The first thing Aang registered was the sound.

He could hear birdsong, as well as the crackle of a nearby fire and low voices talking. He groaned, and opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the face of Katara hovering above him, always a nice thing to wake up to. Above her, a canopy of leaves framed the sky, which was perfectly blue and cloudless. Katara gasped, realizing that Aang was conscious, and shouted. "Sokka! Toph! Suki! He's awake!"

Immediately the low voices that Aang had been hearing stopped, and three more faces entered his field of vision.

"Where are we?" Aang made an effort to sit up. "What happened? Last I remember I was..."

Aang suddenly had a vivid flashback, of a jet of flame shot at someone close to him, followed by a lightning bolt arcing into his own chest. He clutched at it and lay back down.

"Ozai... shot me?!"

"Yes, he did." Katara held his hand.

"This isn't Ba Sing Se." Aang realised, feeling a bit silly that it had taken this long to notice. "Why aren't we in Ba Sing Se?"

Katara, Sokka and Suki exchanged glances.

"Once you were unconscious, the Fire Nation... they somehow broke through the walls. They sacked the city, and we escaped with you on Appa."

"WHAT?" Aang shouted. His worst fears had come true. He had stressed about fighting the Firelord in order to save the population of the city since the beginning of the siege and had... failed. There was no way around it. He had lost his fight with Ozai and Ba Sing Se had suffered for it.

Katara sensed his distress, and guessed the cause of it correctly. "If it helps, Ozai only beat you because of a cheap shot he took at me."

"And yet he still beat me."

Katara realized that line of reassurance wasn't going to work and changed tack. "Well, there's nothing to say we can't try again. Team Avatar is still intact, in fact it's bigger than it has ever been, and we still have plenty of allies out there, we are still in this fight."

This did better, but Aang still felt guilty.

"When I went to see Guru Pathik about the Avatar State, he told me that I needed to open all my Chakras to master it. I did all but the last one, but in the middle of that I got a vision that you all were in danger and I had to rush back to save you. To unlock the last chakra I would have had to let go of my personal attachment; I would have had to let go of you. I didn't want to do that, especially not with you in danger."

Katara seemed confused as to what Aang was saying.

"I chose personal attachment over Avatar stuff, and now I can't access the Avatar State. At all. Not even the uncontrolled natural disaster Avatar State." He explained.

"Oh."

They sat in silence for a while, none of them quite sure what to say next.

"If you can't beat Ozai alone, then we'll beat him together." Sokka tried to sound optimistic.

"Sokka, trying to fight him together was what got me shot with lightning last time." Aang reminded him.

"No, Ozai playing dirty did that," Toph said angrily. "Just because he might try to do something underhanded doesn't mean we shouldn't fight him together."

"Believe me, there's strength in numbers, no matter how individually skilled you are." Suki put in. "I'm a Kyoshi Warrior, so I know."

"Where are the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors? Where are Hakoda and the rest of the water tribesmen? Where is the Earth King?" Aang only just remembered about them.

"They all escaped through a secret tunnel under the palace together, or at least they said they were going to. We don't know where they are now, probably at some fortress or other, but as far as we know they are safe."

Aang sighed. Finally, some good news.

"Is the invasion still happening?"

We don't know. We think so, because we have one major advantage," Sokka replied.

"What's that?"

"For the past two weeks, the Fire Nation has been spreading the 'news' that you are dead. They seem to believe it themselves too."

"The Fire Nation thinks I'm dead?!"

"So does everyone else."

"That's bad isn't it?"

"How?"

"I'm the Avatar, remember, a symbol of hope against the tyranny of the Fire Nation. If they think I'm dead what will that do to that hope?"

"It's only for a few weeks. Then we'll hopefully win the war and you can make your triumphant return!"

Aang could see the logic in that. "Alright then." He began to get up slowly. Katara and Sokka got him under the arms to prevent him from falling over, and he leaned against a tree.

"What do we do now then?"

"I say we lay low until Aang is recovered, and then help whoever needs helping until the day of the eclipse. You need your training too." Katara said.

"I make the plans around here," Sokka said, earning him a glare from his sister, but salvaged the situation by saying "... but I agree with Katara. We should do that."

"We also need to track down the Earth King, Hakoda, and the Kyoshi Warriors between now and the invasion."

"And bust a few Fire Nation heads in the process," Toph said.

Aang nodded. Their time in Ba Sing Se was over, and had been a disastrous failure, but this was a new beginning.

The war was not lost yet.