1. THE GRASS IS SOFT AND COOL. I can feel it on my skin, through my clothes. The wind whispers and rattles through the grass, and the trees creak and moan. There's a slight chill in the air, but I ignore it. Goosebumps ripple my bare arms, but I ignore that, too. I ignore everything and nothing. The world is alive around me, alive and thrumming, but in the middle is me. I feel like the white space in the corner of an otherwise full canvas. I'm very tired, but I can't sleep. My body rebels, but I ignore it. It doesn't know what's good for it. I don't, either, of course, but at least I know enough to avoid my dreams.

The fire whip cracks into the air. My body hums with anticipation. This is the moment. There is no turning back. I pull the whip back, let the moment seep into my bones. Will I be the same man tomorrow? If not, who will I be? Better? Worse? Indifferent? I have no answers. Never have. Will I ever? Time to find out.

Azula's voice, hard and brittle. Her voice has always been like that, like her eyes, even when she was a little girl. There's something new there, though, something different, something…

Unnatural…

"Zu-Zu," she says, "I don't mean to intrude on the moment, but that whip's not hot enough to kill."

In the memory, I sigh. "I know."

I strike.

My eyes snap open. I sit up in the early morning darkness, run my hands through my hair and down my face. Dammit. I clench my fists, feel the grass and the dirt crunch between my fingers. Gods-dammit. I lift my hands, spread them open, watch the grass and the dirt drift off with the wind. Fuck. I beat my hands against my pants, shaking off the grime. My clothes are dirty, torn, well on their way towards being rags. Doesn't matter what else I do to them, I suppose.

I turn, look back down on the camp, such that it is. I'm on a low ridge, looking down. The camp (again, for lack of a better word) is in a shallow bowl, guarded from view. Trees dot the lip, and the view is clear as far as the eye can see. I drove them hard to get here; I hope it pays off, that it was worth exhausting everyone. If we're found before tomorrow, we're fucked; there's no way Appa can move much before then. He sleeps in the bowl, soundly. Does he dream? I hope not. Seems unfair, to curse a helpless beast with dreams.

Of course, when have the spirits ever been fair? Assuming that they're even there…

Everyone's sleeping, scattered around the saddle. There's Sokka; I can hear his snores from here, when the wind passes over the air bison's back. There's little Toph, curled into a ball, and Katara, identified by the huge pillow of dark hair spread around here. In the middle, a form laws, small, unmoving. From here, I can't even tell if he's alive. He better be; otherwise, it was all for nothing.

All for nothing…

I mean, I committed treason for the sake of the fucking Avatar. If Aang dies, then what was the point?

I'm tempted to laugh. It's hard not to. A dry, cold, grating chuckle builds in my throat, makes my lips tremble and tickle. I shake my head, willing it away. With this laugh, this particular one building hard and cold down in my chest when my heart should be, there will be tears, and I can't afford those yet. Someday, yes, they will come. I will let them. I will curl up in a corner and cry until I can't cry anymore.

But not yet.

I turn away, back to the horizon. We're adrift in a sea of rolling hills and green grass sighing in the wind. Trees bend and sway and groan. To my left, at the corner of my vision, is a small village in a sea of neatly cultivated field. Have they heard? I wonder. Somehow, I doubt it. Whether Ozai or Kuei reings in Ba Sing Se matters little in such places, I suppose. Whether the tax collector wears red or green wouldn't make much of a difference in their lives. Do they even know about the war? I very much want to wander down, ask them. If they don't, I'll suggest to the others that we stay, stay and never leave. Would they go along with it? I'm not sure. A week ago? Of course not. Today?

Today?

I push the thought aside, down deep amongst my tears. There it can stay; I don't need it right now.

My fingers twitch. I settle back down to the ground, sit, dig in my pocket, pull out a crumpled back of cigarettes. I shake it, count. Seven. I sigh, shake one out, grasp it with my lips, put the pack away. Seven. I flick out a finger, bend a tiny flame to life. Fucking seven. I draw the smoke in deep, harsh Fire Nation tobacco, shot through with spice and fire. My fingertips tingle, my head swims; it's been far too long. I hold the smoke in, blow it out, feel the soft burn in my mouth, throat, nostrils. I feel warmer now, more relaxed, but no closer to being ready to sleep.

I laugh. Six now. I clear my mind, smoke in silence, slow, careful, deliberate. It almost works.

