Over the next two weeks of traveling, Zuko did get better with money, but he also saw his money stash dwindle until it was gone. He'd made it to the place where the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom almost touched, but he'd wasted all of his gold pieces when he'd had no idea what he was doing, and now he needed to figure out a way to get across the ocean to the Fire Nation without any money.

He saw even more examples of Fire Nation cruelty, too, though he tried his best to ignore it. It really was everywhere. Occasionally, it had even been directed at him.

Unsure of what to do next, Zuko was forced to stay in this town for longer than he wanted to. And with no money and his rations dwindling, he was starting to get desperate. He kept glancing at his blue mask, pulling it out, considering it, and then putting it away.

Unfortunately, staying near the town meant exactly what he feared. When he woke on the morning of his fourth day in town, he found his uncle sitting next to him in his clearing.

"You've made yourself very difficult to track down, my nephew," Iroh said calmly.

"Because I didn't want to be tracked down," Zuko growled, picking up his bag and pushing himself to his feet. "Go away, Uncle."

"Zuko, you have to know that this plan of yours is crazy," Iroh said, standing up too. "You cannot turn yourself in to Ozai. It does no good for anyone, least of all you."

"It's my only chance to redeem myself," Zuko said, though he no longer really believed it. "I've accepted that I will never be able to fully reclaim my honor, not with… with who I am now. But maybe if I at least show my father that I'm still loyal to him despite my… flaws, I'll redeem myself at least somewhat in his eyes." He wanted so badly to believe that.

"And in this so-called 'redemption,' you consign yourself to death or a lifetime in prison or maybe worse, and you consign the world to continue a terrible war for another century, maybe longer? I cannot believe that's what you really want, Zuko. If you truly believe that is acting honorably, then I have failed you completely."

Zuko closed his eyes. Because of course, his uncle was right. As he always was.

"All I've wanted, all my life," he said slowly, his voice trembling, "was for my father to love me. Uncle, do you know how much it hurts to know that now he never will? I didn't ask to be this way, but now, because I am, I'll never be anything more than a failure to him, or maybe a tool for him to use. I'll never have the chance to be just Zuko, his son. I might as well turn myself in, because what's the point of doing anything else? I feel like I don't know anything anymore, like I don't have a purpose anymore. Whatever my father does to me, I will deserve."

Zuko opened his eyes, stiffening as he felt Iroh's arms wrap around him.

"Oh, Zuko," Iroh said softly. "That's not true."

Zuko blinked back the tears that were welling in his eyes and tore himself away from his uncle.

"Goodbye, Uncle," he said, and strode away.

"Zuko, wait!" his uncle called, but Zuko kept walking.

As he did, he pulled out his blue spirit mask and put it on. He was tired of holding back.

A few minutes later, he was crouching on the rooftop of a building overlooking the town market. If he was going to get to the Fire Nation, he needed food and money, and he intended to get both here.

Maybe attempting to rob a busy marketplace in the middle of the day wasn't the smartest plan, but he was beyond caring.

And besides, his target wasn't very busy at all. It was one of the stalls in the empty side streets, where the Earth Kingdom merchants were placed, just like in Hano's town.

Zuko felt a little twinge of guilt at that. He was going to be stealing from someone just like Hano. Shaking his head, though, he refocused.

Now was his chance, as the merchant stepped away, leaving the cart unattended. Zuko dropped down behind the stall and stayed there at a crouch, quickly grabbing several things.

He was just about to turn around and leave with his winnings, when something hard slammed him in the side of the head, and everything went black.

The next thing he knew, he woke with a terrible headache, and he was...moving. He blinked his eyes open and realized that he was being carried by two Fire Nation soldiers. One of them had his legs, the other his arms, like a pig on a spit. There were at least a dozen others around as well, including one that had his pack. Why so many guards for just one thief?

Zuko tried to kick his way free, but his ankles were tied together.

"He's awake," someone said, and the whole group stopped.

The people who were carrying him dropped him unceremoniously on the ground, and then someone else dragged him to his feet, finally letting him get a good look around.

"Good," said the man who'd pulled him up, a man only a little older than Zuko himself, his eyes glimmering with mirth. "That means he can walk himself."

Zuko didn't know how the man expected him to do that, considering his ankles were attached to one another, but he shoved Zuko forward. Zuko tried to catch himself, but fell over, and the soldiers laughed uproariously.

Zuko's anger began to burn hot within him. He rolled over and sat up, his hands already warming up, ready to burn these ropes to a crisp and attack.

