Part 1

"Was it the Avatar who did it?"

They all asked that, when they learned who she was and what had happened to her. Most of the time, she lied and said yes, but it always galled her. Despite what Zuzu had always claimed, Azula preferred to use the truth to trick people whenever possible. And she liked to think that, perhaps, the Avatar really was involved in some way. She couldn't completely rule it out, not until she knew more about it. So every time she had to lie about it, she told herself that herself it was an opportunity to gather more information by cleverly probing whoever was talking to and/or trying to arrest her.

Not that she was making a habit of admitting her weaknesses or failures. But as a fairly (in)famous figure who frequently found herself fighting for her life or freedom or sometimes just proper royal respect, people tended to notice when she wasn't burning their faces off. That's why she preferred to go unnoticed whenever possible.

Such as, to name a random example, when traveling to the ruins of the Sun Warrior civilization and encountering an old man being robbed on the road.

"There's a toll," said the bandit at the front of the group of rough men in incomplete sets of Fire Army Firebender armor, clearly having been classically trained in the art of literal highway robbery, "and you haven't paid it yet."

The gray, shaggy-haired old man stood in front of the robbers with his back ramrod straight and his hands hanging loosely at his sides. A patched satchel hung from his right shoulder, dangling safely behind his hand. They were all in the middle of the wide dirt road, far from the creek it followed.

The old man said, "This isn't a merchant road, and I am not transporting cargo. You are clearly deserters and have no authority to collect a toll from anyone. And I don't even have any money. Step aside and stop bothering me!"

From her hiding space behind some hawthorn bushes on the opposite side from the creek, Azula couldn't see his face, but the way he held his body more than communicated an important warning to these ruffians. One that was apparently going completely unheeded. She shook her head at the poor perception of criminals these days.

One of the smaller robbers stepped forward and sneered at him. "We're the- uh, executive branch of the Loyalist Road Administration Committee. And we say we want to see what you have in your bag, gramps, and there may just be an inspection fee involved!" He cackled while his boss frowned at this deviation from the script.

"No," the old man barked, unimpressed with the relatively original dialogue or the smaller bandit's knack for bureaucratic organization. "Get out of my way. I am on a pilgrimage!"

The bandit leader pushed aside his improvisational compatriot and summoned a flame in each hand. "Give us what we want and things won't have to get ugly."

Azula rolled her eyes at another line written a little before the first dragons were hatched.

The old man was equally unmoved. He snapped a hand up and shoved the bandit leader right in the center of the armored chest, sending the large man stumbling backwards quite a ways. His subordinates had to scramble to get out of his way.

Once he came to a stop, the bandit leader blinked at this break from the traditions of criminal acquisitions. "You're in trouble now, geezer," he recovered, shifting into another time-honored staple of the genre. He struck a pose out of the Ember Island Players' worst martial arts farces, tossed a little fire in the air around him, and screeched, "WAAAAAH!"

In her bushes, Azula lowered her face into her hands. She didn't have her Firebending while idiots like this did. If any further proof was needed about of how thoroughly broken the world was, here it was.

The bandit leader's compatriots spread out like a wolfbat pack as he went through something that could have been a training form sequence, if it wasn't for all the awkward flailing and the unnatural "HEEYAH!"s and "WOOOOOH!"s. Some of thugs even moved as far as Azula's hiding place in the bushes, so she remained very still and quiet as she waited to see some entertaining violence.

It turned out to be worth the anticipation. The bandit leader sprung forward with entirely too much fire, vigor, and "WAHOOOOO!"ing. He was certainly going to do terrible injury to someone, and might even manage to hurt the old man, too.

But instead, the old man took a half a step to the side and placed himself precisely out of the path of any of his attacker's limbs and flames, and then gave a slight bump with his hip to add just a little bit of extra momentum to the bandit leader's flight. The result was the bandit missing his landing, tripping forward, continuing to flip as his feet flew out from under him, crashing to the ground face-first with an unpleasant crunch, twisting as his body attempted to instinctively curl in ways his armor was not designed to accommodate, and kicking himself in the face with a heavy and very scuffed boot.

