[act two; chapter eight     -     if you could, would you?     i would.]

    They slept, then, peacefully. Though it only lasted moments at a time. Brief period in which they went untouched by those who sought to end them, those who plotted and schemed and hunted.

    They were awoken, all too suddenly. She shot up from where she had been laying. She watched, then, pushing to her feet, as Aang ran to the cliffs edge of the temple, looking out below. There, she saw, Fire Nation airships approached, rapidly growing nearer and nearer to what was supposed to be a sanctuary. A place where they would be safe and hidden.

    The Avatar, with a wide arc of his staff, shut the surrounding metal doors, enclosing them. Though, that meant they were trapped now. In most ways, that was. She hadn't been watching what had occurred from above her, the stone and rocks that had, suddenly, come loose. She hadn't seen Zuko, then, as he dove for her, wrapping his arms around her. They were sent tumbling, their bodies rolling against the ground as they avoided the collapse of the rocks.

    She grunted as they stopped rolling, his body shielding hers, lying just overtop of her body. Turning her head over her shoulder, just slightly, her brows furrowed, pulling tightly together. She maneuvered herself away, grumbling, "Thanks," though she said nothing more. Did nothing more.

    His cheeks swelled red, his mind overtaken by some mirage of embarrassment or anger and confusion. Perhaps all and everything.

    Toph, having created a tunnel in the wall as a way to escape, gestured to it, gaining their attention. "Come on, we can get out through here."

    But Lian noticed the cracks, saw how their plan had already begun to crumble before it had truly even started. As the world began to cave in, as it all fell apart. Appa would not cooperate, would not fathom entering a small cavern in the dark. And Zuko...Zuko stood separate from them all. Just as he always seemed to.

    As if he was not one of them. As if he hadn't earned it.

    (She had always believed that he did, even when she wished she didn't.)

    She called out his name, "Zuko?"

    He didn't turn. Didn't do anything but remain where he was, though his chin turned just over his shoulder. She saw him. His face. She saw Zuko. "Go ahead," he said. "I'll hold them off. I think this is a family visit."

    She followed. It had been instinctual, truly, for her legs to move, then. She hadn't thought of it, hadn't allowed her mind to slow enough for her to realize her actions before she acted, to realize what consequences may lay ahead.

    "Lian, Zuko, no!" She heard, Aang's voice echoing all around them in a deep, frightened bellow. She did not stop, not even then. She did not even falter in her step as she followed after him.

    She jumped over one of the shattered metal doors, feeling her feet slam into the ground. She ran, then, and kicked the tips of her toes against the ground, dragging them along the surface. She felt the earth shatter under her step as Zuko destroyed a bomb just in front of them.

    She wasn't sure if he was entirely aware of her presence, though some part of her knew, already, that he did.

    She kicked her foot up, then, dragging the earth with her as she went. The rocks moved with her, dragging through the air in a wide, deadly arc as it collapsed into the side of an airship, cutting through its side.

    She stopped, though, when he did. When Zuko froze, when his body went entirely still. She approached his side, their arms bumping against each other.

    His hand, though she had not seen it, flexed, clenching into a fist as though fighting the urge to hold onto her. To pull her closer and protect her, even when he was entirely aware that Lian did not require protection, least of all from him.

    "What are you doing here?" His voice echoed as Azula, from the depths below the temple, emerged.

    She smiled. Lian had seen that smile before. She'd seen it the day of the agni kai. The same smile that had overtaken Ozai's expression when he had seen the fear in his son's eyes. "You mean it's not obvious yet? I am about to celebrate becoming an only child!"

    And then their world was engulfed in blue flames.

    Lian grabbed hold of Zuko's tunic, tugging his body back, even when she stumbled over her own feet. The earth below them splintered with cracks, catching her off balance. She stumbled, then, her body crashing to the floor as the world around them began to crumble.