Before he could—and before he could remind himself that he probably shouldn't be openly firebending anyway—something shiny and blue smacked the nearest soldier in the head, and he fell over. The object flew back the way it had come and landed in the hand of a boy with brown skin, his hair shaved on the sides with the top pulled into a ponytail. The same boy, Zuko realized, that he'd kicked into the snow at the South Pole. Next to him stood Aang, Iroh, and Katara.

The soldiers' laughter died out. They looked around in confusion. And everything broke into chaos as the four newcomers rushed in. One of the Fire Nation soldiers blew a horn, probably calling for reinforcements.

Zuko quickly burned away the ropes and got to his feet. He glanced away from the fight, toward the nearby forest. Maybe he could still run away while his uncle was distracted, losing him out in the woods.

Instead, Zuko joined the fight.

For a while, the battle seemed to be going well. They had the upper hand.

Then, seemingly all at once, things started to go terribly wrong, as the reinforcements appeared, another half-dozen or so Fire Army soldiers, wielding bows.

But they weren't just any archers. No, these were the Yuyan Archers, the most skilled archers in the whole of the Fire Nation.

They loosed, and the arrows flew true, hitting strategic spots meant to incapacitate but not kill.

Aang got hit in the hand, causing him to wail in pain and lose control of his glider, crashing to the ground nearby. Katara received a glancing blow that sliced open her water pouch, then two arrows, one to the shoulder and one to the side, that brought her down. Sokka tried to cut away the arrows that flew at him with his boomerang, but was caught in a net and pinned to the ground.

And Iroh… a blunt-headed arrow took him in the head, knocking him out, and a sharp-tipped one landed in his… the side of his neck.

That was more than just incapacitation. Pain. Pain and rage like Zuko had never known. His vision blurred. Time seemed to crawl as his uncle's body went limp and fell so slowly toward the ground.

Zuko tried to rush forward, to catch his uncle before he hit the ground, but he was locked in place, trapped in a body that no longer felt like his.

The rage had unlocked something new in Zuko, a warmth and light that rocketed into his awareness, more powerful than any firebending he'd ever done. It was the power to move mountains, to scorch entire cities, to conjure winds so strong they flattened forests, to control the oceans themselves, and to do all of those things at once. A deep, terrible power that could only belong to the Avatar.

As it consumed him, he heard a voice rising up from deep in his subconscious, at first barely a whisper, but growing in volume with each word. A gravelly voice, similar to his uncle's but a little more nasal. It said, "Zuko. Come speak to me. I must show you something."

He heard a scream—he thought maybe it was his own. The air around him grew colder, his vision went pure white—and he found himself in another place.

It was a strange wood, the trees tall and thin, with no leaves or branches except for at their very tops, where leaves spread in wide canopies, blocking out the sky and draping everything below in a persistent gloom. At Zuko's feet, instead of grass or dirt, was water. It was only about an inch deep, not enough to reach his ankles, but it was as smooth and reflective as a mirror, and it covered the forest floor for as far as Zuko could see in every direction. When he took a step forward, the water did not ripple.

"Where am I?" he called, looking around. "I heard a voice calling out to me. Is anyone here?" The trees were spaced several feet apart, and their trunks were improbably slender, perhaps only as big around as one of Zuko's legs. It should have been impossible for anyone to hide among them.

And yet, when he turned and called out again, someone emerged from behind one of the nearby trees, as if appearing from nothing. It was an old man with long hair and beard, dressed in traditional Fire Nation robes. Some of his white hair was piled atop his head, held in place by a hairpiece with two long flame-like spikes sticking up on either side.

"I am here, Zuko," the man said. His was the same voice Zuko had heard before. "It's nice to finally speak to you."

"Who are you?" Zuko asked warily, instinctively falling into a defensive stance.

The man eyed him and chuckled, shaking his head. "I wouldn't bother with that if I were you," he said. "Your bending will be useless here."

Growling, Zuko tried to shoot a blast of fire. Nothing happened. He tried again, but again no fire appeared. Panicked, he looked up at the man. "What did you do?"

"Me? I did nothing. This is the spirit world, child. The elements are of the physical world, so you cannot access them here."

That didn't make Zuko feel much better. "Who are you?" he asked again.

"I am Avatar Roku." The man gave him a significant look. "Your past life."

His walls going up immediately, Zuko took a step back and crossed his arms over his chest.

