Zuko could tell that they had docked long before the guards came to take them out of their cells. After living on a Fire Nation ship like this one for three years, he'd become accustomed to the subtle differences between the way they moved when sailing and when they were at anchor. He felt the slight jolt as the ship came to a stop, and he could no longer feel that consistent, faint hum in the floor and walls that indicated the engines were pushing them forward.

"We're here," he said quietly, and Katara looked over at him. "Welcome to the Fire Nation."

Katara stood up from her cot, looking out into the hallway. "You ready?" she asked.

"I have to be."

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, two sets of guards—two for each of them—came marching down the darkened hallways to their cells. Zuko didn't try to resist as they clapped metal cuffs onto his wrists and pulled him out of the cell. They didn't bother with blindfolding him this time. He guessed there wasn't much point in keeping the mystery anymore, since they were leaving the ship.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the other two guards had done the same thing to Katara and followed behind Zuko as his guards led him through the maze of cells and up several flights of stairs to the deck.

As they emerged, Zuko winced and blinked against the glare of the sun. He didn't know exactly how long he'd been deep in the belly of the ship, but he'd nearly forgotten what it was like to see in proper daylight, to feel warmth on his shoulders and back. It made him stand up a little straighter, the firebender inside him celebrating after being deprived of sunlight for who knew how long.

His instinct was to slow down as they made their way across the deck of the ship, but the soldiers behind him were pushing him forward, so he couldn't stop even if he wanted to.

He and his entourage were not the only ones up here, of course. He saw several other Fire Nation soldiers and other deckhands walking around on the deck, some of them standing at attention as the guards led Katara and him to the center of the deck. Others were cleaning or unloading or doing other menial tasks.

Zuko tried to turn his head just enough to look behind him, but not enough that the soldiers would question it, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aang and Sokka emerging onto the deck behind them, as well as Yue. He couldn't see Appa anywhere, though.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that Appa hadn't been with them when they were captured. They'd left him when they entered the city, at the guards' request. Where had he been this whole time? Was he on some other ship, or had he gotten away?

There was no way he would have left Aang, Zuko was certain of that.

He didn't have time to ponder that much longer though, because if he wanted to get away from this, now was his only chance. He could see Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee waiting for them in the center of the deck.

He caught Katara's eye and gave a little nod, then he brought up his leg and kicked the inside of the guard's knee who was holding onto his left arm. He crumpled, yelping in surprise, and Zuko spun around and kicked at the other guard's leg.

Meanwhile, pandemonium broke out on the deck around him as Katara wrestled herself out of the grasp of her own guards and raised her arms high above her. She was limited somewhat by her hands still being bound, but still, the ocean responded to her call, two spouts of water forming on either side of the ship and coming down on some of the sailors nearest to the edge of the ship.

Zuko was too focused on his own battle to see what Sokka and Aang were doing, but he gathered, based on the yells from people behind him, that they were following the plan as well.

The two guards he'd kicked down were starting to get up now, and a half-dozen of the soldiers who had been standing at attention were closing in on Zuko and Katara. Zuko moved around one of the guards, putting himself next to Katara. He couldn't move his hands too far apart thanks to the chains, but held his hands out, palms first, and spun in a circle. Wind blasted from him in all directions, making the soldiers who were approaching stumble and skid backwards, but it wasn't enough to push any off them off the ship, or even make them fall down.

Grumbling to himself, Zuko asked Katara, "Do you have a way to get rid of these chains?"

"Hold on." Katara's face was screwed up with concentration. She closed her eyes for a second, then took a deep breath in and blew it on the chains holding her own hands together. Ice crystals began to form on the metal, and as she focused, they spread, until the entire chain holding the two shackles was frosted over with a thick layer of ice.

She yanked her hands apart, and the binds shattered, leaving her hands free with two broken chains hanging from her wrists.

"Wow, I didn't think that would actually work," she said.

"It's a wonder what practice will do," Zuko said, holding out his hands to her. "We don't have time to marvel."

She shook herself. "Right." Taking his hands in hers, she did the same technique on his shackles. When she let go, he pulled his wrists apart and the metal broke off easily.

"Let's go," he said. He grabbed her hand and pulled her back toward where Aang and Sokka were fighting another group of soldiers.

All they had to do was get off the ship. He didn't have a clue what they were going to do after that, but he didn't have time to worry about that right now.

Soldiers behind them were giving chase, shooting fireballs and other, mundane projectiles at them, but with Katara's waterbending and Zuko's firebending, they fended those off easily.

The others were doing pretty well, too. Apparently that Yue girl was more than just a pampered princess. She and Sokka were fighting back-to-back with a group of soldiers, and she seemed to be holding her own.

