"Dr. Chen, you gotta come see this. I think I found--"

"Syl, I swear," the petite woman didn't bother turning her head into the dark tunnel, "you give me another April Fools today... and I'm throwing my helmet at you!"

They had been chiseling through inches of rock along this new excavation point, and the young anthropologist had just about called it quits with the day.

"No -- seriously, Grace, I'm not joking." the man moved some of his long, messy brown hair to press his ear further against the concave rocks. "There's something behind this wall. It feels hollow."

Grace came over with her thin lips pursed even more in speculation, holding her burrower's helmet tightly as she adjusted the light towards Syl. If it hadn't been for the bit of soft dirt and dust covering her face and the forest-green cargo pants, she could've passed as a very distraught librarian looking for a missing book. When she pressed her ear against the same spot, and heard a distant echo... her eyes bolted.

Syl caught that contagious smile, immediately calling to their geologist a few yards off in the dim light.

"Andrea, get over here! We need shovels!"

A tall, plump woman with curly black hair scurried into the scene, staying careful to watch her step in the darkness. It didn't take long for the three of them to jam their shovels straight into the rocks, picking up pieces of gravel out of the wall before an opening crumbled into existence.

"Hoooooly cr--" Andrea's mouth fell.

Syl immediately took out his flashlight to look into the hole. "You think this might be it?"

"I'm not sure." Grace didn't hesitate to place her hands inside the opening to examine further. "According to legend, the Cave of the Two Lovers was aligned with magnesium pyrite: Glow-in-the-Dark crystal, remember?

"Yeah, but those things would've burnt out ages ago," Andrea located her small notepad at a pocket inside her brown-leather coat. "Nobody's found this place in centuries, Grace, and with nothin' but darkness... those crystals would've given themselves out, eventually."

"She has a point," Syl managed.

"I suppose you're right." Grace squinted her eyes, examining the lining of the rocks and gave a small sigh. "Man... I thought this was going to be different."

"Different? What're you talking about?" Syl couldn't help but laugh a little. "We might've found the famous Cave of Two Lovers!"

"Yeah," Grace wiped some of the dirt from her goggles with her free arm, "but I guess I was expecting a more... dramatic discovery, you know? With the ancient markings of the Badger Moles along the walls, the green-lit crystals making a path into the Lovers' tombs... this just looks like another dark, dirty tunnel to me!"

Andrea and Syl made matching odd looks at the woman, whose goggles were somewhat lopsided in the moment.

"What?" the woman stared at them incredulously. "You don't understand... I've been imagining this since I was a little girl. It would've been nice to have something match the real thing!"

"Well hey," Syl jabbed his research partner on the shoulder, "we haven't even gotten to the good part yet! Maybe the actual tomb'll make up for some of those lost dreams of yours, Gracey."

Dr. Chen blocked his next playful jab, keeping her professional-looking stature as she took another breath into the dark cavern ahead of them.

"You want me to gather the troops?" Andrea smirked.

"Yes." Grace felt her bold voice coming back to her as she turned on her flashlight into the tunnel. "Tell Dr. Dragon we're heading east into the southwestern brink, approximate coordinates: thirty-two by fifty-four. Tell him to keep his microphone on, and get the interns ready for some serious digging. And get us some extra batteries, please."

Dr. Chen smiled at the last statement, by which her friend then threw her a teasing grunt. She despised being the dubbed the 'waitress' of this whole operation, but aside from being the crew's expert Geo-chronologist, Andrea had to admit she did a hell of a good job.

"I'll get you your camcorder, too, Syl." Andrea then said in a light-hearted manner, rearranging the goggles over her eyes as she scavenged out of the dark realm, leaving Grace and Syl to take a couple of moments to look at each other, and then to the dark tunnel in front of them.

The two couldn't help but squeal happily, like two children about to enter Disney World.

Three years.

To Grace Chen, those past three years had been nothing but a maelstrom of disappointment, delusion, and mostly downright ridicule about this entire excavation to find the legendary Tomb of OmaShu along the vast mountainous regions of her ancestors' homelands near Beijing, China.'The Cave of Two Lovers' she mused to herself, wondering if such a thing was indeed possible to exist: a cavern that withheld evidence that love - true love - did exist, and it was unquestionably worth fighting for.