The rest of the thugs began giving the confrontation even more space, which Azula found rather amusing until one of them - the little fellow with all the ideas for original dialogue in roadside robbery - backed up into her bush and she got a face-full of bandit backside. He yelped and spun to face her, which was only a marginal improvement, but as soon as he saw her, he squeaked, "There's a girl! Take her hostage and the old man will give us his gold!"

Azula was offended for several reasons. For one, she was an adult now and didn't like the way she was being labeled 'girl.' For another, she thought she had a very intimidating look to her and couldn't see how this moron immediately thought 'hostage' when he saw her. And lastly, why did anyone think an old man this scruffy had any gold? This could all be for nothing but a few coppers, and then wouldn't all these bandits feel silly? If anyone had any money here, Azula was the most likely candidate. Granted, she was a little low on funds at the moment, but she had work hard for her money these days and was professionally affronted by these people.

So she went ahead and indulged herself by stepping out of her bush and slipping her backpack off her shoulders. She settled it carefully on the ground as the bandit jumped to grab her, and then stood up to meet him with excessive defensive force. Once he was on the ground, she shook the blood off her bare hands and turned to face the rest of the rabble.

It turned out that many of the bandits were Firebenders like their leader, but they also shared his propensity to vastly overestimate the effectiveness of basic combat training. Their styles were both standard and sloppy, no trouble for someone who could position everyone on the battlefield, move so that her enemies were constantly bumping into each other if they tried to follow her, and incapacitate in an instant.

It was so good to be feeling superior to people again that when one of the last bandits punched a wobbly fireball at her, she made to catch it in a hand and toss it aside.

But as she felt the growing heat of its approach, a little bit of that tactical genius finally remembered she was no longer a Firebender. But the flames were too close to dodge now and she was disguised in peasant clothing which would burn quite easily and she was a failure whose own father-

A wall of flame erupted right in front of her, thin and controlled but strong enough to block the fireball. As soon as the danger was past, the wall snapped out of existence with barely a flicker and the old man straightened from his stance.

He turned to Azula, and she finally got a look at his face- specifically, the elegant features and the vertical scar lines passing over the corner of his right eye. She knew that face (minus the scruffy hair) from glimpses of war meetings in the palace when she was a girl and, later, from Wanted posters.

Admiral Jeong Jeong, the first naval officer to successfully desert from the Fire Nation during the war.

The last of the bandits, probably less concerned with the identity of the old man than that he could summon giant walls of fire into existence at will, let out cries of fear and ran away as best they could while dragging those compatriots who were still having trouble with gravity. It perfectly lived up to their leader's love of the classic formula for roadside banditry against mysterious lone traveler, and Azula was sure he would be quite proud if he was conscious.

She turned to find Jeong Jeong's eyes on her. He said, "Why are you here?"

Had he recognized her, too? Better to play it safe; she bowed shakily as if nervous and put a breathless quality into her voice. "Thank you for saving me, grandfather!" It took some effort to say the word without a twist of contempt. She had never respected her capital-letter Grandfather, and she liked to think he would have approved if he had known it. "I am Azra. I was traveling when I came upon you, and I- I didn't realize so many of them would be Firebenders! If you hadn't saved me- Thank you- um-"

Jeong Jeong turned and began walking away from her.

O- kay. Well, he certainly hadn't been known as a particularly social member of the officer corp. In fact, it was a common joke (mainly because Admiral Zhao had repeated it so often) that Jeong Jeong couldn't stand anyone's company but his own, and even that was only because he had finally stopped talking to himself years ago. And it seemed he hadn't recognized her at all. So this little diversion had come to an end, and it was time to get back to her journey.

Except her path was taking her down the road in the same direction as Jeong Jeong.

She let him get out of sight before following. Unfortunately, he turned out be to be something of a slow walker; it wasn't long before she crested a hill and found him on the downslope ahead of her.

She slowed her gait and remained nonchalant.

Without stopping or turning around, Jeong Jeong barked, "Why are you following me?"

Azula held out her hands in surrender and raised the pitch of her voice to sound more innocent. "I'm not! I'm going this way, too, grandfather."

