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Chapter Text

Katara 

    When the first boat of refugees from the Southern Air Temple hit their shores, the members of the Southern Water Tribe accepted them with open arms. The second, the third, and the fourth were welcomed the same. Her tribe made space in their homes to invite strangers from a different culture into the safety and warmth around their hearths. Katara remembered almost every detail of those days so vividly. The colors of the men’s clothes, the strangeness of their pin-straight hair, or lack thereof, the paleness of their skin; all new and intriguing to a precocious six-year-old. Katara remembered her parents whispering in hushed, harsh, tones with each other and the other members of the tribe but she wasn’t old enough to understand what was happening, not yet.

    It was the fifth boat that brought the plague to their perfect arctic paradise. 

    Each boat brought reunion and heart ache alike, and at the first spotting of a small wooden vessel on the horizon, the Air Nomads began to crowd anxiously at the shores waiting to see if their loved ones had made it out. It had been days since the last ship of survivors had made land. So long even, that they had already written off anyone else having survived the long trip. Some would have made their way to other refuges but those that took this path would not have survived on the water that long. The cold air, lack of fresh water, and their unwillingness to eat meat if they were even able to catch fish, meant that their survival had been unlikely even in the first few days. 

    There was only one man left alive on the fifth boat. 

    Katara had been playing in the snow with the other girls, building their own hunting shelter. They were only a few yards away from Gran-Gran's house.

    There was a loud commotion, but it was hard to tell where from as the snow that covered everything obscured sounds. They didn’t fully stop building, but one by one they slowed as the sound grew louder. Katara was too young to be afraid but old enough to understand that this was not a normal occurrence. 

    The first runner passed them, arms and legs pumping, and his labored breathing was audible as he sprinted up to Gran-Gran’s door. 

    Katara stopped working then, her arms stayed propped up against the brick of compacted snow she had placed, and she watched.

    The runner was waving his arms emphatically, and then he was pulled into the house. 

    The second runner was her mother. 

    “Mom,” she called, and the ghost of a smile crossed her face before falling. Her mother seemed not to hear her, and she flung the door open and entered her mother-in-law’s house in a panic. 

    “Should we see what’s going on?” The girl to her left asked, and Katara frowned in response. 

    Then, the pack came. A group of four Water Tribe men shuffled down the same path as everyone before them. In their arms they bore the orange and yellow robed figure of an Air Nomad. All of the girls, without speaking, put down what they were doing and moved to watch more closely as the morbid parade made its way across the densely packed snow.

    Katara could see the Air Nomad now, his head was lolled back. She watched him in horror as they carried him through the door. His face was a pale mask, his skin waxy and yellowed, and his eyes were shut tight. 

    “What’s wrong with him?” She found herself asking without thinking, but none of the other girls had an answer. 

    After a second, her father emerged from Gran-Gran’s front door. 

    He must have been one of the men carrying the Air Nomad, but she had been too transfixed on the sickly man to notice him. 

    “Katara, go home,” he commanded, his voice shaking, “when Sokka gets home, eat dinner. Your mother and I are staying to help mom heal that man.” 

    “What’s wrong with him?” She echoed her earlier question.

    “He’s just dehydrated and starving, nothing your Gran-Gran’s sea prunes and some sleep can’t fix,” but he did not meet her eyes and his voice lacked its usual confidence. 

    She felt a part of her brow crease that would soon become commonplace, “Dad, I’m scared.”

    “Don’t be scared, Katara, go home and eat dinner and we’ll try to be home by bedtime. Stay inside.”

    Her parents were not home by bedtime, but the following morning when she woke up, her father was sitting at their table. 

    Their house had only three rooms. Mostly constructed from wood, and chinked with moss, the outside was surrounded by thick blocks of ice that didn’t even melt at the warmest time of the year. The main room, where she sat, was cold everywhere except for right in front of the embers of the fire that Sokka had stayed up to stoke throughout the night. 

    She went right for him, normally she would go right to the fire in the morning while her mother served breakfast, usually singing and dancing her way between the large table and the pot that would be simmering above the fire. 

    He startled, shifting back in his chair slightly before wrapping her up in his arms and pulling her up onto his lap. 

    He was silent, and all of her racing thoughts from the night before were silenced by his presence so she chose not to break the spell. She rubbed her face into the soft leather of his worn tunic, inhaling the scent of her father like it could soothe the fears that had been growing within her since she’d seen the sick man. 

    The front door opened, and Katara broke from her father’s embrace hoping to see her mother walk through the door, but it was Sokka returning from the outhouse.

    “Where’s mom?” She asked, looking up at the tired face of her father.

    “Sit down, Sokka, we need to talk.”

    She scrambled off his lap, and she slipped into the chair her grandfather had made when he’d first married Gran-Gran. It was a pale driftwood chair with arms that had at one time been squared at the end, but use had rounded them to softer edges. 

    He looked at his hands on the table. 

    She thought about their size in relation to her own, and placed her hands on the table the same way he did. 

    “Your mom is staying with Gran-Gran for a while. That man had a sickness... we’re not sure it’s safe for her to come home for a little while. 

    “Like the coughing sickness?” Sokka asked, recalling stories of the plague that had devastated their community when they had been very young. 

    He didn’t respond for a moment, but eventually he slowly said, “like the coughing sickness.”

    Sokka nodded gravely and swung his legs over the edge of his chair, “are you going to cook breakfast then?”

    Her father laughed, a hollowed version of his normally boisterous laugh, and then put his hands to his face and took in a deep breath that was followed by a shaky sigh, “yes, of course, breakfast.”

    “When will mommy come home?” Katara asked, better at sensing the emotions rolling off her father like frozen black waves. 

    He kept his hands over his face when he spoke, and in his new hollow voice told her, “I’m not sure, my heart, but soon.”

    It was a lie. She never saw her mother alive again. 

Zuko

    The first person in Zuko’s family to die was Lu-Ten. 

    Several cohorts of soldiers had been deployed when the first reports of the illness made their way to the Fire Nation Parliament. Under the guise of sending medical aid to suffering people, the Fire Nation sent their soldiers to almost every corner of the globe. Zuko remembered crying when Iroh and Lu-Ten were deployed. He remembered his dad laughing at him, and taunting him. His mother, who normally resigned herself to silence, only spoke up once Azula joined in on the teasing as well. It was barely a month before the court was abuzz with rumors of the illness. Zuko and Azula were banned from going to Caldera City and trapped behind the walls of the palatial estate of the Fire Lord. They were given no information, but at 8 years old Zuko was not very interested in learning about a plague on the other side of the world. 

    It wasn’t until a year after Iroh and Lu-Ten had left, that the plague would become a presence in Zuko’s life. On a spring day hotter than any on record for the time of year, Zuko was splashing in the pool with Azula and her best friends when the letter arrived. His mother appeared, wringing her wrists under the flowing sheer sleeves of her gown, and called for them to get out of the pool immediately and change into robes to meet with their grandfather. 

    Azula was curious, unable to sense the doom rolling off of their mother’s bidding, but Zuko could tell something was wrong. He scrambled out of the pool, cold fear settling into the bottom of his stomach as he hurried toward his room, Azula at his heels, badgering him with questions about why they were going to see Azulon. 

    Once they knew what had happened to Lu-Ten, it seemed like Zuko’s life began a rapid downhill descent. 

    In the months following Lu-Ten’s death by the plague, Zuko’s normally irritable father became cruel. He withdrew from their family almost completely, spending his time in locked meeting rooms with advisors Zuko had never seen before. When Ozai did interact with them, he was haggard, distracted, and flew off the handle at the slightest provocation. It was then that his father hit him for the first time, but far from the last time. 

    Iroh didn’t come home from the Earth Kingdom until a few weeks before the year anniversary of Lu-Ten’s death. His normally lively uncle was now hollow-eyed and ghostly. He drifted through the halls of their ancestral palace like a specter, clinging to the shadows and disappearing when looked at directly. Zuko had been too young to understand what trauma his uncle had been through. His father told him that Iroh was weak, and he believed it.

    The second person in Zuko’s family to die was his grandfather. 

    Two years after the first reports of the illness in the Earth Kingdom, it finally made its way into the most heavily guarded place in the Fire Nation. They weren’t sure how the outbreak made it to the palace. All Zuko knew was that one second his grandfather was alive, and the next second one of the kitchen staff was ripping into his neck with her teeth. 

