A/N: In canon, there were posters for both Jeong Jeong and the Blue Spirit on the pillar right next to Aang's.

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Jeong Jeong declared an end to practice by late afternoon. To Iroh, he said it was because a fish will not break a dam by flopping against it. To his students, he said nothing at all. To himself, he admitted the truth: he had a lot of thinking to do.

Zhao had turned out a complete disaster. With nothing but the best intentions, he was responsible for the creation of the Fire Nation's most ruthless and destructive soldier, who was now in command of the lives of innocent people. Jeong Jeong had created a monster and set it loose on his own nation, a nation he still cared for. Was it any wonder he was reluctant to take students? The slow pace of his training really had nothing to do with the Avatar at all. He hoped that, if he saw any sign that he was failing again, the damage would be minimized.

But he was not failing. Jeong Jeong required several hours of watching it with his own two eyes to believe it. Here was another temperamental young man much like Zhao, with great impatience and anger and (it was obvious from the way he shook) a tendency to express it in flames. After that morning, Jeong Jeong expected nothing but the worst. Only Iroh's promises kept him from throwing Zuko out of his training program. And now that same young man, who was so much like Zhao, turned out completely the opposite way. He controlled fire precisely and patiently. Jeong Jeong had not failed.

He declared an end to practice and retired to his hut because he needed to think very, very hard about his prospects for the future.

Jeong Jeong entered his hut and lit the half circle of candles he used for meditation. He was just sitting down when the leader of the spearmen approached. "Sir," the man said. "Patrols report no signs of trouble from the Fire Days festival."

"Good."

"But as they were searching, they found something you should see."

Jeong Jeong followed him outside. Outside another hut, a group of spearmen that had just returned were waiting before they took off their gear. The leader held out his hand, and one of them gave him a paper, which he held out for Jeong Jeong to look at. Jeong Jeong made a fireball in his hand to see it more clearly in the fading light. It was a Wanted poster for a man wearing the blue and white mask of some inhuman being.

"His crimes," the spear leader said. Jeong Jeong looked for the suggested section. It read, Wanted for the crime of stealing the Avatar.

Jeong Jeong's eyebrows rose. Iroh had told him how they had come to be traveling with the Avatar. He studied what little description was given, recognizing Zuko's approximate measurements. So the boy had an alternate identity that was wanted for high treason. Very interesting.

"Some of us thought," the spear leader continued, "that this Blue Spirit might make a powerful ally, or else our most dangerous enemy. A rogue fighter who doesn't stick to established roads and waterways could easily find us if he's still after the Avatar. But he is on the run from the Fire Nation, the same as we are. What should we do? Increase our defenses? Prepare to move? Search for him?"

"Nothing," Jeong Jeong said. He took the poster. "This is of no importance. Return to your regular routine." The spearmen looked startled, and some of them might have protested had they not spent so long in his company. They knew better by now. Jeong Jeong turned and marched back to his hut. He pushed aside the flap, intending to burn the poster.

But he did not. His breath rushed out and was not replaced. His knees went wobbly and weak. His heart skipped a beat or two. For a moment, Jeong Jeong could not move. Then he staggered forward, pushed the flap back into place behind himself with one shaking hand, and fell to his knees in a floor-touching bow before his lord and master.

When he judged that the appropriate respect had been paid, Jeong Jeong allowed himself to look up. There on the ground before him, fire burned with no support, weaving an intricate pattern across bare dirt. Jeong Jeong knew such things were possible, but he had never imagined he would see it in his lifetime, or in a thousand lifetimes. Why should Fire itself, one of the four elements, creators of the world, deign to make itself known to him? But here it was, revealing its true nature before him. And what was that pattern it was making on the floor?

Jeong Jeong stood up to get a better look. He had blocked out what his eyes had seen upon entering. Surely that was a mirage. But it was not. The fire traced across the floor said: Thank you.

Jeong Jeong sank to his knees again, and did not try to get up. He couldn't. He could only stare into the flames with glazed eyes, breathing as hard as if he had been running. The fire moved, lifting off the floor in a leaping liquid way, like water, bounding across the floor and back onto the candles. Jeong Jeong still could not move, nor think. He had just seen Fire speak, then turn and leap away. His world was upended.

