IMPORTANT Author's note: After many days (okay, weeks) of careful deliberation, I've come to the decision that this is the last 'episode' I will be writing. BUT! Before anyone panics or starts leaving me nasty reviews about what a quitter I am, let me assure you that I AM GOING TO FINISH THE STORY. It simply won't be in episode form.

Instead, I will continue this as a connected, multi-chaptered series of one-shots. The reason I am changing to this new format is because it occurred to me that, at the rate I am going and by doing this in the manner I have been up until now, it will take me close to another year to finish writing this series. I just don't have that in me.

More than anything, I want this story to be done and out of my head, so I can concentrate on enjoying the rest of the real 'Avatar: The Last Airbender'. So instead of spending hours on end filling in the details, and coming up with the intricate little sub-plots for each 'episode', I can focus on simply posting all the individual scenes that have been rattling around in my brain for the past 13 months.

I'd also like to move on to some other concepts inspired by the 3rd season canon, and I really can't bring myself to do that while this story is still unfinished. With any luck, this change in format will also mean faster updates, all of which will be complete in their own right (no more commercial breaks or nasty cliffhangers!)

Think of it as a sort of 'skip to the good parts' version of the tale, where you will still get the main idea of what is happening in the primary meta-plot, but only by way of the more interesting character interactions which seem to be everyone's favorite part of my writing anyway.

I hope you all aren't too disappointed, and that you will refrain from flambéing me for my change in style. And please try to understand that this project has been great fun for me. Reading your reactions and knowing that I've helped fill the void between season two and three for so many people is something I never expected to accomplish when I started out.

Thank you all SO much for staying with this as long as you have. I will do my best to maintain the same level of humor, action, and heart that so many of you have expressed is the reason you read my work. You guys have NO idea how deeply it affects me to know that so many people enjoy my writing this much.

Okay, enough of my babbling! And now, back to the show!


It took the better part of the day for Zuko to search the house; it was much larger than it seemed on the outside and he was thorough in his examination. He poked through drawers and cupboards with a growing sense of inexplicable urgency. Something was here, and he knew it, he simply had no idea what it was or where he would find it.

As the dying light of day sifted in through the shuttered windows, he finally sat down at the bottom of the stairs with a frustrated sigh.

"I'm missing something," he murmured to himself, "I have to be."

Meanwhile, Momo was still flitting about the main parlor, curiously inspecting anything that caught his eye, and entertaining himself by crawling under the various sheets draped across the furniture. He was rummaging underneath the linen over the mantle when the whole thing came sliding down, carrying the lemur with it to the floor with a crash.

"Momo!"

Zuko lept up from his spot on the stairs and hurried over to the chattering and shifting pile of fabric. With a rueful shake of his head, the prince lifted it up to find Momo sheepishly blinking up at him surrounded by a pile of scattered knickknacks.

"You're just a disaster waiting to happen," he muttered with a grin, but the smile evaporated as his eyes fell on something unexpected.

His heart pounded in his chest as he reached down to pick up a small, framed portrait of two boys: a teenaged Fire Nation noble, and a grinning bald kid sporting an arrow on his forehead. While the teenager looked only vaguely familiar, there was absolutely no mistaking the air bender in the picture.

Zuko voice was little more than a shocked gasp. "Aang!"


Sokka trudged wearily alongside Renzu back to their shared tent. His first day of training had been absolutely exhausting and every muscle in his body ached. But the real drain on his energy came from knowing what it was he was being trained to do. No matter how many times he went over it in his mind, he still could not think of a way to get out of this mess.

He all but collapsed on his cot, and this in turn elicited a small chuckle from Renzu.

"You look like I felt after my first day," he observed amicably.

The only response Sokka could muster was a bleary-eyed glare, which merely served to make the other boy laugh outright. Ignoring Sokka's doleful expression, Renzu opened up his footlocker and dug out a small clay jar.

"Here, catch!" he said, tossing it to Sokka.

It was a testament to the warrior's reflexes that he managed to do so and curious, he sat up while he uncorked the top. The pungent smell of something resembling mint assaulted his nose, and his eyes watered slightly as he drew back from the aroma.