    She used the momentum from her fall, however, to push Zuko further away, to urge him in the opposite direction. Her feet met his back with a grunt as she rolled, thrusting his body over her head, her hands releasing the hold she had on him as he was thrown away. She pushed herself up, dragging her hand along the splintered, uneven ground, watching as it moved with her. It rippled, then, as if it were the waves of the ocean. When her fingertips swept upward, so did the earth, aimed at her sole target.

    Azula ducked, her arms reaching to cover her head as the rocks turned to glass, the splinters digging into her arms and legs and face, getting stuck in her hair. She shrieked in surprise, her eyes wild and fully of an anger Lian could not quite describe.

    She pushed off of the ground, launching herself forward in an—insane—attempt to reach the airship. She barely did, really. She soared through the sky, then, entirely airborne for a moment. And then she was descending, her body dropping to the top of the ship. She tucked her head, rolling against it as if she were a boulder tumbling down a hill.

    She watched, only for a moment, as Azula's eyes widened further, taken aback. The girl ran for her, then, fists immersed in blue flames. Lian ducked her head down, swinging her fist into the firebenders side, hearing the satisfying crunch of her knuckles against Azula's ribs.

    The younger girl growled in anger, hand reaching for Lian's hair, fisting it. She tugged, throwing Lian to the ground with a heavy thud against the ship. It was then that the earthbender could feel the heat of Azula's hands nearing her body, her exposed neck and arms. She acted on instinct, then, pushing up into a plank, only to kick out her right leg. She spun, leaning back on her hands as she kicked Azula's legs out from under her. She shoved the firebender away, pushing herself back to her feet.

    She watched, then, in muted satisfaction when Azula's body rolled away. She dug her nails into the ship's side, pushing herself up onto her knees as her attention shifted from Lian to something different.

    To someone else.

    Zuko stood, then, on the roof of an adjacent airship, having escaped from the collapsing temple. It was then that she could hear the echo of Appa's roars, the sound of her friends as they fled.

    She did not think, then, what would happen to her. She did not think of what would occur when they left, when they escaped, leaving her and Zuko behind. She did not blame them, not really. But she did not think of what Ozai would do when he came face to face with her. She imagined, then, that it would be something akin to what he had done to Zuko all of those years ago. She found, however, that she did not fear it.

    She watched in stunned silence as Zuko ran, jumping from the edge of the ship, launching himself across. His feet landed, then, with a thud, immediately pushing himself in a run towards his sister.

    His eyes flickered to her for a moment, watching as she pushed herself back to her feet, her own eyes glancing between him and Azula, and then to their friends as they circled back around, taking blast after blast as they did.

    He hoped she would stay where she was. That she would remain a distance away, that she would not be used as collateral once again at his sister's hands.

    Zuko blocked hit after hit from Azula, though it was when their fists met in the center that it went wrong. A blast strong enough to blow them from the top of the airship.

    He hadn't seen her. He hadn't seen Lian. He hadn't known where she stood or if she was safe. Not until he was falling through the air, the wind creating a capsule around him, did he notice a tumbling haze of dark green. He had hardly noticed when Katara grasped onto him, tugging him into the saddle on Appa's back.

    Aang, too, had noticed, directing the flying bison to circle back around only briefly. Sokka, then, reached out for her as Suki ensured he stayed stable where he was. He shouted her name, "Lian," echoing through the air. She blindly reached an arm out, splaying it in the direction she must have imagined he'd be.

    Her body was toppling through the air, falling too far past them to be caught, she realized. Her hair had created a curtain around her, already longer than it had been after Ba Sing Se. it whipped around her in all directions, her clothes, now cold from the air, flapping against her skin.

    And then her body had hit something hard, the air having been knocked from her lungs. She heard his voice before she could see his face, Sokka holding her body between his and Suki's. She reached blindly, her hands grasping onto his forearms, attempting to stop her body from shaking so entirely, so violently.

    "You're okay," he murmured, his words solely for her. "We have you. You're okay."

    She nodded silently, casting her eyes in the direction she had just fallen from. She saw Azula, then, freefalling, tumbling through the air.

