"You know, in all of the time that we've shared, I've never been so scared.

Doll me up in my bad luck; I'll meet you there." Doll, Foo Fighters

Xx

The walls are closing in on him. The blood in his veins slows to a crawl, his heart icing over in his chest. He's so cold; colder than he was when he had followed the seals here, colder than he had been when he was swept off of his ship into the icy waters of the South Pole. His vision is a vignette, blackness creeping in through the corners, the picture before him threatening to fade away. Move, damn it! Try as he might, his legs will not budge from underneath him.

"Think about it Zuko: you can help me and regain your birthright, or you can let your uncle die."

Once those vicious words slid out of Zhao's mouth, Zuko's body had begun to betray him. The anxiety rushed upon him, blanketing him in fear. His breathing is so heavy it's beginning to make his chest hurt, and before where he had been shaking, he's now paralyzed. All of the noise in the Oasis sounds muffled as it enters his ears, like his head is stuck under a pillow and Zhao is holding him trapped underneath it. His anxiety attacks usually aren't this bad; there are only a few things that can make his body shut down like this, and a threat to his uncle's safety is one of them. That, coupled with the fact that his only options are to choose between Katara's safety and his Iroh's, is more than enough to send him over the edge. He fights with everything he has to stay on his feet as he watches Zhao battle with Katara. Her form has improved a great deal; she must have found a master here in the north. But Zhao has years of experience, and he watches as Katara gets knocked down. No, no, no, move Zuko, fucking move! No matter how much he tries to move, he is trapped inside his own body. There has to be a way out of this; there has to be a way that he can save them both. He has to.

Katara is knocked down again, and Zuko fights even harder to snap out of it. He starts to gain feeling back in his hands, clenching and unclenching them to get his blood flowing again. He waits for Katara to get up, but she doesn't. His breathing somehow speeds up even more; he's about to pass out, the air not staying in his lungs long enough for his body to absorb the oxygen. His fights harder than he ever has to stay here, to stay in the moment. His hearing starts to come back as he wrestles to stop hyperventilating. If I can just get to her—

"You're pathetic." Zhao is in front of him, Aang slung over his back without care. "Take him to the ship. Once you get there, the crew will know not to hurt your uncle."

He shoves Aang's limp body into Zuko, and begins to walk towards the exit. Zuko adjusts Aang so that he is draped across his shoulders like a fine scarf. I'll come back for her, he tells himself, desperately trying to justify what he's doing. He feels so trapped, his mind a bird with clipped wings, cloistered in a gilded cage. He can't keep the Avatar away from Zhao at this point, but if he brings him back to the ship, he might be able to help him break out again before Zhao knows any better and ensure his uncle's safety at the same time. He can't bear to look at Katara as he turns towards the small round door, following Zhao into the cold night air.

"I'll meet you there," Zhao says as he turns away from Zuko. "There's something I need to take care of."

Zuko's throat has closed, and he silently moves forward to take Aang to the ship. With every step he takes, his mind is fighting him. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The mantra is his heartbeat, loud and insistent. His upper body is dead weight, his legs shuffling towards Zhao's ship simply because he doesn't know what else to do. He has to get to his uncle. He has to get back to Katara. He has to make sure Aang is safe—

"Nephew!" Zuko almost drops the Avatar onto the hard ice when he hears his uncle's voice. He's running up to Zuko, a worried look on his face. "Zuko, what are you doing? What happened?"

He realizes tears are streaming down his face only when they start to freeze. "Uncle, you're okay! Zhao told me he would kill you if I didn't bring the Avatar to his ship for him! I couldn't move, he— Katara—" His uncle's face softens with sympathy.

"Nephew, I am fine, but Zhao has plans to kill the moon spirit. We must get to the Oasis quickly!" Zuko feels a rush of energy and takes off, his uncle on his heels. That lying bastard.

Right before they step into the Oasis, the sky turns an eerie, unnatural crimson. Zuko and his uncle look up into the sky; the moon is completely red, casting a bloody glow onto the structures and people of the North Pole as the battle rages on. They duck through the small door, the scene they emerge into one of nightmares. Zhao holds a writhing, wet bag in his hand; the pond beneath him disturbed by the single koi fish in it swimming erratically.