    Servants moved throughout the room during these meetings so frequently that they were practically invisible, but he knew the woman who did it; she was kind. She used to sneak him extra dumplings or rice when his father had sent him to his room without dinner, but now, she was different. Her skin was sallow and sapped of all color, her eyes were bloodied where they should have been white, and she snarled animalistically as she bit and shook the neck of the most important man in the country like she was a rabid tiger-monkey. 

    The members of the council sat struck still as if they had turned to stone. Zuko, alone, rose to his tremulous legs and stumbled forward, shouting for his grandfather. He watched as the dark blood flowed, then gushed down his grandfather’s wrinkled neck and disappeared into the crimson silk of his robe. The now bloodied kitchen staff member looked up from his grandfather’s neck to growl at him menacingly.

    Iroh, who had been sitting next to Zuko, leapt from his seat with a shout and grabbed Zuko by his collar, pulling him away from the scene.

    They ran through the halls, Iroh’s hand clasped tightly to Zuko’s. Iroh forced him down the hall despite his feet feeling like lead. He had to focus on not tripping and just staying up right but it was hard to ignore the crescendo of screaming that began in their wake. 

    Iroh dragged him down the maze of hallways until they reached Zuko’s bedroom. Iroh slammed the heavy door behind them and the two sat panting, catching their breath for a moment before Zuko turned to Iroh, horrified.

    “What about grandfather? What happened? Why did she attack him? Are we all”-

    “Hush, Zuko,” Iroh admonished him sternly, his ear pressed to the door listening. 

    Zuko began to cry quietly, remembering the look on Azulon's face as he’d been... eaten.

    Zuko could think of no better verb to describe what he had witnessed. 

    After another moment he reached out and grabbed onto the sleeve of Iroh’s robe. 

    Iroh turned to him, and scooped him up into his arms, pulling him away from the door and into the interior chamber of the room. 

    “Wait here.” 

    Iroh put him on his bed and Zuko waited while he dragged furniture around in the other room and then came back again panting. 

    He shut the doors connecting Zuko’s bedroom to the antechamber, “no one has told you about what happened when I was in the Earth Kingdom... when I”- Izroh’s voice cut off as he slid the dresser in front of the door he’d just closed. 

    “No, mother said there” - Zuko stopped, his heart sunk to the pit of his stomach like a stone, “mother,” he whispered, looking up at Iroh.

    Iroh, intuiting his train of thought, shook his head, “I don’t know about Ursa, Zuko, I will look for her and Azula once everything has calmed down,” his eyes caught the light as they filled with tears, “there was a sickness in the Earth Kingdom, Zuko, a terrible sickness. Your cousin- my Lu Ten - he got the sickness from a man in the camp and he... he tried to attack me too. It changes people,” his voice was choked when he finished.

    “Changes them? How?” 

    “They become violent... Fire Lord Azulon did not believe me but... you can not let them bite you, Zuko, or even scratch you. Do you understand?”

    Zuko, shivering, confused, wondered if that meant his grandfather was sick now, it hadn’t seemed like he could survive with how much blood he’d lost but... “can they get better?” 

    “I don’t think so, Zuko,” Iroh admitted, staring away from him and at the door intently. 

    “How do I know who is sick?” He began to worry, wondering if either of them could be sick and not realize it.

    “The infected can’t speak, they’re...” Iroh cleared his throat and seemed to steel himself before speaking, “Zuko, they’re already dead, no matter who it is, they’re never coming back. It starts the moment they’re bit,” Iroh held his gaze intently despite the tears welling in his eyes, “I need you to promise me you understand that.”

    “Uncle,” Zuko whimpered.

    “Promise me, nephew,” Iroh demanded, “no matter who it is. Run or fight, but don’t let them touch you.” 

    At ten years old he was no stranger to combat training. As the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, no matter how ceremonial the position had become, he was expected to be a mighty warrior, but this was beyond what he had trained for and he had never considered actually using his training in real life. Still, he looked into his uncle’s eyes and resolved himself to say the words even if he couldn’t begin to understand their weight, “I promise.”

    “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, Zuko, but if you’re going to survive”- there was a knocking sound from behind them, the wall where there was a small hidden door that would recess to reveal a narrow hallway that connected the Crown Prince’s room to a series of passages the skirted the walls of the palace.

    Iroh ran to the door and held it from being moved, “who’s there?” his voice thundered like the general Zuko had been told he was. 

    “Uncle Iroh?” Azula’s normally harsh voice cried pitifully from behind the wall.

    Iroh flung the door open quickly and pulled Azula through the small door, “Azula... let me see you.” 

    He held her back out and inspected her, before putting her down and looking through the passage, “did you shut the door behind you?”

    “Mother did, Uncle, she shut the door behind me, someone came into the room, they were bleeding, they were”- 

    Iroh turned and closed the door, hurriedly bringing the bedside table in front of it and then turning to them.

    “Uncle, there were people biting each other in the hallway, what’s going on?” She slammed her foot down to the ground and demanded, her voice shrill with fear. 

    “It’s an evil sickness, Azula,” Iroh stopped, and dropped himself into the velvet armchair that sat next to the fireplace on the edge of the room, “did your mother get bit, Azula?”

    “I- I don’t,” Azula thought for a second and seemed to get upset, “I don’t know, I didn’t see.” 

    Iroh nodded and leaned forward in his chair, covering his eyes with his hands and breathing deeply through his nose. He muttered to himself “thought we were exaggerating... that our isolation would save us... but it’s here in the palace...”.

    For a while, it was the only sound that filled the room, but once their ears adjusted to the quiet, they could hear the sounds of yelling and then the silences that followed abruptly. Zuko clung to his pillow and rocked while imagining as many scenarios as he could that ended with his mother being fine.

    The third person in Zuko’s family to die was his mother, but at least, if he didn’t know how she died, he could pretend she hadn’t. 

Chapter Text

Katara’s ears were perked to hear any sounds, but all she could hear was the crunching of leaves and pine needles as she slowly made her way across the hard packed dirt and detritus material of the woods. After twelve years, she should have been used to the sound of crackling leaves but her heart still longed for the deafening blanket of snow that had muffled her steps in the South Pole.

She knew Sokka and Suki were in the woods flanking her, and Aang was somewhere ahead, but the eerie silence had the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck standing at attention. Even the sounds of birds, the buzzing of flies, or the scurrying of rodents in the underbrush, were conspicuously absent. She had learned enough since leaving home to know that an absence of signs of life in these woods could only mean one thing: a predator was near. And while this area was lacking in natural predators, it was overrun with an invasive species. 

It was cold for the beginning of spring, but Katara’s forehead beaded with sweat. Her body was wrapped in furs and leather straps to protect her skin, and the anticipation of what they might come across had her heart galloping. The sun, though not early enough in the year to heat the earth, soaked into the dark furs enveloping her. Underneath her wrappings her arms sweat.

Somewhere above her, a bird took flight from a tree.

The sound caused her to pause, she wondered what the bird had seen that caused it to flee. She hoped it was only her presence, or that of one of her small tribe that was fanned out amongst the trees. Fear loomed heavily on the edges of her mind, though it never really left now.  It lived with her, and she was able to shove it down when it was necessary, but she would never get used to being prey. Not entirely. 

A trill ran through the air, the first sound from another human she’d heard since they’d begun their trek through the wood what seemed like hours ago. She recognized the signal as one of Sokka’s hunting calls, though it came from in front of her where Aang was running point, and it made terror sweep through her body. 

Of the many hunting calls they used to communicate with each other, this one could only mean bad news. 

Humans.

 Even with monsters lurking in every shadow, it was humans that scared Katara the most, and it wasn’t even just humans; it was the only group of humans that got their own special signal.

 Fire Nation Soldiers. 

Katara's role after hearing the call was to wait while the other two came in from the sides and Aang turned around. So, she waited.

It didn’t take long for them to find each other, they didn’t stray too far usually, and the three of them watched Aang with worry etched into the lines of their prematurely aged, and dirt covered, faces. 

 He grimaced once he was in earshot and leaned in when he was close enough to whisper, “I only saw one, on look out it seemed, couldn’t tell how many there were.”

“All the way out here,” Suki mumbled, “what could they need this far outside of their walls?”

“Who knows,” Sokka shrugged, “do you think we could take ‘em?”

Aang looked at him worriedly and wobbled his head indecisively, “I didn’t get a good enough look, there could be a whole squad,” he admitted. 