Jeong Jeong grunted but said nothing further.

Even slowed down a bit, Azula soon found herself overtaking him. She went ahead and passed him, pausing briefly to give him a quick bow and prepared for him to attack, but he didn't so much as twitch. She increased her pace and soon left him behind. Perhaps he had indeed recognized her and was simply choosing not to confront her, but that was no matter. She had given no clues to her destination and was headed for rather remote parts of the Fire Nation, so finding her wouldn't be easy. And there was no chance Zuko knew what she was up to. Although, if he knew she didn't have her Firebending-

No, he couldn't know. He could never know.

Even if he might understand. Especially because he might understand.

It was Azula's theory that Zuko had suffered something similar, once upon a time. It made sense. The Avatar definitely had the power to take a person's Firebending, as he had so definitively demonstrated on- on Father. Where he had acquired that ability, Azula didn't know for certain, but he hadn't shown it before the Day of Black Sun, so the likely explanation was he had learned it between then and the return of Sozin's Comet. Perhaps that was what he had been doing while hiding at the Western Air Temple.

On the Day of Black Sun, Zuko had left to find the Avatar and join him. Zuzu was later at the Boiling Rock helping to free some of the Avatar's compatriots, working with the Avatar's Sokka, so clearly his defection had been successful. And, rather surprisingly at the time, he had been fighting and Firebending at a level which allowed him to match and- well, even exceed Azula.

Now, as Fire Lord, Zuko was 'reforming' the Fire Nation's culture and education, and one part of that was bringing the historical Sun Warriors back into prominence, emphasizing their place in Fire Nation history and spreading awareness of their philosophies and ways. Certainly, Zuzu had been no ancient-history buff before his time with the Avatar, so what could have led to this interest?

Perhaps the Avatar had not been so happy to see his former enemy at first. Perhaps the Avatar was looking for a way to practice a new, devastating technique he had just learned from newly discovered Air Nomad texts. Perhaps he had taken Zuko's Firebending. Perhaps Zuko had then quested for a way to restore his ability and prove his new loyalty, eventually finding the answer somewhere in Sun Warrior history or lore- and it was an answer which gave him more power and control than ever before.

And if Azula could find this answer, she could restore her own Firebending. Perhaps-

Perhaps-

She herself would be made stronger by what she discovered. Strong enough to truly challenge Zuko for the first time in a long time. Strong enough to take what she wanted. Strong enough to find a place in this new, increasingly strange world. Strong enough that Father-

So she was on her way to the ruins of the Sun Warrior civilization.

But it was not a well-marked road. The island of the Sun Warriors, north of Capital Island, were long abandoned for reasons the histories were vague about, which probably meant spirit troubles of some kind. No ships went there unless specially commissioned, being as distant from the Fire Nation as it was from the Earth Kingdom. There were mainly fishing villages on the northern coast, socially isolated from what were considered the more sophisticated cultures on the rest of the island. The roads weren't always good or even properly mapped.

So it was that an hour after passing Jeong Jeong on the road, Azula found herself at a crossroads without a clear idea which way to go. She consulted the maps she had acquired for the trip and compared them to the directions on the large sign right where the six roads converged, but things weren't entirely matching up. Leave it to illiterate peasants to fail to make sure that their roads adhered to the official maps! At least none of the posters on the notice board had her face on them, but seeing that Ember Island Players had the budget and ambitions to advertise out here for their next production was disheartening.

She was taking her time to truly and deeply regret her inability to burn the whole structure down when Jeong Jeong stepped up next to her.

She blurted out, "Where did you come from?" and immediately regretted it.

"The Capital Caldera, originally," Jeong Jeong bit out, looking first at the notices and then up at the directions above them. "Before that, we encountered each other when those rogue toll-collectors bothered us. Don't you have the intelligence to remember?"

Azula was preparing herself for Zuko or the Avatar or someone to leap from behind the road-sign to ambush her, so she nearly missed how she was being insulted. "Wh- what? Of course I remember! I merely meant-" She looked around, but it seemed that she and Jeong Jeong were alone and no one was planning to throw a boulder or icicle at her head. "Never mind. Apologies for my disrespect, grandfather."

