It was a late fall evening, and Zuko was spending it, as was his habit, working at his desk — he was supposed to be eating, but, as usual, he'd forgotten.  There was a soft knock, and then the door opened, letting Kouji in.  "Hey, Zu," he said with a small smile.

The Firelord looked up. "Hey. What's up?"

"You need to eat," said the boy matter-of-factly.  "And before you try to say that there are more important things to do, I was thinking we could swipe some of the pomegranates by the wall."

The teenager considered for a long moment. "...Fine. Ten minutes."

Kouji laughed and grabbed his hand.  "C'mon, Zu!"  He eagerly led the older boy out to the wall.

Zuko followed, a little less unwillingly than he pretended. Truth to tell, it was nice to stretch his legs.  And it was nice to see Kouji acting like the twelve-year-old he was, rather than the adult he tried to be.  Besides, he loved pomegranates,  and someone had probably told Kouji that.

The boy took a running start and leapt towards one of the lower-hanging branches on the tree, batting at the fruit hanging on it.  Boy and fruit then tumbled to the ground, Kouji trying to turn in the air so he wouldn't squish it on landing.

"Are you okay?" Zuko asked.

"Yeah, fine," Kouji laughed.  Then his eyes shot to something past Zuko's shoulder, and widened.  "ZUKO!"

"What—"

Kouji's free arm slammed against the ground, and the earth under Zuko's feet pitched, throwing the Firelord to one side—

And a large boulder, heavy enough to crush a skull, lodged into the ground.  From the angle it had been fired from, it would have certainly killed the Firelord.

"Kouji, run!" the teenager shouted, preparing to defend himself.

Instead, Kouji rolled onto his feet, running between Zuko and the place the attack had come from.  To the Firelord's shock, the boy slid into a bending stance.

"Kouji, get out of here!" Zuko cried, shooting fire over the younger boy's head at their attackers.

"I won't leave you!"  A boulder slammed towards them; Kouji raised his hands quickly and opened his fists, and the stone shattered into dust that rained over the two of them.

"Go! Get out of here! I need you to be safe!"

"I wo—"

Stone hands slammed into Kouji's shoulders, throwing him to the ground.  Before he could rise, one of the attackers yelled, "Kouji!  Your sister needs you!"

The boy went utterly still.

Zuko's eyes widened, then narrowed. Oh, hell no. He dodged another hit, then ran for Kouji and slapped him as hard as he could, hoping that would snap him out of it.

The twelve-year-old gasped, and his eyes, curiously blank, returned to normal.  "Zuko—?"

"Run," the Firelord whispered, then turned back to the Dai Li.

Horrified, Kouji obeyed.

Zuko, now completely surrounded, bared his teeth in a feral sort of grin. "Bring it on."

And then a chain wrapped around the neck of one of the surrounding men, jerking him back.  In the empty space that was left, blue fire flared, catching the earthbender next to where he had been moments before.  Not a second later, Haru had barrelled through the gap, his eyes blazing and his trophy chain held at the ready.  He stopped just beside Zuko.

The Dai Li seemed intent on keeping these reinforcements away from the Firelord — who was taking an alarming number of hits.

Noting this, Haru yelled, "Ichiro!" as his chain lashed out again.  A boulder shot for Zuko, only to be struck by the bladed end of a kusari-gama and shattered.  The scythe was jerked back to its owner — Kouji?

No, not Kouji. This young man was several years older. A little disoriented, Zuko dragged himself to his feet once more to keep fighting back — and was promptly knocked down again.  Not-Kouji came to stand just behind the Firelord as Haru rotated to stand in front of him; together, the two young men began a strange defence of blue fire, leaping rocks, and whirling chains.

Zuko had never felt quite so useless in all his life.

Between Haru's sturdiness and Not-Kouji's near-uncanny speed and grace, the attacking Dai Li were taken down.  Zuko, as soon as the threat was neutralized, dragged himself to his feet and stumbled off after Kouji.

"Hey, wait!" yelped the earthbender.  He ran after Zuko and caught him by the shoulder.  "You need to get checked out."

The Firelord jerked away, wobbled a bit, and shook his head. "I'm going after Kouji."

"Zu, Kouji was—"

"Controlled, I know. Wasn't his fault."

"You don't know what else they've triggered him to do," Haru argued.  "I know it isn't his fault, but you can't be alone with him."

"You can follow if you want."

"At least get healed up first!" exclaimed Haru.

"No. I'm going to find him now, he's just a kid, he'll get lost — "

"Or worse," said Not-Kouji.  "He won't."

"Exactly. I'm already behind, I need to catch up."

"You can barely walk straight!" Haru snapped, exasperated.

"I'm fine," Zuko snapped back. "And I'm going after Kouji now. You can come with me or not, whatever you prefer."

"Sparky—"

"Just go," said Not-Kouji.  "I'm going too.  Wings can carry a message to the Dragon of the West when we stop for the night."

"Fine," the Firelord muttered, then continued stumbling off after his young aide.

After several hours, it took both Haru and Not-Kouji — actually named Ichiro, and as it turned out, he was Kouji's older brother — to convince Zuko to stop for awhile.  It also took some threats of sinking the other teenager waist-deep into the earth on Haru's part.

Zuko, somewhat sulkily, complied to a brief rest, and half-collapsed onto the ground, pale as snow.  Haru took advantage of this to treat Zuko's injuries while Ichiro wrote a message to General Iroh, explaining what had happened and what they were doing, before sending it to the palace attached to his pet sparrowkeet.

When Haru was done cleaning him up, Zuko impatiently demanded they get moving again right away.  The other two, however, insisted they rest longer, since by now Kouji had to have collapsed for some sleep.

"Then we should use this time to narrow the gap between us, catch up to him faster," Zuko pointed out.