“Let’s check it out,” Sokka commanded, “lead the way, Aang.” 

They crept through the woods with all of the stealth they could muster, and while not all of Suki’s lessons had stuck with Katara, she had a hard time believing Sokka could still be this bad without purposefully stepping on every branch in his path. 

Aang led them to a tree and then crouched. She had no time to admonish him for just how far ahead he had been, she barely had time to crouch before they were almost discovered. 

Just beyond the tree line a dilapidated Earth Kingdom village sat, desolate, except for one lone figure. The midday sun shone harshly after their time beneath the trees. The glare made it almost impossible to see the face of the man in the dented Fire Nation armor who stood at the perimeter of the town watching the woods. Almost, but not quite. 

To her horror, and a small amount of relief, the man in armor turned to look toward them.  She knew that Fire Nation soldier. She cursed silently and watched him through a small opening in the leaves of the shrub she hid behind.

She would have recognized that scar anywhere. 

She couldn’t help but notice how he looked... different. He was wearing Fire Nation armor again, but not the clean, polished, full uniform befitting his rank that he used to wear. The last time she’d seen him he’d been wearing olive drab and traveling with Earth Kingdom survivors, and she had barely noticed, but somehow the dirty, half uniform seemed even more out of place on him than civilian clothing. 

Her hand found her necklace, tied even tighter now that she’d lost it once, and she grasped onto it without thinking. She had been furious when she first found out that he had it, but they went months without seeing each other, so eventually she had just been glad to see it again.

That didn’t mean she forgave him for trying to trade it for the cat-deer Suki had shot, and it certainly didn’t constitute the reason why she was less afraid of him than other Fire Nation soldiers. 

For a while, Zuko had been their biggest threat. She used to be more afraid when she would catch the purple and red of his scar underneath a helmet, or saw the plume of his distinctive ponytail, then she would when they came across a group of the infected. Now though, she would rather come across Zuko and his kind uncle than any other group of survivors. Not that she was excited to see him, but if they had to have an altercation, better the devil she knew then the devil she didn’t. 

  “I wonder how many are with him this time?’ Sokka whispered, but his whisper was the same volume as most people’s conversational tone, so she glared at him instead of answering. 

“I don’t know, I didn’t see anyone else. I didn’t even see his uncle,” Aang whispered back. 

“I hope Iroh’s ok,” Katara mumbled, and continued watching Zuko through the leaves. 

“Iroh’s Fire Nation, too, remember?” Sokka shot back.

She shushed him loudly instead of responding. 

“We could just wait,” Suki cautioned, the only one whispering quietly enough to maintain stealth. 

“Or we could just attack,” Sokka countered.

“That almost never works out in our favor,” Suki reminded him, and grabbed Aang by the forearm, yanking him back down, as he had begun to try to poke his head up to see the village. 

“I want to see,” he complained.

Katara shushed him, and she exchanged a glance with Suki. 

“Go around the tree and climb up it from behind then,” Suki advised him, not looking away from where Zuko stood.

“There’s no way he hasn’t heard anything yet,” Katara mumbled quietly, only Suki had heard her, and her observation set the other woman on edge. 

Yet, Zuko was completely facing away from them when she looked back.

Aang popped up and took a quick peak.

Katara’s anger flared, “ sit down, ” she hissed, and Suki pulled him back down by the arm again.

This time though, Aang lost his balance. A domino effect rippled through the group. Aang fell into Katara, knocking her out of her squat and into her brother, who had been paying so little attention that he was knocked over completely, falling not only on his ass, but out from behind the bush. 

There was a moment where time stood still, and Katara watched as Sokka looked out at the town and then sheepishly turned back to them, “I think he saw us.”

Katara had seen Prince Zuko before she’d actually interacted with him. 

She had been standing in a small courtyard enclosed on all sides by concrete walls. She was sweating from her brow and upper lip. She could feel the heat through the rough linen of the hood they had forced over her head even though she could not see the sun. Her heart was beating wildly, and despite her fear, she was still trying to think of a way out.  

Their plan to take back control of Kyoshi from the Fire Nation had failed, and their time at the Kyoshi Island Safe Zone had come to an abrupt and violent end. She wasn’t even sure who was still alive anymore. 

She was almost certain her father wasn’t. 

Back when she had been barely 13, Katara had thrown herself wholeheartedly into the rebellion effort. She had eavesdropped and found out about it when her father had been speaking to Bato late one night, in the small two-room unit they all shared, and she’d fought to be allowed to join. At 15, she faced the penalties of an adult for her choice despite her age.

She waited and listened. She tried to distinguish the voices of the Fire Nation soldiers that surrounded her. She could tell there were at least five right now, but she had no idea if there were more. Three of the voices she recognized. Commander Zhao, the man who ran the Kyoshi Island Safe Zone now; his second in command, who she’d only ever heard referred to as ‘Captain’; and the soldier who had brought her food during her brief imprisonment.    

She knew there were two other men with them, one sounded older and the other was hard to distinguish. He answered mostly in one word answers, or grunts where they would suffice. She knew something about him though: he was a prince. 

The most talkative of them was Zhao, of course, and he was carrying along the conversation despite the halting conversational skills of the prince. 

“Here is one of the insurrectionists, Prince Zuko,” Zhao boasted and suddenly she was back in the spotlight, “little more than a whelp, but a fine example of how these peasants spit in the face of everything the Fire Nation has done to protect them. They raise their children to hate us, and send them to their deaths in their place, isn’t that right?”

The bag was torn from her head, and some of her hair went with it, ripping from her scalp just as the sun blinded her, and she cried out. 

When she could see again, she glared at Zhao, imagining ripping through the binding on her wrists and beating him the way he deserved.

“Enjoying your stay, Katara?” Zhao goaded her. They’d had a short but eventful history as their rebellion had gained attention, and she already hated him. 

She bared her teeth and then growled, “you’re gonna regret this, Zhao .” 

She looked around, desperate to make a plan of escape, and that’s when she first saw him. The Prince. His skin was red and mottled, healed unevenly after a horrific burn that covered almost an entire half of his face. His unburned side was contorted by a deep scowl. She would have been scared of him maybe, but just as they locked eyes, she heard a Water Tribe war cry from above her. A wicked smile split her face and his eyes narrowed. 

There was a sharp crack as something metal hit the stone floor somewhere beside her and then the light breeze started filling the courtyard with smoke and a vile odor that could have only been one of her brother’s special stink bombs. 

She took a deep breath of air and kicked out her foot, making contact with Zhao’s shin as hard as she could and taking off toward the sound of her rescue.

Chapter Text

Zuko knew they were there as soon as he heard the bird call. 

The terrible imitation of an Albatross Krill would have been out of place anywhere but the Southern Seas, and he’d heard that Southern Water Tribe hunting call before enough altercations with the remaining tribe members to put the pieces together. 

Then he’d seen Aang peak over the bush.

Zuko was tired though. He was turning twenty-one at some point in the next few weeks. He had no kingdom, no family other than Iroh, no home, no honor, and no way of escaping the Earth Kingdom. He didn’t feel like fighting them. He felt like standing guard while Iroh pilfered this house for expired antacids and then retreating back to the tree stand they’d been squatting in.  

The last time they’d seen each other had been... less than ideal.

Things were said, family heirlooms were leveraged for access to food, Katara had tried to kick him in the balls; he was sure once they realized that it was only the two of them, they would descend on them to take whatever they had and whatever this small town had left to offer. After their last interaction, when Iroh and Zuko had reunited, Iroh had nagged at him ferociously. He had tried very convincingly to have Zuko promise him not to fight the group the next time they encountered one another, but there was a stubborn part of him that he couldn’t ignore and that part couldn’t promise anything. 

He almost called out to them, annoyed because they might as well get it over with, and curious to see if they would be willing to parlay with someone who they’d expressed so much disdain for in the past. What he really wanted though, was for them to play it safe and stay hidden in the woods. 

He turned back to the building behind him at the sound of Iroh exiting the house, “any luck?”

“That depends on how you define luck, Nephew. I did not find the antacids, but I did find a book that looks most interesting.” Iroh flashed him the paperback, a maroon rectangle only a little larger than the size of his palm, with the image of a half-naked man kissing the neck of a shrine maiden. 

Zuko quickly looked toward the ground and rolled his eyes. He hoped the hiding group in the bushes couldn’t see the cover of the book. 

