A/N: Okay, that's it. I have been bothered by something for months now, and actively intending to go back and change it for the past two months, and today I finally got around to it. Aunt Wu made highly specific predictions in canon, and I already knew what she would be predicting when I wrote that chapter, so there is no excuse for having made her prediction for Iroh so vague. Iroh's prediction, formerly "Mistakes from your past will come back to haunt you," has been changed to "Words you have said..." I think this is much more in line with what Aunt Wu would predict, and much more interesting.

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In his dreams, he returned to the swamp in search of his dropped branch. It was very, very important that he have it. He stepped into the trees, and knew in a flash that he was not alone. His sense of being about to be caught gave him a hundred warnings, a thousand. The swamp was crawling with firebenders like Zhao who would find him and report that he was with the Avatar and he would never be able to go home again. Zuko panicked and started to run. But no matter how far he ran or how fast, the firebenders kept up with him. He realized the fire spirit was leading them. Betrayal!

He kept running, having no choice. As he ran, he remembered. He had been in a swamp like this before, with people who didn't understand bending and wanted to burn him as a witch. He ran faster, and faster, his heart beating too loudly to hear anything, feeling the flames of the pyre licking up his back, across his shoulders…

The wind blew and made the trees whisper. They were laughing deep, evil-sounding laughs. Why had he come back? Why? He was a little animal running into a trap.

A firefly flashed ahead. He cried out and ran toward it. The firefly was safety. The firefly was protection. He had to reach it!

Swinging from side to side as smooth as a pendulum, dancing between the trees, the firefly led him on. Zuko sensed the firebenders recede. The firefly's master must have quieted the fire spirit. He was nearly safe.

He broke out onto the lake where he had found the branch. It was different, no longer choked with roots. Lotuses had grown where the mangrove roots used to be, and he could smell a soft perfume coming from them. There was light from the sky. He looked up. High above, perched on a high branch of a giant mangrove, was the watcher.

The firefly flew up, returning to its master. It landed on the branch at his side, flashing softly. The watcher's eyes did not flash. Their glow was steady, unmoving as the rest of him was. He made no sound, no movement, no expression. He watched, and did nothing more.

Zuko sank to his knees in relief. He was safe! The watcher was just like the night and the breeze. Beneath the watcher's glowing eyes, nothing terrible could happen to him.

A higher branch shifted, allowing light to fall on the watcher. His clothes were recognizable, but in strange patterns and styles. His arms nearly matched his legs in length. He had dark black hair and brown skin, a combination not found in any part of the world, and there were things on the sides of his head. It was unclear what they were. They did not move.

Zuko got to his feet. He did not look at or think about the watcher any more. He needed now to make an amulet of protection. That was what he needed in order to cross the swamp safely. He considered all the different styles his firebending instructors had taught him. Should he make an Amulet of the Crane? An Amulet of the Snake? Perhaps an Amulet of the Fish would be better. Fish were favored by the water spirit.

He decided to make an Amulet of the Dragon. Then, as a dragon, he would stride proudly with his power known to everything around. The swamp would make way. He would need fear no firebenders, for he would be their king. Yes; a dragon was what he ought to be.

He decided that, and he picked up his branch, and then he heard his mother calling for dinner. He dropped the branch and ran into another dream, leaving the swamp behind.

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The next morning, Iroh awoke with a loud, luxurious yawn. Several parts of his back cracked pleasantly. The sun was already streaming through the little window, indicating that the morning had already begun. Zuko was undoubtedly frustrated. "My apologies, Nephew," Iroh began. "Our hosts were so accommodating that I… Nephew?"

"Mm." Zuko lay belly down on the next bed in a manner that suggested he had not lain there, but rather been felled by exhaustion or injury. There were small scratches on his hand, and his hair had been disturbed. He smelled faintly of swamp.

Iroh decided to let him sleep. He clearly needed it, and there would be time to chide him for going against their hosts' instructions later. Iroh pulled a blanket over him, for Zuko had collapsed without one, and tiptoed off to find breakfast.

The owners of the large house served a delicious breakfast. "It's not often we have guests!" the wife said with a smile. "Can I get you anything else?"

"More salad!" the Avatar requested. "These swamp herbs are delicious! You should really try it, Sokka."

The woman left. Sokka clutched a rice ball. "I'll stick with things that weren't picked out of the mud." He took a big bite of the rice ball.

"You know that rice grows in paddies filled with water, right?" Katara asked. Sokka coughed and spit some of it out.