Eventually, the shock began to wear off. He could think again. What did this mean? Why had Fire spoken to him? Was he supposed to act? Most importantly: what had he done to gain its favor? He hadn't thought it was possible to gain favor with the elements. They were supposed to have no favor, proceed in their eternal and unchanging way without a care for the dramas and tragedies played out by the short-lived creatures that lived within them. Clearly, what he had learned about them was wrong.

There was a knock on the wall.

Jeong Jeong got to his feet and composed himself. He stepped over the candles and sat in the circle in his usual way. "Enter."

The crown prince of the Fire Nation pushed aside the flap and peered in. He looked around as if he expected something to be wrong. "Is now…a good time?"

"It is time," Jeong Jeong said in his usual surly way. "Do not spend it as freely as you spend air."

Zuko walked in and sat down. "I was just wondering. Why did you leave the Fire Nation?" He hesitated, then added, "Your weird training methods actually make sense. Maybe you had a good reason."

Jeong Jeong said nothing at first. He did not like to talk about that part of his past. It was painful, laced with shame and disappointment and regret. But the man who asked him about it was the Blue Spirit and his best student. Perhaps he was capable of learning something useful from Jeong Jeong's sad tale. "I knew that if I did not, I would be consumed. Fire is in our hearts. When I was a general, the fire in my heart was twisted, enflamed, made to burn unclean fuel. I felt as if I was burning alive every moment. The anger, the hate… You would do well to stay far from it."

"Your inner fire was getting out of control," Zuko summarized.

"Yes." Not quite, but close enough.

The prince shrugged. "I don't have that problem."

"Don't you?" Jeong Jeong raised an eyebrow. "Then how do you explain this?" He whipped out the Wanted poster and let it unroll in front of Zuko's startled face.

"Don't tell Uncle," was the first thing Zuko said.

"Do you think he would be ashamed to have a nephew who is wanted for treason?"

"No, it… It's more personal than that." Zuko looked down.

Jeong Jeong lowered the poster. "You have found a way to control your heart's fire."

"What? No." Zuko shook his head. "You're wrong. You don't know me, and you don't know my alter ego. That's not what's going on at all."

Jeong Jeong was sure he was right. Nobody who was fully under the sway of the Fire Nation in its current form could control fire with any precision. Distancing himself from the Fire Nation must be what had saved him from this fate. The Blue Spirit explained why he had turned out so differently from Zhao.

"Don't tell Uncle," Zuko repeated.

Jeong Jeong nodded. "I give my word." Zuko relaxed.

Now it was the master's turn to go on the offensive. "Why do you think you have an alter ego?"

Zuko visibly curled in on himself. "I don't know. It's just fun."

One of the things Iroh had said to reassure him that Zuko could be patient was that, when left alone, Zuko relaxed and had fun. It was part of why Jeong Jeong had given them a break. So "having fun" was code for sneaking around as the Blue Spirit? It would have sounded like an odd definition of fun to anyone else. But Jeong Jeong knew what a relief it was to step out from under the thumb of the Fire Nation. He understood. "It is that too."

Zuko glanced up at him. For just a split second, Jeong Jeong saw a shy little boy. "You understand what I mean by that?"

"I have stayed here for more than a year." Jeong Jeong knew he was understood by the way Zuko looked at him like he had grown a second head. The prince said nothing. This discussion was over.

Which was good, because Jeong Jeong remembered something else he had wanted to talk about. He grew stern again. "Do not think you can relax and coast on your talents. You call yourself a shark, but you are nothing more than a minnow. You imagine yourself mighty, but you are small and weak! You cannot teach the Avatar how to be the Avatar. That is hubris!"

Zuko bristled. "I am not small! And I wouldn't…" His voice died, as did the spark in his eyes. Something previously unnoticed drained from his face, leaving it masklike. "Never mind."

"Speak," Jeong Jeong commanded. "I want to hear how you justify yourself."

Zuko lowered his head and his eyes. If he had been holding a fire, it would have gone out. "I said never mind. It is hubris." He got to his feet, bowed, and walked out.

Jeong Jeong reconsidered. Perhaps the prince had been right about himself. His problem was not with his inner fire being too strong, after all.

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Meanwhile, Aang's friends were trying to cheer him up, and not doing a great job at it.

"I agree," Sokka said. "Training you to burn lines in a bit of cloth is crazy! When is that ever going to help anyone? You don't need to be wasting your time on that."

"Sokka!" Katara shot him a look. "Aang, I understand that it's frustrating to go so slowly. But look what almost happened when you tried to go faster. You should be patient."

