This will be the last chapter of AJITD (A Journey in the Dark). It was originally meant to be considerably longer, but I’ve decided to include much of it through flashbacks in the sequel. The sequel will be called "I Am the Blue Spirit", which is obviously a Blue Spirit/Bluetara fic. It’s a little more self-indulgent than AJITD has been, but it should be pretty good, and I’m eager to get started on it.

By the by, this chapter starts two weeks after the last one left off. A lot of stuff happens in between but you’ll have to read the sequel to find out just what.

Without further ado, read and review please. Enjoy!

His Name is Zuko

Fool. She’d been planning it all along. She’d known what he was going to do, long before he ever knew himself. She’d planted the bait…and he’d fallen into the trap. Fool, he thought the word again. The same word he’d been thinking to himself for the past two weeks since he left Ba Sing Se. The fact wouldn’t change, not until he’d set things to rights.

"I know what I have to do now," he muttered to himself as he observed the stillness of the water before him, sitting among the mountains like a sheet of perfect glass in the moonlight. "It’s just…I’m afraid to do it."

But somewhere inside him, a still, small voice was urging him to press on, to do what he knew to be right, even if fear of rejection stayed his hand. The voice had at first sounded very much like his mother, but now…it was beginning to sound more like himself.

He’d free his uncle, somehow. Then he’d find the Avatar, find Katara, but not to face them as an enemy. He would find them, somehow. And somehow he would earn their forgiveness. And Zuko, Prince of the Fire Nation, would fight alongside the Avatar, Aang, his former rival, to see the fall of Ozai, and the rise of all that the world should be.

Zuko knew his road now. And now, he had but to follow it. Somehow.

The End