Jeong Jeong said nothing. He just stared at the sign for a long time. Eventually, he said, "Why does this not make any sense?"

"Thank you!" Azula held up her map. "Nothing matches, and someone paid good money for my maps." She saw an opportunity, and added, "Where are you traveling to, grandfather?"

"The northern coast," was his near-growling reply. "As long as I find a village where I can get a boat, I don't particularly care which one."

"What a coincidence." Azula glanced up to make sure a sky bison wasn't about to land on her. "I, too, am traveling north in search of a way across the sea. It is for a- a research excursion. You said you were on a pilgrimage?"

"So you can pay attention." Jeong Jeong finally looked at her. "I am journeying to the old cities of the Sun Warriors. I am told that it might give me some needed insight on the ways of Firebending. And- I could use such insight."

Azula wasn't sure if she should leap for Jeong Jeong's throat or duck behind the notice-board and prepare for a siege. But she couldn't imagine that someone with Jeong Jeong's tactical sense would have bothered announcing himself before springing an ambush, so maybe it couldn't hurt to see how this all played out. "What a fortunate coincidence, as I am also seeking out the ruins of the Sun Warriors. But it is too bad that neither of us seems to know the way to go."

Jeong Jeong grunted. "We will simply have to pick the road that looks like it's going north, keep our eyes on the sky to confirm out path, and leave it if takes us in the wrong direction." He scowled even deeper that he had been all this time, scrunching his face so much his scars were completely hidden. "So it is with all decisions in the life of a warrior."

"It you say so." She pointed at one of the roads. "That one should do. We might as well travel together, yes?" After all, if he was indeed merely a lone traveler, it would be easier to strangle him while he slept than to fight a Master Firebender in the open, at least without an army.

And it turned out that few armies wanted to follow a Fire Royal who couldn't Firebend. Azula could not find the resentment in her to blame them. She certainly wouldn't want to follow such an impotent leader. Of course, that didn't include Father-

But he-

"Well?!" Jeong Jeong barked from a distance down the road. "Did you not say you want to inflict your presence on me as I travel? Why are you standing around?"

Azula blinked, realized she'd become completely lost in her thoughts, and hurried after Jeong Jeong. She kept her anxiety off her face; it had been a long time since the days when she would become trapped in her own mind, and she had worked hard to leave that behind her. If it came back-

She would have to make sure it didn't come back.

"Apologies, grandfather," she mumbled as she caught up.

"You would do well to concentrate on what you're doing, if you ever hope to get to your destination."

"Yes, grandfather."

"Do you think those toll-collectors would wait for you to finish thinking before attacking you?"

"No, grandfather."

"Do you think it will be easy to navigate if we waste daylight and must travel by night?"

"Yes, grandfather. The skies are clear and we can follow the north star."

Jeong Jeong turned to look at her again as he walked. His gaze was searching in a way that was all too familiar to her. "Hm. You are not wrong. But it is still better to travel by day!"

"Of course, grandfather."

As he continued to expound on the virtues of actually getting to one's destination, Azula bolstered her sanity by planning some well-deserved murder. That usually made her feel better.

Except this time none of those plans could involve Firebending.

When the sun was nearly set, they stopped to set up a camp.

Azula, naturally, was a highly skilled camper. True, she had never left the civilized areas of the Fire Nation until she was fourteen and needed to bring her incompetent exiled brother back home, but as with all things, she had researched and observed and worked to acquire the necessary expertise. You never knew what survival skills you would need, after all, and even though she had not expected to become a fugitive revolutionary, she had been able to make it work once she figured out how to style her own hair and lace her own boots.

Jeong Jeong, too, had been a fugitive insurgent for a time, so even though he had no idea she was anything but a student of ancient ruins who sometimes also fought bandits, she could admit that she wanted to impress him a little. After all, he had been something of a success, even though Uncle, Zuzu, and the Avatar had done all the really hard work for him. It would be good to know how she measured up to him.