As they approached Aang and Sokka, Aang blasted a soldier away with a jet of wind, sending him flying off the side of the ship and into the water. He gave Katara and Zuko a grin. "Hey, guys! Long time no see!" Like they were a group of old friends meeting up at a tavern.

Katara got to work, quickly breaking all of their chains so their hands could move freely, while also ducking out of the way of attacks.

"What's the plan?" Sokka yelled as he dodged a soldier's sword slash. "You just said to wait for your cue."

"We have to get off the ship!" Zuko yelled back. He heard the sounds of more fireblasts behind him and spun around to block them.

As he did, though, he saw Azula, who had been waiting for him in the center of the deck, calmly walking forward. She pushed a lock of her hair back into place, and the air began to crackle with energy as she rotated her arms in a pattern Zuko had seen once before, when his uncle tried to teach him how to bend lightning.

"Scatter!" he shouted, and ran for the nearest edge of the ship.

His friends followed his command, disengaging as best they could with whatever enemies they were fighting and sprinting for the sides of the boat.

Azula would aim at him, he was sure. And she wouldn't miss. She never did. He tried to brace himself for the impact.

But it didn't come. He felt, rather than saw, the streak of blue erupt from her fingertips, and it did arc toward his side of the boat—but not toward him.

Instead, he turned, feeling like he was moving in slow motion, and watched the bolt streak toward Aang, who was running a few feet to his left.

Aang didn't seem to notice. His eyes were trained on the water off the edge of the ship.

Zuko tried to move, to get in the way of the line of fire, but he was moving through molasses. He watched the lightning strike Aang directly between the shoulder blades, watched his body lock up as the electricity coursed through him, watched as he fell to the ground, twitching.

"No!" The world sped up again, and Zuko changed course, rushing toward Aang. Azula was shaking her head at him. She flicked a hand toward the other side of the boat, where Sokka and Katara had run, and Mai and Ty Lee both went that way while Azula continued toward Zuko and Aang.

Aang had fallen face-first onto the deck, and there was a large char mark on his back between his shoulder blades. Frantic, Zuko knelt down next to him and rolled him over. He was unconscious, but breathing. Zuko shook him, his fingers tingling with residual electricity. "Aang! Wake up, we have to go!"

Aang didn't respond, but Zuko noticed that his fingers were clamped around something—a leather band dangled out of his clenched fist. Zuko pried open his fingers and, despite the chaos and terror of the moment, had to hold back a laugh when he saw what was there.

It was the stupid bison whistle he'd been carrying with him this whole time. Aang must've hidden it very well, or maybe the guards just hadn't thought it was important enough to confiscate. Zuko shook his head and folded his fingers back around the whistle as he scooped Aang up into his arms.

As he rose, he glanced back toward the other side of the ship—just in time to see two of Mai's knives pierce through Katara's sleeves and into her sides, pinning her arms. Princess Yue was being held by multiple soldiers, struggling against her bonds.

Ty Lee was giggling as she deftly avoided all of Sokka's swings, and took him to the ground with a few quick jabs.

There was no way they were going to get away—not all of them, anyway.

The old Zuko would have run. He'd come a long way from being that boy, but a part of him still wanted to. He looked down at Aang, unconscious in his arms, and looked back across the way. His gaze met Katara's, and she gave him an encouraging smile just as one of the soldiers on that side of the ship smacked her across the head with the butt of his sword, and her eyes rolled back.

Something inside Zuko broke then. He couldn't lose these people. Hadn't he already lost enough? Everything he touched crumbled, and these friendships were no different.

But then a different voice—many voices—spoke in his head. No, he wouldn't lose them. He could feel his body heating up, heard the winds roaring a little louder in his ears. Then, suddenly, he was watching the scene from outside his own body as his eyes flared pure white and his whole body filled with unimaginable power—a power he had felt once before. The Avatar State.

Zuko set Aang down and raised his hands. He'd never bent water before, hadn't learned a single waterbending form, but his body moved as if he'd done this a thousand times, and the water responded, flooding over the ship's deck and sweeping every person aboard into the ocean, until no one was left but his friends—and Azula.

He watched himself stalk toward her, raising a fist ringed with fire, watched as wind pinned her down and water rose up in a wave behind her, its edges made of sharp ice instead of liquid.

He looked down at his sister—and stopped. On her face was an expression Zuko hadn't seen since they were very small, in the days before she'd become Father's golden prodigy and he'd become the family screw-up. A time so long ago, he'd nearly forgotten things had ever been that way. When she was just his little sister, and she would come into his room at night because she'd heard Daddy yelling at Mommy again, and she was scared.

Scared. Fear. Genuine fear. Azula was afraid of him. That broke him, too, in a different way.

