Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan story. Avatar: The Last Airbender is owned by Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon.

A/N: Warning: extremely dark imagery and mentions of graphic violence and rape ahead.

Chapter One: Home Is Behind

Once again, Azula woke when her head thumped into the side of the wagon, and once again, she wondered what had possessed her to not only listen to, but participate in, her mother's insane, desperate plan to escape the capital.

"You can trust Yeng Min," she'd said. "he's a friend of my parents." she'd said.

Fat lot of good that had done them when the caravan master he had paid to smuggle them out of Yu-Dao had recognized them, and decided that he felt more loyalty to coin and the Earth Kingdom than to his rightful firelord.

'Friends in high places and all the good intentions in the world won't protect you from a slit throat in the middle of the night.' the Princess thought darkly.

She hadn't told Zuko yet, not that he was cognizant of his surroundings very often anymore, but her idiot brother had apparently grown fond of the cranky old fool.

'Shouldn't be surprised; for all his foul language and pessimism, he was almost as much of an idealist as Zuko.'

She snorted quietly to herself; and hadn't the other part of Mom's plan worked out so much in their favor. Since Lady Ursa had so selflessly risked her life to draw their pursuers off their trail, everyone who was looking for them thought they were still back in the Home Islands.

Her brother stirred, whimpering softly through his gag.

"Shut up you big crybaby." she whispered, eternally glad she had managed to spit her own gag a few days earlier, even if she had to quickly put it back in whenever their caretakers brought them what passed for food among the peasantry, or came with medicine for Zuko's burn.

That must be it she decided. She had been overcome with spite and vindictiveness when Father had proven himself to be such a fool and a hypocrite. But then, she had allowed her emotions to rule her actions just as he had, hadn't she?

'It can't be allowed to happen again.' she resolved. 'Not if I want to get out of this alive.'

Oh, she certainly didn't think the Earth Kingdom was likely to have them killed, they made for far too valuable hostages. But she had learned long ago that humans were not always rational, and might fail to act in their own best interests, if their emotions dictated otherwise. And if they did survive, the chances that they would be rescued, or be able to escape on their own, once they arrived in Ba Sing Se were virtually nonexistent.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the wagon creaking to a halt, and someone beginning to dig through the crates that hid the two prisoners from prying eyes. Moving quickly she began working the gag back into her mouth, wishing, as she often had the past few days, that she had a means of slipping out of the bonds around her wrist and ankles that was less likely to draw attention than firebending.

Blinking violently as bright sunlight flooded into their previously gloomy crevasse between two barrels of fish offal and a crate of bottled sake (if the smells were anything to go by), Azula recognized their visitor and suppressed a groan. "Doctor" Dom-Lu managed to appear corpulent while still retaining the physique of a sapling, irregular lumps and rolls of pallid blubber hanging from his crooked frame like moss from swamp trees. His dark brown eyes looked almost as black as the few strands of his hair that had yet to turn grey or fall out, and his beard was a short and wiry affair that retained a hint more color than his head.

But his truly legendary level of ugliness wasn't the reason the Princess despised him.

"Planning to be difficult again today? I hope not." he rasped. "I may not be as foolish as some, to blame children for the sins of their forebearers, but your trickery hasn't made pleading your case any easier."

Azula glared up at him defiantly.

"Hmph. You still take me for a fool, and seek to outwit me, yes? You may be very clever for your age, girl, but a child you remain." Coughing roughly, he continued. "I have dealt with many children in my day; had seven of them myself, and going on a dozen and a half grandchildren now . . ." he began to ramble.

Azula rolled her eyes; he could probably continue like this for hours if he wanted. Eventually he finished mumbling at her and set about cleaning her brother's burn and changing his bandages, while one of the caravan guards brought over three bowls of steaming, flavorless slop. Awakened by the painful removal of his bandages, Zuko drank eagerly from the proffered waterskin, though he gagged several times at the smell of the "soup" before hunger won out and he forced it down. The Princess remained silent as she grimaced and ate hers. The gruel may have been foul enough to warrant an execution had it been served back at the palace, but that was no reason to forget her manners.

"Spoiled little shits." the guard murmured, no doubt thinking they couldn't hear. "Can't even handle a taste of real food."

After the "Doctor" was finished with her brother, the gags were replaced, the crates and barrels piled up once more, and the wagon began moving again, Azula allowed herself the slightest smirk.

These moronic plebeians would never know what hit them.

All Lu Ten could see, in every direction, was black ash. Floating on the wind in blinding clouds, burying the earth so deep that he sank to his waist, forcing its way past his chapped lips and parched mouth to strangle the life out of him. He waded his way around drifts a hundred feet high, pressing on for reasons he couldn't remember. Time passed endlessly, without consideration to the laws of reality, yet still he trudged on.

