He's bleeding. He's been absently aware of that for a while, the pain making itself known. The wound stings and throbs in time with his heartbeat. Blood runs down his arm and drips off his fingers to the grassy earth he marches on. The trees shade his path, yet he still feels the sun burn. He will never not feel it. But he's going to try anyway. He's going to try to go.
Go where?
Anywhere that is not here. Anywhere that is not stained with blood of men, women, children. Anywhere that the smell of burning flesh is absent. Anywhere else other than the ravaged war zone not a yet a mile behind him. If he were to turn back, he would still be able to see jagged earth, torn bodies spilling rivers of blood, corpses crushed and ablaze, and cold, dead stares. He does not turn, doesn't need to. He knows with perfect clarity what he left behind.
Death, destruction, pain. Are these things not evil? Was he not the cause of it? He and his fire? All is defined not by what it is, but what it does. If he did evil, he and his fire, was he not also? So be it.
Evil he was then. He had no choice. It was born into him and trained to near perfection. He could not simply put it off like a robe not his own. It was his; it was him. He breathed, and it was. The fire he wielded had taken too much. He could not be redeemed. But he could be beaten, destroyed, killed. His portion of evil was housed in a mortal vessel. Good is the conqueror of evil. So he must go to find the good that will vanquish the evil. That will end the death, destruction, and pain. That will end him.
The Fire Nation?
No. Not them. They are the source of it. Evil cannot be destroyed by evil. One will only become more haughty and proud at the destruction of the other. Yet it will continue more powreful. But still, a problem. The Nation would not suffer him to live; he would not suffer them to be the ones who killed him. So he would hide. Run and hide and search for the good that had to be somewhere. That's not to say that he will go down easy however. Evil never dies without a fight.
Until that time, let him wander, stumble, stride on with certainty in his fate. Let there be no doubt in his goal for all the days of his life, short as he is sure they will be. He will rise and sleep, eat, drink, and know hunger and thirst. He would think to end it himself and bring a blade of fire ever so near his neck on more than one occasion before he would be reminded of his fate.
And then one day, Jeong-Jeong met a man with a lotus tile…
A/N: this was going to be an Uncle dies scenario with Zuko. But then the Deserter took over. I can't say as I mind though