"Where's Zuko?" Aang asked.

"He's still sleeping," Iroh answered. "He disobeyed our hosts and snuck into the swamp. I'll have a word with him when he wakes up."

The three children looked at him. Aang's jaw dropped. "He went into the swamp?"

"At night?" Sokka asked. "After we heard all those stories about bears and fevers and tangling roots? Who does that?"

Katara's eyes narrowed. "Why did he go there?"

Iroh sipped his tea. "I don't know. You can ask him when he's awake."

The wife returned with more salad. It was delicious. Aang bowed to the owners of the house very respectfully when he was done. "Thank you for the meal."

The wife beamed. "Oh, the pleasure was ours!"

Her husband nodded. "Yes, it's a shame that your friend couldn't join us. But I can't blame him, stumbling in the way he did last night."

The wife dashed into the kitchen and returned with an armful of wraps. "That's why I prepared some things for him!" Iroh accepted the wraps with profound gratitude. "When he wakes up, where should we tell him to go?"

"To Appa," Aang said. "It's been really nice here, and you're all very kind, but we should keep moving."

The owners nodded and bid them safe travels. They returned to their rooms and packed up everything they had left there, then went out to feed, brush, and saddle Appa.

The bison yawned and stretched as luxuriously as Iroh had. He patted Appa's nose with a smile when it was done. "You also had a good night's sleep, I see." Appa blew a gust of warm air at him.

Aang fed Appa the small amount of hay the villagers had managed to put together, and went over his fur with a brush normally used on ostrich horses. Then the saddle was replaced and they began to put their packs in place.

They were interrupted by someone running up to them. It was the grandmother who had led them on a tour of the village the day before. She ran as fast as she could, cane trailing behind her in one hand, white hair flying. She came to a stop and put the cane down, leaning on it as regally as she had the night before. "Good," she said when she had her breath back. "I was afraid I would be too late, that you would have already left."

"Why did you want to see us?" Katara asked. "Is something wrong?"

The old woman shook her head. "I had to offer my gratitude." She reached beneath her robe and took out a small piece of jewelry. It was a necklace with an image of a leaping fish formed in copper. "The waterbender you're traveling with saved my grandson's life. This is the least I can offer. It's something of a family heirloom. My father bought it from a traveler. It brings good luck."

Katara took the necklace, but held it out. "This is very generous, but I think you have the wrong person."

The old woman shook her head. "My grandson knows how to tell a proper story. I trust his description."

She bowed deeply. When she straightened, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. She turned and walked away, back as straight as ever, but it was clear how afraid she had been.

"I didn't rescue anybody while we were here," Katara said.

"Neither did I," Aang said. "She must have gotten the wrong person."

Katara closed her fingers over the necklace. "We should find whoever this really belongs to. It wouldn't be right to keep it." She handed the necklace to Momo for holding while she finished packing. The lemur tried it on, found it to be too large for his small neck, and looked around as if someone was playing a trick on him.

When they were done, Katara and Aang discussed how best to search for the old woman's hero. "We should go to Old Man Hi Tung," Aang suggested. "He has that porch facing the street. He would've seen someone."

"If he didn't, we should ask her grandson," Katara added.

"But she lives in one of those swamp neighborhoods that all look the same," Sokka pointed out.

"So we get a guide," Aang said.

Iroh sat on a bench off to the side, watching Momo to make sure he didn't drop the necklace. The place the villagers had found for Appa was very nice. There wasn't a hint of stench, only the smells of hay and leather and forged metal (for a corner of the stable also doubled as a foundry when there were no visitors). This little swamp town was a very good place to take a vacation! He would like to come back someday.

Someone else ran up. This time it was Zuko. "Are we ready to leave?"

"Almost," Katara said. "There's just one thing to do first."

Momo chattered, holding up the necklace. Zuko took it from him and looked at the leaping fish. "What is this?"

"The old woman who gave us a tour yesterday gave it to us," Iroh said. "She was very grateful for the rescue of her grandson."

Zuko's eyes widened. "That kid was her grandson?"

Iroh blinked in surprise. So did everyone else. Zuko didn't notice, being too busy looking at the necklace. "Maybe now he'll listen to her more," he muttered. "Hi Tung was right. The swamp is a bad place to be. We should go."

Aang picked his jaw up. "Yeah. Sure." He airbended himself onto Appa's head. "Whenever you're ready."

Iroh and everybody else piled into the saddle. Zuko still had the necklace out. He seemed fascinated by the fish. Eventually, he put the necklace on.

