This was a response to a meme over on livejournal. It's not finished (sorry), though I've had enough fun with it that I will probably write more. Also, this is essentially all the parts that I wrote in the process of trying to finish it. Thus, the plot is a bit shaky and sporadic. Anyway, it's AU, Jet isn't dead, and Zuko was arrested by the Dai Li.

For those who are wondering, the prompt was "Jet finding Ursa and returning her to the F.N. to make up for Ba Sing Se."

Sokka wasn't happy. Sure, they'd beaten the Fire Lord, and no one was dead, and Jet wasn't hitting on his sister anymore. But peace, as it turned out, was a lot more difficult than war. Most of the Fire Nation, despite the past hundred years of war and tyranny, still didn't want to be ruled by anyone but a firebender, specifically a royal firebender, and the spirits seemed to agree with them, if the large amount of grouchy house spirits and river spirits and volcano spirits (that one had been fun) were any indication. Unfortunately, royal firebenders who weren't interested in destroying the rest of the world were in rather short supply at the moment, which is why Sokka was digging through stupid court documents and stupid genealogies of the stupid royal family. Oh, and hadn't these people ever heard of organization? There wasn't any method to the order!

"How's it going, Sokka?"

Obviously Sokka needed to work on his scowl, because it hadn't warned Aang at all.

"Terrible! These people have obviously never had to find anything in here before, or these records would be organized!"

Aang glanced at the papers. "They're alphabetical."

"Alpha-"

Tomomi, Tsukiko, Umeko, Yasu, Yuzuki…

Oh. Alphabetically…

Well, it was a stupid system anyway.

"So you haven't found anyone?"

"No. It looks like anyone who might have any claim to the throne is either dead or imprisoned for trying to burn down the Earth Kingdom. There aren't that many papers left, either."

"Who's next, anyway?"

"Umm… Zuko."

"That's it?"

"Yep."

"He's a bit young to have illegitimate children that could take the throne, huh?"

"Uh huh," Sokka continued skimming the papers, "Nothing here we didn't know: son of Ursa and Ozai, brother to Azula, banished… banished?"

"What?"

"'Crown Prince Zuko, son of Ozai was banished following the events detailed in general records vol. 637, under the condition of capturing alive the Avatar.'"

"What was he banished for?"

Sokka shrugged. "Doesn't say."

"Let's find out! What was that book that-"

There was a rumble of earth.

"Come out here Twinkletoes! You can't hide forever!"

"Umm…" Aang stood up, "You're gonna have to find it on your own, sorry… I wasn't here!"

Sokka appeared holding a book. "I have good news and bad news."

Toph smirked. "You've overcome your unmanly fondness for shopping?"

"No, I have no- Shopping is perfectly manly!"

"Su-re."

"Ahem. I may have found a –living—member of the Fire Nation royal family who isn't completely psychotic!"

Katara looked up from trying to splash Aang. "Who?"

"Zuko!"

"You found out why he was banished?" Aang said.

"Yeah."

Toph spoke up. "Hate to burst your bubble, but isn't Zuko the guy who burned down Suki's village?"

"And threatened Gran-Gran?" Katara added.

"And hired that bounty hunter you mentioned?"

"And tied me to a–"

"Yes, but–"

"And even if he hadn't, we still don't know where he is," Katara said, "He wasn't here on the Day of Black Sun."

"That was the bad news," Sokka said, "But it's still the best we've got. Read this."

Katara was learning that reading a book was made incredibly more difficult while flying on the back of a large bison at top speeds.

It was worth fighting the winds that were trying to tear the pages away from her, though. She had already read it twice, just to make sure she had understood it right, and she was still not convinced.

Zuko... wasn't evil. Or at least, he hadn't been at some point. Granted, she supposed that pure evil babies were hard to find (though Katara had to wonder after reading some of the records on Azula), but it was still hard to picture the angry guy with the ponytail and scar... not angry and scarred.

"What do you think, Sugar Queen?"

Toph's voice broke Katara out of her thoughts.

"What?"

"This thing with Long Feng. I mean, really, you'd think a guy would stop trying to take over a city after this many encounters with the greatest earthbender in the world," after a second she added "And the Avatar."

