A/N: Everything said about Iroh's backstory in this chapter is based off that one comment Zhao made during the siege of the North Pole about Iroh having made some journey through the spirit world. I have heard that Iroh's backstory is explored in more detail in The Legend of Korra. However, unless some kind reader tells me exactly which episode that happens in, I'm never going to see that scene. The first episode really turned me off. Everything here is my own creation.

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Katara and Aang rushed back to their house and told Sokka what had happened. Sokka threw his pillow away. "What?! He won't take Aang as a student? What did we spend the past few months dodging firebenders for, then?"

"We've got to get him to change his mind," Katara said. "Waterbending training for Aang is too important."

"He's too stubborn. He'll never change his mind," Aang moped.

"Then we'll have to get someone to change his mind for him." And that was exactly what they did. The next morning, Katara woke the two boys earlier than any of them would have liked, and they went up the palace steps to meet with the king. They had to explain to palace staff that they were having a conflict with Master Pakku. The staff went to fetch the king, who met them promptly in his audience chamber along with those same four people, his daughter, and Master Pakku. There, they told him what had happened the previous day.

The king frowned. "What do you want me to do? Force Master Pakku to take Aang back as his student?"

"Yes," Katara said. "Please."

Maybe she'd gotten a little too used to the royal treatment they received in the Earth Kingdom. She'd expected the people of the Northern Water Tribe to care just as strongly about Aang's need for training. Clearly, safe behind their enormous wall, they didn't. Her hopes were dashed when the king said, "I suspect he might change his mind if you swallow your pride and apologize to him."

Katara tried. She really did. She looked back at Aang and reminded herself that her own interests came second to the fate of the world. She summoned up all her strength and said, "Fine."

Then Master Pakku had to go and ruin all her careful preparation. He smirked and said, "I'm waiting, little girl."

Katara's anger ignited into a raging inferno. He actually liked ruining her dreams! She'd begun to suspect it the night before, but now she knew! The look of self-satisfaction on his face was unmistakable. If that was how it was going to be between them, she would be happy to fight! If he expected her to back down like a small child, he was wrong! She was never, ever, running away helplessly ever again. "No!" Her fists clenched. "No way am I apologizing to a sour old man like you!" At every few words she felt her waterbending power flow through her and heard ice splintering. It was good. "I'll be outside if you're man enough to fight me," she declared. The king and the princess gasped. She liked that. They knew better than to dismiss her. If they could learn, Master Pakku would too. She turned and went outside before anyone could try to change her mind.

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Pakku fought to keep his face stoic as he left the palace. Secretly, he was furious. He'd thought that he had won. Surely now that the Avatar's training was at stake, the girl would back down and stop fighting. But no. She continued to fight. Something about that profoundly unsettled him. Why did she continue to fight decades of tradition? Didn't she see yet that it was useless?

He walked right past the girl without looking at her. She called after him, but he had resolved not to listen. Her bluster and angry words would be treated as the useless things they were. It was a learning experience, he told himself. "Go back to the healing huts with the other women, where you belong," was his only response.

Then a water whip cracked against the back of his neck.

He could not ignore a physical attack. He whirled around, astonished. The girl looked ready to keep her promise. She was going to fight a master. Why? What could that possibly accomplish? Pakku knew he should wall her off or something and continue walking away. That would have been the smart thing to do. But he could not ignore this incredible display of bravado. What did she hope to accomplish? He needed to know. "Fine. You want to learn to fight so bad, study closely!"

The fight began. He used theatrical moves, calling up large quantities of water and swirling them around like he had at his performance. After knocking her down, he surrounded them both with a moving wall of water. "Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," he told her. He could afford to be magnanimous. She already looked impressed and frightened, stepping away from his wall as it tightened. Of course she did; he was the master and her, just a little girl who didn't know what she was talking about. There was no other way this fight could go.

But then she deflected his water, sending it all flying off. A bystander cried out as he was hit. The determined look was back on her face, and she came running at him again with a water whip. He made her a ramp of ice and sent her flying. She landed on a water pot at the base of the stairs. He tried again to wash her away, but this time she took his water and bent it around herself, letting the attack pass harmlessly around her. Pakku's eyes widened. Such a move was the mark of a true waterbending master.

"You can't knock me down!" she declared. The onlookers cheered. Only now did Pakku realize how many there were. A whole crowd of women and children had gathered to watch, including the princess herself. His pride was at stake. Before he knew it, he was fighting her like she was a real enemy. And she fought like a real enemy, too, throwing sharp disks of ice at him. As he dodged them, he caught a brief glimpse of his own face. That sight made him more determined than ever to beat her.

"Well, I'm impressed," he told her. "You are an excellent waterbender."

"But you still won't teach me, will you?"

"No." Pakku didn't even consider the option. He couldn't. Not with so many onlookers, not after everything he'd said. He couldn't give up the fight now.

She sent a rolling wave of ice at him. He dodged it easily. It was time to get serious. Using waves of ice to carry him along, he closed in on her and dealt her a physical blow. He knocked her down. Before she could do anything more than catch her breath, he held a ball of water high up in the air. It froze and shattered, ice spikes stabbing down around her, completely trapping her.

