Alright, for this chapter I had to delete a LOT of dialogue because, as you know, I'm trying hard to make this a fanfic, not an episode. However, I think it turned out rather well. Almost all the dialogue is mine except for the "I'm angry at myself!" bit. That belongs to Avatar and its brilliant creators, who I am in no way affiliated with.

Thanks for reading; I'd appreciate reviews!


Prince Zuko is just starting to get used to a soft feather pillow beneath his head, servants awaiting his every whim, and a hand to hold in the mornings when it is all ripped away.

"Don't be such a drama queen," Azula drawls with a smug smile. "So our father wanted to meet with his advisors. Alone. With no one else around. Don't take it so personally."

"I feel like I'm getting banished all over again," he mutters, and the others on the ferry tactfully choose to ignore this. "Don't you get it?" he demands of the rest. "We're on a forced vacation."

"I think it's exciting!" Ty Lee, eyes bright, squeals while braiding her hair. "Doesn't your family have a house on Ember Island?"

Azula smiles bitterly. "We used to go there every summer when we were kids."

Azula, Mai, Ty Lee, and Prince Zuko look to the island that will be their home for the next few days. One sees an opportunity in her shrewd dark eyes. Another sees only a chance of scenery, maybe something to lift her boredom. The third sees a weekend that probably won't live up to her sky-rocketing expectations. And the last sees just how easily he can be removed again.

"That was a long time ago."


Lo and Li's beach house certainly isn't fit for royalty, but Prince Zuko finds it fits Ty Lee just fine. She's giggling and chatting with the old women and her friends, saying endlessly and excitedly that she loves the beach and don't you just love it, too, Zuko, don't you?

"And I just love this bedspread!" she gushes, flopping down into the linen. The prince wonders vaguely just what she doesn't love, and how much she would love him if she found out how big of a lie he is living.

"Are you kidding?" Mai asks her good friend and foil. "It looks like the beach threw up all over it."

"Speaking of," Azula says, already in elegant motion, "let's go down there now." It isn't an invitation or a suggestion, and the rest of the group doesn't object. They emerge from the ramshackle house in their swimsuits, squinting in the golden sun and squishing their toes in the soft sand.

"This place is just paradise," Ty Lee says cheerily, but the crown prince does not voice his objection aloud. It may look that way, but it is still a prison for him.

Prison. Just the simple word, two syllables, inflict pain on his body and tug anguish out of his heart through way of the spider web seams. He remembers the cold, damp stone under his feet and the imposing claustrophobia brought by the hood over his face as he went to visit the uncle he would be better off without, just days ago. He recalls seeing the old man for the first time since his restoration to honor and favor, sad and silent behind the steel bars. Pathetic. Alone. Iroh has lost. He knows it. Prince Zuko knows it. The entire Fire Nation knows it. So when Prince Zuko had left, why had he felt that twinge in his soul, like he should be there with his uncle, be rotting away next to him, the man he used to accidentally call "father" when he was young? Before he knew better, knew there was only one man he should worry about being a son to.

"Are you okay, Zuko?" Mai asks, putting her hand on his arm and bringing him back to reality.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

Why does he say it like a question?


After a day of swimming, eliminating all competition sand sports, and spending time with his girlfriend, the prince's worries are just starting to slip away from him for the first time in weeks. That is, until Azula gets them invited to Chan and Ruon Jian's party, and all his anxieties come crashing back.

"A party?" he asks during dinner, first in disbelief, because, somehow, Azula and a rowdy house full of music, food, and people just don't mix in his mind without something catching fire. "Why would we want to go to a party?" This time his voice is doubtful.

"It could be fun," Ty Lee assures, taking a sip of her drink. She turns her gaze to Azula. "Why didn't you tell those guys Chan and Ruon Jian who we were?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I was just so used to people worshipping us-"

"-They should." Ty Lee interrupts, flourishing her fork.

"I know they should, and I love it. But I was intrigued about how they would act around us if they didn't know. As if we were perfectly ordinary. Like them."

