Sokka and Zuko spend the rest of the night talking around dinner, telling the story of what happened at the Boiling Rock. I wander away, looking at the Western Air Temple, trying to connect the place of my memories and paintings with what currently exists. I take a torch with me, painting the halls and rooms in eerie light and shadow.

It isn't hard. The majority of the temple seems untouched. There isn't any rubble, but a lot of relics are missing. Probably looters early on, taking what they could.

In the great library, I swing a torch around. There are some spots missing where books or scrolls should be, but everything here looks largely untouched too. Dusty, sure. All the teachings and meditations are here, and some of the old clay tablets before paper. I touch one, longing for its information to come back to me. The information is still inside me, but not the ability to wield the air as easily as I breathe.

Eventually, I make my way back to the fountain where everyone is sleeping. It's cold - the wind is heavy on the side of the cliff. The fire is embers, and I get up close to it. I want to sleep in a room, but I would feel alone again. Being around everyone is nice.

I don't lay down though. I poke my torch back into the fire and wander over to the fountain. There are sections of rocks that have fallen from the ceiling around the fountain. This is really the only sense of destruction I see in the whole temple.

I sit at the edge, looking down and around. There are so many different buildings here, built into the earth. I wonder if the builders of the temple had help from any earthbenders, or if they built it themselves, chiseled out the earth and everything. The Western Air Temple is the largest of the four, and it spans into the night.

Tomorrow, I will visit the statues I've painted so much. I will go up to the mediation circle and try to find myself. I will keep going forward and avoid Zuko as much as possible.

However, he doesn't take this hint. Instead, he sits down next to me, passing me a bowl of slightly warm soup. "Here, you left before we ate," he says, placing it in the space between us. "I know the prison food wasn't very good. Suki ate about five bowls of this."

I nod but make no movement toward the bowl or to thank him.

Zuko does not see my displeasure at him being here, next to me, deep in my own thoughts. "Uncle and I came here first, after I was banished. It is the most preserved of the four temples, mostly because of its location. I took a few scrolls from the library about the Avatars."

"You went into the library and you didn't even take anything on airbending techniques?" I ask, pushing in on him having me teach him the techniques of airbending.

"I was more focused on the fact that Aang probably knew all the other elements now, so his techniques would have differed from what the airbending teachings had."

"You thought Aang was alive for the 100 years, that nobody had seen him?"

Zuko shrugs, looking out into the dark. "I was 13. And angry. And I wanted to go home."

"And now you're 16 and angry and you can't ever go home."

I see Zuko flinch next to me. After a long pause, Zuko says, "I'm not angry anymore." Zuko looks down at his hands, thinking. I scoff, and he looks at me, sincere in his golden eyes. I look away. "I had so much hate and anger for so long, but when I decided to leave and train Aang, I let go of that anger. I couldn't firebend."

"I saw you bend at the Boiling Rock. What are you angry at now?"

Zuko shakes his head. "No, Aang and I went in search of the original firebenders."

"Iroh told me he killed the last dragon."

"He lied. To protect the last one." I think again about how Iroh is so different from his brother. They were raised the same, but Iroh still took a separate path. One of balance to the world. Spirits, I miss Iroh. "Hunting Aang was my drive for firebending for three years, and then it vanished and I couldn't access my inner fire anymore."

"Your bending is different," I say, not quite able to keep my thoughts to myself. "You've changed."

"I want to help Aang defeat my father and restore balance to the world."

"That's very noble of you. It took you betraying Iroh and I to discover that." I stand, looking away from him.

He grabs my hand, pulling me back down into a sitting position. "Zia," he whispers, holding my hand, not letting me go. His warmth is different. It is comforting, and not overbearing and burning like I'm used to. I can't help but look at him. "I want you to forgive me. I want. . . I want you by my side when I take over as Fire Lord. To help guide me." His eyes are so sad, and so full of hope.

But inside me, there is still hurt, and betrayal. Somewhere, far beneath that, I imagine is love for Zuko. But it's so buried by everything else. When he turned his back on his anger, did he push it into me? Our roles have reversed.

"I - I can't forgive you," I say, stern and looking over the edge. The moon is rising over the cliffs, and it is mostly full. I keep my eyes on it, because I can't look at Zuko. Not when he's like this. "I need time before I can feel anything other than betrayal from you."

Zuko lets go of my hand, and I stand again, moving back over to the blanket and sleeping pad someone has set out for me, near the fire and the circle of everyone sleeping. They look so peaceful, and I imagine I won't get much sleep, not with Zuko looking up at me. His eyes are so sad. I shake my head and leave him alone on the side of the building.

Suki said something to me, after I put Zuko in the cooler at the Boiling Rock. That time can heal my feelings for Zuko. Right now, it feels like that is so far away. That the amount of time that will pass is years and decades and centuries away. That there is no version of me in the future that will ever feel love for Zuko again.

Before I begin my wandering around the temple, Aang takes me aside. He is holding a bundle of clothes. Browns, and oranges, and yellows. He found clothes for me.

"I thought you would want these," he says, offering them to me. He has such a big grin on his face. I can't tell him. I can't tell him no.

But I can't wear them.

I shake my head, watching sadness fall across his face. "Aang. I'm sorry. I can't bend anymore. I can't wear these. I don't feel . . . welcome to wear them. Not yet."

After all that I've done.

After all that I still feel.

My anger and my hurt and my desire for revenge.

I cannot accept these robes. I cannot don the clothing of an Air Nomad in training. Because I can't bend anymore. I'm still a nomad, sure, wandering from place to place. But I can't. Not now.

"It's okay. I understand," Aang says, and he sets the clothes down near Appa. Probably to be put on him in the case that I do change my mind.