Pakku felt great. Oh, the exhilaration of battle! How he missed it! He felt more relaxed that he had in ages. Unnoticed tension had drained from his muscles. "This fight is over," he declared proudly, walking past her.

Still she struggled. Still. "Come back here! I'm not finished yet!"

"Yes, you are," he told her. But then he spotted something dark lying on the ice. He picked it up. His breath left him. He held it up to the light, not believing his eyes. "This is my necklace."

"No, it's mine," the girl said. "Give it back!"

Pakku turned back and looked at her again. He realized why she reminded him so strongly of the past. She was the spitting image of Kanna as a young girl. His fiancee had run away from her home, leaving behind shattered hearts and tears. Now, decades later, her granddaughter had returned. She even brought the necklace with her. "I carved this necklace for Kanna 60 years ago," he explained. "We were engaged. But then she left, without even saying goodbye." He unmade her ice prison and turned away. The memory still caused him pain.

"My Gran-Gran was from the Northern Water Tribe?" Katara asked. "She never told me."

All of Pakku's pride left him, and all of his anger. None of that was important. All he felt now was pain and sadness. "She was the love of my life," he remembered. "I thought we would have a long and happy life together."

"But that wasn't enough for her, was it?" Katara murmured. Her voice was softer than he had ever heard it. "She wanted to have her own life, too. No matter how much she loved you, she needed to follow her own dreams." Katara stood right behind him now, like a ghost from the past. "Nobody can live their life just for other people."

Her words pierced into his heart. Living a life just for other people… Wasn't that what he was doing? He never would have pursued teaching, but teaching pursued him. It was what was expected of a master. It was the best way he could serve his community. He didn't like it or enjoy it, but that had never mattered. It was tradition, and tradition was not something that could be fought. Fighting only caused pain. It was better to swallow your complaints and go along for harmony's sake.

But Katara's words, her very existence, implied that Kanna had found happiness. She had made a life for herself where she could follow her dreams and surround herself with loved ones, too. Fighting tradition had earned her a long and happy life. Wasn't that the very life he had wanted to give her more than anything? Pakku's hand curled over the necklace. The night before, he had watched his love's granddaughter experience happiness and deliberately ruined it. He had become a monster that his younger self would have hated. How had he gotten so lost?

The thought of being lost reminded him of his dream. An idea burst upon him like a summer sunrise. In his dream, why didn't he try to break through the walls of ice?

Pakku looked back at Katara, who gazed up at him sadly, and found that he could no longer deny either her or himself.

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Meanwhile, Iroh prepared an extra serving of breakfast and took it to Zuko in the hospital. One of the women offered to get him pillows and other supplies to help Zuko sit up and eat. First, they checked to see if he was awake. Zuko groaned in his sleep.

"Nephew?" Iroh asked softly.

One eye briefly opened, then closed again. Zuko took a deeper breath.

"It's alright to wake him," the woman said to Iroh. "Patients injured so badly often struggle to wake up fully. He needs sleep, but he needs food even more." She went to get the pillows. When she came back, she passed them to Iroh and lifted Zuko's limp form upright by herself. Iroh stuffed the pillows under him and marveled at how strong she was.

"Uncle?" Zuko whispered.

"I'm here," Iroh told him. "And I've brought breakfast. You need to eat."

Zuko opened his eyes and stared dazedly at Iroh. "Why?"

"What do you mean, why?" Iroh asked. "You've lost a lot of blood. You're in the hospital, Nephew. You almost died."

Zuko's eyes shot open fully. His pale cheeks grew more colorful. He shivered and tried to reach out for the food. Iroh picked up the bowl and removed its lid. "Let me feed you. It's soup. Wouldn't want to spill any." He expected complaints, even in this state, but he got none. Zuko cooperated easily. He seemed to have a good appetite.

This worried Iroh. As much as he would have preferred otherwise, Zuko never seemed to take his own well-being seriously. Only something incredible, something Iroh couldn't imagine, could have frightened him badly enough to make him a perfect patient. What sort of near death experience had Zuko had? Was it going to convince him to care for his health more? If it did, the experience would be a double blessing.

These thoughts renewed the doubts Iroh had begun to have the day before. He no longer believed the water spirit was an enemy. It was true that it had seemed to attack them. But it never really harmed anyone (except Zhao), and all of its urgings had spurred Zuko to come to the one place on the entire planet where there were healers that could attend to his spirit. Iroh knew that spirits often took a long view, ignoring the day to day lives of ordinary people and thinking only of the passage of destinies. Had it, in its long-thinking way, been helping Zuko the whole time?

That would make sense, except for all of the things it didn't explain. Iroh had been deeply struck by Kalika's story of the water spirit sewing his clothes back together. Such a minor, yet intimate act… It reminded Iroh of a mother caring for her child. And then there was that recurring question Katara had refused to let go of: how did he know the water spirit was following them before it showed itself? Iroh was starting to think she was right. That question was not as trivial as it seemed. Something bizarre was going on between his nephew and the water spirit, and the answer to that question might explain exactly what it was.