"That seems out of character for you," Prince Zuko says suspiciously, but Lo and Li answer him before Azula can. Their raspy voices morph together in an eerie but wise statement that reverberates in his mind long after they fall silent.

"Like waves crashing upon the sand, Ember Island can make even the roughest stones smooth once more." They look at each other and the lines etched on their ancient faces. "To the party!"


"I don't think that's what 'dusk till dawn' is supposed to mean," Mai tells Azula as they trek across the sand.

"Don't be ridiculous," Azula snaps, and Prince Zuko's first instinct is to leap to Mai's defense, despite having seen the scars from her stilettos, despite knowing she can take care of herself.

"Is this their house?" Ty Lee asks before anything can happen further, pointing to the medium-sized bungalow crouching in the volcanic sand. Its windows stare the group down like glowing eyes. Prince Zuko immediately wants to leave; he has enough people watching his moves and waiting for him to fail already.

"I think so," Azula says, charging up the porch and rapping on the door precisely three times. Chan answers with a confused look on his face, square-jawed and cleanly shaven.

"The party hasn't started yet," he says slowly. "No one's here."

Azula raises her eyebrows. "I heard you telling someone you would be partying until dusk till dawn. It's dusk, so we're here."

"That's just an expression."

The crown prince of the esteemed Fire Nation hears Azula say something about being the perfect party guests, but he's too distracted by the way Ruon Jian is looking at Mai over Chan's shoulder. A bit possessively, he puts his arm around the girl's waist, hoping to send the young man a message. He knows just how easily he can lose things, and he's determined it won't happen with Mai. Not Mai, never Mai, not if he can help it.

"That's a sharp outfit, Chan." Azula tells their host as Prince Zuko, Mai, and Ty Lee follow the two of them inside, Ruon Jian following Mai's trudge a bit too closely. "Careful. You could poke a hole in the side of a Fire Nation warship, leaving thousands to drown at sea." For the first time in his life, Prince Zuko sees his sister scramble for the words that once so readily obeyed her, trying to make up for it with a nervous smile. Is this his sister? "Because… it's so sharp."

"Uh…thanks?" Chan replies uncertainly, and, behind Azula's back, the prince stifles a short laugh and Mai flashes for just a second something that could possibly be a smile, the ends of her lips curling up just so. Ty Lee looks on at the couple disapprovingly, then gives the struggling princess an encouraging smile.

"Idiot," Prince Zuko hears Azula mutter indignantly to Ty Lee when Chan leaves. Ruon Jian, however, only edges closer to where Mai stands, silent and seemingly oblivious to the boy's persistence.

Hopefully, Prince Zuko looks to the door in the vain hope more guests will arrive, but none do. Already he knows it will not be a good night.


The party, it would appear, was not going well when he left, but did Prince Zuko really expect any different? He was run out after he shoved Ruon Jian into a vase for flirting with Mai, but so far the following had unfolded: Azula had unintentionally scared their host Chan out of his mind for a reason unknown to him, Ty Lee had managed to knock half the boys at the party unconscious just because they 'all just liked her too much', and Mai had broken up with him after the mishap with Ruin Jian.

Never Mai. Right.

The moon is high and full in the starry sky as he walks alone along the beach, but Prince Zuko cannot set his gaze upon the moon without thoughts of his uncle and the Avatar and the nightmare at the North Pole, cannot look at the stars without failingly trying to compare their beauty to Mai, because the magnificent stars fall short every time.

Without even meaning to, he finds himself in front of the dark mansion that belongs to his family, one that, back then when they were actually happy, seems like a whole different group of people than what they've become.

Nostalgia for what is like a different life overtakes him as he crosses the threshold, stumbles across the relics of the childhood that was cut short by the selfish ambitions of one man, and the sacrificial actions of one loving woman. The paintings on the walls are lies- surely he was never that happy, that free of burdens and scars? Surely his hand was never that small, frozen in time and imprinted in stone?

For some reason, he isn't as surprised as he should be when he turns around to discover his sister on the other side of the dusty room, and he finds himself desperately trying to shake memories of this dejected place out her, to prove that they actually happened and weren't just dreams of another happier life a whole world away.

