It was three weeks before Prince Zuko of the Fire Kingdom was arranged to be getting married to his fiance and childhood friend, Mai. The materials for the celebration were lavish to say the least. The guest list had just been confirmed - Everyone who was anyone was coming, of course, including his old friends in the Aang Gang. It was almost eight months after he had been reunited with with his long lost mother and returned to rule his kingdom. In that time he had begged Mai for her forgiveness, and eventually she had forgiven him and come to love him again.

He'd never been happier, truly he hadn't. And yet, he was not completely content. Something sour was refusing to settle in his stomach and he just couldn't place it. He loved his fiance more than anyone else, he knew it. But finally settling down and getting married... It was a daunting prospect. He was nervous. Yes, he, the powerful Fire Lord, was scared of committing. He WAS still young, but then, when you were royal you grew up fast. Too fast. You didn't get to have the same experiences that other youths got to indulge in. He was sure he was fine with that, he had been for a long time. But every day that passed started to feel like he was getting closer to the end of his days, his palace began to feel more like a prison.

He began to suspect he'd go crazier than his sister if he didn't get out, for at least a little while, while he still could. So early one morning, well before the rise of the sun, he stole away under the cover of darkness. He managed to get out of the capital without incident and entered the nearest woods, where he breathed in deep the smell of it, the sap and the oils seeping out of the trees and the last of the dying fall flowers. It was the middle of autumn and the leaves were mostly yellow and red, which he could see clearly now that the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon.

Despite everything he had gone through to restore his honor and be accepted back into his homeland, there were some days when Zuko wished that, just once, he could leave it all behind. But it was no use. He wasn't just some nobody who could go off wandering into the world and not be recognized, not anymore. He had responsibilities, so many, and more were being piled on his plate every day. Even if he escaped to the furthest corner of the globe, even if he wanted to, he knew it was futile. His life was planned out for him from here on out, all that was left was for him to accept it.

The sun was rising ever higher. If he didn't get back soon his advisers would probably begin to start having panic attacks. Tempting though it was to sit back and let them, Zuko instead sighed and got to his feet, dusting the dirt off his bottom before starting back towards the path home.

But before he'd taken a single step, an unusually strong wind suddenly blew past him. A simple gust was hardly a shocking thing to experience, but less than a second before there had not even been a gentle breeze, and now the wind was so strong it was nearly pushing him back. Alarmed, Zuko tried to turn his head back towards the source of the wind, wondering if perhaps Aang had arrived early - He couldn't think of any other person who could make the wind do this. But the gust was so strong it blew his lengthy hair in his eyes, obscuring his view, and in the next instant the wind had become even stronger. It did push him off his guard and the next thing he knew his whole world was spinning out of control, literally.

Fallen leaves danced around him as he spun, and as he did he almost felt as if the entire planet were spinning with him. The mostly yellow leaves were peppered with red leaves, but then the next thing he knew, all the leaves had turned red, and then the next second all the leaves had turned bright spring green, as if time itself was being spun in the opposite direction. He was already beyond disoriented when the leaves changed color once more, now into a deep, dark blue.

The blue leaves continued to swirl around him, then they slowed, and finally they fluttered away to the ground. Zuko staggered, dizzy and confused, trying to get his eyes to stop rolling. He managed to stumble against a nearby tree (the bark was almost white instead of the usual shade of brown) and used the stable wood to lean against while he caught his breath, which he was quick enough to do, expecting an attack. He looked around him in several directions, becoming more and more alarmed by the minute. If it weren't strange enough that the yellow Autumn leaves had turned a shade of blue he'd never seen anywhere else before, in any of the four nations, the rising sun was now setting on the opposite horizon.

He noticed something else in the distance of the opposite horizon too, and it was even more unexpected than everything else he'd seen so far. It was a woman, a woman who bore a kind of beauty Zuko had never quite experienced before. He had seen hundreds of beautiful women, surely, beautiful in all different kinds of ways. But the beauty of this woman was a very different sort, it hardly seemed like it could truly be possible for a real, earthly woman to be so lovely, and in fact, the moment Zuko laid eyes on her he was convinced she was not human at all.

Her eyes were the most striking shade of blue Zuko had ever seen. Katara's eyes were the only ones he could even compare them to, but they were bluer than the shade of Katara's eyes even if they reflected all the deep blue seas to be sailed in their world, and they stared at Zuko as if all those seas had frozen over into jagged ice. Her skin was flawless and pale peach colored without a single blemish to be seen anywhere. Her legs were long and proudly stood straight, and her hair, the only feature of hers more lovely than her eyes, was longer than he'd seen any other woman grow her hair out, and reached down well past her knees. The color was an ethreal shade of dark blue. Perhaps it could be confused for plain black in darkness, but with the last light of the setting sun directly behind her, the blue in her hair glimmered off the shiny silken strands.

There were several kinds of reactions Zuko was inclined to have, but he was still mostly confused. First with the yellow-red leaves turning to an unheard of shade of blue, then the sudden shift in time, and now the beautiful blue woman before him - A thought suddenly came to him and he found he couldn't shake it from his mind. Who else could she be, looking like she did, arriving as she had?

Zuko, the Fire Lord, ruler of all the Fire Nation and warrior of legend, sank to his knees and bowed his head to the ground.

The young woman was just as confused as he was now. She had nearly been about to draw the unusually long sword that hung by her side, the hilt of which was decorated with a golden crescent moon, until the stranger before her bowed to the ground, seemingly no longer a threat to her. She wasn't entirely convinced though. She had traveled many, many worlds and there had been many times and places where something that seemed harmless turned out to be deadly. She did not draw her sword yet, but she kept her hand near it as she slowly approached the bowing king.