Just after Sokka had made his discovery, they had gotten a report from Jet that Long Feng had instrumented a coup and taken over Ba Sing Se. Between their first visit to the city and the fact that Azula had a bunch with her in the Fire Nation, they were getting really sick of fighting the Dai Li. So Katara, Aang and Toph were flying at all speed to, well, stop him. Sokka had stayed behind to babysit the generals and dig through some more documents.

"Oh. Well, we can't let him keep power; he'll start brainwashing people again." If he'd ever stopped. Katara shivered. Jet had gone back to Ba Sing Se to help the Earth King, and he had mentioned rumors of another set of caves run by the Dai Li.

"Well, obviously. What I meant how far do you think he's gotten? Your boyfriend's letter wasn't that informative."

"He's not my boyfriend!" This was true, oddly enough. After they had met in Ba Sing Se, Jet had shown none of the signs of flirting with her that he had in the forest.

Katara decided to change the subject. "Anyway, I don't know. I've been reading."

Aang looked backward from Appa's head. "Really? What did you find out? I didn't get a chance to ask Sokka before we left."

Apparently there had been a war meeting of some kind. A lot of details were confusing, with names of people and places that didn't exist anymore, or were really obscure. But basic idea of the first battle plan was easy to understand, even if Katara didn't want to understand it. It was repulsive! How could they think they could treat their own people that way? She had been surprised to see her own feelings given voice on the page. Someone had protested the plan. The scribe must have been surprised as well, though, because the speaker's name wasn't written until after the tirade: Zuko.

It got worse, apparently. Katara wasn't sure exactly what an Agni Kai was, but the result was fairly obvious. Along with recording the punishment for refusing to fight, several other edicts had been recorded. The exile is not to be given any pain-killers or medicine, the exile is to have left the nation within the next six hours. The exile was being punished for doing the right thing.

Katara wasn't sure that the Zuko she knew had any traces left of the person she was reading about, but at this point, they could only hope.

The sun was bright.

He was standing with a large group of other people. Other prisoners, was how the tall boy had described them. Prisoners, people in a prison. He supposed that was accurate. But they weren't in the prison anymore, so were they still prisoners?

The tall boy was traveling with a girl, a short bald boy, and a short person in green that he thought was boy, but wasn't sure. They had come running in, opened up doors that shouldn't exist, and now the world was a lot bigger.

The world had sunlight now. That was definitely important, even if he wasn't sure why.

The bald boy looking at him now. Perhaps he could explain why the sunlight was important?

"Uh oh."

The girl and other boy (the tall one) looked up.

The boy said "Lee!" as the girl said "Zuko!"

Which one is it?

He thought it was Lee. Kinda hoped it was Lee, actually, because the girl looked angry, and he didn't really want to be this Zuko person when she caught up to him.

Lee was an Earth Kingdom name. Zuko was a Fire Nation name. It was like the sunlight, he didn't know how he knew, but he did. And he was wearing green, so he was probably Earth Kingdom. So he was probably Lee.

With this realization came a stream of memories: stone walls, a teashop, the tall boy yelling (about what, he wasn't sure), an old man who smelled like tea. Uncle.

Meanwhile the tall boy and the girl and the short girl in green were arguing about... something. Whether he was a Lee or a Zuko? But he'd already figured that out. Maybe they didn't know that yet.

"My name's Lee."

They all looked at him, and they all looked worried and a bit confused, except the short girl, who just looked worried.

The girl is talking over him again. The tall one, with a soft voice and loud eyes. The one who keeps giving him headaches.

"We need to figure out what's important to him. It worked on Jet."

"Yeah, but we have no way of knowing. All we know is that he wants to capture Aang, and that he doesn't have a ponytail anymore."

Lee wonders who they're talking about. He doesn't know anyone with a ponytail except the girl's brother, and the brother was obviously talking about someone else.

"We know he has an uncle. I met him on the road a while back."

"Maybe a picture would help jog his memory?" It's the boy with the blue arrows. The brother shouts.

"I'll draw it!"

The girl's brother seems really excited about this. Maybe it's important?

He follows along with he rest as the boy starts to grabs some paper and ink and starts to draw... maybe it's a person? Suddenly he's in an excellent position to guess, as the paper is shoved in his face.

"Have you ever seen this person?"

Ah. So it is supposed to be a person. Lee blinks, but doesn't answer. Fortunately, the sister grabs the paper and says

"Of course he doesn't! I don't think he would recognize it under normal circumstances!"

