Disclaimer: Do I own it? No. Curses! Foiled again.

Author's Note: Not only am I an idiot for taking on a 100 Fanfic challenge for a fandom I've never written about, but I'm an even bigger idiot for accepting the challenge when I can't even finish my other stories.

Here's to a bumpy ride! Luckily for me- unluckily for the reader- there's no time limit. Poor unfortunate reader. Okay, I'll do my best.

The rules were lenient. They didn't have to be in order. No time limit. No length requirement; that's good.

Enjoy.

#8 Crossroads

© Ethereal Fae, September 2008

It was staring at him dead in the face. He hadn't even realized it until it had smacked him upside the head, found it's way into his nervous system, and traveled its way to his cerebellum where the mental oil lamp ignited and screamed 'You just now noticed?!'.

His mentality split in half. Zuko swore he could have heard the reverberating krrrrsh as the path his conscience was walking suddenly split in two.

On one side was his past, leading up to this very moment; exiled, dishonorable, and alone. Pent up emotion flared in his eyes, flickering with such intensity it could've been mistaken for his bending. All the emotional baggage had been caused by one remark; one sentence. He'd only been trying to help. The events that came after his 'disruption' of the Fire Lord Ozai's meeting only fueled that fire.

Exiled from his own nation, by his own father with nothing but his scar and the clothes on his back to remind him of what he used to be, his title had dwindled into nothing more than a snide joke.

His uncle was the only one that seemed to really care about the fate of his nephew. He'd given so much wisdom and then Zuko just brushed it away, too consumed by the idea of regaining honor and returning home to a welcoming father. His obsession with capturing the Avatar only added to it, and then Zuko would become even more angry and tense.

When the day came that Zuko realized he wasn't fighting to regain his honor or his father's acceptance anymore, he realized he now had two paths before him.

The other path was the path the led to his future. The path he should have been on all along. It was the same path General Iroh had proverbed about; the Avatar's path.

Something inside him had awakened, and now he had this new enlightenment. It was like the shards of himself he had lost in his broken childhood were glued back together by this new-found hope for this end to the war.

The path was divided and Zuko was ready to face the crossroad head-on in a blaze of glory.

So when Zuko faced his father at the Fire Nation capital, he knew what he had to do.

"I'm going to join the Avatar."

Fin.

Review please?