No, Grace didn't consider herself a believer. She had actually given up on the search for true love the day she turned thirty, closing that chapter in her life about finding the perfect man, and instead dedicated her self to love what she did. And what Grace loved... was stories, and dirt. Perhaps if there was anyone who deserved the credit in unfolding her future it was her grandmother for telling her all those stories about the old world, about the city OmaShu that had been constructed out of true love. She wasn't a girl to believe in anything too sentimental, but prided herself in slivers of hope in the form of research grants and generous donations by her fellow Stanford friends... including Sylvester Matsko.

Funny, how before this whole 'search for OmaShu' fiasco began, Syl had been quite happy living under his graduate assistantship at UCLA, teaching intermediate Mandarin to sleepy undergrads in the daytime, showing off his skill of the language to pretty blue-eyed girls on the occasional night outings. It was during one afternoon at a coffee shop as he was writing his Master's thesis: "Strategic War Planning that Brought the Fire Nation out of the mainland Earth Kingdom during the Brykean Dynasty of Imperial China," when he stumbled upon a familiar face on the front page of the school newspaper:

Stanford graduate, Grace Sheng-Ting Chen, from Palo Alto, CA, becomes the youngest in university history to receive the Honorary Doctoral Degree in Chinese Anthropology. Dr. Chen now seeks small crew for long-term excavation in northern Beijing, China to find legendary tombhighlighted in her doctoral thesis, funded by the Stanford University Department of East Asian Cultures.

When Syl read about her needing a professional translator and analyst of the military history prior to the Brykean Era, he almost spit out his coffee in excitement.

The rest was history.

Little by little, Grace managed to reconnect with her former classmate, remembering how oftentimes they would doodle ugly pictures of their cultural anthropology professors whenever lectures would drag. By the time she recruited geologist Dr. Andrea Linx, archaeologist Dr. Michel Dragon, and her first group of undergrad interns under a six-month paid contract, Grace's enthusiasm for this little expedition to China was slowly dwindling by budget cuts and the many defensive arguments she had to make in front of the university board for extra time on location.

She'd argued her way into three years, and Grace knew the board would not give them much more time.

Sometimes she snuggled into her blankets for warmth during those cruel winters in northern Beijing, and she would curse herself stupid for turning down that teaching position at the Institute for East Asian Civilizations back in sunny California. But Grace Chen knew she had to find this legendary place at some point, and with every small artifact she and Syl discovered with their small research crew... it made Grace hopeful that they were getting closer.

Either that, or she had quite the list of I.O.U.s to make by the time she returned home.

"Michel, can you hear me?" Grace pressed on the tiny microphone attached to her jacket. A bit of static came as a response, along with a muffled voice with a slight French accent.

"Yea, Doctor," came the microphone speaker against Grace's left ear. "You're fine, I'm checking the coordinates on the computer... according to the vibration readings, that tunnel goes a few yards below ground. Make sure the rope link is tight, yes?"

"Roger that, Dragon," Grace laughed, keeping her footing strong as she carefully continued downward into the tunnel. The rope was latched in her belt, and it was attached to Syl's belt a few feet above her, and it led out of the tunnel into the crew's station, where Andrea and others kept a safe grip the whole time.

"You got the camera rolling, Syl?" Grace coughed out a bit of dust as she made her way down the narrow tunnel.

"Yep, but I dunno what good it's gonna do with all this dust," Syl remarked, trying to hold it steady in one hand as he crouched a few steps behind.

Syl was right. Their flashlights could barely cut through the dust as they tried to find some sort of opening, but Grace was determined to continue documenting every detail of this secret tunnel She grabbed the portable tape recorder from her pocket, rewinded some of the tape and quickly pressed it on.

"This is Dr. Grace Chen... April first, two thousand and nine... inside Excavation Point number G-C-121 for the OmaShu Project."

A single rope was the only link between Grace and Syl as they scavenged that dark and narrow pathway, with all that equipment they clung onto, they prayed that the rope would be strong enoughlead them further into the abyss... with Dr. Dragon hanging onto every word through their digital microphones. Grace started to cough, then.

"There -- is -- as you can imagine by my coughing just now... quite a bit of rubble in this small tunnel that my assistant Mr. Matsko discovered shortly. It's hard to make out any sort of marks along the walls... OmaShu's tomb was said to be hidden within a labyrinth of tunnels guided by magnesium pyrite, but--"

"GRACE!"

Syl's camera had fidgeted against focus as he squinted his eyes to find certain markings on the rocks with his helmet light, and the woman almost slipped down the rocky slope as she looked up in reaction. She paused the tape recorder.

"What the hell, Syl?" she whispered angrilly.

