The air shimmered, and the world blinked.

One moment, Aang was balanced mid-air, eyes glowing, spirit energy coiling at his fingertips like celestial thread. The next, a rift opened with the low hum of bending gone sideways. Katara’s hands went to her mouth. Zuko stepped forward instinctively, unsure whether to reach for his sword or his breath.

And then she fell.

From nowhere. From another world entirely.

She was soft light and silence, hair glinting like cloud-split moonlight, robes the hue of mist and pearl. No tattoos. No staff. No warning. Her body was limp, barely a breath in her chest as Aang shouted something incoherent and Katara dropped to her knees.

Zuko caught her before her skull met the palace marble. She was warm. Lighter than she should’ve been. And when he looked down, her expression—despite the unconsciousness—was strangely serene, like someone who dreamed in wind.

Iroh insisted she be placed in one of the sunlit guest wings. “The spirits have returned what was stolen,” he muttered cryptically over tea. He watched her sleep with a soft smile, already preparing ginseng infusions and whispering about fate and destiny and "finally, some peace in this house."

She woke the next morning and bent the air so delicately it didn't seem bent at all. Curtains rustled with precision. Petals lifted in quiet spirals around her. She didn’t stomp the wind—she invited it. Danced with it.

Aang followed her like a wide-eyed child. Katara kept glancing sideways at Zuko. And Iroh, well—Iroh declared loudly at dinner that she looked perfect in Fire Nation red, then immediately ordered three bolts of silk. For “diplomatic unity,” of course.

She stayed. Not because anyone ordered it, but because there was nowhere else to go. No temples. No sky bison. No other her.

Zuko told himself it was temporary. A diplomatic situation. A courtesy.

But every day, she wandered barefoot through the palace gardens, talking to turtleducks. Every day, she floated past him in soft swirls of fabric that never seemed to touch the ground. Every day, she showed Iroh another airbending move from a world where peace had never been shattered by war.

And every week, Iroh sighed louder. Smiled wider. Planted more red peonies in her path.

Until finally, late one evening, as she disappeared around a corner like a breeze in human form, Zuko stood in her wake and whispered to the empty air:

“…I’m completely doomed, aren’t I?”