"Whoa! What is this?"

"Rub that into your muscles," explained Renzu, "it'll help with the soreness."

With one eyebrow quirked up in skepticism, Sokka cautiously dipped his fingers into the container of cream and experimentally rubbed some onto his bicep. It was cool at first, but moments later, it quickly permeated into the muscle, spreading a strange sensation of warmth. His arm immediately started feeling better, and he quickly lathered more onto other areas of complaint.

"Wow, this is pretty amazing stuff," he declared after he finished rubbing it into his tired muscles and handed it back. "Thanks!"

"You can thank my girlfriend," smiled Renzu with a hint of pride, his eyes flickering discretely to his right, "she's the one who made it for me."

Following the boy's glance, Sokka noticed a miniature portrait on a short cot-side table.

"Is this her?" he asked, reaching across the small room to pick it up for a closer look. Long dark bangs framed a petite face with luminous eyes and a perfect bow-shaped mouth.

"Ning' Xue. Yeah," confirmed the other teen with a distinct note of fondness and longing.

"She's beautiful," Sokka remarked honestly, setting the picture back in its place.

"Smart too," added Renzu with a grin, leaning back on his cot, "and she's a great cook. Her spiced komodo-chicken dumplings are to die for."

"Mmm, sounds yummy," sighed Sokka dreamily, licking his lips slightly despite having just eaten less than an hour ago.

"Heh, I bet you'll eat just about anything won't you?" teased Renzu.

"More or less," Sokka admitted with a shrug.

They sat in silence for a moment before Renzu finally spoke again.

"So what about you; got a girlfriend?

Sokka reflected briefly about whether or not he should answer with the truth, and then decided that considering Suki was currently in what was, as far as anyone in the Fire Nation knew, occupied territory, he could probably be honest on this point at least.

"Yeah, I do," he said finally. "She's in Omashu, well…'New Ozai'," he corrected himself.

Either Renzu didn't notice the oversight, or he simply didn't care, for he plunged ahead with the conversation.

"And are you two…you know…serious?"

The question left Sokka somewhat taken aback. He'd never really considered how far he was willing to take his relationship with Suki. After what had happened with Yue, he found himself unable (or perhaps unwilling) to face any sort of decision regarding his future with her. It was a sobering realization.

"I don't know," he answered with a hint of pensive embarrassment. "I guess never gave it much thought." Too tired to think it incredulous that he might find insight into his own dilemma from someone who was technically his enemy, Sokka warily turned the question back on his comrade. "What about you?"

"I'd marry Ning' Xue in a heartbeat," he confessed candidly.

"Then why don't you?"

At this, Renzu turned his head to regard 'Li' with an expression that was stuck halfway between incredulous and melancholic. He held this glance for several moments before looking back up at the tent ceiling with a sigh, and giving an answer that left Sokka with nothing else to say.

"I don't want to make her wait for someone who may never come home."


Nightfall had forced Zuko to postpone any further investigation of the house. The place was far too dusty for him to risk carrying a flame around. He'd figured that with his luck, he might accidently light a cobweb or a drape on fire, and bring the whole house burning down upon him.

So he had settled down on a cot in the kitchen, a room that he noted seemed conspicuously less dusty than the rest of the house. A small candle on the counter provided enough light for him and Momo to share a meal of baked fish from the basket that the old woman had left out for him.

Now he sat propped up against the wall, eyes closed, and his diminutive furry companion snoring softly on his lap. He didn't realize he'd dozed off until a noise in the house startled him awake. Momo perked his ears up as well.

With a perfunctory wave of his hand, the candle on the other side of the kitchen flickered out, and he cautiously moved across the room to stand beside door, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Light flooded the floor from the other side of the closed door.

Listening intently, he heard the soft thump of a candlestick being placed on a table, then the faint rasp of steel being pulled from a sheath, a dagger by the brevity of the sound. Whoever was out there had a weapon, so he silently drew his own twin blades as well…and waited.