Iroh decided not to chide him for going into the swamp. Going into the swamp in order to rescue a child was very noble. Also, he had much more important questions to ask, like just how did Zuko manage to get mistaken for a waterbender?

.

"Is there any reason, any reason at all, why that old woman's grandson would think you were a waterbender?" Sokka asked.

He was on the lookout for warning signs, so he saw the way the firebender's eyes flashed. "No." Zuko crossed his arms. Sokka was starting to see that as a reliable Don't talk to me sign. It would be best to avoid going there.

So Sokka didn't go there. He changed the topic. "What did you mean when you said Hi Tung was right? All those things he talked about were just fever dreams, nothing more. You don't really think there's a cabin in the middle of a swamp?"

"No," Zuko said. "Not a cabin. But the swamp is really dangerous, in ways that you wouldn't expect. He was right about it being full of surprises."

"Why did you go in there?" Katara asked.

Zuko looked away. "Because I wanted to prove him wrong."

"And you did, right?" Sokka asked. "There were no spirits or ghosts trying to kill you. Just a swamp, at night."

"Just a bunch of roots," Zuko murmured. His tone was ambiguous. He could have been agreeing or strongly disagreeing. But of course it must have been agreement. Sokka knew how the world worked, and it was obvious that Hi Tung's stories were just a bunch of fairy tales. There was no such thing as an evil sentient swamp.

"Exactly. Just a bunch of roots," Sokka repeated.

Zuko stayed quiet. He really knew how to kill a conversation. Sokka rolled his eyes. He wouldn't have chosen to hang out with someone this humorless and dull of his own free will.

"What do people back in the Fire Nation talk about at parties?" he wondered aloud.

Zuko shrugged.

"You must have been to some parties," Sokka pressed. He was not going to allow some humorless jerk to force him to spend hours flying in complete silence. They weren't even close to friends. He didn't owe Zuko anything.

"Not really," Zuko replied. "There aren't many parties in the Royal Palace. Just official functions. You don't want to know what people talk about at those things."

Sokka assumed that "official functions" probably meant war meetings, and therefore Zuko was right. He didn't want to know how they talked about the destruction of innocent lives. "Well...what about birthday parties?"

Zuko flushed. "My birthday parties didn't have a lot of talking. My sister's birthday parties had more, but you don't want to hear any of it." He visibly cringed as he described children's birthday parties.

Sokka was torn. What line of questioning should he follow? Zuko didn't seem like he would talk about why he was so uncomfortable with birthday parties, so Sokka went with the other thing. "You have a sister?!"

"Yes," Zuko forced out. "She's an evil monster. That's all I have to say about her."

"What's her name?" asked Katara.

"Azula."

Sokka frowned. Katara and he were blood. They had grown up in the same house, with the same parents, eating the same food and hearing the same jokes, together from before either of them could remember. Nothing could change that sibling bond. Even if Katara turned evil somehow, he would never call her a monster. She wasn't a monster. She was his sister.

What kind of person could call their own sister a monster?

"Let me guess: she's not a fan of you either," he muttered. With a brother like that, it would be perfectly understandable.

Zuko crossed his arms tighter. "She follows Dad's example." He gave nobody a chance to ask what that meant, immediately changing the subject to, "What do people talk about at the poles?"

Sokka leaned back to look at the clouds. Fine. If that was how talking was going to work, then he wouldn't talk. Why couldn't Aang have formed a spirit bond with someone friendlier?

"Parties," Katara answered. "At the poles, you can't go off on your own. People need each other."

Sokka was busy looking at the sky, his mood soured. He didn't see how Zuko relaxed, uncrossed his arms a little. He couldn't see the look on Zuko's face when he asked, "What kinds of gossip do you have?"

Katara hesitated. "Um… Just the usual kinds, I think."

"What are the usual kinds?" Zuko pressed.

"Who's secretly in love with who, who did something embarrassing, who did a good or bad job when fishing…" Katara stared back at him. "Why do you ask?"

Now Zuko hesitated. "Gossip is different back home," he said.

"Different how?"

"Meaner."

Sokka rolled his eyes. That wasn't a surprise. From what he knew of firebenders (Iroh excepted), he couldn't imagine them being good company anywhere, even at a party.

"You'll be really surprised at the North Pole, then," Katara said.

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Katara meant that to be the end of the conversation, a summation of all that had been said about their different cultures. She'd already suspected that the Fire Nation was harsh, cruel, and unfriendly. He would be really surprised to travel anywhere and see people being genuinely kind to each other. So she was really surprised when he asked, "What else do you do at the poles?"