“Can you focus on the task at hand, Uncle,” Zuko growled. 

“Every opportunity for luxury in this world is important, no?”

“No,” Zuko said, his tone snappish from embarrassment and adrenaline. His uncle wandered off to the house across the street while chuckling to himself, and Zuko kept waiting. 

It was their own incompetence that eventually flushed them out. 

Zuko often marveled at how easily they fought their way out of situations despite how often they fell into them by lacking basic situational awareness and common sense. 

He was watching near the bush, but purposefully not looking at it, and he ignored another flash of the tan bald headed Aang, and twice he could hear the hiss of Katara’s voice as she chastised them. 

Eventually though, there was no way he could ignore them anymore, because Sokka fell out from behind the bush, and they made eye contact, and he knew it was over.

He wondered if he should call for his uncle and risk them knowing it was only the two of them, or risk facing them alone.

His dual swords felt heavy against his back as he drew the blades. He had no desire to fight them, but his old anger still flared. 

There had been a time when he’d wanted with all his being to capture this group of rebels, but now, he wished only that they would stop running into each other.

 It had been almost a full rotation of the seasons since he’d last seen them. If they still had access to an up-to-date calendar to check, he would bet it had been close to, if not more than, eight months. 

He watched the shrubs as the rest of their crew popped up from behind the greenery, and his gaze went to Katara as soon as she was visible, he was still thinking of the look in her eyes when she’d seen her necklace in his hand.

He should have looked to the Kyoshi Warrior first.

 She was his most formidable opponent, and she was 1/4 of the way toward him by the time he pulled his eyes away from the Water Tribe woman. She must have been out of bullets, or maybe she just didn’t even consider him a serious enough threat to waste them, because she had her tessen poised for the attack. Even without the fearsome make up or robes, she was intimidating enough to elicit a fear response from him that set his hair on end.

 Zuko knew that the Fire Nation didn’t normally allow the inhabitants of a safe zone to continue their own militias. They were normally folded into the ranks in a separate company that was segregated, but held higher privilege than most other groups within the community. On Kyoshi though, it had to be different. Zhao hadn’t been the first one to enter the island. Another commander had been in his place, and had been forced to allow them to continue their practice at threat of violence. Something unheard of before them. Zhao had been sent to begin the process of restricting their freedoms, the very thing Katara and her friends had begun their fight against. The Kyoshi Island Warriors had a fearsome reputation built in, and he’d fought this one enough to know she was no exception.  

Instead of waiting for her to attack, he went on the defensive, beginning to move toward her and preparing himself to parry. His legs felt heavy, but Zuko had been training with dual swords since he was fourteen and it was nearly automatic. The meditative act of practicing, and then the thrill and exertion of sparring, had been therapeutic for him following what had happened. When his father- he almost stumbled over a root just as he was about to make contact with his opponent. He couldn’t think of that. 

When their weapons met, she threw him off balance quickly, but he caught himself without stumbling and managed to hit her in the back with the handle of his sword as she lunged past him. 

From back in the woods, he heard Aang yelling for them to stop, to wait, not to fight, but they kept going. However, there were only a few blows exchanged between Zuko and the warrior before they were joined. 

With a heavy blow of a club to his shoulder, he fell to his knees. He gasped at the sharp pain that traveled from his upper arm to his mid back, but before ‘Sokka’ could land another blow, he rolled over, jumped back up, and sliced at him with one of his swords. The metal embedded in wood as the other man used his club to block the attack, but Zuko didn’t have time to wrench the blade back before he was fending off an attack from the islander again. 

He was outnumbered, and he knew soon Katara would join in on the fight, he started doubting his odds but that had the adverse effect of making him want to fight harder. 

“Prince Zuko!” Iroh called, angry and shocked, from behind him.

Zuko ignored his uncle and dropped down to lash out with his leg to knock Sokka off balance and to dodge another hit from his other opponent.

“We talked about this,” Iroh yelled and then called his name angrily again.

Zuko wanted to turn and yell at his uncle to stop distracting him, but it was already too late.

In his momentary distraction, the Kyoshi Warrior grabbed his arm, bent it back and wrenched it behind him, bending his wrist unnaturally and locking his elbow. Once she had him where she wanted him, she forced him to his knees. 

“Your uncle is trying to speak with you,” she taunted.

He glared at the ground, unable to bend his head up to look at her. As he sat there, occasionally wrenching at her hands to see if she’d loosened her grip, he watched as Aang and Katara’s feet came into view. 

Above him, the four rebels and his uncle began a conversation, more of a negotiation.

“Let me go,” he shouted, pulling once again.

Katara squatted down and while he couldn’t make eye contact with her, he could look up to watch her mouth as she spoke. He looked back down.

“Just be thankful we’re not Fire Nation, or you’d be dead already,” she hissed, and he was sure she didn’t say it loud enough for Uncle to hear.

She was more right than she knew. 

Zuko went slack, pretending to give in to Katara’s veiled threat, and stopped fighting.

“How’s your back, Suki?” Sokka asked the warrior, and Zuko committed it to memory. Suki, he thought disdainfully.

“If my nephew promises to stand down, will you please let him up, it can’t be very comfortable,” Iroh reasoned calmly from behind him, his voice closer now. 

“As if we can trust anything he says,” Katara protested.

“Katara, Zuko is supposed to be the unreasonable one, remember,” Aang said, his voice a shade too close to patronizing. Zuko couldn’t see her expression, but he imagined he knew what kind of face preceded her response because his own was contorted in anger. 

“I’m not being unreasonable,” she hissed, “you’re being naive.” 

“I’m not letting go, Katara, don’t worry,” Suki shoved a little harder on his arm, sending pain shooting through his shoulder and wrist and he blew out through his nose to stop himself from shouting. 

“Please, fellow survivors, we should be working together. Our previous interactions have been unpleasant, but we’ve always managed a small amount of civility between us”-

“Unpleasant?” Sokka interrupted, scornfully, “I’d say that’s an understatement. Wearing damp underwear is unpleasant, having someone track you down to arrest and kill you is a little more than that.”

“Iroh is right though,” Aang said, his tone, Zuko imagined, was as commanding as the boy could muster. 

“Is it just you two?” Suki asked, hand still gripped tightly to his arm.

He wondered if they would be surprised enough that he could break out, overpower Suki’s strong grip, and at least get on his feet. His knees pressed painfully into the ground and his upper body ached from the position she forced on him. 

“Yes, we no longer associate with the Fire Nation or the group of ruffians you saw us with all those months ago.” 

“Iroh,” Zuko growled through his gritted teeth. How could his uncle so easily expose their vulnerabilities?

“And we’re just supposed to believe that?” Katara scoffed. 

“I would hope so, but perhaps that is asking too much.”

Zuko was desperate to see his uncle’s face right now.  

The idea of entertaining peace was hard enough for him to swallow, but listening to his uncle, essentially groveling, was sparking the remaining semblance of the pride he had had instilled in him since birth. 

He let out one long breath through his nose and once his lungs were emptied, he pointed his index finger, dropped his pinned shoulder, and twisted against Suki’s hold. It broke her grasp just as he knew it would, and he ended up with his shoulder at her pelvis. He used the leverage of dropping out of the hold to launch the both of them forward. He tackled her to the ground, and the fighting broke out again immediately. 

Again, Aang and Iroh stood off to the side shouting at their more reactive counterparts, but it only served to add to the din of melee while Zuko fought off three attackers while simultaneously trying to get back the sword he’d lost to Sokka’s club before he had been gooselocked by Suki. 

Starting out fighting three people was easier than getting attacked in waves, and he held his own much better than before. He managed a well-placed hit onto Sokka’s hamstring that had him limping outside of the ring of contact which made it even easier for him. However, Sokka began heckling from the sidelines, adding more noise to an already hectic brawl. 

“STOP, stop and we can share the resources, there’s enough for all of us!” Iroh bellowed, his voice bouncing off the trees. From across town, a flock of birds flew overhead, casting a shadow as they fled.

Suki and Katara shared a look and readied themselves but did not move toward him again. 

A tense moment of silence followed, while Zuko weighed the strengths and weaknesses of fighting versus calling a truce. 

He grunted and held his orphaned dual sword by his side.

“They attacked us, first, uncle,” Zuko reminded him, his voice strained, more to set the narrative than to actually remind his uncle.