"Yeah, it could have gone wrong. But it didn't," Sokka said. "Making a fireball sped up his training like a thousand times."

"I'm sure the master has a reason for being cautious," Katara said in a louder voice.

"And I'm sure he's just hoping Aang will give up and go away like he wanted in the first place."

"I just don't understand," Aang said. "Zuko was doing it! He mastered that exercise, and I couldn't get it at all. How did he do it?"

"Make him sick again and ask him," Sokka suggested.

"Why is he so much better than me?" Aang stared enviously into the fire. His fists clenched. His inner fire burned brightly. He'd mastered everything Katara had to teach him on the first try. Sure, Zuko was better at firebending than she had been, but he'd still expected to have the lead. Zuko was humiliating him at firebending, and he would have done absolutely anything to reverse that, except he couldn't. No matter how hard he tried, the cloth exercise eluded him.

"There must be a secret to it," Katara said. "You have skill and talent. There must be some key that you're missing."

Aang turned to Iroh. "Tell me, please. I know you're not supposed to, but he's not here. He won't find out. Tell me what it is!"

Iroh rubbed his beard. "You were looking at him too much, not concentrating on what you were doing. Fire is tricky. You have to pay constant attention to it."

Aang pointed to the cloth he had been struggling with for the past half hour. "I wasn't looking at him now. How do you explain that?"

"How are you going to breathe properly when you have it on the floor?"

Aang groaned. "Breathe. Concentrate. That's all you old guys ever say about firebending! I don't see Zhao breathing and concentrating before everything he does. I don't see all the soldiers we meet breathing and concentrating before they throw fireballs at me. When are we going to get to the real firebending?"

Iroh shook his head. "Do not take Zhao as your role model, young Avatar. He is a very stubborn, angry, unhappy man. Do you want to be the kind of firebender he is?"

Aang flushed. "No." He sighed. "It just feels like Zuko's the only person who's taught me anything useful about firebending. What he said made sense. What you guys have to say makes no sense at all."

Iroh nodded. "Every student has different needs, and every teacher has a different style. Perhaps Jeong Jeong isn't right for you."

Aang nodded. "That has to be it. If I found someone I understood, I'd get it in no time." He hadn't really lost to Zuko. It was just circumstance. His pride remained intact.

Katara looked at the patchy burned cloth. "It does look like you've reached the limit of what you can learn here."

"We should move on." For the first time all afternoon, the two siblings were in complete agreement.

Zuko came back soon. "What did you talk about?" Aang asked him. Was it something useful Aang could learn from?

"We talked about why he left the Fire Nation."

"What did he say?"

"His inner fire got out of control. He was angry all the time and felt like he was burning." Zuko looked at him. "What do you care?"

Aang slumped. "I don't. I was hoping for something useful." He got up and went to see the master.

Jeong Jeong glared at him as he entered. "How dare you interrupt my concentration? I am busy!"

"I'll be quick," Aang promised. "I just wanted to tell you that I think I've reached the limit of what I can learn here. We've decided to move on."

"You have," Jeong Jeong agreed. "You are too impatient. You have not mastered discipline. You cannot master any bending discipline without discipline itself. Do you understand the truth of that now?"

Aang looked down. "Is that why Zuko was so much better than me? Because he understands discipline?"

"Yes."

"He was right." Aang's hands curled into fists. "You weren't really teaching us firebending at all."

Jeong Jeong sighed. "Sit down. Listen to my story." Aang sat. "Once, a long time ago, I had a promising student. He could summon fire on command and direct it as he wished. But he lacked self control. He used his fire irresponsibly, without proper respect for it. He was easily angered and very impatient. He left my training just because he became bored." Jeong Jeong stared at Aang with such great intensity that it seemed like he was looking through the boy's very spirit. "When I look at you, I see him. You are impatient. When granted access to fire, you would have burned your friend's hands if you had not been stopped. You don't respect fire, and you don't have the focus to control it. Until you do… I am unwilling to take the risk of creating another monster."

Aang's inner fire shrank back to embers from hearing this. He felt very small, very young, and very, very ashamed. "How do I learn discipline and focus?"

"You must master water and earth," Jeong Jeong told him. "From water, you will learn focus. From earth, you will learn strength. Focus and strength combined create discipline. Then you will be ready to handle fire."

