That morning was chaos.
"Hi!" Aang said to Iroh and Kalika.
"Where's the jerkface?" Sokka asked.
"He's not here," Kalika replied.
"Do you know when he'll be here? We're on a schedule."
"The water said he may or may not come back this morning, so I don't know."
Katara sighed. She turned to Iroh and asked him, "Has he told you that he's known the water spirit ever since he was a little kid? It's the mysterious childhood friend that taught him to understand lemur."
Iroh choked on his tea. "No, he hasn't told me that."
She asked Kalika, "Did he tell you?"
"Not in so many words, but I inferred it from the way he described the water spirit as being an adoptive mother to him."
"What?" Aang asked.
Kalika bit her lip. To tell, or not to tell? She looked aside. A small water circle met her gaze. "He has a whole spirit family, in fact," she told them. "He lives in a world where there are spirits around every corner. It's not the same world as everyone else lives in at all."
Katara started to pace. "How? Why?"
"Why is he so good at talking to spirits?" Aang clenched his fists. "I'm the Avatar."
The door fluttered open. Master Pakku stepped inside. "The king requests your presence, along with your scarred friend's."
"He's not here," Kalika said. "He spent the night outside the city, and he may or may not come back sometime today."
"Would you like some tea?" Iroh offered. "We've learned many interesting things."
Sokka counted on his fingers. "The water spirit's a childhood friend of his, he has a whole adoptive spirit family, and they're a lot more interested in talking to him than the Avatar."
Master Pakku sighed. "Shall I tell the king you will arrive at some random time, whenever he comes back?"
"That would be far too much of a disturbance to His Majesty," Kalika replied. "Tell him to call again tomorrow. Lee will be back by then."
"Disappearing overnight is not a good look," Master Pakku told Iroh, glowering.
"I agree, but I don't control his choices."
"Why does the king want to meet with us?" Aang asked.
"Your scarred friend was very suspicious, even before he disappeared overnight without telling anyone. The king and all of the advisors want to test him. And that's all I am allowed to say."
"What kind of test…?" Aang asked anyway.
Katara waved a hand. "Don't worry about it, Aang. The water spirit will do something. That's not important."
"I think it might be important if the king of the Northern Water Tribe thinks we knowingly brought somebody suspicious into the city," Sokka said.
Katara waved a hand again. "So? He's only human. I think we have more important things to be worrying about. Lee's not the only one talking to elemental spirits anymore. We're all caught up in this. Kalika, you said the water told you something?"
"It answered yes or no to my questions."
"He spent his entire childhood with nobody suspecting anything," Katara said as she paced. "Then the water spirit attacked his boat, messed with our ice dodging, made him speak on its behalf, and now it speaks to other people besides him. It was content to sit for so long doing nothing, but now it's making a move. What is it trying to do, and why? What could one of the four elements consider so important?"
"And why Lee?" Kalika asked.
"What about me? What about my destiny?" the Avatar asked.
"Excuse me," Master Pakku barked. "Other people besides him have seen and spoken with the spirit of water?"
"Water, bring him back sometime today," Kalika ordered. "He can't hide out there forever." She turned to Master Pakku. "Yes. I have."
"Everyone has," Katara muttered. "That's what all waterbending is."
"Was he around when this happened?" Master Pakku asked Kalika.
"No. Last night, when he didn't come back, I asked the water if he was safe. It made a water circle to say yes."
Master Pakku took a step backward, looking visibly shocked. "That's not what I learned…"
"Everything we learned may be wrong," Iroh said. "Fire has also begun to speak. It wrote out 'Thank you' on the floor of Jeong Jeong's tent after my nephew and the Avatar received training from him."
"Something big is happening," Kalika concluded. "And we're at the center of it."
"No, he is," Katara corrected her. "We're around the center of it. That explains why everything's been so crazy for us. The winds are strongest around the center of a storm. But in the center, there's an eye where the winds are calm. In the eye, there's no storm at all."
"Lee, where are you?" Kalika whispered.
.
Katara's words were true. In the eye of the storm, there was neither wind nor crashing waves. There was neither the terror of sheer death nor the elation of survival. In the eye, peace and rest could finally be found.
Zuko sat in his ridge, sending the fireball out and bringing it back. He was getting pretty good at switching between spiritbending and regular bending. While practicing, his mind split into two streams again. One stream monitored his fireballs, while the other entertained new thoughts. I'm giving in. I'm officially going over to their side. I'm leaving my human responsibilities and siding with spirits.
No. My royal responsibilities were never real. I never could have met them. I am not a hard, decisive person like my father, and I never can be. I could have been a decent enough leader. In another life, maybe. One where I didn't suffer as much. But in this life, I was broken. I will never be able to go back there without either hating it or giving in to the urge to imitate my father. I couldn't step foot in the palace without feeling sick to my stomach. That's no way for a Firelord to be.
How will I ever face my father? I couldn't explain any of this to him. He wouldn't understand. All he would see is his own son betraying him.
It's better if I never go back. That way I'll never have to see the disappointment in his face.
"I don't have to go back, do I?" he asked the water spirit, who was quietly digging nearby. He caught a fireball and put it out, then turned to face the dragon. It shook its head. "Good."
After everything I've done to go back home, now I'm giving up? Making it all for nothing? Zuko contemplated a fireball. The worst part is, I meant it. Good. I don't want to go back home. Does that make me disloyal? I'm doing the only thing I can do. If I don't abandon the idea of being Firelord, I'm going to die. Wanting to survive can't be wrong. He just wouldn't be able to understand. He couldn't see how doing something that doesn't make me happy could kill me, and I am NOT about to explain it.