So Azula scouted the area around the road and found a relatively hidden and defensible spot near an old volcanic outcropping. Once she confirmed there were no signs of other human or animal habitation, she doffed her backpack and retrieved the materials for her tent. It was a small thing that didn't even leave her enough room to sit up, but it kept the weather and bugs off of her and traveled lightly. Very efficient. She set up space and the structure for a campfire where the outcropping would hide most of the light from observers, and then retrieved some water in a skin that could be placed over a fire. There was almost no dead wood around for fuel, so she used some that she had been carrying tied one her backpack.

Then it was just a matter of lighting the campfire.

She just had to find her sparkrocks.

She searched all through her backpack, and then the pouches on her belt. She checked in her boots. Then she checked everything again. She couldn't have lost them; they were too important to her, now. They were the only thing keeping her from feeling cold at night, once the sun was gone. She used to never feel cold, but now there was always a little chilled emptiness inside, ever since that night when- when she had lost everything.

She felt it whenever the sun drifted behind a cloud, or in the early hours before dawn when the last embers of a campfire stopped glowing and sharing their heat.

She needed fire, and if she couldn't make her own-

She just had to find her sparkrocks.

Where were her sparkrocks?

Then the wood burst into comforting flames.

For a moment, she thought she'd done it herself, but Jeong Jeong came over and sat down in front of the fire.

Oh, right. She was traveling with a Firebender. Who she should probably murder tonight, just to be safe.

"So," she said cheerfully, "what did you bring for dinner, grandfather? I have decommissioned army rations. Very healthy, and they keep well on a journey like this." She'd admittedly learned a bit late about the rates at which food spoiled, but that stomachache was years in the past.

Jeong Jeong said, "I am not your grandfather," and then went back to staring at the campfire.

Azula gave that all the attention it deserved and completely ignored it. She added the dried bits from her ration pack to the water in the skin above the fire, making something that was almost like a soup, and sat back to watch it boil. Someone had told her that water under observation never reached transition temperature, and it was such a stupid statement that she still took pleasure in proving it wrong.

Jeong Jeong unslung his knapsack from his shoulder, and Azula watched to see what he had brought to eat. Judging from his temperament, it was probably something without enough fiber in it.

He pulled out a candle. And then another. And then another. While Azula wondered if he was going to eat them, he kept going until he had twelve in total, at which point his knapsack was limp and clearly empty. They were of varying thicknesses, and each one had burned down to a different height. And they were messy, dribbly things, with dried rivulets of wax running down their sides and tops canted at different angles.

Jeong Jeong carefully placed them in a semi-circle around him, the campfire at the center of the arc, lighting each one of with a touch of his fingers as he went. Finally, at the center of the crescent of light, he sat down, folded his legs, and closed his eyes. His breathing became deep and regular.

Azula recognized this. Every Firebender knew how to meditate through the control of candleflames. Even Zuzu had never struggled with it- unless he was interrupted by something or someone that made him angry, as she had often indulged in. It made sense that a Master like Jeong Jeong would do such an exercise even before taking dinner.

But that didn't explain why he was so bad at it.

His breathing was regular, but none of the flames were. Oh, they were burning efficiently enough, but they pulsed in different times, grew bigger and smaller according to their own will, and bent in the small breezes that visited their campsite. If the flames hadn't been so large, she would have wondered if he was using his Firebending at all.

"You're doing it wrong," she said without thinking.

Jeong Jeong didn't open his eyes. "I did not realize you were a Firebender."

Azula had to work to keep her wince out of her voice. "You are right, grandfather. I am not. That bandit would have burned me to a crisp if you hadn't saved me. I am ignorant of the flames and the power that Firebenders can command!" She let that hang in the night air for a moment to help sell the idea, and then continued, "But you're doing it wrong- you need to synchronize the pulse of the flames with your breathing while you empty your mind, and even babies can control candles."

"Indeed." Nothing changed with the fires. "And I am not your grandfather."

Then his stomach growled.

"You didn't bring any food," Azula said, "did you?"

Jeong Jeong opened his eyes. "You may share your soup with me if you wish."

Azula had to think long and hard about it.

She didn't end up murdering him that night.

TO BE CONTINUED