A/N: To the TWO people who favorited/alerted this story, thankyouthankyouthankyou. Now, to everyone else, REVIEW. Reviews=love!

And now I shall turn it over to the Authoress herself...

Hello, I'm Marissa. HeyThereIt'sMe, my BFF, dragged me into this.

HTIM: * maniacal laughter* Yes. Yes I did.

Anyway, this is my first fanfiction I've ever done so please tell me if it's any good. Be completely honest about what you like about it, don't like about it, what you think could be made better and how, and ect. Seriously! Let me know! Everything helps and I will read all you comments. I might not update very often because of this trivial thing called highschool and homework which I know none of us enjoy.

Now, I think I'm supposed to say that even though I truly wish I did, I do not own the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender nor the canon characters within it. Thankyou to HeyThereIt'sMe for helping me write this fanfiction and thankyou to the readers for adding this story to your favorite stories and having it send you a little message if I update. Farewell for now!

Chapter Two

One Year Later

Little Aurora walked through the halls of the large palace she had learned to call home. She still didn't really know anyone or see anyone besides Ursa, who treated her like her own daughter. Day after day, she wandered; discovering new places all the time. Today, however, would probably change her life forever.

As she turned a corner, she walked straight into Prince Zuko. They both stumbled and Aurora grabbed the wall for support. She hadn't really run into him, but he certainly had been running when he turned that corner. Both of the children were knocked over and Zuko rubbed his head.

"Watch where you're- oh." He stopped as he looked at who he had hit. Even after these long months, he still didn't really know who this girl was. The blonde stood up and brushed off her robes.

"I'm sorry," she said coldly. You would have never guessed she was five by how mature she acted and sounded. She fixed her hair and straightened up. "I should have looked where I was going. My apologies, Prince Zuko." With that, she turned to leave.

Zuko scrambled to his feet.

"Wait! Where are you going?" he asked as he followed her down the hall.

"I don't know. Somewhere," she replied without looking back.

"Can I come with you?"

"Why would you want to?" she asked stopping.

"Well, why not? I've never really gotten to know you all that well," he said stopping beside her.

She smiled at the young prince. "That sounds fine."

The boy smiled and the two walked off down the hall.

Four Years Later

The two children laughed as they ran through the halls.

"I'm going to win!" shouted the little girl with her blonde hair whipping the air behind her.

"Not gonna happen!" retorted the boy as he caught up to her. "Your no match for me, Aurora!"

"Think again Zuko!" she said as she turned a corner and nearly ran into Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula. She quickly maneuvered around them and Zuko followed closely behind.

The two had been close friends for years now, and one could hardly see one without the other. Zuko had made the young Avatar a necklace with a wooden charm which had the Water Tribe's symbol engraved on it. Aurora tutored Zuko on his fire-bending and trusted only him with her secret; she especially trusted him because he had caught her when the tree branch she had been sitting on broke. No two could have been closer.

Aurora was nine and Zuko was ten. They'd done everything together and promised each other they would forever.

That is, until the death of Fire Lord Azulon. Ursa was banished, and without her, Aurora had no one to keep her from harm. So she wrote a note and left it where she knew Zuko would find it. She ran without turning back.

Dear Blaze,

It's not safe here anymore. If I stay, then bad things might happen to both of us. We know that your father never liked me and that Azula loathes me and always will. Nothing can change that. Just remember, you were, are, and always will be my best friend.

-Rory

Ta Min tore the clips out of her black hair, ignoring the clumps that came with them. Tears stung at her eyes, and she fell down on her bed.
She should have known. All her life, she had compared herself to an object... Being trotted out for guests to gawk at, then locked back in her room. Being decorated and smiled at, but never spoken to.
Now she knew. She was never treated like a child because, to her parents, she wasn't one.
She was a disgrace. A mistake. Saved only by the grace of a general, who had killed her mother, and presumably her father.
Her father. This was all his fault. Stupid, why marry a Water Tribe woman...
There was a soft knock at her locked door.
"Ta Min? Come out, Ta Min." Ki's voice came to the young girl.
Her mother- correction, the woman who raised her- was stubborn. But Ta Min, at ten years old, was even more stubborn.
More knocks. Ta Min began to pack her bags, each and every one of her red and yellow dresses, robes, slippers, clips, everything she
could possibly fit into her bag.

She looked up, above the door. Double swords sat there, as decorations. Like her. They had become a part of her. In all of the training that her father had put her through, all of her lessons with her master.

They deserved to escape too. She tore them off the wall and climbed out of the large window, committing the escape she had planned so long ago.