    "She's not gonna make it," Zuko whispered, horror leaking into his tone. But then she had. With a push off of her feet, blue flames propelling her, Azula hooked herself onto the cliffs, a hairclip saving her from certain death. Zuko grimaced. "Of course she did."

———

    They had found a place to stay for the night, a place where they could remain hidden, however temporary.

    They sat around a fire, the night sky above them.

    Aang looked around, glancing between them all with a small smile. "Wow, camping...it really seems like old times again, doesn't it?"

    "If you really want it to feel like old times, I could, uh—" Lian sighed deeply, placing her face in her hands as shook her head at Zuko's words. "—chase you around awhile and try to capture you."

    She looked across the fire from where she sat, her green eyes falling upon Katara's rounded figure, her elbows braced on either of her knees, her face cast solely towards the fire.

    Her brother, however, seemed in much better spirits, raising his cup to the air. "To Zuko," he said with a smile. "Who knew after all those times he tried to snuff us out, today he'd be our hero."

    All but Lian and Katara raised their cups, chanting with laughter, "Hear, hear."

    The firebender looked between them all, though his eyes, however obvious, lingered more on the two girls, piqued by their silence. "I'm touched," he said gently. "I don't deserve this."

    Pushing up from her seat on the ground, Katara said, lowly, "Yeah, no kidding."

    Lian looked up, then, her eyes finding Katara's, seeing how, almost instinctively, they drifted to her. She, too, pushed up from her seat, waving a hand at Zuko as went to move. "Wait here, just for a while."

    And then she was gone, turning her back and disappearing into the darkness after the waterbender.

    Lian found Katara sitting before the cliff, silently joining her on a slab of rock. She said nothing, not as she sat, and not as she reached for the younger girl's hand, cradling it between her own. They sat there, then, for a moment. Looking across the ocean that lay before them, the moon above their heads.

    "Would you..." Katara's voice broke through the silence, splintering. She did not turn to look at the older girl, but rather kept her head directed forward as it had already been. She swallowed harshly, and continued speaking, her voice quiet, though it carried through the wind. "Would you kill him? If you had the chance, would you kill Long Feng?"

    Lian thought about it. Let it run through her mind like the rushing waves below them. She thought of the question: would she kill Long Feng? Truthfully, at first thought, she did not know. She did not even know what her reaction would be to seeing the man who had played such a strong, horrible hand in her youth. In raising her from baby to child to teenager. She did not know...

    She did. She knew, then, as she thought of the letter that sat upon the desk of her room. It sat there, she remembered, just where she had left it. The letter that had revealed the truth of her mother's passing, of her marriage to her father. The truth of where Lian had come from, what had molded her.

    Her brows pinched together. Her eyes burned. (She was on fire. Burning alive. Screaming.) "I think that I would. I think that...I think that he has escaped life's consequences for too long now. I think that he does not know what it means to look your mistakes in the eye and know that he was wrong."

    She knew the truth of her words. Perhaps she was the only one who truly did. For she knew of Long Feng's manipulative words and unkind hand. Of how, when angered, he would lock her in a dark room. Concrete walls and concrete floors. Nothing but darkness, is what had surrounded her too often. He would lock her there, abandon her, and leave her for days. She would stay there, then, for however long he wished. Without food, without water, without any semblance of humanity. She had been left there with her ravaging thoughts and dead voice and drowning mind. And when those doors opened once more, when he stood before her, Lian was nothing more than compliant and afraid.

    She was just a kid.

    Long Feng had, in most ways, been in her life more than her own father had. He had shaped her from the day she was born, starting from the very moment he left her mother alone to die. From the very moment he scooped her, a baby, from Jia's arms and handed her off to the King. She had been his puppet, and he the puppetmaster. He had shaped her, controlled her every move and word and thought. He had been the strings holding her up and the strings that would drop her from a cliff. He was the very reason she existed. She had thought, for a time, that he would be the reason she died.