He bent fire at a nearby ice wall and sighed. What does this mean for the Avatar? I can still be loyal to my country. I can still support my father, even from afar. But now my destiny is to safeguard the world and talk to spirits, just like his destiny. I can't ignore how much we have in common. What do I do with that? I'm not directly working on my father's behalf anymore, so I don't have to be his enemy. But if I become his friend, that would make me disloyal.
"What should I do?" he asked the water spirit. "What should I follow? My ideals, my values, they all seem to be wrong. No matter how hard I tried, my real actions opposed my values. And now it turns out that my behavior was right and my values were wrong. I should have been listening to spirits and teaching people about them this whole time. I should have been doing what comes naturally to me, even though I'm too impulsive for my own good and I ruin all of my own plans and I'm a jerk who hurts people." He shook his head. "I'm so confused."
The water spirit left its little project and tapped him on the shoulder. Listen to your nightmare. It will guide you out.
"The Nightmare? What are you talking about? It's horrible. I wish I could get rid of it."
Did you see?
"See what?"
When did it come to you, and when did it not?
Zuko shrugged. "It came rarely before. Then it happened several times while I was traveling with the Avatar. Near the end, when we were almost here. Then after we got here and I almost died, I had it every night for a few nights. Then it stopped for a couple nights. Then it started again." He looked up at the dragon. "Do you know why it's been so frequent lately?"
The water spirit nodded. What was different about those two days?
Zuko's first impulse was to get frustrated and demand that it just tell him already. But no. There was something important hidden in its words. If he could just reach a little farther, he could understand! Zuko applied all of his thought power to this question. "What was different about those days? What happened?" After much struggle, he realized he couldn't remember. Unstable mind states that divided one day into many distinct periods made it difficult to remember how much time had really passed. Which events went with which day?
The dragon tapped him on the shoulder. Two days, it repeated.
Zuko did some quick mental math. The day on which he gave Riri advice to be herself fell within the brief period where he did not have The Nightmare! Using that as a reference, he could locate nearby events. The conversation with Riri. What happened that night? I don't remember. After talking with Riri, I felt so sad. The change in my feelings must be messing with my memory. So he tried a different tactic. He performed more mental math to figure out which of his lessons with the Avatar fell within this time period. The second one definitely did. I taught him how to tell which elements spirits are descended from. Again, he struggled to remember anything else. When he was teaching, he felt completely different from when he did anything else. He couldn't remember what happened before or after that lesson. Gah!
"No wonder I felt so trapped," he snapped. "My whole life is blending together into a swampy mess! It's just a bunch of different things happening to me, and I can't tell how they're related!"
The water spirit drummed its flippers on the ground happily. Then it tapped him on the shoulder again. The Very Nice Little Water Person. She was you. You said to her happy things. No nightmare. Two nights ago, your mind changed. You said angry things to yourself. Nightmare.
Zuko blinked. "I only have The Nightmare after being mean to myself?"
It nodded.
Mallum. I helped him. When she left that night, I felt so peaceful and quiet. Zuko was quite sure he had not had The Nightmare on the night where he helped Mallum, either. "Feeling good about myself prevents it?"
The water spirit nodded again.
"You said my nightmare will show me the way out. So I should do things that make me feel good about myself, and avoid being mean to myself."
Yup.
"If I listen to my ideals, I'll feel guilty and beat myself up for not meeting them. But if I follow my impulses, I'll end up doing things that make me smile and forget about my troubles. So according to you, I should follow my impulses."
The water dragon nodded vigorously.
Zuko crossed his arms. "You could have just said so."
You would not have learned of swamps.
"You can tell the future now?"
Yes.
Zuko started to huff, and cut himself off midway. Wait, what? "You can?"
The water spirit lifted up a stream of water and made it flow in a circle. Then it straightened it out and mimed the stream flowing along the ground like normal, turning into a heavy mist that rose up and acted like a cloud, drops of water falling out of that cloud, and the water collecting into a stream again. The past and the future look very similar, it said.
"Did Aunt Wu really have the gift of prophecy?" Zuko asked.
Yes. She saw these circles. But as she got settled, her own thoughts blinded her. Her power is stronger now, thanks to you.
Zuko narrowed his eyes. "That guy with the shoes. Her prediction was guaranteed to come true, because it made itself true. As soon as she said it, he wore them every day. If she hadn't said it, it wouldn't have come true, but it wouldn't have existed either. Either way, she would have been right." The water dragon vibrated with happiness.
"So what have I been doing with the fishbones? Is that all bunk?"
The water dragon tilted its head like he had said something ridiculous. How could it be? You talk about yourself. You know yourself.
Zuko rolled his eyes. "I talk about myself all the time, but my predictions don't come true. I thought I was going to be Firelord, and look how that turned out."
That was another person's idea blinding you.
"Who says I'm not blinded when I look at the fishbones?"
You think the fishbones are special, so you look at them specially. You put away all ideas.
Zuko groaned. "You're making my head hurt. How did we even start talking about this? Don't answer that; I don't care."
The water spirit trotted away and went back to its digging. Zuko made another fireball. He threw it out, drew it back and caught it. "If the past and the future look identical, does that mean my past is going to come back to haunt me? Am I going to die…that way?"
The water spirit looked up. There are different pasts and different futures, it signed.
Zuko's eyebrow twitched. "How do you tell which past is going to become which future?"
The water dragon started to dance. I know! It's so much fun, isn't it?!
"Spirits are crazy!"