"Don't worry about it," said Ichiro calmly.  "Kouji is a glorified clerk.  He can't get too far ahead."

 

*          *          *

 

Clinging tightly to the papers shoved in her hands before he and Haru had gone pelting off, a slender preteen tried to find the general's office.  It wasn't easy — the palace was rather labyrinthine to any unused to it, and the fear she was picking up from her twin brother wasn't helping her orient herself at all.

Eventually, however, she succeeded. The old man looked up, a little surprised to see an unfamiliar girl there. "Can I help you?"

"Haru sent me," was what she started to say.  What actually happened was that she said, "Haru se—" before sharp pain assailed both of her shoulders, followed by pain on her back.  She gasped, "Kouji!" and dropped the papers.

"Miss? What's wrong? What happened?"

She shook her head, trying to cut back on her awareness of her brother.  "Haru sent me," she managed to get out this time, gathering the papers again.  "He said I needed to give them to you — he and my brother went running off to take care of something, I don't know what…"

Iroh scanned the papers and went several shades paler. Only the child's presence kept him from swearing.

And then the entire palace shook.

"Wait here," he told the girl, then ran off to find the source of the shaking.

He found Zuko's guards, all dead, and a number of Dai Li agents, some unconscious, some dead.  One of the pomegranate trees was burning, and that portion of the wall was a loss.  Iroh quickly put the fire out, and summoned guards to take the surviving agents.

Soon after, a frightened page came running.  "The Firelord is missing!" she blurted to Iroh. 

Once again, Iroh refrained from cursing. Barely.  The girl, not even ten years old, hopped from foot to foot, unsure of what to do.  "Go back inside," he told her, a little more tersely than he usually was with pages.

The girl bowed and fled.

Iroh gave instructions for the guards to search for any sign of his nephew, then returned to his study and the girl who'd brought those papers.

She had curled up in a corner of his office and was crying quietly, so soft that he could barely hear her.

He reached out and rested a hand on her shoulder. "Miss?"

Startled, the girl gasped and looked up at him with wide amber eyes.

And there it was in the structure of her face, the curve of the jaw, the shape of the eyes themselves, if not the colour: Kouji.

Seeing that, he silently offered her a hug — he'd ask her for details after she'd cried herself out.  The child was quick to accept the comfort he offered; she might have been nearly thirteen, but she was clearly afraid, and had been left alone in a strange place.  He soothed her as best he could, and after several minutes, she calmed down enough to be coherent.

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" he asked, quietly, after making sure she was feeling better.

"What do you want to know?" she asked in turn, wiping her eyes.

"Anything you can tell me," he replied.

"I… don't know a lot," she admitted.  "Ichi-ni and Haru didn't talk where I could hear."

"Every little bit helps," he assured her.

Hesitantly, the girl told him what she knew: that Haru had arrived at their colony, seeking out a Dai Li cell; that Ichiro, having been part of the group that had taken it out a year before, had volunteered to guide Haru there; that both young men had arrived back at her home at a flat run, where Ichiro had broken into their father's study and gone digging through the desk; that Haru had had to hold Ichiro back and yell at him once he had seen some of the papers there; that Ichiro had told her to pack her things in the scariest voice she'd ever heard from him; and that they'd left as soon as she was.

Iroh nodded. "Thank you for your help," he said. "Why don't I find a room for you to stay in, as long as you're here?"

"Okay," she said, very quietly.

He smiled reassuringly at her. "Don't worry. Everything's going to be fine." He rang for a page, to whom he gave instructions to set up a room for the girl.  Meekly, the girl went off after the page, leaving Iroh time to consider the implications of the papers, the fact that Haru had yet to report in, and the missing Firelord.

 

*          *          *

 

Years of chasing after his twin sister had conditioned Kouji for long-distance travel more than Ichiro realised.  Despite several months of cushy living, the preteen still remembered how to forage and hunt, and how to keep going for hours at a time without completely exhausting himself.  After Zuko had told him to run, he hadn't stopped moving until he was near collapse; by altering between jogging and walking, Kouji was able to put that off for hours.  When exhaustion finally brought him down, he soaked his aching feet in the river he'd decided to follow while he ate, then he crawled under a bush to sleep.

The boy woke screaming, having relived his unwitting betrayal of Zuko in his dreams — only this time, he had been utterly frozen, unable to help his beloved Firelord, only able to watch in horror as the Dai Li crushed him in a rockslide.  Fighting the tears that threatened to overwhelm him, Kouji crept out of his nest and began moving again. 

Zuko had ordered him to run.

He would obey as though it was the last order the Firelord would ever give — which it very well might have been.

The boy kept up this routine for some time, very quickly losing track of the days, focusing only on escaping his shame, his self-hatred, and any possible chance of being used against Zuko again.  When he ran out of land, he bartered passage to another island in the archipelago.  Eventually, he wound up stumbling across ruins in an architectural style he didn't recognise; the shock cut through his mental daze and froze him for several minutes as he just stared.

"Ozai's beard," he whispered, then made his way towards those ruins.  Maybe he could hide there.

Maybe forever.

Something crooned behind him.

Startled, Kouji paused on the edge of the wall he'd just started climbing down and turned his head.  On the ground beneath him was a three-foot-long black lizard with delicate, half-formed wings.

"What the…?"

The lizard crooned again and tried to hop up to join him, fluttering its still-useless wings madly.

"No, wait!" cried Kouji, letting go with one hand and reached down to try and stop her.  "Don't—"  The rock under his other hand crumbled, and Kouji plummeted to the ground.

The lizard shrieked, but the boy didn't move.  He lay where he'd fallen, looking nothing so much like a child's discarded doll — except for the slow trickle of blood from under his head.

The lizard remained, keening over him, until help arrived.