Syl was excitedly pointing on some odd markings with his hand for the camera. "Grace, look, these are ancient burn marks. I think we found a secret burial ground of the ancient Fire Nation."

Grace almost choked in her own saliva with disbelief, pausing so much that Dr. Dragon had to call out on it through her microphone.

Impossible, she thought. If what Sylvester said was true, this meant that this entire mountain range... roughly a year's worth of research and investigation.... had been for nothing.

"That's crazy, Syl," she whispered up to him so as to not let the camera catch her words. "Geographically, the Fire Nation was documented to be somewhere in Eastern Korea or Japan, not mainland China!"

"I know; that's not what I meant..." Syl insisted on keeping the camera on, trying to locate the other intricate burn marks along the dark walls. "It's just as probable that people from the Fire Nation could've chosen to be buried in ancient Earth Kingdom territory. By the looks of these markings, it must've been sooome burial ceremony... hey, Grace, you think it could've been a Fire Lord?"

That was when Grace had had enough, and she pressed the tape recorder once again.

"Correction for the record. Excavation point number G-C-121 is clearly not the sacred grounds of OmaShu, by the looks of the burning marks on the walls. At best, this tunnel is leading us to more artifacts from the ancient culture of the Fire Nation... which I will be obliged to document for Dr. Max Kiely, since that covers his line of expertise. This is Dr. Grace Chen, reporting on April first--"

"Wait, Grace... what are you doing?" Syl struggled to turn off his camera and look down at his research partner.

"I don't have time for this, Syl," Grace murmured and was ready to start heading back up the tunnel, but the man was deliberately staying put. "The board wrote to me. They're on my back about finding the Cave, and if I don't give them results by the end of April... they're going to cut my funding. We can't just investigate every little tunnel we keep stumbling into--"

"Guys, you doing okay? I'm getting an unusual Richter reading up here." Dragon's voice muffled into Grace's ear, and the girl huffed a sigh, grabbing her little mic.

"Yeah... yeah, we're fine," Grace exchanged a scowl with Syl as she said so. "Listen, Michel, false alarm. This place is Kiely's territory. We're heading back up..."

But Grace's voice hung at the end of that syllable, hearing the sudden tremors occur against the palms of her hands as she held onto the tunnel walls. Syl felt them, too, and he took it the same way by his frightened look. A minor quake was passing through the mountain... and Grace immediately grabbed hold of her tool belt to ensure that if worse came to worse, they could attempt to climb out.

It was minor, but it had passed under Grace's feet enough to crumble the ground below her completely, and before either of them could even think about screaming... they slid further down into that dark tunnel with their helmet lights breaking the dusty air. Grace was yelping, holding onto Syl while tried not to laugh as he documented the whole sliding experience with his camera. The whole thing didn't last very long, but it was enough to wake them both out of their spirits, and thanking them that the rope had still been intact to their connections topside.

"Michel! Michel, you still there?" Grace tapped into her microphone, while Syl investigated his surroundings like a cautious, curious child with a camera.

"I'm here, Grace," the man replied reassuringly. "What's going on? Where are you?"

"The rocks gave in, Mich," she explained breathlessly, coughing. "Syl and I must've slipped way below ground. I'm not sure where we are..."

Her helmet's light was going wildly from one corner of the place to another, her eyes slowly adjusting to the small circular pit of dust she and Syl had stumbled into. She placed a sleeve over her mouth to control the coughing, rolling her eyes as Syl kept toying around the walls with his camcorder light.

"Do you still want me to pull you both up?" came Michel's voice again, but just as it did... Grace's helmet light had noticed a strange set of blocks in the faint distance on the pit. Two blocks... two coffins, exactly like the ones illustrated to hold the bodies of Oma and Shu.

Goosebumps had raced onto Grace's skin, she could hardly breathe. "Give us a few more minutes, Michel. I think we may have found something. SYL, THIS WAY!"

Syl located the woman through his camera's night-vision light, watching her excitingly gesture over to a shadowy place in the pit they had landed on.

"This... this isn't the OmaShu tomb, Grace. Oh god.... Oh my god...!"

"Are you sure? What... Syl, what is it!?"

"Grace... we found the burial place of Fire Lord Zuko. FIRE LORD ZUKO!"

"Who?" her voice sounded abundantly disappointed.

Syl stared at his friend with bulging, incredulous eyes.