"Zhao!" Iroh calls out to the admiral, his voice that of his old life, the Dragon of the West slipping into the body of his warm, friendly uncle. Zuko lets out a heavy breath as he sees Katara awake, holding onto another girl who looks very similar to her except for her light hair, now tinted red. "Whatever you do to that moon spirit, I will unleash on you ten-fold! Let it go, now!"

Zhao growls under his breath, clearly not happy to see Iroh and Zuko, who has Aang still slumped over his shoulders. He lowers the bag to the pond, allowing the white koi fish inside to slide back into the water. Everyone releases a collective breath, and in the brief moment of calm, Zhao strikes. He punches his fist out, a ball of flame makes contact with the water, and then, the sky goes dark. Zuko doesn't have time to comprehend what has happened; his uncle attacks Zhao while Zuko runs back to the pond, depositing Aang back where he had been sitting just minutes ago.

"Katara!" Zuko turns to her, her eyes wide and wet, the girl in her arms out cold. "Katara, I'm so sorry, I couldn't move, and then you were on the ground and Zhao—"

"Zuko." She stops his rambling as he realizes tears are falling from his good eye. "It's okay Zuko. I know what he did. What's important is that you brought Aang back safe." He looks deep into her eyes; he did bring the Avatar back safe. All because of her.

He hears his uncle grunt, and looks up to see Zhao running for the exit. Zuko growls, the fury of what Zhao made him do, what the Admiral has wrought upon the world, pumping through his veins. He gets up and sprints after him, determined to catch him and make him pay. He chases Zhao through the city as the battle continues around him. Fire balls color small spots of the sky red, but the world is in shades of black and grey. It's wrong, so very wrong, and Zuko wonders how many different kinds of fucked up someone has to be to kill the moon spirit. He finally catches up to Zhao and shoots a plume of fire at him to stop him in his tracks.

"You lied to me!" His anger fuels his bending, his fire lighting up the areas around them. Zhao fights back, still trying to flee.

"Oh, poor baby doesn't like getting lied to!" Zuko's fireball barely misses his face. "You're the Blue Spirit! You helped the Avatar escape! You're a traitor and a disgrace to the Fire Nation!" The two men are so engrossed in their fight that they don't notice the water within the city has started to glow, nor the large, fish-like creature making its way towards them. "You should have taken my offer— at least then you could have lived!" They continue their fight, the ground beneath them trembling as some areas begin to crack and fall away. Zuko looks up as a massive shape appears behind Zhao. The thing looks to be made of pure energy, using the water flowing through the city as its vessel. It reaches for Zhao, grabbing him with a shape that resembles a hand. Just then, the moon lights back up in the sky, flooding the city with its light.

"No!" Zhao yells and struggles in the creature's grasp. "It can't be!" Zuko watches the creature bring Zhao up high into the sky, and throw him off into the distance towards the ocean. Good riddance.

Zuko runs as fast as he can back to the oasis, the strange glowing water receding along his sidel. When he gets there, Katara's brother Sokka is holding the body of the girl with white hair. Zuko jogs closer to them; there are tears on all of their faces, and the white-haired girl's face looks pale, limp, and ashen. She's dead. He kneels down with the group and Katara lunges over into his arms, crying into his chest. He strokes her hair as he stares at the girl, who slowly fades away into nothing right before his eyes.

Iroh is the first to stand, wiping tears off of his face. Sokka stands as well, a dead look in his eyes, and Zuko pulls Katara up to her feet, keeping her hand in his. "Prince Zuko, we must leave immediately. It's not safe for us here." There's hurt in his uncle's eyes as he says it, and Katara squeezes his hand.

"Why can't you just come with us?" She looks up at Zuko, and he feels his heart splinter in his chest.

"It's too dangerous. We're fugitives now." He turns and looks at his uncle, who nods his head. "We'll have a bounty on our heads, and we can't increase the risk of Aang getting captured again." Katara's face crumples and she moves to hug him again, her arms tight around his waist. He holds her just as tight; in just a matter of months, this woman has become more important to him than almost anyone else in his life. She had faith in him when nobody else did, and that was more than he could say for anyone other than his uncle.

