Disclaimer: None of the Avatar characters belong to me.

Author's Note: Sorry for no Avatar World scenes but I promise to have it in the next chapter. In the meantime, enjoy chapter 3!

+Clivian+

Clivian dreamed a lot. It was all he could do; dream. If he didn't dream, he might have been arrested and locked up in an asylum a very long time ago. He dreamed things and sometimes, in the utmost secrecy, carried out his plans. The plans had always succeeded but then Clivian was not the type to act too soon. It was always better to dream than fail. Anything was better than failure.

Recently, however, he had been dreaming less and less for all his dreams had been penned out before him and had begun to materialize into real events. All had gone well so far.

Of course, Clivian, self-sufficient as he was, had not done it alone. Most of this plan had been sketched out in the depths of his cranium just three years ago when he had received a phone call regarding an 'amazing discovery' from Dr. Almer from the physics department.

The physics department had been added in the early days along with a bunch of other departments Clivian could list off the top of his head but cared very little for and Dr. John Almer was one of those scientists whom Clivian couldn't stand. Most unfortunately, Dr. Almer had a decent reputation in his line of work so Clivian had decided to drop by.

Clivian had been warmly greeted by Dr. Almer who had looked as though he was about to wet himself with excitement. Clivian had managed not to frown in disgust at the grown man's jubilation. Whatever the discovery, Almer would remain a dickhead in Clivian's book.

The physics department had all manner of strange testing stations which gave the impression of being disorganized and cluttered; two things that made Clivian want to walk briskly out the door. It was with great difficulty, therefore, for Clivian to nod intelligently at Dr. Almer's enthusiastic ranting while trying hard not to look disgusted.

When they reached a high security sealed lab, Clivian remembered sighing internally. His neck had already felt sore with all the nodding. That was another thing he hated about Almer; the guy would never shut up. It was a miracle that he had managed to keep any of his work silent.

Once inside, Dr. Almer had suddenly gone rigid as though he had seen a ghost. Speaking quickly with a serious tone Clivian had never ever heard him use before, Almer had cut to the chase.

For the last decade, it seemed that Almer had lived like Clivian, secretly concocting a brilliant masterpiece. As Dr. Almer had explained in his worried tone, a trusted team of scientists with him in charge had tried testing a once famous theory made by a Polish professor in the early 2000s. The professor's theory was extremely complicated and yet nearly everyone in the world knew it as something along the lines of 'time travel'. Of course, this was not entirely true. What Almer had created was not time travel but space travel. Almer had then explained that the project had been an utter failure until just last month when they had experimented with antimatter. A small quantity had been detonated in one of their 'space machine' and had yielded results.

Almer had pointed to something on one of the tables. Inside a transparent box had sat the beginning of many discoveries. Clivian knew that parallel universes, or whatever Almer gabbled about next, was the key. This was the one thing that could bring him the answer to all his hopes and dreams.

Five years later, the answer had a name. It was called Zuko.

+Katara+

She was speechless. She stood in front of him, dripping water while he stared back. Then, without even thinking, she flung her arms around his neck and sobbed.

Zuko. It had to be. This couldn't all be just a dream. Even if it was, she was glad to finally have someone she knew to help her wake up from the nightmare. It felt extremely unreal and awkward to be hugging Zuko right then.

She let go of him and took a step back, looking him over.

He looked older and more tired than the last time she had seen him (which suddenly felt like several lifetimes ago). The clothes he was wearing looked borrowed and were too large for him. His hair was messier and he looked more serious as though those golden eyes of his had seen at least six different wars. In short, he made her feel like well-fed, pampered cat in comparison.

"How- what-" a hundred different questions sprang to the tip of her tongue but Zuko cut her off.

"Not here." He said, glancing around nervously. "I found a hideout. Come on." He motioned for her to follow him. Katara quietly crept behind him, an odd feeling washing over her. It was as though a pair of invisible eyes were glued to the back of her head.

After about ten minutes, they reached a brick apartment building called "Tristall" , one of the last in the city. Zuko led the way up all the way to the sixteenth floor. When they had reached number 1601, Zuko unlocked the door with a key he wore around his wrist. He ushered Katara in before him.

At first glance, the tiny room looked empty. There were two doors leading off on one side of the room and on the other side was a kitchen. In one corner of the living room there was a jumble of sheets, a pile of gray newspaper and a black box placed on top of a pile of books which were all labelled "West Verklay Telephone Directory".