"Do you remember that time, years ago, when we had that contest to see which one of us could bend the sunset?"

Azula shares a small smile. "I won."

"Liar." but he's smiling sadly, too.

Azula always lies. Prince Zuko drives the memory of the small Earth Nation boy from his mind, focuses on ones buried even further down.

"The times when we played war games, and you were the firebender and I would be the waterbender, splashing you with the ocean spray?"

Azula nods. "I won those, too." And rightfully so. Prince Zuko allows himself to remember one thing- the last time he saw Katara. Fire beats water, every time.

"And the time when Mom told us that, if she could, she'd bend the stars close enough so that they'd have to listen to our wishes?"

The smile drops from Azula's face. "She never said that to me." Maybe Azula doesn't think she's won everything, after all. His sister takes a breath, brushes the black hair from her face. "Let's get out of here. This place is depressing."

And it was, in a way. The paintings told him lies, mocked him with what he never really had, not truly. A broken family that he doesn't seem to belong in, one that doesn't belong with each other. Like puzzle pieces that almost fit, but not quite.


"Are you cold?" Prince Zuko asks Mai as he and Azula approach the circle of driftwood logs on which she and Ty Lee are sitting. She doesn't reply, just pushes his arm away when he tries to sling it around her.

"I'm freezing," offers Ty Lee, seemingly learning nothing from the unconscious boy at Chan's party.

"I'll make a fire," Prince Zuko says quietly, looking to the silhouette of his family's abandoned beach house. "There's plenty of stuff to burn in there."

It's after he throws the painting of his family into the flames that the truce amongst the four goes up in smoke. First Ty Lee explodes, nearly crying, then, more surprisingly, Mai. Seeing her stand her ground against he, Ty Lee, and even Azula makes him only regret her rejection more. If only he hadn't spilled that snow cone into her lap, insulted her at the party, pushed her friend into a vase. If only, if only.

It hits him like a speeding bus- if only he'd gotten just a second longer in the Catacombs with Katara. If only he'd stood by his uncle's side when he was threatened. If only he didn't care what others thought and expected. So many what ifs run through his racing mind, but in his life, there is only what is, and what isn't.

And before he knows it, Prince Zuko is spilling his guts to these people: his sister, who he knows will eventually exploit his vulnerability, his ex-girlfriend, who doesn't want to hear a word he says, and this girl he only used to know, back when he was unscarred and not nearly as remotely angry. "I thought that if I came back, I'd be happy. And I should be! My dad talks to me- heck-" he laughs bitterly "-he even thinks I'm a hero! But I'm just… angry all the time, and I don't know why."

"Well there's a simple question you need to answer, Zuko." Azula says, and through the darkness Prince Zuko thinks he sees her roll her eyes. "Who are you angry at? Is it Dad? Me?"

"No, no…"

"Your uncle?" Ty Lee wonders, and it is all he can do not to cringe in pain.

Prince Zuko shakes his head. "No, no, no…"

"Well then who is it?"

"Yeah, come on, Zuko,"

"Just tell us!"

"I'M ANGRY AT MYSELF!" Zuko, banished prince, enemy of the Earth Kingdom, and fugitive to the Fire Nation, screams. The flames grow to an all time high, illuminating them all in an amber light before diving down again.

"Why?" Azula inquires after a moment above the crackling of the fire.

"Because I'm confused." Zuko finds the explanation tumbling off his tongue, obscuring his thoughts grasping for a rationality that cannot be found. "Because I'm not sure I know the difference between right and wrong anymore."

"You're pathetic," Azula laughs cruelly.

"I know one thing I care about," Mai says, standing up and reaching out to Zuko softly, apologetically. "I care about you, Zuko." And when she kisses him, it's like a glimpse of relief or a second of vacation, but, like all good things, it doesn't last.

Strange, how Lo and Li said Ember Island would make him smooth again. Zuko only feels more jagged now, feels so sharp and unpredictable that he might just cut the whole world open without meaning to, because he's already done the same thing to his own heart.