The siblings bicker for a while. Eventually everybody just wanders away, leaving Lee on his own. With nothing better to do, he picks up the brush and starts drawing.

Katara sighed. How were they supposed to help Zuko if he thought they were all insane? Her brother wasn't taking this seriously at all, and...

Was Zuko drawing? Just what we need, another artist. She discreetly looked over his shoulder.

It was a woman. A pretty woman. Apparently Zuko was a better artist than her brother.

"Who is that?"

(Several months later)

The road between two Fire Nation villages was no place for a freedom fighter. There weren't as many people as in the towns he'd visited, but there were still travelers, farmers and merchants and soldiers, and Jet hadn't attacked any of them.

A year ago, his swords would have already been drawn.

But they weren't the enemy anymore, the war was over, and he had other things to worry about. Like the fact that he was trying to track down a woman who might very well try to kill him when he told her why he had come.

I'm sorry, but your son doesn't even know his own name anymore, and it's kinda my fault. Yeah, that was gonna go over really well.

Maybe he wouldn't find her. Maybe Zuko would stay Lee. Maybe the spirits wouldn't kill them all.

And maybe Ozai will decide that trying to conquer the planet wasn't a good idea after all.

Dammit anyway, why couldn't the Dai Li have decided he was wrong when decided those two were Fire Nation spies?

He was almost glad he was here, and not in the Impenetrable City. Even with the Dai Li mostly gone.

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

It was policy enforced wit stone-covered fists. There was no war, but there were no firebenders. At least, not if the authorities hadn't been informed, and given them permits, and gone through lots of paperwork that probably didn't really exist.

Those men are firebenders!

The subsequent arrests had been swift. Later, when Jet had run into Katara again and they had seen what Dai Li did to dissenters and other threats, Jet hadn't given a thought to the firebenders that had been dragged away by stone gloves. He hadn't thought about them with guilt, or checked every cell they passed hoping to see golden eyes, and he certainly hadn't been disappointed when he didn't find them.

Really.

Then the war, the invasion, and Jet was back in Ba Sing Se again while the others helped negotiate a fragile peace on the other side of the world. Which was harder than anticipated, it turned out, when the Fire Sages and everyone else (including the spirits) refused to accept the break in tradition caused by not having a Fire Lord. The Dai Li had made things difficult again, and suddenly Aang and Katara and Toph were helping him lead prisoners out of some catacombs (seriously, how many hidden caves were there in Ba Sing Se?). One of whom was Lee, who was actually Prince Zuko. Sort of.

Except he thought he was Lee, for real. And when they had brought him back (what else could they do, he didn't have anyone in the Earth Kingdom to go to) Sokka had been all thrilled, something about succession and old records, and Zuko not being a complete psychopath. And his excitement had lasted all of five seconds.

What are you talking about, I'm not a firebender!

Katara had tried the waterbending that had worked on some of the others and it hadn't worked. When grilled about his past, his family, Zuko remembered he had an uncle, a father, a sister. But Mushi (Iroh, his name was Iroh) hadn't been among the prisoners, and from the records Sokka had found... well, Ozai might just make things worse.

Then Katara had found some old portraits and discovered that Ozai had been married at some point, and Zuko and Azula had a mom, and she maybe wasn't dead. Zuko didn't know and Azula wouldn't tell.

So now Toph was digging around Ba Sing Se for Iroh, and Jet had volunteered to find Ursa. Jet hoped Toph was having better luck, because a two months of searching and he still hadn't found her.

Which brought him back to the dusty road filled with people he should hate.

He gripped the portrait and approached a passing... farmer? merchant? Whatever, they looked like they would know the area.

"Have you seen this woman?"

The man squinted at the picture, but Jet knew the answer would be no, just like every time before. This woman could be their only hope for regaining all the memories that waterbending couldn't, the only way to bring stability to a nation that wasn't the enemy anymore (and that was the only reason Jet cared, not because of golden eyes that should have had sparks but didn't anymore) and he just couldn't find-.

"Yeah, she lives just down the road."

The woman who emerged from the well-hidden garden looked about right, unintimidating, if somewhat wary. Her hair was tied back and she was surrounded by flowers. Jet thought he even recognized a few.

"Can I help you?"

It couldn't be this easy, could it?

"Yeah, actually." Jet took a breath. "It's about your son."

For a second, golden eyes flashed, and it occurred to Jet:

This is the woman who married the Fire Lord.