A/N: This is my first Fan Fiction that I've ever posted, so any criticism would be greatly appreciated. I mean the good and bad kind, too. ^^

There wasn't anything to do. Wren sat down, nonplussed. She always had something to do. She ran over her list of daily chores through her head. The water was brought in and boiling away, the plants were looking healthy and watered, and her Leopard-Bear, Moose, happily bouncing around after a dragon-fly. The fire was warm and healthy, much thanks to her bending. She sighed, used to doing things, used to action.

She got up and clambered into the cave with a little difficulty, seeing as its' entrance was a few feet up from the ground. Usually Shiro helped her up – she honestly didn't need it, but Shiro insisted on the fact that despite her powers, she was still 'just a girl'. She felt a pang of a familiar feeling. It confused her, feeling pain over her old mentor's absence. He was a cold, venerable, and hard-pressed old man who had little patience and even less mercy, but he had dedicated his life - leaving his life in Ba Sing Se - to her, and to her training. Without him, she'd just be another helpless bender out there with no sense of right or wrong, and she might not even have had the grip she had on her powers if not for him. Despite his obvious animosity towards her, he had still selflessly devoted his life to the cause. She would always owe him for that.

It disgusted her, to think of all that power, her power, gone to waste. It disgusted her that if not for one miserable, sexist old coot, she would have just been another useless opponent for the Fire Nation to dispose of quickly and efficiently. Just another useless Avatar. Of less use, even, than the last one. Nobody even knew what had happened to him, anyway, the sly dog.

The more she thought about the old Avatar, the less she blamed him. She would have ducked out on this life, too, if she had the choice. But Shiro had found her. Shiro had known when others had not. She wouldn't have abandoned her Avatar responsibilities anyway, once she knew. Fire Lord Ozai had to be apprehended. She was the only one with that power.

The cave was neat, as usual. There were only two rooms, one for her and one for Shiro, separated long-ways by a stone wall that she herself had raised, once Earth-Bending had become easy for her. A few days after that, she remembered Shiro raising another wall, so that the walls were in a T formation, giving them both suitable doorways on opposite sides of the cave. In her room, on her side of the wall, she had scratched designs in the wall, crudely-drawn pictures of things she used to know, in the corners. Shiro had dominated the center of the walls with battle stances and tactics from all four elements, as well as a map, as good as he could draw it, of the world they lived in. She walked around to Shiro's side, a place she had never gone.

As much time as they had spent together, he never told her anything about his life before bumping into her (literally) outside of Ba Sing Se, and she had always been curious. Every time she asked, she was promptly punished with a shower of small rocks whipping at her from all sides, occasionally cutting her skin and always leaving bruises. By the time she had learned to block this she had learned not to ask. She was surprised that she had never even so much as glanced into his room, even.

Shiro's wall was empty. His room was bare. His bedding, even, was scarce; plain white with a line of green along the edge, and a simple, wrinkle-free pillow. Wren didn't know why this surprised her; this was Shiro, after all. Simplicity was his mantra. She walked out of Shiro's room. It was a surprising reminder of losing her mother, and everything else after that. With a jolt, Wren realized that she could return to civilization now, without Shiro holding her back. He'd been the one to take her here to the middle of the woods, so as to make training easier, and much less noticeable, and therefore a greater threat to the Fire Nation. They couldn't kill that which they couldn't even see. Wren felt uneasy. This new feeling was unsettling. She'd been given lessons in manners and society and even book-education and mathematics from Shiro, of course, who had once admitted that he was well-learned in books – but that didn't mean that she was ready for society. Not at all.

This brought along newer, more fear-inducing questions. What was she going to do about her training? She couldn't even wrap her head around bending air. It was so…intangible. Earth and of course, Water, her native element, were the easiest because they were very much the same in the mechanics of bending. They were very nearly polar opposites in the way they acted, but the moves were much the same. Fire was the second-hardest. She had had so much trouble with it. But Shiro, unfailing in his dedication to training the Avatar despite his obvious disdain of her being a girl, had stuck with her through all the frustration and the burns. She had eventually found the energy pool in her body from which to pull from to make fire, and how to breathe to control it. But air – Shiro hadn't even begun with air, as they were still working on fire. She'd tried air-bending before, but to no avail as far as she could tell. Perhaps it had just been particularly windy that day? Who knew?