“You were ready to attack us as soon as you saw us,” Katara countered, and while she took a step forward it was not to fight, her staff was still at her side. 

“Please, I heard you in that bush and was just waiting to see what you guys would do.” 

He watched Katara and Suki exchange glances and realized they might actually believe him. 

“He hurt my leg though, Suki”, Sokka whined, pulling out the syllables of her name dramatically. 

“I apologize for my nephew’s roughness. I understand there is much history between us, and I’m not suggesting we work together; only that we do not actively encumber one another,” Iroh said diplomatically, and Zuko was suddenly reminded that once-upon-a-time Iroh had been the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, just like he once had.

“I want my sword back,” he said glumly, resigning himself to Iroh’s will. 

Chapter Text

There had been an instant while his father was holding the burning metal shovel to his face that Zuko had felt the worst, most intense, pain of his entire life. Then, all he could sense was the overwhelming smoke and the acrid smell of char. It had choked him, and when he couldn’t handle it any more the swimming vision in his right eye had gone black. 

For three weeks he had lingered on the edge of living and death; his dreams and nightmares blending into reality. He would wake mid conversation to find himself alone. He would touch the shimmering veil that separated him from the visions of his mother only to be pulled back, screaming.

His mother visited him everyday. She sang to him and pressed cool cloths to his face. When he woke, her face would morph into the stern grimace of a kitchen maid pretending to be a nurse, but for a few moments of every single day, he was cradled in her embrace as if he was still young and had simply scraped a knee.

His father never visited him in reality, but like his mother, he visited often in dreams. The expression on Ozai’s face while he had burned Zuko was superimposed across every memory they shared and Ozai hunted him in his sleep. He would have his father’s fingers wrapped around his throat one moment, and have Iroh dozing by his side the next. 

He spent three weeks in bed, sweating, fighting fevers, and sloughing off dead skin, reduced to secreted traditional herblore for relief as his father wished him to live or die by Angi’s decree.

When those three weeks passed, and he could hold himself up, he saw his new face.

He had felt nauseous upon seeing his once pale skin standing out angry, amaranthine, and inflamed, with thick layers of sticky straw colored pus and weeping scabs that let through streaks of crimson. The rectangular impression of the ash shovel was outlined by a violent purple line that was crowned by yellow and green bruising from the beating he had endured before the burn. His right eye was still swollen from bruising, but he could see through it at least.

He had imagined that his left eyeball had sizzled, popped, and oozed down his cheek during his punishment, and while it was milky and opaque, he had felt relieved to still have it. 

Six weeks after the burn he was on a decommissioned ship headed toward the disease ravaged Earth Kingdom.

 They had moved further into town, where Iroh had shown them which houses they had already gone through, and which places they had encountered the sparse undead. They stood in a circle around Sokka, who sat on the curb, still acting like he’d been much more seriously injured than he was. Zuko watched him with annoyance bordering on contempt, and that was just slightly worse than how he felt about the rest of them. 

How quick they were to just start acting all buddy-buddy with his uncle. He looked around the circle at the group of them, not even bothering to hide his feelings, when he met eyes with Katara.

He had always known her to have an intense stare, but where he usually saw ferocity and anger, he now saw cold disdain. He was a prince, or had been a prince, and was unused to the feeling of someone looking down on him, yet this peasant looked at him like he was nothing. Some small part of him railed against the idea, but the larger part of him agreed. 

He broke their tense staring contest when a complaint of Sokka’s finally caught his attention.

“I thought we weren’t ‘working together’” the man said from his place on the curb.

Zuko snapped his head back to look at Iroh and the rest of the other group.

“It isn’t working together, Sokka, it’s just…” Aang couldn’t finish his sentence and sort of bobbled his head and waved his arm as if that would explain everything.  

“Sharing information,” Iroh continued, “as to not further encumber one another.”

“I think we’ve shared enough information now,” Zuko said, anger seeping into his words, “shouldn’t we be getting back to what we were doing?”

“The sooner we all leave, the better,” Katara echoed his sentiment.

There was an air of agreement amongst the group, so Zuko spun on his heel and began a near jog toward the furthest house down the closest cross street that would bring him away from everyone else. 

He’d been through many towns in the Earth Kingdom, but each one was almost completely different than the last. Architecturally speaking, they varied more in the major cities, but the level of technology and access to what he used to consider ‘common goods’ was wildly different between them. Some seemed to be trapped in the distant past, whereas others were once automated and high tech. 

This town fell somewhere in the middle. Modern buildings were built alongside old earthen houses. Some had faded signs advertising themselves as a tavern ‘built by earth benders’ or purported to be a museum of ‘Earth Bending History’. The houses that had been built around their traditional homes were reminiscent of Gao Ling, the closest major city and a cesspool where Fire Nation soldiers fraternized with bandits and thugs to get all manner of alcohol and drugs, and he’d heard some even dealt in trafficking humans. He believed it, but his brief encounters with the city had always been as an empty uniform, there only for intimidation. 

He didn’t make it far before he heard the sounds of footsteps behind him, and he turned quickly to see which one had followed him. He expected Iroh, and he was prepared to start an argument about what had just happened, but it was Katara. 

I should have known .

“What do you want?” He asked, his verging on a growl.

She stood back from him, “just making sure that you’re not going to summon any buddies.” 

Zuko glared at her, “didn’t you hear Iroh, we’re alone out here now.”

Katara whistled, “can’t imagine what someone would have to do to get kicked out of the Fire Nation Army,” she casually crossed her arms and shifted her body weight to rest on one leg, “must have been real bad.”

“I never said we were kicked out,” he said quickly, heat creeping up from his collar.

There were a few shouts from back where they had all been gathered, but Zuko ignored them, stepping closer to Katara.

She remained in her relaxed stance and watched him. Her expression was anything but relaxed though, as her earlier anger still seemed to set her face into a grimace. 

“You didn’t have to,” she smirked, “I’ve known your comrades to do the unspeakable, and yet”-

“You don’t know the half of it,” he hissed, taking two long strides to make up the space between them, and then moving in so close that she had to look up to make eye contact with him, “and if that’s what you think, then why follow me alone?”

“Someone has to watch you,” her voice was clear and firm, and she spoke with such honest conviction that, not for the first time, Zuko wondered what he’d really walked into that day on Kyoshi Island. 

“And that has to be you?” 

Katara glowered, “if they want to trust your uncle, fine , but I’m not just letting you run off to-”

There was a sudden sharp, artificial, bird cry.

Katara’s head tilted to the side, confusion flooding her features, and then whipped around to look back toward where they had come from.

“What does that one mean,” he asked, beginning to feel the creeping anxiety make its way down his spine. 

He watched her as her face slid between emotions, she flicked her head back to look at him quickly before stepping forward, “something’s wrong.”

“What does that”- 

The sound of wailing pierced the air.

“Suki?” Katara began sprinting back toward the group, and Zuko hurried to follow.

They reached the end of the street and what had seemed so close only a few moments ago was now an insurmountable chasm. Zuko paused and watched in horror, barely comprehending what he was seeing.

 Dozens of zombies had flooded into the city from somewhere beyond the trees. They shuffled and lurched down the street, pushing against each other as they followed the cry.

He’d never seen so many in one place, certainly not since the first years he’d spent in the Fire Nation camps. It wasn’t possible. How had all of these people died, and recently enough for their animated corpses to be so well preserved? 

He looked back to Katara only to realize that some had already made their way onto their street. He had a fraction of a second to look around calculatingly, but one after another they shuffled down the road they were standing on, heading right toward them. 

“We have to get back to them,” Katara said sternly, and removed her staff from her back.

Zuko was already on the same wavelength, his dual swords in his hands without thought, and he rushed forward to begin taking out the few that passed. 

He had taken out three without issue, but once they had made their way to the street that they had left everyone behind on, the numbers increased, some started to flank him. He was being backed against a stone wall faster than he could react. 

Katara came in, slicing through the zombies to his side and allowing him a small break to get a better position again. 

Once he was out again, they were forced by the sheer press of bodies to stand back to back.

“Sokka!” She screamed at the corpse that her staff had just ended, and for a harrowing moment Zuko thought she must have just ended the second coming of her tribesmen, but she kept fighting and yelled again, “Sokka, where are you?” 

Zuko pressed even closer to her, as her yelling brought more of the undead around them and he shouted, “we’re surrounded, we need to move!”