"I appreciate it, though. Thank you, Aang." I smile, and I touch his shoulder. We hug, but my mind is so far away from this. So far away from the temple around me and the people around me.

"Good! Now I can show you around!" Aang pulls me away, and smiles big again, and starts to pull me away toward the temple itself.

We spend the better part of the morning wandering the temple, Aang next to me, chattering away. He tells me about the two dragons that him and Zuko saw. About the rainbow fire they created, and how Zuko and him learned a dance from him. I take all of this in while only partly listening.

Everything everyone says about Zuko is that he's changed. He's better.

Well, everyone but Katara.

I see the way she glares at him when he spends time with Aang or Sokka alone. The way she snaps at him when he tries to make a joke. How she avoids him at all costs.

Seems like I'm not the only one who still feels betrayed by Zuko.

In the middle of the day, after Aang has taken me to the giant statues and up to the meditation circle, I find Katara alone. She is practicing waterbending around a fountain, far away from the others. There are so many fountains in the Western Air Temple, I'm surprised I find her.

Without saying anything, I sit against a pillar and watch her work. She looks older than when I saw her first - the memory being of when I saw her when Iroh was shot full of lightning by Azula. She looks older, and her hair is loose down her back. Her clothes are still that deep blue of the Water Tribe.

Her movements are so fluid. Granted, I never really witnessed her bending before now, at least not up close. All my interactions with her were very nonexistent, at least in the beginning. I never left the ship.

If I knew about her, about her relationship with Aang, would I have envied her? Been jealous of her?

No. I only turned toward violent emotions after what Zuko did. I did not have the room within me for envy or jealousy.

"Zia, right?" Katara asks, moving over to me. I nod. "I'm Katara. Aang told me that you're not able to bend anymore. I can't imagine how hard that must be."

I shrug, pushing those thoughts away. "I've had a few months to get used to it. Iroh thinks I used up the majority of my spiritual energy to stay alive in the iceberg." Plus, I have more time for other things now. Painting. Existing.

Katara sits next to me, and we sit in a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Finally, I say, "So, you hate Zuko too?"

She laughs, but it carries no joy. It echoes across the pillars around us. Katara settles down, her arm brushes against me. "Yeah, I don't trust him."

"Good. I don't either."

Katara isn't surprised by this either. "I thought he had changed. In the crystal catacombs in Ba Sing Se. I thought he was a person - he lost his mother to the Fire Nation too - we had something in common. It brought it into perspective that he wasn't just a creature spawned by the Fire Lord."

"Yeah, then he left Iroh and I entombed in some crystal and fought with Azula. I know how this ends." With Azula striking Aang with lightning, and him falling, and Katara catching him. Her face looked so hurt then. I don't bother to repeat these thoughts, and Katara doesn't bring them up either.

"The Air Nomads used to believe peace and balance was possible, even on a personal revenge was a two-headed viper. You kill your enemy, but then you poison yourself. I just - I can't do that. I can't be not bothered by what Zuko did to me. To Iroh. To Aang."

Katara is silent for a long time. Eventually, she places a hand on my back, and it is warm. "I understand, Zia. I do. I don't trust him - this transformation is abrupt after what he did at Ba Sing Se."

After dinner, Zuko finds me alone, reading against the moonlight. The moon is full, and I take advantage to continue to flip through the old scrolls from the library. It is a description early on in Avatar Yangchen's birth - that gap period where an Avatar dies and the new one is quite old enough to shoulder any burdens. It details the Platinum Affair, which led to every nation except the Air Nomads preferring isolationism.

All political nonsense seems like nations being petty with one another. The Platinum Affair feels no different. It blocked normal people from the nations from moving freely. The only people that could do so were the Air Nomads. An Earth King melted down some platinum ingots and made a giant badgermole statue, saying he would end isolationism when the platinum tarnished.

"Can I sit here?" someone says, and I look up. It's Zuko.

Holding my bo.

I shoot up, and he steps back, unsure.

Tied around the bo, twinned together, is the dove necklace and the last remnants of my original Air Nomad clothing.

Following my gaze, Zuko offers the bo out. "I took it with me when I left Ba Sing Se. I thought - I thought you would want it whenever we saw each other again."

I scoff. Whenever I got out of prison? I accept the bo. It isn't my original airbending staff, but the wood is worn. It is mine. I remember wanting to carve my own story into the bo, to make it mine. To share something of me with it. What would I carve now? What story of mine would I tell?

Zuko continues to stand awkwardly next to me. I look up, realizing that Zuko has done me a kindness. A favor. An olive branch.

"Thank you," I say. He nods. Because I don't offer anything else, he turns around and leaves me alone.

I sit back down, holding the bo in my hands. I unwind the cloth and the necklace, holding them in my hands, thinking that I could drop the necklace and be done with Zuko forever. He would see me let go of the necklace and it would fall into the abyss below the temple and neither of us would ever be able to find it again.

But Suki and the monks and Aang all ring around in my head. Fighting for space alongside Katara and I's distrust for Zuko.

But Katara is right. Zuko isn't just a creature spawned by the Fire Lord. He's a person, with flaws, and mistakes. And I told Iroh I would be there to help guide Zuko to the right path. I hold both the necklace and the cloth and the bo on my lap, and they all point toward the Zuko I fell in love with. The one on the run from the Fire Nation, the one in Ba Sing Se. The one that changed.

And this Zuko tells me he's changed. His drive for bending is different, and he came here, and Aang trusts him.

Spirits, Aang trusts him.

I tie the cloth and the necklace back together, winding them into a twist and wrapping them around the bo. I fall asleep with the bo just out of my reach, reaching for an answer, for some form of guidance, for some sign that I can trust Zuko again. Somewhere, in the future, I can believe in the good in him.