She hopped down from the cave and looked for Moose. He was happily chewing on the dragon-fly. She sighed again. If only Shiro could see me now, she thought, he'd have a fit. She'd done both of their chores in half the time it took to do one. But then again, she reasoned, she was only hunting and gathering for one, now. She felt another pang of grief. Shiro would never see the tidy camp site. She would never see him again.

She honestly hadn't known that his devotion would go that far. They were training with Earth-Bending (Thank God) in a wide meadow a few miles from town and even more miles from here when a few Fire Nation thugs came from the trees looking for money or something else, she couldn't tell, and Shiro…poor Shiro. She had just enough time to run before they turned on her. Had she remained in the meadow, money wouldn't have been the most persuasive or tempting thing to take away from her. She took the wide route, avoiding the camp site for days. She and Moose had only just returned the previous day to find everything surprisingly neat.

She flopped down on a small, expertly-crafted stone bench by the fire. Being only seventeen, she couldn't imagine living alone. That's when she heard the voices coming from behind her. She leapt into action, grabbing Moose by his long tail, as she so often did, and bolted down the hill to a nearby lower, smaller cave used mainly for hiding from people. It wasn't big enough for anything else.

Two men came up on the hill, and Wren could hear their talking due to the wind blowing in her direction. Something about Fire Nation, something about the Avatar. So, she thought, they know. She took action immediately. Whistling for Moose, she pulled Fire from her limbs and hurled it at the two men. If they were Fire Nation looking for her, maybe they would spare her if they thought she was Fire Nation. She was there in the clearing before her cave. There was an older man, and a boy about her age. His face was scarred – he'd been hurt by the Fire Nation, too. The fire stopped flowing through her body. In the second her attack stopped, the old man had her in a head lock and the scarred boy had his hand pointing at his face in the classic Fire Nation execution style.

"A girl? A girl attacked us?" the boy said in a somewhat raspy, yet surprisingly gentle voice.

"What of it?" she snapped, "You're the ones that invaded my home"

The old man let her go.

"Terribly sorry, miss. You said you lived here? We've been here for a few days, and it's been vacant"

"Well, I was on what one should be able to call a vacation" Wren snapped again, realizing that they might not think she was the Avatar. Typical, she thought, they expect the Avatar to be a damn boy.

"Should be?" the old man inquired.

"Well, it wasn't pleasant. My…my uh…well.."

"Is this about who the second bedroom belongs to?" the man asked quietly. Wren stared wide-eyed at him.

"How'd you know that?"

"Just a guess," he wheezed with a smile, "After all, what's a pretty girl doing out here all alone, if something had not happened to her partner?"

"…Partner? He wasn't my partner! I don't need anybody here to take care of me!" she exclaimed, offended. Now the man was puzzled again.

"Then what was he doing with you out here, all alone?"

Wren was lost for words. Right when she had gotten them to the point of being friendly, she had gotten herself back into hot water. Even though fire wasn't her native element, she felt heat run through her body. She decided that she might as well tell the truth, or at least most of it.

"He was my master. We….we were training"

"Fire-Bending all the way out in the boonies of the Earth Kingdom? Where's the sense in that? Your powers seem quite advanced for your age – you could probably get into a top school in Omashu" The old man said.

"…Omashu?" she asked again carefully. Thanks to maps and general knowledge from Shiro, she was fairly certain that Omashu was an Earth Kingdom city. Had the Fire Nation taken it? It made her sad to realize that they wouldn't be saying that she could attend a Fire Bending school if the school wasn't in the Fire Nation.

"My name is Iroh, and this is my nephew, Zuko"

The name "Zuko" struck a cord with Wren. Zuko, Zuko, Zuko…Zuko THE PRINCE OF THE FIRE NATION. Her mouth hung open.

"Prince Zuko?"

The handsome young Prince blushed.

"Forgive my nephew, he's a bit embarrassed about his, uh, well…"

"Well, you were banished" Wren said shortly, directly to Zuko. The sooner they left, the better. Wren needed to figure out what she was going to do about Air Bending.

Zuko just looked at her. She glared back, making her face hard despite the fact that she knew that she should take him on now and get it over with. Something in her pulled her back. She, somehow, didn't want to hurt Zuko. She shook her head. She had to hurt him. She had to kill him. There was no other way.