She ran around the virtually empty streets of her town, gold and red buildings rising up around her. She had never been out of her home alone, and now that she was, she felt... Free. Weightless. There were no borders for her now.
Eventually she came to the edge of a forest. It stood there, daunting and forbidding, in front of the petite girl. She put a hand on one of her swords, which were slung across her back, and walked in.
She walked alone for several frightening hours, or at least it felt that way. After much walking, she came to see the faintest glow of... Was that a campfire?
Overcome with joy, Ta Min began to run toward the flickering light. She forgot all stealth for a while, crashing and rambling through bushes and trees, the little spider-lizards and rodent-beetles scattering at her footsteps. Only when she could hear the faintest echo of conversations that she remembered not everyone in the forest could be her friend. She began to walk a little softer.
She was able to make out words now. Mumbled conversations, hints of soft laughter. They were hiding from something, or someone...
A crunchy leaf was squashed beneath her cautious foot, and suddenly the woods were deadly quiet. No one dared breathe, no creature stirred, no breath of wind touched the trees.
In the suspended silence, she could hear every word of their hushed conversation.
"Someone's coming."
"Fire Nation?"
"Probably."
There was the sound of many weapons being drawn at once.
Ta Min was frozen in place. They were going to hurt her, she thought frantically, they were going to kill her. Because she was Fire Nation.
But I'm not, she realized. The thought came into her mind like a douse of cold water. I'm only half Fire Nation. If she played her cards right, maybe she could get away with it...
She took another few steps forward. The people by the campfire could obviously hear her coming, though they weren't going to shoot randomly at what they can't see. No, they were going to wait until she came into the pool of light, cast by their campfire.
Another cautious step. "Hello?" she called out innocently. "Is anyone there?"
Only a little bit farther. Surely by now they should see that she wasn't going to hurt them...
"Hello?" she called again. Three more steps, two...
She broke through the thick wall of trees and into a clearing, where several Earth Kingdom men, and even one or two women, were sitting around a campfire. She was wrong in assuming that all weapons had been drawn... in fact, only one or two men had a hand on their sword. Maybe they heard her call out.
"Hi," she said nervously. She was torn... These Earth Kingdom men, who very well may kill her because of her nationality, or her parents, who wouldn't give her a second thought?
Death, she decided, was a much better fate than just sitting around doing nothing. Death was, at the very least, an adventure.
"Hi there," said one of the women, a slender, black-haired figure in a green dress. "What brings you here? It's awfully late to be in such dangerous woods."
"I ran away," Ta Min said simply, trying to come up with some story to tell them. But how could she tell them a story, when she had no facts? She didn't know much about the war. She didn't know anything about Earth Kingdom people on Fire Nation soil.
"Well, you look hungry," the woman said softly. "Come and eat with us, we're not going anywhere."
No one else seemed to make any motions of agreement, but they didn't protest either. Ta Min slowly walked over towards the woman and sat down.
"So," one of the men asked, "you got a name?" His voice was rough, but it was obvious he was trying to be gentle to the fragile girl.
The woman handed Ta Min a bowl of something warm. "Ta Min," she said.
"I'm Jin," the woman said with a smile.
Some of the others looked as if they were going to introduce themselves as well, but at that moment a bleary-eyed boy, about Ta Min's age, came stumbling out of the tent with a handmade bow around his arm.
"I heard voices," he said.
Jin smiled at the little boy. "It's nothing, Yuan, go back to sleep.'
The boy- Yuan- shook his head. "No, a warrior never sleeps."
The woman stood up and walked toward Yuan, who Ta Min guessed was her son. "Come on," she was saying, "let's go to bed."
"Who's she?" Yuan asked, pointing directly at Ta Min's forehead. "She's Fire Nation!"
"That's nonsense, Yuan, of course she's not. Now be quiet before somebody hears you." Jin ushered Yuan back into the tent.
Ta Min felt her blood run cold for a minute. Yuan... he knew her secret. He could tell with just a look. What about these men, who seemed much more advanced and experienced? In daylight, would she be shot down for being Fire Nation?
"You never did tell us why you were here," another man said, who seemed much nicer then the first who had spoken. "I'm Tong, by the way."
She smiled at Tong, and managed to get sound to spill from her lips. "I ran away. They... they were hurting me."
About a dozen sets of eyes looked at her in sympathy, and it was then when she knew that these Earth Kingdom men and women would accept her, no matter what nation she was from, because all that mattered was one thing: she had run away. And she was never going back.