After several centuries, the Prince began to see irregularly shaped lumps of something solid, scattered across the dunes. For years he paid them no mind; driven by the reminder they gave of where he was going, or more accurately, what he was fleeing from.

Finally he gave in, his fear of knowing what they were overshadowed by his fear of not knowing who they were. Forcing his way over to the nearest charred carcass, he was almost relieved when it stood up and revealed itself to be the first person he had ever killed.

Though every feature that had distinguished The Man in life had been burned away, Lu- Ten would never mistake it for any of the many other burnt corpses he'd made since then; he was intimately familiar with every minute detail of this particular lump of charcoal and overcooked meat. They'd been burned into his mind as thoroughly as he'd burned through The Man's flesh, and he'd seen them in his nightmares so often that he sometimes lamented that The Man was the only constant of the past five years of his life.

'I'm Dreaming.' the Prince decided. 'This is just another nightmare.'

The Man moaned, a brittle, scratchy rattle, made by a diaphragm trying to pull air into lungs that no longer functioned. An echo of the last sounds he'd made in life. Lu Ten smiled sadly; at least this nightmare was familiar, and wasn't likely to be as horrible as the one he'd probably have to face when he woke.

"I'm still planning to find out what your name was." the Prince intoned softly.

The Man made a noise that Lu Ten chose to interpret as a vague affirmation.

A horribly familiar scream, un-muffled by the distance or ash between Lu Ten and its source, rent the grey-choked sky. On reconsideration, The Prince decided that this dream could be as bad as reality.

All Hakoda could see, in every direction, was black ash. It'd mixed with the snow to cover everything for miles, even before the ships had arrived at his village.

'Need to stop calling it that, even to myself.' the former chief resolved. 'It's Bato's village now, it has been for almost two years.'

They'd hit while most of the men were setting out on a hunting expedition, whether by chance, or something more sinister, Hakoda was too jaded to make an unbiased determination. The Raiders had shown their hand too early, however. The hunting party, still only a few miles out, had seen the black snow, and had raced back home in the hopes of arriving before the marines did. They didn't.

By the time they had driven off the assault near on half the clan was dead, and their town had been leveled. Bato had found his wife and two youngest daughters dead in the street, with three marines raping his eldest a few yards away. Once he was done killing everything in the town that wore red, he was understandably indisposed, and many of the warriors had looked to Hakoda to lead them out of sheer habit. He had so far allowed the familiar task of making sure the tribe didn't tear itself apart to distract him from the lack of news on his family.

'If they're still alive they'll need a chief more than a father in order to stay that way.'

Messengers he'd sent to seek aid from the other clans were starting to trickle back, all early, all reporting plumes of smoke rising from the other villages. No aid was likely to come. The first order of business then was to move to a new site and rebuild, before the next storm or raid hit. Hakoda currently had everyone who could still walk piling everything that could be salvaged onto sleds, and anyone strong enough to pull one filling in for the bear-dogs the Raiders had killed.

Once they were sure their families wouldn't starve, every Yuupiik warrior, and every living man left in the other clans, knew there was only one option for what to do after.

As he moved about the rapidly assembling convoy of shellshocked refugees, Hakoda finally spotted Kanna, her arms around the shoulders of two children, he let out a breath he would have proudly admitted to holding. After a quick glance around to make sure everything was running smoothly for the moment, he hurried over.

As he approached however, his sense of unease grew. His children's trembling and tears he could have explained away fairly easily, considering what had just happened. But nothing he was willing to imagine could justify the silent tears Kanna was trying so hard to hide. This was the most stoic person he had ever met; she had lived through the darkest days of the war, and while he had been too young to understand at the time, Hakoda knew that those experiences had hardened her. A mere raid, no matter how horrible, wouldn't be enough to make her show her tears.

As much as he wanted to, he couldn't deny what it meant any longer.

Hakoda screamed at the sky.

By now he was at the part of this particular dream where he started to wish he would wake up already, but Lu Ten knew that wasn't likely.

He was crawling through the ashes, dragged down by the grasping weight of a thousand vengeful corpses, and someone was burning to death. Sometimes it was his mother. Occasionally it would be his father or aunt. This time, as per usual, it was his cousins; dragged by the hateful Dead into the raging inferno that had spawned this hell of smoke and cinder, the only flame in this world.

And as per usual, the Dead made him watch, helpless as the children screamed, begging him to save them even as their flesh boiled away. But at least it wasn't one of the times where he was the one who did it. As had become his habit, he fought to ignore the happenings before him, having long since learned that nothing he did would change the outcome.

Eventually, the screams and the flames faded and Lu Ten's eyes opened to a sky of red canvas.