    She looked out across the water far below them. "I do not believe in revenge, I never have." She saw, from the corner of her eye, as Katara looked to her. As her blue eyes turned, glancing in her direction. Listening. Waiting. "But I do believe in bad karma. I believe that the pain one inflicts on others will, eventually, come back to them."

    "Would you come with me to find the man who murdered my mother?"

    It was a simple question in theory. In thought, perhaps. Lian had told Aang that she would end Ozai should the time come where he was unable to. That if it had been something he deemed required, that if he could not do it, then she would. She supposed, in all ways, those words applied to Katara. To what she was asking.

    Without hesitation, she said, "Yes. I would."

    Katara nodded, though she said nothing. Rather, she simply squeezed Lian's hands, the ones that had cradled her own. A simple, silent thanks. Words that, between them, had no need to be spoken aloud.

    Lian pushed herself up from the stone, standing to her feet. As she rounded the side, her hand ghosted over Katara's shoulder as she did. She noticed Zuko, then, standing some feet away. She offered him a small nod of her head before she rounded the corner of a rock, disappearing from his sight.

    She wasn't sure how long it had taken for him to find her. She had given him the space he needed to speak with Katara, of course, but had made her way to her tent. She sat, then, waiting for him.

    From outside, Zuko approached slowly. Apprehensive. He knew that she was aware of his presence—she always was. Anchoring his heart in his chest, he pushed open the flap to her tent, entering with his head ducked down. She sat adjacent to him, a scroll placed at her feet. It held different mending skills, he realized, in all forms of bending.

    "I'm sorry," he said quietly as he settled across from her, his hands placed on his knees.

    She looks up from the scroll, her steeled, green eyes observing him. "What for?"

    It was not truly a question. Not from her. Not for him. It was a prompt, a door opening. A space for him to tell her all that he harbored in his mind. It was an invitation.

    "For everything. I know that I've said it before, about Ba Sing Se. But I..." he tipped his head, his eyes trying to find hers as she avoided him. "I am sorry. For kissing you like that. For not explaining things to you. I guess I was worried—I was worried that you would not like who I have become these last few years."

    They looked at each other, then. Truthfully. Wholly. Entirely. Looked at each other, through each other. And they saw all that had changed. They had both been marked by the war; they had been reshaped as if they were clay in a potter's hands.

    Lian had hardened, Zuko realized. No longer was her exterior soft and full of curious glances. Gone were the innocence and infantry of youth. It had been long replaced by a violent, steeled shell. He could see it in her eyes that had once been so wide and yearning for freedom. Now, all that remained was a sadness that he had once believed he knew. Perhaps he had. But perhaps it had become all that Lian was. It had been what reshaped her. Learning the truth of what happened to her mother, her failed relationship with her father. It had all changed her. Caused her to go from girl to woman before she had truly reached her seventeenth birthday. Scarred by the hands of his sister on the outside, yet scarred by something so much more on the inside. Scars that she had never truly allowed others to see.

    No one but him.

    But Lian could see through him, too. She could see how he had been split in two. He had been that way for some time, she assumed. Two sides, two warring sides from within. One, which clung so dearly to youth; the other, clinging so desperately to finding worth in a man who had only ever seen him as worthless. He, too, had cracks in his shell. She had seen them. Felt them. Read them aloud and cried for them. For him. Perhaps, he too, had been reshaped, time and time again. By the unkind hands of his father. By the angered opinions of his people. A traitor, he had been. A prince, he had become once more. And now, she supposed, he was just Zuko. Truly and entirely, perhaps for the first time since his mother disappeared. Since he had been forced to fight a grown man as a child.

    Perhaps they were, entirely and solely, who they had always meant to be.

    "Can I...can I hug you? Just for a minute..."

    She nodded mutely. He shuffled towards her then, both of them braced on their knees. He wrapped his arms around her then, holding her body within his own. As if he were the sun's light cradling the earth, holding it, protecting it.

    She did not reach her arms around him. Not at first. No,