"You're kidding me... Grace, this is as big as King Arthur... no... KING TUT!" Syl was moving his camera so wildly along the written marks on Zuko's tomb, he didn't notice. "Do you have any idea what this man did for the Fire Nation, all the prosperity be brought back to it after Sozin's War? The kid was a genius!"

"Oh yeah... I remember that story," the woman brushed through the handful of facts she could remember from studying the Brykean Dynasty, feeling awfully guilty that it wasn't her most favorite time period in ancient Chinese history. "Didn't the legend say he was in league with the forty-seventh Avatar... Avatar Aang... and they helped rebuild the world or something?"

The man felt insult pounding on his chest, realizing how single-minded Dr. Chen had become throughout this entire excavation for the Cave of Two Lovers. He wanted to say something, but he knew she was just being stubborn, and hiding her inner disappointment of losing another day of funding for this cave.

"Yeah," Syl pressed his had onto the tomb gently with his free hand, blowing into the dust to locate any written accounts of the burial ceremony. "And according to the Brykean records, Avatar Aang was the last Avatar to exist before the Age of Bending completely disappeared."

Grace snorted, examining the other tomb. "I honestly don't understand how people could take the 'Age of Bending' so legitimately as historical fact. "

Syl glared up at her. "Hey, it did happen."

"I know, but that's almost as to say we should take every one of Jesus's miracles from the Bible as historical fact. In the end, they're nothing but eyewitness accounts, and we can only take so much of those things seriously."

"Grace, you're slapping ten years of high quality education to your face right now," Syl promptly turned the camcorder over to her, as she stared at him annoyingly from the other block. "I honestly think you'd be a much happier person if you quit thinking about the money you're losing, and just start believing in true love... like these people did."

Grace muttered a "Shut up" at the camera as she blew dust off of the second tomb. "Oh man... this must be his wife's tomb... the Fire Lady Katara, right?"

"Yep. The famous peasant girl from the Southern Water Tribe. Interesting story there..." Syl could feel his insides becoming heavier with sentimental thoughts as he kept focusing his camera to the dusty blocks. "... it was a romance built out of friendship. You couldn't imagine how those two hated each other, but when they became friends... everything changed."

"Okay, Syl, I get it!" The woman grunted again, trying to read the inscriptions on her own as she adjusted her goggles for a better view. "They were in love."

The man lowered his camera to gather himself closer to the first coffin and read some of the inscriptions on Fire Lord Zuko's tomb, feeling altogether lucky and living someone else's life for this sort of opportunity. As he traced the Chinese writing along the base of the tomb... something else caught his eye at the corner of the second coffin.

Something that gilded against the light of his camera.

Crouching near the tomb, Syl turned on his camera and moved himself towards the shining object... what looked like a small bead covered with dust. When Grace stared over at him, she raised a brow and looked in the same direction. Something was resting at the base of Fire Lady Katara's tomb in this dark, secret burial pit.

And covered in layers of delicate dust, curled up in a sleeping fetal position for what must've been thousands of years... completely eaten away by the tiny creatures of the mountain, laid the skeleton of a man. Grace could not place who it was, but Syl caught the identity immediately with his camera.

"The beaded necklace."

It was the same necklace they'd both admired, many years ago when they were learning about the ancient civilization of the Air Nomads during the Brykean Era, how that culture had been wiped out from the Imperial Fire Nation during Sozin's reign. The necklace stood out to them because it held the iconic orange of the Nomads, with their insignia of Air illustrated in the book as a representation of a lost culture.

The beaded necklace could only have been worn by the last surviving Airbender, and according to the history books and Syl's uncanny fanaticism for this time period... it was Avatar Aang.

"Syl," Grace whispered slowly, her eyes locked on that beaded necklance, "I know the books documented Avatar Aang's alliance with the Fire Lord Zuko ... but do you have any idea if maybe, he was also really close to...?"

The man placed a sleeve over his mouth as he held the camera shakingly, taken aback by the unceremonious placement of a man who should've been buried in the most sacred of places... and instead found here... willingly left to die next to the coffin of another man's wife.

He nodded his head towards Grace in the dim light, finally turning off his camera to conceal the evidence.

"Grace, forget the Cave of Two Lovers. I think we may've located the most valuable love triangle in the history of the ancient world..."

A/N - Hey guys. So to further prove my love for Avatar, I'm experimenting with a new miniseries here, dealing with stuff happening after the War. I'm not even sure how far I want to go with it, but I think it'll be interesting. =) Love triangles can have quite the complex stories. Let me know if you like it so far. --MM