Iroh put the bowl down when it was empty and turned to the woman. "Give us privacy," he told her. "I need to talk with my nephew." She nodded. Using her waterbending, she raised ice walls between them and the other patients, then left the room.

"I'll be more careful in the future, Uncle. I promise. I know the water spirit's too powerful to fight," Zuko said. "I think I'll take Master Pakku's advice and try to train it to cause less trouble."

Iroh beamed. What wonderful news! "I am so happy to hear that," he said, giving Zuko's hand a squeeze. "I wish you the best of luck with it. Sincerely."

Zuko briefly smiled back. "I thought you'd like it."

"That's not what I wanted to talk with you about, though." Iroh gave his hand another squeeze. "It's time, Nephew, for you to hear another story from my life. It's a story that I've never told you before, or your sister. Few people know it. I think that now, you are ready to become one of them."

"Another war story?" Zuko asked.

"No. It's a story from after the war." Iroh put on his serious face. "Do you remember how long it took me to come home after my defeat?"

"I remember," Zuko said. "It was a year or more before you came home. Father said it was because you were afraid to face your dishonor."

"That was the reason why I didn't come back immediately," Iroh admitted. "Then the news reached me of our father's death and your father's, er, takeover of the family business. I knew I wasn't needed at home, so I took a rest. The time had come for me to decide some things about the course of my life.

"My son's death showed me, as plainly as the sun, that I was on the wrong path. Fighting in the war the way I was brought death and destruction. Even if I succeeded, it would come at a high price. I wasn't willing to pay that price. I decided that I would never go to war again, or if I did, it would only be when needed.

"But at that time, I didn't know what else could be done with my life. I needed guidance. So I traveled and sought out the company of others that I thought could advise me, men even older and more powerful than I. They saw that my quest for redemption was genuine and brought me into their fold. They taught me centuries of accumulated wisdom that they had worked to preserve during the war. I learned many things about the true state of the world.

"Still I wasn't satisfied. I felt that I needed more. What I needed was beyond their ability to give. But I got an idea, and together we made the preparations for it. We gathered food, water, bathing supplies and medicines in a safe place. We researched how it could be done. Then, under a blue moon, one of the times when the spirit world comes close to ours, I lay down in the safe place with my friends watching over me and I entered the spirit world."

Zuko's eyes widened. "You've been to the spirit world?"

Iroh nodded. "The spirit world is very different from our world. There, it's as if time stands still. The spirit world changes slowly, so slowly that if you spent your life in there you wouldn't notice a thing. Even the plants scarcely seem to grow. The beings that live there are ageless, and they look at the world very differently than we do. From them, I learned patience. I learned how to see beneath changing appearances to the essence that stays the same. They taught me to see as they do. When I came back to our world, I was starving hungry. My friends had many questions, but they had to wait until I was done eating and drinking. While I was feasting, I saw the most incredible thing."

He paused for effect. Zuko was hooked. "What was it, Uncle? What did you see?"

"A spirit," Iroh said. "This world has both a physical dimension and a spiritual dimension. The spiritual dimension is normally invisible; it is home to ghosts, who have no tangible existence. But after having spent so long in the spirit world learning to see as they do, I gained the ability to see this spiritual dimension even when I'm in my own body. I saw the Avatar riding a spirit dragon on their way to the Crescent Island, for example."

Zuko sat there with his mouth open. "Why have you never told me about this?"

"Because I thought you weren't ready to hear it," Iroh answered. "I thought the story would be wasted on you. I thought you would dismiss it as unimportant or silly."

"...Why are you telling me now?"

Iroh gave the question time to answer itself. The silence around them grew dense, almost tangible. He looked Zuko straight in the eyes. "I'm telling it to you now because I know I was wrong. You are ready to hear it. You've been ready for a long time, haven't you?"

Zuko blushed. He looked away and said nothing.

"I wanted to tell you because I want you to know that, if you ever wish to talk about spirits, you can come to me. I understand more than you think." Iroh stood. "I'll be back with lunch." He left.

How strange the turnings of destiny were! Iroh had never suspected that his journey into the spirit world would be anything more than a source of personal enlightenment. Even the other members of the Order of the White Lotus had never done it. They'd given him the title of Grand Lotus for it, and he'd long regarded himself as someone very special. The fact that the Avatar could also enter the spirit world heightened rather than diminished this feeling of uniqueness. If it was something only the Avatar could do, then surely he was alone. As with the dragons, no one but he would ever learn the things he'd learned and understand the things he understood. There was nobody to talk with about it. It was a source of pride to know something nobody else knew, but also a source of loneliness. It hadn't been as hard to return to the royal court and face his dishonor as Ozai thought. Iroh had already accepted for himself the life of the outsider, set apart from everyone else by understanding that could not be shared.

How his heart quickened to realize that wasn't true! He and Zuko had more in common than he'd thought possible. Their relationship could take a gigantic leap forward. He didn't have to be alone anymore.

Iroh hoped that Zuko would talk about spirits with him. He wanted that very badly.