Suddenly, the door burst open, and Zuko spun away from the wall to face the threat with swords poised to strike. But the sight of his assailant left him frozen in shock.

The woman's hairstyle was different from what he'd drawn, with ribbons of silvery-grey sweeping through the dark tresses near her temples, and there were perhaps more care-worn lines around the eyes that he didn't remember her ever having before. But aside from that, the likeness to the image tucked away in his tunic was more than startling…it was perfect.

Ursa was likewise immobilized by surprise. She had noticed the upset mantelpiece when she entered the house, and was fully prepared to dispatch a vandal or perhaps a roaming beast. Instead, she was greeted by the same face that tore at her heart every time she saw it posted on warrants throughout the Fire Nation. Her first coherent observation, absurdly enough, was that his hair was longer than what was pictured.

For several astonished heartbeats, mother and son stared wide-eyed at each other across their respective lengths of steel. Then, as the reality of the situation finally sank in, swords and dagger clattered simultaneously to the floor, and Ursa stepped forward to sweep Zuko into a fierce embrace.

All thought, all reason, all expectation was reduced to this single, desperate hold on one another, so that nothing more was exchanged between them beyond Zuko's dazed but exultant whisper.

"You're alive."

Until that moment, the prince had not dared to believe this truly possible. He had hoped for it, of course, but the fear of a far more disappointing probability had clung to him throughout his search so strongly that his success left him completely overwhelmed. All he could do was bask in the almost surreal luxury of his mother's arms.

While even eternity would have been too brief a span for their reunion, Ursa at last drew back to look at her eldest child, her moist eyes glistening like diamonds in the candlelight. Her smile was the hallmark of warmth and renewed existence as she took her son's face in her hands and gently brushed away his tears with her thumbs.

"I thought I would never see you again," she marveled softly. Then her tone became more somber as she added, "I'm sure you have a thousand questions."

Zuko nodded mutely despite the fact that, at the moment, he was still too thunderstruck to think of a single one.


Members of the weapons specialist force apparently didn't get to sleep any later than the rest of the new recruits, for once again Sokka was awakened before the first rays of the sun lit the sky. Renzu, it seemed, woke even earlier than that; his bunk was already empty when the dry clang of the morning bell roused Sokka from his sleep.

With a hearty yawn, Sokka started getting dressed, and he had just finished pulling his boots onto his feet when his co-occupant popped his head through the front flap of the tent. His face was flushed with excitement, and a huge grin was stretched from ear to ear.

"Li!" he exclaimed breathlessly, "come on! There's someone I want you to meet!"

Renzu's head quickly disappeared, and Sokka hastily grabbed his training helmet and got up to follow after him. Even though the camp was lit only by the glow of torchlight, Sokka could see the bustle of activity as soldiers and recruits made their way to the mess hall. He noticed with some dismay, however, that Renzu was leading him in the opposite direction.

"Can't this wait until after breakfast?" bemoaned Sokka wistfully.

Renzu only laughed, pausing to let Sokka catch up and clapping a hand companionably on his shoulder when he did so.

"No, seriously," the hungry water tribe boy pressed, "who's so important that I have to meet him on an empty stomach?"

"Well," explained Renzu patiently, "you know how I said yesterday that our team wouldn't have any fire benders in it?"

"Yeah…"

"I was wrong," he smiled as they neared an impressive looking tent, "We will be led by one…and he's a good one too!"

Two sentries flanking the tent snapped to attention as the boys approached, and one of them held aside the drape that served as a door to let them pass. The inside was well appointed, and a tall officer stood with his back to them, staring at a large map of the Fire Nation Capital.

"Li," intoned Renzu with immeasurable pride, "I'd like you to meet our squad leader, my father…"

The man began to turn at the sound of Renzu's voice, and as Sokka's eyes fell on the face before him, his hunger suddenly fled in the wake of the iron weight that dropped into his stomach. Any hope he had of getting out of this mess unrecognized had just vanished as the familiar visage of the man who had surrendered in Chameleon Bay, and then later captured him and Zuko in Bìmíng, came into full view.

"…Commander Huo."


One last cliffhanger for old time's sake. :-D