Zhao smiled the entire night. Iroh was used to being awake for days on end. It wasn't a practice he enjoyed. Still, over the course of the night, he had taken cat-naps in his sleep when the action was particularly far away. He didn't know what was giving Zhao such stamina. Finally, the red light from the east began to spread.
"Ah, daybreak," Zhao said. He had a positively mad gleam in his eyes. "It's time to rewrite history."
"We should press the attack, see if we can reinforce the contingent within the walls," Iroh said.
"Oh, they don't need reinforcement. Take everything and cut a hole through that wall. No matter what it takes."
Iroh frowned. "Are you sure that's wise? If they do that, they will be depleted, and fall when the battle stretches on."
"Oh, come tomorrow, there won't be a battle. We will press through their defenses today, and the city will fall."
"But if come nightfall, they will have the full moon to give them the strength to repel us," Iroh pointed out.
"Oh, I have plans to remove the Moon from the picture," Zhao said, his grin the portrait of insanity. Iroh looked at those eyes, those mad, dangerous eyes. How long ago was it that he saw such eyes in his own reflection? How long had it been since he did what it took to excise them?
"Remove the moon?" Iroh asked. He had a feeling he knew where this was going, however.
"Your fate is here, Admiral Choi!" a voice came from the door. A young Tribesman with a somewhat battered face charged at them with a spear. Zhao idly turned and vaulted the boy over the rail. It was a long fall, and a horrific landing. Iroh averted his eyes from the boy's gruesome fate.
"As I mentioned before," Zhao said, giving almost no indication that somebody had just tried to murder him, "I have the identities of the Moon and Sea spirits. Along with their names, they also included illustrations. These mortal vessels for the spirits can be found... and killed. And that it was my destiny to do so."
Iroh shook his head. "These sorts of things are not to be trifled with. Do you know what happened to the world the last time it lost its moons? All life almost ended."
"Spare me your ill-researched pre-history, old man," Zhao said. "I know how much you fear the spirits, you superstitious old goat pig; I've heard the rumors of your 'journey into the Spirit world'. You are a relic, something that has no relevance to the present. When I kill those spirits, their immortality will pass onto me."
"That isn't how these things work," Iroh said, but Zhao wasn't listening.
"We cut through today, Iroh. Are you coming, or will you stay behind with the injured and useless?" he asked. Iroh sighed. He knew his course. His vision, that dark and horrible nightmare he had lived with for forty years, was coming true. He just had to see if he could steer it away from the consequences he foresaw.
"I will come," he said, his voice low.
"Good. Now stay out of the way of destiny."
Zuko breathed, and used his chi to warm him. He needed to. Even with the sun in the sky, this place was fatally cold. He looked back at the Avatar, bound and unconscious. There was a catch in his throat. He was so close.
"I finally have you. You're alone, your mine," he said. He wasn't talking to anybody. Maybe he was talking to the Avatar. He didn't know. He didn't care. "I've been waiting for this for so long. Do you know what it's like to lose your home? Not to fire and death, but to edict? To know that everything you ever loved and cared about is still there, but that you can never see it again? That is the greatest torment a man could ever face."
Zuko scrubbed a hand over his short beard and stared out of the cave. The winds howled and sleet slashed through the air. "A blizzard, of course," he said. "It's always something, isn't it? Well, destiny has tried to destroy me before. From the day I was born, I was a child of calamity. I was so weak, that the doctors thought I wouldn't see the sunset. But I fought. I have always fought, Avatar. No matter what the world does to me, I never stop fighting. I've never had anything in my life come easy. I've had to fight for everything I ever had, and that's made me stronger."