“No!” She hacked away, and she accidentally hit Zuko with the back of her staff as she tried to pull it back from a zombie’s skull. His arm surged, shoving his forearm dangerously close to the clawing maw of an undead Fire Nation soldier. 

She cursed loudly, and moved chaotically to avoid the next wave of biting teeth coming toward her. 

Zuko, who was taller than almost every monster around them, looked over their heads quickly enough to see that moving back toward the street they had been on originally was the most sure fire way to escape and he yelled, “move with me, I’m rotating”- he had to stop speaking as a child’s corpse came for his legs. 

He called out in surprise and took its head off without hesitation.

“Back where we came from!” He called, disgust and terror clutching his gut. 

Katara turned with him and they worked in tandem to break through the horde. 

It felt like hours, his adrenaline slowing down the world and focusing his mind on just surviving through the next moment. 

Just as Zuko broke through the outer wall of their attackers, Katara shrieked, with a little space to move he took a chance at looking back and saw her staff had gotten stuck in the bone of one of the undead's necks.

He grabbed her and pulled her through the opening. She stumbled at first, tripping over her feet as she reoriented herself, but soon he was pumping his arms and making his way as fast as he could away from the horde. 

Zuko struggled to control his breathing, and slightly behind him Katara was panting. 

They turned a corner, and at the first opportunity Zuko pulled them down a long alley, mistaking it for a street.

There was no way out.

The sound of the horde began to fill the side street they had turned down. Zuko stopped breathing for a second, his hands still wrapped tightly around the hilts of his dual swords, and they both dove behind a large steel dumpster. 

Chapter Text

There’s a place in the South Pole that Katara’s dad showed her on a fishing trip. A cave made in the ice, barely accessible by climbing across slippery flats and steep rocks, that overlooked the ocean from the shore to the horizon. There were many such spaces around her home, but this one was special because it was theirs. If she imagined, she could still feel the bite of the cold against her cheeks, the ache in her fingers from climbing, and the salty seal jerky she would eat with her dad (and brother) as she watched as the sky shifted between pinks, purples, oranges, and blues. She would be tired from a day on the water, cold from the rocking of the boat and the lapping of the waves, but for a moment there was only the sky, and it had been painted just for them. 

She pictured that place, those moments, while she sat huddled behind a dumpster with her arms wrapped around her knees and bile stinging the back of her throat. Their refuge was hardly that, but if she stayed within the three feet of space that encompassed the width of the dumpster, she could remain unseen. She flicked her eyes away from the horde to examine her more immediate threat. 

She didn’t know what terrified her more; the shuffling heard of undead passing by the alley they had ducked into, or the Fire Nation Prince squatting beside her. He had pulled her back here when he could have left her to die. Maybe the thought hadn’t occurred to him. She was torn on whether she appreciated the hiding spot, or whether she would have rather risked it out on the road. 

She peered at him out of the corner of her eye for a second too long, and his gaze met hers. He pressed his lips together and then turned his attention back to the passing horde.

She worried he was deciding now to leave her, or that he’d decided she was worth more as bait. She’d seen plenty of Fire Nation soldiers use civilians as bait to escape in the past. She looked back to the opening of the alley again, shifting ever so slightly forward to be able to see around the dumpster.

She flattened immediately, the horde was still passing.

Fuck . She tried not to let herself think about the possibility that they weren’t going to make it out of this, but it was harder to push it to the back of her mind the longer they sat there. 

She turned her attention to Zuko, who was looking toward the back of the alley. His face was scrunched up in concentration, and the scar tissue on his cheeks exaggerated it intensely. 

When he looked back to her, she could see a bit of the same sharp look in his eye that Sokka would get when he was contemplating a new contraption. 

The alley around them was surrounded on two sides by stone buildings, one side opened to the street, and the other ended at a chain link fence with tattered pieces of old tarps bungee-corded to the links. She looked away from him and rocked forward on her heels to peek out from their hiding spot just enough to catch a glimpse of a break in the number of the horde.  

  She let a small ember of hope flare in her stomach and turned to Zuko to see him watching her.

He pointed toward the building on the other side of the fence and imitated climbing up a ladder. Once she focused on the building, she saw the edge of the fire escape on the wall blocked by the building boxing them in. She didn’t know how he planned on getting them over the fence though.  

She motioned for him to look back at the street and he crouched low and looked out for a second before shifting back and invading her personal space to try to whisper as quietly as possible.

“Now or never,” he prompted her.

She frowned slightly and she looked between him and the fence confused and scared he would leave her behind. 

He leaned in again, and she waited to hear his plan, “I push you over and then climb. Fast or I die. Once we see a break,” he leaned back and mouthed to her again ‘now or never’. She shook her head. She hated the plan. There would be another alley just as dangerous as this one on the other side of that fence if she missed the fire escape. 

He tapped her shoulder three times and she whipped her head around to glare at him, but he was glaring right back at her. He pointed at the opening of the alley and then pointed at his wrist again.

She wasn’t even sure she knew what the plan was, but she knew they needed to move. She gripped her knees tightly and leaned forward to look at the alley one last time.

Zuko seemed to sense her resolve and started inching toward the fence at the back of the alley. 

She took a few quick breaths before steeling herself and once there was a clearing,  she knew she couldn’t wait one more second.

She sprung up from her crouch and turned to see Zuko waiting, bent on one knee at the closest edge of the fence to the fire escape, ready for her to use his hands as a foothold to propel herself upward. 

She hoped this worked. 

She couldn’t think as she ran though, her heart started thumping and her instinct took over. Her foot landed on his hand in perfect timing to the sound of snarling coming from behind her. 

She threw herself from the top of the fence to the railing of the fire escape. Her hands screamed as they pressed into the ragged edge of the worn metal, but she kept moving. Either she would pull herself up or she would fall. She grit her teeth and pulled herself up through the pain. She thanked Suki for the hours of chin-up training that she’d forced them to do since the beginning. 

She had only to climb onto the platform and then she ran up the stairs to the roof. The only surety she had that he made it was the shaking of the fire escape when he caught himself on the bars as well. She didn’t stop or look back until she was on the roof. 

He was only a floor behind her when she did check and then she shuffled along the side of the architectural roof until there was more than enough space for them to sit on the flare. It was just long enough that when they both sat, his knees bent over the edge perfectly. 

They sat in silence for a while. Katara sat cross legged as she stared out at the horizon, mind blank. Her heart pounded in her ears. She did not dare to allow herself to think about her friends, or her brother, while she was trapped with the enemy. For a moment, she didn’t even blink as she looked at the edge of where the far away trees met the sky. 

She felt Zuko move beside her, but she didn’t register the movement until he shouted, “IROH,” he cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted again, “IROH, I’M ALIVE.”

Katara, startled by the noise, looked up at him and hissed “what are you doing?”

“They can’t get us right now, but what if he needs the distraction?”

Katara stood then too, and looked down at the undead below them. They were frothing at the mouth, clawing at the walls, but there was no way they could get up. 

Katara took the deepest breath she could manage and projected like she’d been taught when they’d learned the old songs and war calls, she bellowed the loudest she ever had before, her throat stinging at the exertion, she did not call anyone’s name, instead, letting loose their tribe’s battle cry.

Neither of their families’ responded to their calls, and they sank down to the edge of the roof. Silence befell them once again. She listened to the sounds of the horde beneath her and started to try and think of a plan to escape. Anything but thinking about how unlikely it might be for her to ever see her family again.

By morning they began to get a little desperate.

The swarm had not abated. They stood  ravenous, groaning and scratching at the walls, waiting for any moresal that may drop. It had dwindled some throughout the night, but the night had been perilous in its own way. She’d barely slept and, some time closer to dawn than sunset, she’d heard a scream. She’d thought it sounded like Suki, but it had been at such a distance she must have been in the woods. Maybe it wasn’t anyone she knew at all. Maybe her friends were holed up somewhere in town worrying that the scream had been her.

They were starting to get thirsty, and both were getting irritated with the other. 

Katara had chastised him for trying to drink dew off of the roof, and he had snapped back rudely, so they had been sitting in silence, on opposite sides of the roof, while the sun made its slow trek across the sky. 

It’s not even noon yet , she sat lamenting to herself about the slow passing of time and their dire circumstance

Coming from the other side of the roof, she heard Zuko’s steps, and sat up from her repose to see what he could possibly want. 