Aang closed his eyes, lowered his head and nodded. "I understand now. I'm not ready. I thought I already knew everything you were teaching me, but I was wrong. Thank you for showing me, master."

"Now go and leave me in peace," Jeong Jeong snapped.

Aang jumped up and did just that. But then he skidded to a halt, turned around, and poked his head back in. "Do you know where I can find a map?"

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The next morning, Iroh made sure to savor his last tea before another long period of flying. He helped pack up Katara's and Sokka's bedrolls, as Zuko insisted on being the one in charge of their pack. Iroh was starting to suspect there was something in there that his nephew didn't want him to see. That was alright; he understood a young man's need for privacy. As long as Zuko packed his teas correctly, Iroh had no problem with letting him have his secrets.

The Avatar and his friends studied the map Jeong Jeong had given them, deciding where to fly next. Iroh paid one last visit to his longtime friend. As it happened, Jeong Jeong had already come out of his hut and was on the way up to them. "Thank you for the tea and Pai Sho," Iroh said. "And -"

Jeong Jeong cut him off. "Don't say your goodbyes just yet, Iroh." He glanced up at the bison. "Come. We should speak in private."

They went down to the shore of the lake. "What happened?" Iroh asked.

Jeong Jeong lowered his head. "One of the great elemental spirits spoke to me last night."

"What?" Iroh exclaimed. "But they don't do that. The elemental spirits don't involve themselves in the business of humans. They are the tide and the rocks."

"I know," Jeong Jeong said. "But I am sure of what I have seen. Fire, burning above bare dirt, spelling out 'Thank you' before leaping back onto the candles."

Iroh had to admit that that was, beyond all doubt, a sign of the spirit of fire. "What could it be thanking you for?"

"I taught the Avatar to treat fire with greater respect," Jeong Jeong suggested. "But that is not enough to earn its praise. I can't imagine what else I could have done."

Iroh couldn't, either. The elemental spirits were important, but distant. They were the tide and the breeze and the rocks. Unspeaking, unchanging, unacting. The only interaction they had with humans was through bending. Something about Jeong Jeong's firebending training must have attracted the notice of Fire. But his training mostly was not training at all. Was that it? Did Fire approve of the training methods? That seemed like a stretch. Iroh was helpless to begin to explain what one of the elemental spirits did. He knew them as a backdrop to his life only. He hadn't even thought about them in years, not since first learning about them.

"The elemental spirits are mysteries," he said. "It takes decades of intense meditation and focus and effort just to touch a small part of one. I don't expect to find out why it thanked you."

"Neither do I," Jeong Jeong admitted. "I will have to make do with the fact that it did."

They paused for a breath, looking out over the lake. The morning sun had not yet reached down to its surface, but the tops of the surrounding trees were bright orange, leaving orange streaks where they reflected in the water. It was beautiful. "There is something else I must tell you," Jeong Jeong said. "It is about your nephew."

"Has he inspired you to give teaching a chance again?"

Jeong Jeong stood silently. "Yes," he finally admitted. "I will keep an eye out for promising students. If they have patience and self control, I will try to teach. But that isn't what I wanted to talk about. Iroh, your nephew is in trouble."

Iroh shivered. "I know. He's had great difficulties lately. Until recently, he was in danger of being thrown off the bison. But I have faith that he can overcome his challenges. It's part of growing up."

"You are too close," Jeong Jeong said. "A fish that swims in the river cannot know the river's shape. You are blinded by your familiarity." He took a deep breath. "His heart's fire has grown weak, Iroh. I saw it briefly disappear. His face became like a mask. Without an inner fire, a man might as well be a stone."

Iroh remembered that one moment where he had asked about the water spirit and all feeling, all life, had drained from Zuko's face. Like a mask: yes, that was how it had looked to him, too. Chills rose on his arms and all the way up his back. Jeong Jeong had also seen it? That was not an isolated incident?

"I'll keep an eye on him," he whispered. "Thank you for telling me." Jeong Jeong nodded.

Iroh watched Zuko very carefully as they lifted up into the air. Zuko was stuffing pieces of sackcloth into his pack. He seemed to do so with just as much vigor and drive as ever. But Iroh remembered Jeong Jeong's words - Your nephew is in trouble - and his heart pounded.

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A/N: Credit for Jeong Jeong's scene goes to Charley1925. It was a good idea. Thank you!