2

"You haven't been given a chance to be anything more than your scar. Your mistake. Don't accept that."

Weeks after the winter solstice, in an abandoned fort, not too far from Hei Bai's forest. Zuko had lost the avatar. Crossed into Fire Nation waters and lost him.

"Who am I, if I'm not this? I have nothing. I can't just give up and settle down somewhere." He and his uncle were listless, guessing at where the avatar was headed next. His crew was camped out there, and I had thought to ambush and properly disarm the troupe before I recognized him among the group.

Instead, I approached from the entry. He and his uncle offered me a bowl of stew, deer, and after, Zuko pulled me up to the ramparts and told me what had happened.

Roku had awoken, destroyed an entire island to see the avatar freed.

"Be thankful you've escaped trial," I told him. "Exiles who return uninvited aren't treated kindly."

He didn't like this. When he still shaved his head, you could spy the twitch of his temple before his words burned you. He twitched, faced the woods, and sent his knuckles white against the stone.

"How would you know?"

He didn't know then. I had barely escaped a trial myself. Only my punishment would have been death; his, imprisonment.

"I just mean, I'm happy that you are okay. You need to think about your own safety."

"Uncle said the same thing."

This was the first time either of us had voiced anything verging on amity. I had expected more resistance from him. When he pushed off from the wall, I grabbed his hand, smooth and warm, and looked him in the eye.

"Please take care of yourself."

And just like that, I had taken it too far. He walked off.

I camped out in a solitary corner room that night, barricading the door. I trusted Zuko and his uncle, but of the other men I couldn't say the same.


As I collected the cloth Zuko had left from the tree branch, I surveyed the valley. During the war, I had come across a struggling village not far from here. I scanned the northern horizon and spotted no smoke, as I had back then, when the chief's kitchen had swept gray billows into the sky. No tracks peppered the forest floor. Not even a deer's hooves. Odd, considering the oak's acorns would be a reliable source of food.

Then, I found them. A singular track of boots impressed into the mud, leading northward.

I hoped, prayed that he was near, that he simply hid in the long-deserted homes of that village, but I knew my prayer was foolish. Finding each other had never come easy. Even when we had reunited across that vast continent over and over again, sometimes by chance, others through desperation, we didn't always know each other. He was brimming with hatred. A destructive need to make his way back home, even if he forfeited the world in the process. I was bitter, newly alone, always finding myself alone and further and further from my goal: to reclaim my home, too. Despite everything we shared, he couldn't understand that. That losing an entire village, a mother, and my own sense of myself could be just as painful as being turned out by an abusive father. We had both lost our homes. Had them taken from us.

It wasn't long before the wooden buildings spread out behind the trees. A small village, ten or twelve homes.

No wind, no sound, like that half-second before lightning near-struck me dead.

I searched the houses and found no one. Everything was ordered, no overturned furniture or broken-in doors, and yet half-eaten food sat on dining tables. Mugs of tea had cooled. I searched for scrambled tracks telling of a sudden departure, but found none.

When I came upon the chief's home, I found little remarkable. Tidy bedrooms, stocked pantries, which I made use of. It wasn't until I peered out from an upstairs window that I saw it.

A circle of blackened earth, and then a trail of flattened trees twenty feet wide, trunks splintered, destruction spreading down the valley as far as the eye could see.