He started gesturing to her once they made eye contact and she tried her hardest to figure out what he was trying to communicate.

“I can go through the window, but something might be there,” he said, giving up on his hand gestures when he made his way over and sat down next to her.

“What window?” 

“There’s a smaller one on the other side of the building that I have a plan to get in through, and then maybe we can at least find water.”

“Or more infected,” she muttered anxiously. 

Zuko rolled his eyes, “this town was abandoned when we got here, and the building is boarded up. I can handle one or two, but I need assistance in getting the window open.”

“Assistance?” 

“Let me show you,” he said gruffly, pulling himself up again, and beginning the walk back to the other side. 

She had half a mind to be contrary but she had no interest in staying on this roof another second if there was a way out. 

She followed him over and he showed her what he wanted her to do, “just hold my legs like this, I’ll look down and see if I can open the window or see what’s in there and then help me get back up. If I can open it I will, if not...”

She waited for him to finish but he didn’t.

“Ok, well, let’s do it then.”

She braced herself against the roof and Zuko kneeled down. She grabbed his ankles and slotted her heels against the edge of the roof, hoping her feet wouldn’t slip. She tensed her thighs and tried to put as much weight onto her own muscles as she could just in case.

He bent himself over the edge, further than she had anticipated and she held on with all of her strength as he swung back and forth. His fist beat against the window like a stuttering heartbeat, and when it stopped she waited anxiously for word of his success. 

Beneath them, on the street, the infected followed the noise and started trickling into the alley on that side of the building. Their snarling and groaning gave them away, and it struck her that she was dangling Zuko like bait. Sokka would have made a joke, but the very thought of that sobered her.

She could only imagine one horrific scenario to explain why the normally emotionally reserved woman had made that noise. 

As if sensing that Katara was losing focus on their task, Zuko’s body tensed and he used his core muscles to make his body go straight. She started pulling him back onto the roof immediately but the little space behind her gave almost no extra room to back up. 

He didn’t need much help, and got enough leverage to bring himself back up.

“Did you open it?” She asked, whispering despite knowing there was no way for the infected to reach them. Their renewed interest was putting her on edge again.

He nodded and when he did he also rocked his fist in front of him, like his fist was nodding too.

“What was that?”

“What?”

She knocked her fist back at him.

“Oh,” he frowned, but not his normal severe frown, a sort of soft confusion, “sign language. Can you hoist yourself into the window from the ledge?”

“Of course,” she snipped without bothering to look, but then continued her previous line of questioning as she crawled forward to begin inspecting the window. “You know sign language? Do they teach that in Fire Nation boot camp?” She slithered to the last portion of the roof on her stomach to look over the edge, to see what he was asking her to accomplish.

It was disorienting, holding herself upside down and hanging over a swarming crowd of animated corpses that were reaching up for her voraciously. 

“Don’t think about them,” he commanded, maybe it was supposed to be comforting but his tone was abrasive, “I learned it in the Earth Kingdom.”

It was his attempt at a distraction, she was sure, but it wasn’t enough to counteract the fear that had coiled tightly around her stomach. She had to pause for a moment before she could rip her eyes away from the infected and remember her task.

There was a small window, large enough to fit through but smaller than she would have hoped for, set into the stone wall. It had a ledge big enough for her foot but she would not be tall enough to step down onto it. Thankfully the window opened outwards but she could not trust that to hold her weight either. Inside was a very dusty bathroom, the window and what she could see inside looked like they had been untouched since the very beginning.

She pulled herself back up and made a small groan, “I don’t know.”

“Can you swing yourself into the window?”

“I think so,” she might not have thought twice about her ability if she had been with her group, she may have made it a challenge, but she was worried this would come down to having to trust Zuko even more thoroughly than she already had. 

Zuko started, “if I stand on the ledge I can”- she shook her head adamantly and interrupted him.

“No, I think I can do it. I just have to get it right the first time to use my momentum.”

Zuko nodded, “do you want to go first?”

Katara swallowed, “yeah,” she looked over the ledge at the dozen or so infected waiting for her to fail. 

“If I go first, I can catch you.”

“No,” she snapped, “let me just line myself up with the window.” 

She pushed out an aggravated snort of air through her nose, and got back down to make sure she knew the window was exactly underneath her.

Once she had lined herself up with the window, she stood and turned so that her back was toward the alley, and Zuko stood in front of her with his arms crossed. His usual severe frown was back in place.

“Hopefully there’s nothing in there waiting for me,” she joked.

“If I go”-

“Do you want to go first?” She asked, sharply.

“Do you plan to push me out the window?” He countered, and she rolled her eyes. 

“No, and I should be the one asking that question!” She found the accusation an indignity, he was the prince of the nation that had taken over half the world under the guise of aid only to horrifically exploit anyone who lived in their ‘safe zones’. To her, if anyone was untrustworthy it was him. 

Zuko snarled, and his crossed arms tightened around his frame, “just go then.” 

She squatted, fingers clutching the ledge between her legs, “first time for everything right?” she muttered to herself before kicking off with her back legs.

Her fingers felt the sting and strain of supporting her weight immediately and, when gravity took hold of her body, she started swinging back down and could feel her skin rub raw on the sharp edge. Her stomach was lodged firmly in her throat from both the feeling of falling and the fear of not making it through the window, but she let go when she needed to, if not a little too early. She had barely missed the top of the window with her head and her heel hit the window ledge as she passed through it. She was thrown off by the small bump and instead of landing on her feet she hit the ground on her ass, hard. 

Her hands shook as she collected herself, and she’d barely had time to stand and move out of the way before Zuko came through the window with liquid fluidity and landed in front of her quietly, and on his feet.

They stood there in silence for a moment, both waiting for something to respond to the noise they’d made coming inside, but Katara couldn’t hear anything.

Chapter Text

       “At least they died together.”
     Zuko’s voice shocked her, and she jumped across the threshold into the dusty mauve bedroom. Her eyes went back to the bed and the two skeletons who lay next to each other with their hands still interlocked. One had a cavernous hole in their forehead, and the other at the top of their skull. The moth eaten pink sheets were crumbling away under the mold that had eaten away the fabric beneath their heads.
     “Must have been at the very beginning,” she muttered, and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind her.
     “Did you even check the room?”
     He brushed past her and grabbed the handle.
     “No!” She shouted, louder than she had planned, “I’m not a grave robber.”
     Zuko looked at her like she was stupid and said, “all we do is grave rob, Katara, what do you think you’re doing in any house?”
     “We all have to draw the line somewhere.”
     “And this is the arbitrary place you’ve decided to draw it?”
     “It’s not arbitrary,” she protested, though the word sounded foreign and hard in her mouth, “I decided it because it felt wrong. Like I should just let them rest... rest in peace I guess.”
     Zuko rolled his eyes and sighed, dropping his hand from the knob, “so it’s just sentimentality?”
     “What’s wrong with that?” She protested, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.
     Zuko just shook his head, “nothing, I guess,” and he stepped away from the door.
     They went to the first floor then, and poked through the cupboards and shelves of the little store front. Katara thought it must have been some sort of apothecary, but every product had been scavenged from the store and all that was left was dust and decomposing cardboard boxes.
     All of the windows to the outside were covered in wooden planks, and those were covered by ripped and holey blankets that were pinned to the walls with faded colorful push pins, no doubt taken from the upstairs room decorated for a child. The walls were peeling wallpaper, with bunches of unrecognizably crumbled flowers.
     Zuko spread an old stained sheet across the dirty floor and sat crossed legged on one end. He lifted his shirt to expose what looked like an old fanny pack. She looked away when she saw the alabaster pale skin of his toned abdomen.
     When she looked back he had spread the contents of the fanny pack out in front of him. There was enough rations for two people for one meal.
     He looked up at her, and she attempted a small smile.
     “Iroh always made me take them when we went out,” he said quietly, and looked back down at the jerky, nuts, dried fruits, a small foil packet, and Fire Nation meal bars.
     She didn’t know how to respond, but after a moment he spoke again, “no water though.”
     “We’re going to need to get out of here soon,” she remarked, and sat down as far away from him on the sheet as she could.
     He threw her a meal bar, and took one for himself, before packing the small amount left back into his pack.
     “I think we should find a way out and then sleep. Maybe more will leave if they can’t see or smell us,” Zuko said and then ripped his meal bar open with his teeth.
     Katara nodded, carefully opening her own meal bar and then eating it slowly. She broke off tiny pieces, chewing them to nothing and then taking the next piece. She looked up and Zuko was watching her. His face was intense and she stopped eating to look back at him.
     “What?” She snapped, it had been so long since she’d felt self conscious about anything, but under his gaze she couldn’t help but squirm and she resented it.
     “Nothing,” he muttered and started breaking his own bar down into little pieces.
     Katara watched him from beneath her brow as she looked down at her own food.
     Here she was, sharing the Fire Nation Prince’s rations while they sat cross legged on the floor next to each other. A picnic. She had to accept her circumstances because there was no other option, but she felt like she was in a bizarre alternate reality.
     And Zuko? Their odd truce was the center of her strange new world. The same prince who had once been so bent on bringing them back to face the Fire Nation’s twisted idea of justice was now her only ally in the fight for their lives. She hated the tense silences that hung between them when they weren’t planning, but she hated the idea of speaking with him more.
     She missed the banter and conversation of her friends. She missed the music and the laughing. She missed Sokka’s jokes and his stupid awfully timed, often dramatically failed, pranks. She missed his face.
     Would she forget it? Would there be a point where he’d been gone so long she couldn’t exactly remember his stupid expressions or the sound of his voice?
     She had begun to work herself up, and she had to swallow hard to finish the last bite of her pathetic dinner.
     “Thank you,” she said, remembering her manners.
     Zuko looked up and his brows dipped together in a slight frown before he responded, “yeah, whatever,” he shrugged.
     “Food is never whatever,” she chastised him lightly, and stood, “let’s look for some more doors.”