Zuko was trying to flick on a switch but when that failed, he took a flashlight off its holder and turned it on. In the light, Katara saw that some of the windows had been boarded up.

"So." Zuko said, sitting down on the floor with the flashlight facing away from him. He waved a hand at their surroundings. "Welcome to West Verklay."

Katara sat down slowly. Even if Katara hadn't just run about a mile and climbed a dozen flights of stairs, she still wouldn't have trusted her legs to support her for what was about to come. She was desperate to know but also afraid.

Taking a deep breath, she started with the first, least painful question. "How did we get here?" she asked.

Zuko hesitated more a moment before answering, "I don't know."

Katara hung her head. She felt the tears but did not let them fall.

Zuko tried a different tact. "Maybe we should compare notes." Nodding at her, he added, "You first."

Katara looked up, eyes set. Gulping slightly, she began recounted the events leading up to their first encounter.

"After the Mt. Fudiyu, I woke up in some sort of alleyway. My head really hurt and I felt nauseated. I don't really remember a lot but somehow I got out on the street."

Katara recalled with painful accuracy all the indecent names that the pedestrians had taunted her with but did not say them out loud to Zuko. Instead she skipped to the part where she had fallen asleep on a park bench to wake up to a bunch of armed men and finally how she had escaped by waterbending an entire lake. In the current of rapidly forming memories, another scrap of information drifted to the surface.

"There was a leader." she said abruptly, looking directly at Zuko. "He knew my name. He called me Katara."

Zuko was quiet for a while, digesting the information. Katara watched, wondering what had happened to him while she had been chased across a park.

"I woke up in an indoor swimming pool." He kept his eyes from meeting hers as though ashamed of not waking up in a horrible alleyway like Katara. "I was captured a short while later by those men who chased you." Katara's eyes widened with shock. Zuko appeared not to notice but plowed on.

"They took me to a hospital of some sort. They hooked me up to a bunch of machines, telling me that I'd almost had a heart attack. It was later that told me I was in a different land, a parallel universe, they called it. They promised they'd help me get back but that's when I made my first mistake." He looked up and his eyes met Katara's. As though the words themselves caused him physical pain he said, "I told them about you."

Two hours later, Katara lay in bed, staring up at the stained ceiling of the room above her. Zuko had given her the bedroom even though she had insisted she would be fine in the living room. Outside, Zuko was probably curled up on the floor, thinking like she was.

Zuko had explained to her just outside that he had told that the people who had captured him had asked for details about her. Katara knew that he had only been trying to find her but he had looked extremely sorry all the same. In the end, he had told them about Katara's waterbending and her abilities to heal. It was only after realizing that they were hunting Katara for her special skills that Zuko had broke out of the interrogation room. He had been on the run ever since.

According to what Zuko had learned and suspected, he had ended up in this universe approximately six weeks before Katara. Zuko had heard a brief explanation about how the "portal" could spit people out on different timelines or something but he had not understood most of the things they had said. Katara didn't blame Zuko; she had seen enough. During that time he had find this apartment which had been abandoned by the landlord who apparently had been abducted by a street gang. After that, Zuko had suggested some rest and Katara didn't argue the point. She was in no mood to hear anymore disturbing things.

Katara shifted onto her side, breathing in the musty scent of the sheets. Perhaps tomorrow when she woke up, this would have all turned out to be a dream or a hallucination. Whatever the case, her heart was heavy because she knew Aang's mysterious illness was neither.

+Clivian+

When Clivian had been a high school student, he had been in a special class for kids who actually studied and didn't practice the art of sleeping through lessons in a sitting position. In that class, the students were grouped into pairs to discuss a certain subject and were often told to complete a group project.

To Clivian, this was a godawful waste of time and he usually pretended to be engaged in the activities when instead he was secretly sneaking glances at his watch, which seemed to have stopped at some point during all the boredom. The only reason he didn't make up excuses to stop coming to the classes altogether was the simple fact that this was an opportunity to experiment on humans.