"We must speak quickly," Roku said, looking around. "This vision will soon end. Zuko, you are called to a grave destiny, one that I wish you did not have to bear. It is because of my mistakes a hundred years ago that you walk the path you are on now. It is because of my mistakes that so many have been lost before their time." Roku glanced to the water at his left, and when Zuko looked there, he saw three circles reflected in its surface. Inside each were moving images of people Zuko had never seen before. Somehow, though, they seemed familiar.

"Your mistakes?" he asked, voice guarded.

"I could have prevented this war," Roku said, "if I had acted quickly enough. But I let my love for my friend and my loyalty to my country cloud my judgment. And because of these mistakes, thousands of people, including our own shared lives, have died before their time. Look. Know their pain."

He didn't want to, but Roku pointed at the circles on the surface of the water, and Zuko's head turned toward them almost against his will.

As he looked, one of the circles grew larger. In it, Zuko saw a man whose bald head, along with his arms and legs, was decorated with an elaborate arrow tattoo. He looked like he was maybe thirty or forty, and he was running, alone, down a street that looked very much like the streets in the Fire Nation capital. He ran hard, and at first Zuko couldn't tell what exactly he was running from, but then Fire Nation soldiers overtook him, and even with the help of airbending, they were too much for him.

Zuko gasped at the pain that washed over him as he watched the man crumple. He doubled over, feeling the sensation of his whole body burning as keenly as if it was happening to him right now.

"Avatar Aang," Zuko whispered after the image in the circle went black and the pain faded. He wasn't sure how he knew the name.

Roku nodded. "The namesake of the friend you now know. He survived the initial attack on the air temples, but was killed in the years after, as our people hunted down every last airbender. Or so they thought, anyway. It seems that perhaps they were not entirely successful."

He pointed at the next circle, and it grew bigger while the first one shrunk back to its original size.

In it was a Water Tribe woman, probably around the same age Avatar Aang had been. She hung in a cage suspended from the ceiling, her arms and legs bound as Fire Nation guards allowed her a few precious licks from a water bowl they offered to her on a long pole. Several similar cages hung at intervals around the room, occupied by other men and women who looked just as ragged as she did.

Once again, Zuko felt her sensations as if they were his. He relished the cool water as it slid down his parched throat. He rubbed his wrists uncomfortably, feeling the sting of metal shackles chafing against them.

The water was taken away, and she was allowed to sit on the floor of her cage.

"Avatar Yora," Roku said. "A southern waterbender, captured in one of the many Fire Nation raids." As he spoke, the image in the circle changed to a much younger Yora, fighting in an icy landscape alongside other waterbenders. "She never even had the chance to realize she was the Avatar before she died."

Zuko watched as the young Yora was caught in a net and dragged onto a Fire Nation ship.

The image went black, too, and the final circle expanded to take its place. In this one was a young earthbender, fighting on the frontline of the war against the Fire Nation. She was exceptionally talented, taking on several soldiers at once with ease, but the battle dragged on, and she grew weary, making more mistakes, eventually getting herself cornered. For the briefest of moments, Zuko thought he saw her eyes beginning to glow, as if she was starting to enter the Avatar State, but before she could, a soldier rammed a spear through her chest, and she fell.

"Avatar Ti," Zuko gasped, grasping at his chest. This pain felt worse than the other had somehow, more real. Maybe because, in a way, he really had felt it.

For when this girl died, he had been born. He even thought he knew what battle this had been. His father hadn't been there for Zuko's birth because of a great battle the Fire Nation had won in the western Earth Kingdom.

"Yes," Roku said. "And these are only three of the thousands of lives that were cut short by an endless war. You can stop it, Zuko, once and for all. You must avenge our shared lives, and redeem me."

Zuko shook his head, turning away from those swirling circles, "I—I can't. I can't defeat my father. He's… he's…"

"If you don't defeat him before the end of the summer," Roku said, "there will be no more world for you to save."

Zuko turned back to Roku, his face paling with a realization. "Sozin's Comet," he whispered. "It's coming back again this year."

Roku nodded. "Ozai intends to use it to end the war for good. I can only imagine what kind of horrors he's planning. You must stop him before it's too late." Roku advanced on Zuko, who backed away in panic and bumped into something. Turning around, he saw that Avatar Aang was here now too. He steadied Zuko with one hand and smiled at him reassuringly, but Zuko ripped away from him—and ran right into Yora. No longer tattered and broken, she gave him a meaningful glare.

Spinning back the other way, Zuko saw that Ti was here, too, her hands on her hips. He was blocked in on all four sides by his past lives.

Trembling, Zuko sank to his knees in the inch-deep water, looking up at all of them.

"You're our only hope," they all whispered, their voices mingling into one. Then they disappeared.