She couldn't answer right away. What could he be asking about? She struggled to think of anything recently mentioned that could be compared to the Fire Nation, and came up empty. What did he want to compare next?

"You said you had parties?"

Why would he want to know about that? He'd just said the Fire Nation, or at least its capital, didn't have parties. There was nothing to compare. "I said parties, but it's actually different," she said slowly. "They're not special, and they don't celebrate anything. We just gather together, eat together, have a feast sometimes when there's a big catch."

"That's just how dinner is?"

"Yeah. Mostly." Katara watched him with a growing sense of curiosity. He seemed genuinely interested in how her life was. Why would a firebender, a prince, be interested in that? She tried to think of ways it could be suspicious, but the way he asked was oddly disarming. He asked so...openly.

Zuko pulled out the leaping fish on the end of his necklace. "I asked Bato about water spirits. He said you have superstitions about them, that angry water spirits will cause the fish to leave and you need to give gifts to make them happy before you go fishing. He said you feed things to penguins."

Really? He had asked Bato about their beliefs, and listened? It wasn't a surprise that he would ask, but Katara was shocked to hear that he had stuck around and listened and cared enough to remember what he heard, even though it was useless to him. "Y-yeah. Gran Gran has a fish mixture she makes. The penguins love it. She says that making the penguins happy makes the water spirits happy."

Zuko looked down at the fish again. "Because water spirits love penguins."

"Yeah." Katara leaned forward, wanting to hear what he would say next. His gentle questions had dissolved her suspicions.

He closed his fingers over the copper fish. "I don't think that's right."

Her suspicions reformed. Great. What was he going to say now? That their superstitions were silly and feeding penguins was a waste of good fish?

"I told Bato how the water spirit threw waves around, as if it had fins. I think the water spirit we have is more like a fish. Maybe there are different water spirits and they like different animals."

Oh. Katara was completely confused. "So...the ones at the South Pole just happen to like penguins?"

Zuko shrugged. "It's not like you have anything else for them to like down there. Except for fish, but everything eats fish. Any spirit who likes fish has to be okay with them being eaten."

"There are whales, too."

Zuko blinked. "I didn't see any."

"Your big, noisy ship scared them away," Katara said.

What was going on? He liked talking about the North Pole, and he was interested in water spirits. But he'd never talked this way before. He sounded so open, and friendly. Katara remembered the landscape comparison. She'd come prepared for wild waters and a resistant current, and found a placid lake instead.

"Did something happen with the water spirit last night?" she asked.

He immediately tensed. His eyes flashed. "What are you talking about?"

The water spirit was, metaphorically, a storm. She'd expected the conditions that were typical during a storm. Instead, he was behaving as though the weather was completely clear. What happened to the storm? But she couldn't say that to him. It would sound crazy. "You never stop to talk about normal things like this. You're always go-go-go, wanting to race off and fight the water spirit. Why aren't you obsessing about that like you normally do?"

He remained tense and didn't answer immediately. Katara's suspicions returned in full force. Whatever he said next was going to be a lie. She prepared herself to see past the deception. He said, "The swamp reminded me that there are things other than the water spirit that matter too. I was surrounded by water, but it didn't nearly kill anyone. The roots did. So, I'm thinking about other things now."

His voice was off, and he was explaining too much. It was definitely a lie. Katara didn't buy it. But it made some amount of sense, and she knew from the way he hesitated that he hadn't planned his answer. Maybe it was a half truth. Which half was the true half?

"You don't have to jump down my throat about it," Zuko snapped. "I am allowed to be interested in things." He moved to the side of the saddle and looked off the edge.

Katara thought she should regret making him close up again and putting an end to the conversation. It had been nice, and they had learned things from each other. But she did not regret it. She had learned something just as valuable: another thing that he was lying about. She added it to her store of suspicions and reminded herself to keep an eye out for more. He was an enemy, and his secrets could not be trusted.

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A/N: The watcher is based off of Duke from the TV show Haven. My imagination tends to increasingly distort things the longer I think about them. I was a fan of Haven many, many years ago. By the time I watched Avatar: The Last Airbender and borrowed him for this purpose, the only things I needed to add were glowing eyes and eerie silence. Yeah. The unusual limb proportions and perching and unusual head features were already there. My imagination is weird. Anyway, if anyone wants to look up who I'm talking about, he is specifically based off of season 4 Duke, with that smooth, shorter, combed back hairstyle.