He looked over at the boy, his tattoos still glowing softly in the darkness of the cave. What Zuko wouldn't give for something he could light on fire. His breath only warmed him so far. He looked at the Avatar again. So young. So hopeful. "Do you know what it's like to be hated?" Zuko asked. "To be reviled? They call me the Dark Prince, now. Oh, to an Earth ruler, that would probably be a compliment, but to us? That's as much as saying that we have no understanding of Agni at all. That we are fundamentally and cardinally flawed. The people despised me. Not like Azula. Everybody loved her. She was born lucky. A prodigy in firebending, a brilliant mind, and a soul of fire. Everything her big brother lacked. They all said I was lucky to be born. But that'll all change. When I return, with the Avatar, I'll have everything I ever deserved. My nation. My throne. My honor. They're so close."
"They're a lot farther than you think," Aang's voice came. Zuko turned, dropping into a stance, but the Avatar just stared at the Dark Prince. "You keep saying that you want your honor back. I don't think you know what honor is."
"Don't try to escape!" Zuko said.
"Escape where?" Aang asked innocently. How had this child survived so long and remained so... Zuko didn't dare take his eyes off of him. "Why do you want to go back to a place where you say that everybody hated you?"
"Not everybody. They just don't know who I am, what I'm capable of. I'll show them that I can be a great Fire Lord. They'll accept me."
The Avatar's brow drew down. "But if you need to succeed in what is supposedly an impossible task just to get some people to like you, then why would you want them to?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be surrounding yourself with people who accept you even when you're struggling? Even when you fail?"
"Shut up! You don't know anything about me!" Zuko roared.
"I know you're a man of your word," Aang said. "I know you hold yourself to an almost unreachable standard. You don't deserve to be so angry all the time. You deserve better than that."
"My anger is what makes me strong. My anger is who I am."
"No, I don't think it is," the Avatar said. "When you captured me, I told you about Kouzon. He was from the Fire Nation, from Sozin's time. He grew up on the same doctrine that he fed all of his children, all of his soldiers. He was told that hate was strength. But he became an Air Nomad. He learned the truth, that strength is love and acceptance."
"Stop trying to confuse me," Zuko shouted.
"You're not so different from him," Aang said sadly. "And every time I see you, I think of him. The path he could have walked, if he had taken a right instead of a left. What are you going to do to me? When you bring me back to the Fire Nation?"
"I'll present you to my father, and he'll restore my honor and my name," Zuko said. Aang tilted his head.
"How? And then what? Where will you go? What will you do?"
"Agni's burning blood, why won't you ever shut up?" Zuko shouted. A groaning sound came from behind him, and Aang leaned to one side. Zuko got a sinking feeling in his stomach. "Oh, nuts."
The Avatar breathed deep then expelled a gale of wind which slammed Zuko in the chest, sending him skidding across the open ice on his back. Behind him, he could see that beast landing gently on the unstable ground, and the waterbender Katara leaping off of it. He scrabbled to his feet and cast out a stream of fire at her, but she doused it with a wave of freezing cold water, then flicked her leg forward. Zuko didn't have a chance to dodge as the enormous block of ice smashed into his unprotected ribs. The world went away.
Sokka leaped down and cut Aang's bonds as Katara looked first to Aang, and then back to fallen Zuko. "Hey, this is some good, quality rope... Come on, we don't have much time before the sun goes down," Sokka said.
"I figured it out," Aang said. "The moon and sea spirits. They're in the spirit oasis! They're the spirit koi!"
"That's great. Katara! Come on!"
"I can't leave him here," she said, hovering over Zuko. Sokka gave Aang a look. "His chest is crushed, his breathing is bad. He'll freeze to death, even if the injury doesn't kill him."
"Come on, leave him! Do you really want to have him following us all over the world and try to kill us for the rest of our lives?" Sokka asked.
"You don't really mean that, do you?" Yue asked from the saddle. Two sets of judging, blue, female eyes stared at him, and Sokka turned his to the ground.
"Help me get him into the saddle," Katara said. She had already pulled up the water and was laying healing hands onto him. "Please, don't make me a murderer today."
I'm quite happy with both Zuko and Aang in this one.