There were about five in the class, all straight-A students, all full of potential. One of the students was a rather boastful girl named Patricia Long. Needless to say, Clivian hated Patricia's guts from the get go and decided to play a prank on her. The prank was very straighforward. Patricia had a crush on the art teacher and knowing this, Clivian pretended to send love letters to her pretending to be Mr. Robertson. Patricia, of course, wasn't a complete dunce so obviously she was suspicious. Clivian then hinted to Mr. Robertson the truth about Patricia's crush and indirectly suggested being sympathetic towards her in order prevent hurting her feelings. Mr. Robertson, who had absolutely zero experience with dealing with girls of any age, took Clivian's advice to heart and started acting nicer to Patricia, dropping lines that suggested Patricia deserved a really nice boyfriend. As Clivian had predicted, Patricia connected this new treatment with the weekly love letters. For the final touch, Clivian sent a note to Patricia telling her to meet Mr. Robertson at the art room after school. Patricia waited for Mr. Robertson until three in morning when she finally headed home in tears. Patricia had her revenge the next day. Mr. Robertson was fired for "attempting to engage in an adult relationship with a student" and Patricia moved to France.

After all those years, Clivian still thought that this experiment was by far the most rewarding in terms of life lessons. He had learned that two such subjects could be led to read one situation in two completely different ways as long as the key points were hidden and there was a third person filling in the blanks. The same principles could be applied in almost any situation as long as the third person was smart or was manipulated by another clever person. Hence, it was no surprise that Clivian decided to use the same method in capturing Katara and Zuko.

His cellphone's default ringtone brought him out of his reverie. Clivian picked it up and answered it, feeling cheerful.

"Sir, we located the target and sent an agent in." Salwink's voice spoke from the other end.

"Good, good. Do I have connection with the agent?" Clivian asked.

"Yes, sir. He'll be with you shortly."

Clivian hung up and swiveled in his chair to face the computer monitor. A screen popped up, showing him the live image of his agent. The lighting was poor on the other end, but Clivian could tell that his job was getting easier.

"Hello, Dr. Clivian." the agent said with the tiniest hint of a British accent.

"Agent 12, I presume." Clivian asked, fiddling with the volume so he could hear a bit better.

"Affirmative, sir. This is agent 12 in proximity of the target." In the background, there was a dripping noise as though they were conversing in the sewers.

Clivian nodded, smiling at screen. "Excellent." he whispered. "We have much to discuss."

+Katara+

Katara slept badly. Whether it was because she had talked to Zuko or because she was finally resting, she seemed to remember vividly all that had occurred. It was like watching a horrible play that she could not pry her eyes from.

Images flashed before her in order; first Aang's pasty face, Aunt Wu's message, Zuko, Mt. Fudiyu. And then, in slow motion, she relived the explosion. Ash, smoke, lava and the screams. Had they been hers? But then it all died, sucked into that strange, white light. She remembered seeing the sillhouette of Zuko, of feeling nothingness. And then it had all gone dark...

"KILL ME THEN!"

Katara almost fell out of her bed. There was a smashing noise followed by a violent scuffling sound. Without thinking, Katara opened the door to her room.

She stopped, staring frozen at the black box she had seen the day before. There were people fighting inside it, miniscule but real.

"Oh, you're up."

Katara slowly moved her head to right. Leaning against the wall was Zuko, looking perfectly unhurt.

"Wh-" Katara pointed stupidly at the black box. "What-"

"Oh, that." Zuko picked up a thin, rectangular remote control and pressed a button. The men's fight became suddenly quieter. "Sorry to wake you. I kind of forgot you were sleeping." He added sheepishly.

Katara slid down the wall to sit next to him, staring at the black box. The scene had changed to a red-haired woman crying hysterically over a dead man.

"This is called 'television' by the way." Zuko gestured toward the black box. "Or TV. Which ever. They show movies and stuff."

She nodded as the scene cut to the red woman driving some sort of vehicle while a wild song played in the background. The lyrics went something like "Wadadadada whoaaa uh whooaaa!"

She had not been up five minutes and already the day was starting out to be no different to yesterday's.

+Somewhere in West Verklay+

Tranquillity. That was the key to everything. Keep a clear head and you could even escape from a beast's mouth. Calm. Peace. Breathe.

He let out a low breath of air. Even his kneecaps felt alert.

Staring through the sniper scope, he stared into the apartment a couple hundred yards away. All the windows were boarded but there was a gap between the left-most one. There he could see the back of a girl's head.

His lip curled in spite of himself. She was still alive, intact. She had her head turned away from him, possibly talking to someone. That someone would be a problem. His smile, however, didn't falter. No need be discouraged this early on in the game.

'All in good time' he thought to himself. 'All in good time.'

Author's Note: No, I didn't correct any grammar mistakes because I really don't have the time. Fourth chapter coming sometime later but it might be a while, I'm pretty busy. Thanks again for reading!