A masked figure ran silently through the dark nighttime forest, intent on escaping from a certain princess and her friends. The figure soon came to a stop and looked behind himself, checking to see if anyone was pursuing him. There wasn't, and he alighted against a tree, leaning back against it and sighing deeply, relieved, then saying, "That was close."
The figure then walked into the moonlight, revealing itself to be the Blue Spirit, a well-known bandit who had first appeared when he had freed the Avatar from Admiral Zhao's clutches, and was now just robbing from anyone in the Earth Kingdom who caught his eye.
Who had he been running from you ask? It was none other than the Fire Nation's Princess Azula, who had been sent by her father, Fire Lord Ozai, to capture her wayward brother and uncle and bring them back to the Fire Nation where they could be properly locked up, never to bring shame to Ozai's name again. So why was she pursuing the Blue Spirit? Because she had decided that he was a primary capture target alongside her relatives as well as the Avatar.
What she didn't know however, was that the Blue Spirit was actually a disguise for Zuko so that he could perform illicit activities in relative peace. But she had been very close to unmasking him earlier, and had only been stopped by a sudden infatuation that had gone as soon as it had come. Which was why the former prince was so mortified.
He thought back to that same moment, when Azula had him pinned to the ground, and had her lips only a few centimeters from his own. He blushed furiously at the thought, and also felt the need to hurl. 'Saved only by a kiss that didn't happen,' he thought in disgust. It could have been worse, another part of his mind reasoned, her friends couldn't have interrupted the moment, or she could have removed the mask all the way.
One or both of those options could definitely have been worse, he decided, then briefly thought about killing Azula so she couldn't pursue him anymore. 'No!' he mentally shouted, shaking his head vigorously. 'The Blue Spirit is only a thief, never a murderer,' he mentally chastised himself.
He really could've done it then. He had his swords pressed against her throat, and it would've been a simple matter to just slide the twin blades across it and silence her forever, but he didn't, and he wondered why that was. He considered the possibility that he still felt a familial connection to her, however slight, but surmised that that wasn't the case. He then thought that maybe he had only wanted to intimidate her, but quickly crushed that possibility as well. Finally, he surmised that it was because he just wasn't fond of taking lives so meaninglessly. In fact, during his entire life, he had never had the lack of heart to take another, even when he had rescued the Avatar, and that was because that it would have made him as bad as Azula.
Deciding to sort things out tomorrow, he began to head back toward the cave he and his uncle, Iroh, were staying in. Once he neared said cave, he hid both his mask and his swords in a nearby tree and entered the cave.
He woke his uncle quietly, who muttered as he woke. "What is it, Zuko? The night isn't even over yet." Zuko put a finger to his lips and whispered, "Azula and her friends are nearby, so we should probably get moving and lay low while we're at it."
Iroh nodded with a troubled expression on his face and said, "Good idea, it's not safe here with someone that dangerous so closeby."
They quietly began to pack up so they could leave, when Zuko briefly thought about telling his uncle how he knew about Azula, and quickly banished the thought. 'I'll tell him when we're both ready,' he mentally decided.

I don't own Avatar, that belongs to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The story Beautiful Enigma belongs to Utsukushii Kohana.