Suki looked up as a beam of firelight streamed across the grimy floor – blinding relief from the dank, windowless cell. A figure entered and closed the door behind him. She got to her feet, her eyes straining in the dark to identify the intruder.

'What do you want?' she asked coldly, her voice ringing off the stone walls.

'I have some information that might be of use to you.'

That voice.

'Zuko,' she spat, the most vicious loathing erupting into her being. 'Get out of here! There is nothing you have to say that I want to hear.'

'You're wrong.' The words whipped out low and harsh. 'You want to hear this.'

He opened his fingers and a flickering flame furled into being, illuminating his scarred and hateful face. She glared at him through the bars as he approached.

'The Avatar is alive,' he murmured, and Suki gasped.

'How do you know?'

'Katara told me, but she didn't really know what she was saying when she did.' He frowned. 'She showed me that she had healing water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. I know she saved the Avatar's life. I know he's still out there.'

'And why are you telling me this? You must have an ulterior motive other that trying to make me feel better.' Her eyes looked daggers at him.

'I'm formulating a plan,' he said, even quieter than before. 'A plan that you are involved in. Listen to me. The Avatar and his comrades are planning an invasion of the Fire Nation during a solar eclipse.'

'Why a solar eclipse?'

Zuko closed his eyes tightly, conflict knitting his brow until he resolved himself and looked up again.

'Firebenders lose their bending abilities,' he said.

Suki's eyes widened, then narrowed.

'You still haven't explained why –'

The sound of footsteps cut her short and they both glanced towards the door, the flame in Zuko's hand immediately snuffed. The glow of firelight was growing brighter out in the corridor. They both waited, nerves twanged with the intensity of suspense, as a guard outside walked past the door.

As soon as the guard's torchlight had dimmed to shadow, Zuko swept on his hood and disappeared, ignoring Suki's whisper of 'Wait!' and closed the door silently behind him.

The door banged open and Suki leapt to her feet as Zuko strode across the little room to her cell.

'I've decided to join the Avatar and help him destroy my father,' said Zuko, his face set and his tone defiant. Then, something in his eyes seemed to waver slightly. 'Will you come with me?'

Suki looked into his eyes, then dropped her gaze to the floor and turned her body away from him.

'Please!' Zuko implored fiercely, lunging forward to grip the bars of her cell in desperation. She had to understand. 'This isn't some sort of trick or plot – I've changed, you have to believe me!'

But Suki was barely listening. She knew he had changed, she could see it in his face and hear it in his voice; she had been waiting for him to ask for her help since the day he had told her about the invasion plan. Sitting in the dark cell, her mind had run circles around the room, forming patterns that gradually turned into resolutions. She sighed. If there ever was a time to speak out, this was it.

'I've never told anyone this before,' said Suki quietly, still facing the wall. 'But my father was a firebender.'

'What?' Zuko's eyes widened.

'He lived in a Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom, but when he met my mother he left to live on Kyoshi Island to be with her. He hid his bending, pretending to be a normal Earth Kingdom civilian, and no one but my mother knew what he truly was. When they had me, I just happened to be lucky enough to be a normal non-bender like my mother; my younger brother, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. He was a firebender, and a good one, too,' she added, with a shaky laugh. Suki turned to lean her back against the wall of her cell, her head tilted back and her eyes gazing blankly away into a distant memory. 'My brother and I used to go out and train together – he would practice his bending and I would practice the art of the Kyoshi Warriors; but, when the Fire Nation came through our town, they found us sparring and – and they said that if my brother was good enough to learn bending forms on his own then he was good enough to fight in the war, and they took him away. I never saw him again.'

Zuko watched the desert of emotion in Suki's face with rapture. She refused the lump in her throat; she had divulged enough tears to this grief.

'But my brother was my best friend, and my father is a great man.' She looked over at Zuko with glittering eyes, full of the most terrible sadness. 'What I'm trying to say is, I know that anyone from the Fire Nation is capable of great evil as well as great good, the same as everybody else. I have the blood of the Fire Nation in my veins just as much as I do Earth Kingdom, and I will never deny that part of me.' She suddenly gave Zuko a blazing look and threw herself forward, reaching her arms through the bars to hug him. 'I'm glad you have seen the better way,' she said, stepping back to smile. 'I will help you find the Avatar, and I will help you defeat your father to the very end.'

Zuko's expression shifted from shock to disbelieving gratitude, and he stood back to bow to her.

'Thank you,' he said, and he extracted a silver key from the pocket of his robes. 'I took this from the guard outside, but we should try to hurry.' The lock clicked and the door swung open. 'Someone's going to notice sooner or later.'

'Looks like sooner,' said Suki sharply, her eyes on the hallway outside the door.

People with torches were coming closer; a shout told them all they needed to know. Both Suki and Zuko darted forward to stand pressed against the walls either side of the open door.

'Hey, the key's been stolen!' they heard a man call. 'Someone's trying to break in!'