"No," Zuko said. He stumbled a little, feeling suddenly dizzy as the power faded, the light in his eyes died—and all the elements he'd been wielding at once fell away. "I can't."

In a flash, her expression morphed into a smirk, and Zuko wondered for a moment if the fear had been fake. "Oh, Zuzu, even with all the power in the world, you're still so weak."

She struck out at him with a dagger from her belt, and to both of their shock, Zuko grabbed her wrist and knocked it away.

They stared at each other for a long, tense moment, before the spell was broken by the sound of a roar.

Zuko and Azula both whipped their heads to look as a huge, fluffy white monster appeared as if from nowhere and landed on the ship, right next to Aang, who had woken up at some point during Zuko's Avatar State rampage, and now had the bison whistle between his lips.

"Good job, buddy! I knew you'd follow!" Aang climbed up onto the bison's back and waved to the rest of them—the others were coming back to themselves now, and had begun making their way toward Appa. "Come on, guys, we've gotta get out of here!"

"We'll finish this later," Zuko said to Azula, releasing his sister's wrist and sprinting toward the bison.

"You'll never be able to come back, you know," Azula shouted after him. "After this, you'll be considered a full-blown traitor."

Zuko ignored her. Katara and Aang were already aboard. Zuko hopped on, then reached a hand out toward Princess Yue and Sokka to help them get up.

As they took off into the sky, Azula shot one last jab at him, "You're really going to leave Uncle here to rot? What a considerate nephew you are. Don't worry, I'm sure he'll forgive you, someday."

As hard as he tried, Zuko couldn't keep those words from worming their way into his brain. He was abandoning Uncle, wasn't he? His fingers tensed on the edge of Appa's saddle, and he stared down at the dock until it disappeared from view.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned around to see Katara there, giving him a reassuring smile.

"Your uncle would want you to be safe," she said.

Zuko nodded. He turned around fully and sat down, legs crossed, then looked around at everyone.

"Besides, we'll come back for him," Sokka said. He was sitting next to Yue—in fact, he seemed to be sitting very close to Yue. "When you've got a few more elements under your belt and we've got more people on our side. He's not staying in that prison forever, not if we can help it."

"Okay," Zuko said, a little reluctantly. He shook himself. "But where do we go until then? We can't rely on our Aang ruse anymore. After this, everyone is going to know I'm the Avatar."

The thought didn't scare him as much anymore, he realized.

"I've got a place we can go," Aang said, hopping up from his usual spot on Appa's head to join everyone in the saddle. "It's very secluded; we'll be perfectly safe there."

Zuko frowned at him. "How can you be sure? We had to leave a lot of our stuff on the ship. If the Fire Nation gets some shirshus…"

Aang shook his head and smiled. "We can't be tracked to this place. Besides, even if we could, we didn't leave much stuff back there." He pointed to the pile of bags at the back of Appa's saddle, which looked suspiciously like the bags the guards had confiscated from them before throwing them into cells on the ship. Zuko even saw his black glider staff sticking out of one of them.

He didn't have time to wonder how that was possible, though, because he was still fixating on the first thing Aang had said. They couldn't be tracked? Shirshus were supposed to be able to sniff out a person all the way on the other side of the planet. "How…?"

"Just trust me," Aang said. "It'll all make sense when we get there."

Everyone else looked at each other, but they all seemed to come to the same conclusion Zuko did: there wasn't any better option.

So they agreed, and Aang hopped back down into his spot and shook the reins. He whispered something under his breath to Appa, but Zuko couldn't make out anything except the last word: "home."

As Appa flapped his tail and changed directions slightly, Zuko stared back the way they'd come—toward his home. They were too far away to see the Fire Nation archipelago, and certainly much too far away to see the capital city. But he looked anyway.

I'll come back for you, Uncle, he thought. I promise.

The End.


Author's Note: Thank you all so, so much for reading this story! Yes, sadly, this is the end of book 1—but never fear! We've still got a lot of loose ends to tie up and book 2 is already in the works. It's not quite ready to start posting yet, though, so I'll be taking a (hopefully) brief hiatus to build up enough of a chapter buffer that you lovely readers won't have to deal with me skipping weeks sometimes.

Also yes, they have all their stuff. Do I have a good in-world explanation for why? No, but in the words of Aang from book 1, "Appa is a 10-ton flying bison. I'm sure he could think of something." (In reality, it's because I didn't want to take away Zuko's brand new, super cool and symbolic glider that he's barely gotten to use, so he has it. Because why not?)

Anyway, I hope you'll join me in a few weeks to continue the story and find out where, exactly, Aang might be taking them. It's gonna be another wild ride.