"What are you doing here?" She asked once she was sure she was close enough for him to hear her. This world didn't have many humanoids in it, and those she had seen so far looked nothing like this person. He was clearly out of his element here, in more ways than one.

Still bowing, not daring to look up at her otherworldly beauty, Zuko answered her, "Please forgive me, Blue Spirit. I don't know how I got here, but I didn't mean to trespass into your domain..."

The girl raised an elegantly thin navy eyebrow. "...What are you talking about."

Now that a few moments had passed since he'd been spun around like a pinwheel, his sense of balance and the rest of his senses had come back to him. He could smell the earth beneath his face and it smelled like regular dirt always had back home. He began to feel a little foolish. He slowly looked up at the maiden standing just a few feet away from him now, and he realized that despite her heavenly beauty, she was indeed just a human. "Uh... I..." He nervously began.

She rested her hands on her hips, leaning over and studying his face now that he wasn't hiding it anymore. He was humanoid, but he clearly wasn't from around these parts. She was rather new herself, but she'd not seen a single local wearing the kind of colors he bore, and she hadn't heard anything from the other locals about this spirit he spoke of. "Whatever the Blue Spirit is, I'm not her. My name is Azuma Hazuki." She explained simply, her stoic face betraying none of the interest she was actually feeling. "Who are you? You are not from this world." She stated surely.

He had just about figured as much for himself before she confirmed it, and he quickly got to his feet again, scowling to hide his own embarrassment. "This world?" He repeated heatedly. "I don't know what you mean by that. I am Zuko, Lord of the Fire Nation, and I demand you tell me what's going on!" It had been a while since he'd been quite that much of an ass to someone, but he was getting more and more worried by all this strangeness by the second, and now he was borderline panicking.

Hazuki glared back at him. She almost wanted to smirk too though, he was almost as amusing as he was infuriating. First he had bowed to her as if she were a goddess, and now he was barking orders at her? In the next instant, before he could even blink, she had drawn her sword and pointed it at him, the edge of the blade less than a foot from his person. "Get this straight, Zuko." She demanded back of him, daring to use only his first name as only a few choice individuals had ever done. "I am the Lord of Nothing. I'm a nobody here and I have been in every world I've set foot in." Not entirely the truth, but she felt it was. "But I don't take attitude like that from anybody no matter what they think they're king of. Got it?"

He was shocked, his golden eyes went wide. Virtually no one would dare point a weapon at him knowing who he was. But apparently Azuma Hazuki wasn't just a no one. Normally the threat of attack would put him more on edge, but the effect here was strangely the opposite. He put his hands up to pacify her, "H-Hey, calm down... I apologize. I'm just really confused right now..." He tried to explain.

She slowly lowered her sword, though she did not yet sheathe it. "Is this the first time this has ever happened to you?"

"I guess so? What DID happen to me?" He continued.

She look a breath and let it out in a slight huff. "I can't say how it happened, but like I said, you're in a different world now. And before you ask, no, I don't know how to get you back home."

His heart sank to the pit of his stomach, accepting what her words meant before his brain had actually caught up with the information. "Wait-" He wasn't sure at first what he was asking her to wait for. "How do you know?" He turned his head around to confirm whether or not the same path existed behind him that had been there just moments before. It was gone.

She let another huff. "Look, I know you're still in shock. But I also know you know I'm telling the truth. I know you knew you weren't back home in Kansas since the first second you got here."

"Kansas...?" He repeated in confusion.

"Nevermind that, it's just an expression where I'm from." She explained shortly. "I'm sorry, but I don't know what else to tell you. I don't even know how to get home myself, so I can't help you find yours."

The information she supplied sunk slowly into his mind. He looked down at the ground somberly, lost in his own thoughts. "...How long have you been gone from your world?" He finally inquired.

She didn't answer at first, looking a bit saddened herself. Finally she sheathed her unusually long sword and sighed. "It would probably only depress you to know."

"Tell me." He confirmed, quickly adding, "Please." Before she changed her mind about keeping her sword put away.

She sighed. Well, he was asking for it. "I was fifteen when I first disappeared from home. I'm eighteen now."

Zuko's breath caught in his throat and he almost choked on it. "Three YEARS?"

She glared at him, "Congratulations, you can count." She was being much nicer to this young man than she usually was with men in general, but he was starting to annoy her now.

Zuko didn't have the patience to be insulted, "This is serious! I can't be gone that long, I'm supposed to be getting married in three weeks!"

Her expression softened somewhat after hearing that. "...I really am sorry, Zuko. If it's any consolation, time doesn't exactly work the same way in these in-between worlds as it does in fixed locations. You could be gone for years like me and still get back in time for your wedding. Then again though," She added quickly. "You could end up a hundred years before or after it..."

He groaned and rubbed his forehead, "Thanks Hazuki. That makes me feel WAY better..."

"Well, it's not my job to make you feel better." She snapped back at him.

He sighed and ran the hand that had been rubbing his forehead up through his hair, which had been made messy and wild by the wind. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me like we're both people who do a lot better on our own than with other people..."

She shrugged. "You're not wrong."

He rolled his eyes. "Right. Well, it also seems to me like you've been in this situation a lot longer than I have and know more about what's going on than I do... I'd really like to not be totally alone in this new world, but if you'd prefer we went our separate ways, that's fine too..."

She considered his request for a lengthy moment, then finally she shrugged again and turned her head away from him. "You seem like a big boy, Zuko. You can handle yourself."

The rejection stung, and it made him a little angry, but he bit it back. "Fine. That's fine. Have a nice life then, Hazuki." He told her, turning on his heel and heading back in the direction from whence he'd come and leaving her to do whatever she liked.

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(Author's notes: If there is seriously a single person out there who likes both of these fandoms, please review and let me know. XD)