My name is Zuko. I was once the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, heir to the throne of Fire Lord Ozai. For six months, I chased the Avatar. For six more months, I chased myself.

Today, I am twenty-two-years-old. Now, I chase an answer. We'll see how that works out.

I'm not hopeful.

Author's Note Time!

So, yeah, this is my first story here. I've had this account for ages, and only now am I doing more than perusing other people's stories. Now, finally, I'll feel comfortable with doing reviews and shit. I mean, I always felt a little off, commenting on the work of others when I wasn't willing to get over myself and post something up.

That said, you guys, please comment, no matter what.

So, a few notes. I'll try to keep these short in the future (or even nonexistent; my hope is that, over time, my AU will speak for itself, but right now, I'm betting that some explanation is in order), but for today? It's going to be a long one.

So, one of the biggest problems I always had with the show was that the characters were too fucking young. I mean, they're acting like adults (most of the time), but they're just kids. No matter how mature Katara may be, there's no way she'd be that level-headed at fourteen. So, in order to write my version of the story, everyone had to be age-progressed, to a level that more closely matched how I felt they acted. So, for example, Sokka and Zuko are now 22 (they were 21 when the story started, but more on that). If you think about it, this makes sense for Zuko. What's more believable: That a 14-year-old asserted himself in a war council (or was even let in), or that an 18/19-year-old asserted himself in a war council? And if Sokka and Katara's dad really left Sokka behind to guard the village, if he was 14 at the time (as is implied), then he is officially the worst dad ever. Plus, an 18/19-year-old Sokka being pissy over being left behind by the warriors makes more sense than a 14-year-old; even at that age, most of us understand that we shouldn't get involved in wars and shit.

Also, Katara is now 19. Aang and Toph are 15. Again, this, in mind, more closely matches their actual characterizations. In the show, Aang has a tendency to come across as a particularly willful, kind of pervy pre-teen. Make him 14/15, though? And suddenly all of his actions can be chalked up to full-blown teenager in a little over his head. A 12-year-old doesn't run away on a whim from a good home. A 14/15-year-old, though? Totally.

Further, this story will, in general, take place over a longer time frame. So, for example, the Gaang has already been on the road for a year (hence all the slashes in the ages). This reconciles a lot for me. One, the actual time it would take to travel. The world they live in is obviously a big place, and a lot of it is an active warzone. Even a moderate natural disaster can fuck up the infrastructure of a highly developed society (people who lived through this past winter in North Texas will catch my drift). The idea that the Gaang could just fly back and forth across an active warzone, while trying to not get shot or caught, as easily as a domestic flight from Dallas to Houston on a clear spring day is just ludicrous, as is the idea that Aang is such a special little sunflower that he can master three complex bending disciplines in less than six months.

(Also, before you say, "But they can fly!", Appa will NOT be a get-out-of-plot-points-free card in this story. For one, he's a living animal; try riding a horse full-stop every day for a week and see what happens. For another, the Fire Nation has flying airships; you really think no one in this society has bothered to figure out how to shoot shit down?)

So, yeah, time has been expanded. Things are going to be a bit more complex. The Gaang is going to have to deal with food, clothes, concealment, finding a good camp ground. I'll keep this to a thing in the background mostly, because it bores even me, but this is just a way of explaining why things are taking as long as they do.

Now, there's other shit that will get explained in the story, but first and foremost: Why is Zuko with them after fleeing Ba Sing Se? I'll explain the full story later (in the story), but for now, know that this was an occasion of the characters telling me what to do. When I age-progressed them, Zuko came up to me, sat down, lit my cigarette for me, and said, You know, yeah, a sixteen-year-old me would've betrayed the others in the Crystal Catacombs, but a 22-year-old me? Come on. And you know what? He had a point. So, Zuko didn't turn back to Azula and the Fire Nation. Because this Zuko is older, more mature, though no less conflicted. For me, this is cool. I basically have a whole new series to explore that I didn't even think about when I started mapping this out. I'm pretty fucking excited.

(Also, we're no longer going to toss away all of the character development Zuko went through in Book 2, unlike some writers for a particular well-loved – and deservedly so – animated TV show did…)

So, yeah, I think that covers it. Deep down, I hope you didn't read all this, and that you let the story speak for itself, but I had to get all of this off my chest. In the future, these notes will be much shorter, and, hopefully, much better thought out. Cheers!