Running footsteps – a moustached man came flying into the cell room and stopped in his tracks when he saw the empty cell with its door wide open. He only had time to gasp before Suki lunged forward, kicking him hard in the back so he flew into the bars, whacked his head with a dull clunk and collapsed in a heap on the floor.

'Let's go,' said Zuko, and the pair of them swept from the room and out down the corridor.

They rounded the corner and a guardsman looked up from his cup of tea, his mouth agape as Zuko punched fireballs at him.

'Oof!'

The man was thrown back into the teatable beside him with a crash. He did not get up again as they sprinted past.

'I have to find my father,' Zuko said, as they paused by the entrance to the cellar. 'The eclipse will be starting any minute now and I have to tell him what I'm going to do.'

'What about your uncle?' asked Suki breathlessly.

'He's already gone.' Something in his tone told Suki not to inquire further.

More shouts met their ears and the light of fires began to spread across the walls. Zuko turned and raised his hands to attack, but Suki gripped his shoulder.

'Go!' she said firmly. 'I can handle these guys, you have to face your father.'

He looked at the determination in her face for a moment before nodding once and disappearing through the cellar door.

Suki exhaled, readying herself for a fight. Only a few minutes and their bending would be gone and they would be helpless. This was going to be too easy.

As soon as the first one rounded the corner, Suki sprinted forward, leaping over his jet of flame to spring off the wall and kick him in the chest, sending him flying back into his two other comrades. They fell back with a resounding crash into a stack of crates. One man managed to jump to his feet. He whirled his hands dramatically around his head, twisting his arms to throw them forward in a display of firebending blitzkrieg when –

Phut.

A small spark jutted a centimetre from his palm and turned into a thin stream of coiling smoke. Suki smirked. The guard's eyes widened.

In a flash she was in front of him, her foot speeding through the air to collide with the side of his head. She whirled around before he had time to fall to duck under the other man's roundhouse, instead sweeping her leg across the floor to trip him up.

'Whoaa!' he yelled, before coming crashing down in a heap on top of his other comrade.

Suki looked up, her hands raised to the last guard. The colour drained out of his face and he held up his palms in surrender before turning and sprinting away down the corridor to safety, shrieking in fear like a wounded pig.

She grinned with triumph before slipping through the cellar door and out the other side into the light of day.

She lingered for only a moment to savour the fresh air and the openness of the space in front of her. Suki looked up, shielding her eyes, to see that the eclipse was fully in motion.

She knew what she had to do. Zuko was probably inside the palace by now, facing the Fire Lord and declaring his betrayal; but, once Aang and the others had left on Appa, they needed to have a way to follow…

Then, something caught her eye. Her gaze snapped up and she gasped in horror to see an entire fleet of airships rising into the sky to move forward on the offensive. They were heading towards the beach: where Aang and Sokka and the others surely were.

Suki threw herself forward and sprinted as fast as she could up and over the hill. Stretched before her was a little airfield in which three balloons were still docked and ready for departure. This was their ticket out of here.

She darted forward, slipping around the wall of the holding warehouse, to approach the closest war balloon. A man was inside already. He was attempting to bend fire into the grate but his bending wasn't working – the eclipse was still in progress but she knew it wouldn't be for long: it was now or never. Suki leapt into the hull and didn't hesitate to punch the look of sudden terror off the man's face. He was thrown over the side and onto the ground, completely unconscious.

Get to the palace exit – Zuko will be coming out any second now and it's time for us to leave.

Suki sprinted back towards the palace but gasped sharply as she found herself facing ten soldiers, all with hard expressions and offensive stances. She raised her hands, her eyes blazing fierce and determined, but as she whirled around looking at the position of each of her opponents, her expression faltered. There were too many of them – and the rays of the sun had peaked out from behind the moon; its light glittered off their helmets, glaring in her eyes. All soldiers had their hands poised and ready to strike. She was trapped.

'Suki!'

She looked up to see Zuko, horror written all over his face, looking down from ridge at where she was cornered. He made to run down but –

'Zuko, you have to go!' she called desperately. 'The others are probably leaving right now and you have to follow them! Take the war balloon over the hill!'

'I can't leave you –'

'Yes, you can!' she yelled. 'I'll be fine – I'll just be going back to where I came from.'

'Oh, no you won't, missy,' snarled an old firebender guard, stepping forward from the ring surrounding her. 'You've proven you're too sneaky to be kept here; you're going to the Boiling Rock.'

'It's all the same,' Suki said sharply. She looked up at Zuko with pleading eyes. 'Please, you have to go, you're wasting time! We'll meet again soon. Agh!' she shrieked as hot hands grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her back into steely handcuffs.

Zuko's face was contorted with indecision: he knew she was right, but he couldn't just leave her to be taken to the Boiling Rock – the Boiling Rock, of all places. He stood and watched them drag her away, his entire being aching with regret, before turning back and sprinting down the hill to the war balloon. If she was going to be imprisoned for him, the least he could do was make sure it was not in vain.