The tent smelled of herbs and blood. Lu Ten had little trouble deducing that he was in a casualty collection point of some kind. Although, it was rather quiet compared to those he had visited before. Upon trying to sit up to get a better look at his surroundings, the Prince was frozen with the pain of muscles stiff from long disuse, tearing through his upper body and leaving him helpless and immobile.

Conceding that he wouldn't be going anywhere for a while, the Prince closed his eyes once more, and attempted to recall how he had come to be here. Last he remembered, he had been leading the charge through the recently seized North Harbor Gate of Ba Sing Se, after which- . . . well. Things became rather fuzzy, as they often did in the heat of battle. But he distinctly recalled that the assault had not been going well.

A rustle of fabric brought a beleaguered looking physician into the tent, accompanied by a gust of frigid, mountain scented air. The thin man started upon seeing Lu Ten's eyes open, and hurried to his bedside. The Prince tried to speak, but found his throat too parched and hoarse to do so. The healer quickly produced a waterskin, and he drank desperately, until it was withdrawn. For an instant he was indignant, until he considered the strength of his thirst, and the suppressed pangs of his stomach.

"How long?" he managed.

"Close to a month." the healer answered gently. "We weren't able to give you much solid food, and for a time your illness prevented us from giving you even more than sips of water and broth."

"Illness?"

Something resembling pity flashed through the healer's eyes. At length, he answered.

"I will go and inform your Lord Father that you are awake. He will be able to explain it more . . . gently"

Lu Ten very much didn't like the sound of that.

"Wait." he called weakly as the physician made to leave. "Where are we? This isn't Ba Sing Se."

The healer sighed, now thoroughly downcast.

"No, my Prince, it is not. When you were struck down, the men's morale broke, and your Lord Father ordered them to pull back to the gate and hold there. After reexamining the enemy's deployment and fortifications, and taking account of our own not inconsiderable casualties from the assault, the Crown Prince determined that our current forces would be insufficient to take the city.

He commanded our forces to entrench themselves as best they could, so we might maintain our foothold in the Agrarian Zone until reinforcements could arrive. They held out for almost a week before it was decided that our current position was untenable, and we withdrew. And just in time too.

General Gang was bringing the entire Army of the Great Bai Mountains, along with Colonel Fong's Mountaineers, down the Green River Valley to cut off our supply lines. Prince Iroh was able to outmaneuver them, how I doubt I'll ever know, and we dug in behind them in the northern passes. They've launched several probing raids against our lines, but don't seem confident enough to launch a full assault. We're currently about two days hard ride south from Osenzakura.

But I'm wasting time, and your Lord Father will be much better able to explain these things." he finished before hurriedly departing.

A few minutes later he returned trailing behind a decidedly tired looking Prince Iroh. Upon seeing his son, the man instantly brightened, before growing sombre once more.

"My son. I am so desperately happy to see you awake. The physicians said you might never stir from your slumber again."

Immediately, Lu Ten knew something was horribly wrong. If there weren't, his Father would have tackled him in a hug, or, if his injuries were still severe enough to disallow that, he would have gushed for minutes on end about how worried he had been. And he would never be this formal.

"Father? What is it?"

For an instant so short that Lu Ten almost convinced himself that he had imagined it entirely, Iroh looked as if he had been struck.

"Lu Ten." he spoke gravely, the weight of doom crushing every syllable as it passed over his tongue. "I want you to know that no matter what, I will always be proud of you."

The younger Prince was honestly terrified now.

"Dad?" he almost pleaded. "What happened?"

Iroh's breath caught, and Lu Ten could see tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

"You were struck in the feet and hips by many flying shards of stone. They were able to set the breaks and stop the bleeding, but then infection started to set in. They said that if they didn't do it, you would die slowly and painfully."

The Crown Prince took several moments to breath deeply and gather his resolve.

"They were forced to amputate both of your legs."

A/N: Yeah, about that last bit. I really wanted to see what I could do with the story if Lu Ten survived, but in order for a rather large part of the premise to work, he still needed to be removed from the line of succession. And thus we see what I came up with as a compromise. And I promise I will do everything in my power to avoid devolving into wangst, short of writing these guys out of character. Also, upon further consideration, I have put more or less all plans for To Scorch the Sky on semi-permanent hold. Anyway, here are the

LINGUISTIC CREDITS!

Yu Dao: Canon. Fire Nation colony on the west coast of the Earth Kingdom. Only ever named in one of the sequel comics.

Bai: Chinese, meaning white or pure. Can also mean one hundred, many, or, exclusively in its masculine form, cypress.

Osenzakura: Borrowed from Embers. Fanon name for the town nearest the resort where Zuko and Iroh recuperated from the Siege of the North.