"We'll see each other again," she whispers it against his chest; she says it with such conviction that he immediately believes her. They slowly pull apart, knowing time is of the essence. Zuko looks at her brother, who tilts his chin downwards in a nod, and he does the same. Something has changed between all of them tonight; Zuko feels in his bones that he is a different man, something unkillable having been born inside of him. He moves towards Iroh as Katara moves to hold her brother's hand. The four of them look between each other for a moment, and then Zuko and Iroh run out the small, wooden door towards the port.

Or, what used to be the port.

The giant glowing creature and the invasion had wreaked havoc throughout the city, but the port was by far the most damaged. There are giant cracks in the ice everywhere, and pieces that have already broken off from the whole float out to sea. Iroh had shed as much of his red Fire Nation clothing as he could before they got to the dock; it's still obvious that they're foreigners, but any little bit of camouflage helps. Zuko is glad that he had chosen white clothes for his outfit earlier. All of the Fire Navy's boats are gone, and there are no water tribe vessels either.

"What do we do, uncle?" A crack sounds from under their feet as the hunk of ice they are standing on splits apart from the main dock. They run to try to get to safety, but it's already too late; the chunk of ice has broken off, and the force from many smaller chunks separating from the main piece quickly pushes the ice floe farther out to sea. "Fuck. Now what?"

They stand in silence, eventually sitting down on the floe to help keep their balance as it moves swiftly through the ocean. As they get further away from the city, they see that huge chunks of ice are falling from the wall straight into the deep polar water, which would explain the force pushing them further and further from the North Pole. Time passes, and the two firebenders can do nothing but float along with the current. Zuko falls asleep, his body sore and exhausted after his battle with Zhao, all the running he did, and the massive anxiety attack that he had back at the Oasis. He dreams of blue eyes, a warm embrace, and a huge wall of roaring fire. Katara tries to speak to him in the dream, there in the throne room in front of the wall of fire, but he can't hear anything she says, and after a while she turns around with a sad expression and walks through the fire, disappearing behind it.

"Nephew." He is roused from his nightmare by the voice of his uncle, who is standing up next to him on the ice floe.

"What is it, uncle?" He groans, rubbing his head as he rises to his feet.

"There's a boat over there! We may be able to signal it to come rescue us."

Zuko follows his uncle's line of sight, and true to his word, there is a sizable ship in the distance. It definitely isn't a fire nation ship; it has multiple large sails, and has no smoke coming from anywhere on it. A Water Tribe boat. He starts waving his arms above his head with his uncle, and soon they see a small dinghy coming towards them.

"We need a cover story," Zuko mutters quickly to his uncle, still keeping his arms raised. "We can say we were stowaways on one of the ships before the attack, and that we escaped before it got destroyed."

"Good thinking, nephew. We shouldn't use our real names either." He is cut off as the small boat comes within hearing distance. It holds two burly men who are clearly Water Tribe, their faces stoic as they approach. "Thank goodness, we were beginning to think that we would die out here!" His uncle says it with enthusiasm, which Zuko truly believes is genuine. The two men look them up and down, and share a guarded look between themselves.

"You look Fire Nation," one of them points out in a deep voice.

"We're from the Earth Kingdom," Zuko says, filling in the gaps in their story as he goes along. "We had stowed away on one of the boats and escaped before it was destroyed." The man narrows his eyes at the two of them. Zuko scratches at the edge of his scar, hoping that the ugly mark helps to sell their story.

"What are your names?" The other man speaks up, his voice a little higher than the first, his face showing a little less suspicion.

"I'm Lee, and this is my uncle…" Think, Zuko! "Mushi." Wow, good job.

"Lee and Mushi, huh?" The second man rubs the thick beard on his chin, contemplating the two firebenders. "Alright, get in."

Zuko and his uncle clamber into the small boat, now cramped with four grown men, and the Water Tribe men start rowing back towards their ship. Here's to a new life.