     The next morning Katara awoke from her sleep with a start.
     She sat straight up in bed and tried to orient herself, but she just whipped her head around a few times while her brain broke through the fog of sleep fully and she remembered everything that had happened the day before.
     Her face was still puffy from crying herself to sleep and she felt drained of any emotion more than a deep emptiness.
     She had been so lucky for so long.
     Twelve years of death and displacement and constant loss had left her an orphan, but she’d spent all of that time relatively happy, relatively free at some times, and she’d always had her brother.
     Today was the first day of the real apocalypse for Katara. The first day she was truly alone in the world and surviving anyway she could. Before she would have punched anyone who tried to tell her she was lucky but she could see how she’d been lucky now.
     She got out of the bed with a chorus of groans and popping creaky springs.
     The twin bed she’d slept in had softer than any tick she’d slept on in the woods, but the old material sagged and the bed frame hardly supported it anymore.
     She grabbed her filthy clothes reluctantly and shoved herself back into her stiff musty outfit.
     Back at the cabin they had a makeshift washing board and used pilfered laundry detergent, soap, or foraged herbs to freshen their clothes about twice a month. Yesterday though, she had been covered in a layer of blood and sweat that had seeped into the very seams of her clothing. And there wasn’t even water here to rinse it out.
     She could feel that in her mouth more than anything, and she sucked on her tongue uncomfortably.
     She stopped at the door before opening it once she was dressed and prepared herself for whatever waited for her when she got downstairs. She wasn’t entirely convinced Zuko would still be there.
     When she had hobbled from her room to the small kitchen she found him.
     He was sitting at the small round wooden table, his fingers traced the wood grain and he was turned toward the window. Light shined on his face and from this side she could only see the smooth expanse of skin. His eye was closed, and his dark lashes stood out against his check strikingly
     There was a bowl in front of him, and Katara eyed it wearily. There had been nothing in his pack worth using a bowl.
     Zuko opened his eyes and turned toward her, his expression unreadable.
     “Good news,” he said, his voice rough from misuse and he had to clear his throat before he continued, “it rained last night, and this place has a rain barrel.”
     Never a morning person, Katara took a minute to try to parse out what he meant, she finally grasped and exclaimed, “water?!”
     Zuko nodded and pointed to the wood burning stove, “I don’t think the owner will mind that I burned one of the chairs.”
     “I can’t imagine they would,” she muttered more to be polite than to engage in what she perceived as his attempt at levity, but she couldn’t help but imagine the couple laying up in the large bedroom.
     She looked into the pot that sat on the stove and then she smelled it, surprised she turned back to him, “broth?”
     “We need the electrolytes.”
     She had to rip her hand back from the handle when she grabbed it, heat singed her finger tips and she shoved them in her mouth.
     “There’s a pot holder on the counter.”
     “But how?” She finally asked after she’d finished nursing her reddened fingers and wrapped the thick cloth around the pot’s handle, “and where are the bowls?”
     “The cupboard to your right,” he directed her, “and I have two more bullion cubes in my pack. Makes forager’s stew better, and helps when you're sick or starving. Ir- they hand them out in some Fire Nation ration packs.”
     Katara nodded, but she cast him a sideways glance.
     They lapsed into quietly sipping their empty broth at two of the three remaining chairs at the dirty oak table, and didn’t speak again until Katara took the last sip of her breakfast.
     “So, the plan,” he started, “we’re missing an integral piece.”
     Katara narrowed her eyes and waited for him to tell her what their escape plan was missing.
     “Where are we going once we’re out?”
     “I figured we’d run around and try and see if we could find proof of anyone else.”
     “What if there isn’t proof? What if most of the town is still overrun and we can’t look?”
     Katara shifted in her seat, frowning, “you really think it will still be overrun?”
     “I think it’s a serious possibility.”
     Katara almost mentioned that they could go back to the cabin, it’s what she wanted to do, but before she could force the words out of her mouth, she clamped her lips shut and looked down to study the lines of the table.
     “We need a plan for that too.”
     “What if they’re still in town too, hauled up in some other building?” She looked up to judge his expression but like most of the time his face was a thin veil of frustration, he showed nothing else.
     “That’s a possibility.” he said and his calm voice was another cryptic mask, “but if we call out to them we risk losing any element of stealth when leaving.”
     “But if they’re here…”
     His voice started overly harsh, “Katara, no one called back to us. They’re not here or…”
     She waited, but he didn’t finish his thought, he instead glared into empty space.
     “I can’t leave here without doing something or leaving something behind to let them know we’re ok.”
     She waited again for his response but couldn’t stand the silence, “don’t you want to at least check to see if Ir”-
     “Iroh’s dead.”
     “Don’t say that.”
     “If he wasn’t dead he would have called out to me. That was our plan.”
     “He could be hurt or trapped or”-
     “Dead.”
     “Or he fled the town because he thought we’d get out too.”
     Zuko planted his palms on the table, and said in a very measured tone, “we need to know where we’re going before we can leave a message.”
     “Well, I want to try to scout before we decide to leave.”
     Zuko glowered.
     “You know we should anyway.”
     “Are you climbing back onto the roof?” He asked with a light sneer.
     “We could probably just use the fire escape now that we can unlock the windows.” She smiled when he had no retort.
     She couldn’t brawl with him in their new circumstances but it had felt almost as satisfying as knocking a sword from his hand or tripping him.

     On the roof, Katara looked over the little town that had once seemed so mundane, her biggest worry had been the man next to her. She looked at his profile for a second, a topographical map of his history with fire and royalty, and couldn’t stop herself from saying, “you kind of saved my life yesterday.”
     He started, jerking his head back slightly and eye balled her from under his scarred brow, “don’t sound so surprised.”
     “You’ve literally tried to kill me dozens of times.”
     “I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
     “You were just trying to deliver me to a killer who planned to kill me.”
     “I wasn’t…”
     Katara was beginning to hate listening to his halting conversation and half sentences.
     She turned to him, “I’m grateful you saved my life, but let’s not pretend the past isn’t what it is ok?”
     Zuko scratched the back of his neck and looked off, nodding lightly. His face was contorted and compressed, a twisted grimace.
     Her Gran Gran would have said he looked like he was choking in his tongue.
     She knew she could instigate him more. She wanted to, but the last thing they needed right now was to attract any attention from the infected that she knew would still be lurking around even if they no longer waited in the alley.
     “See anything?” He asked after enough time had passed that her heart rate had slowed back to its resting beat.
     “Nope.”
     “Can we talk about the plan now?”
     “I think it looks clear enough to look around.”
     “Really?”
     Katara scowled, “I know you’re convinced that your uncle is dead already but I can’t give up on Sokka. He wouldn’t give up on me. He’s the only family”-
     She narrowed her eyes and focused on a tiny chimney in the distance.
     “He’s my brother.”
     She went down the fire escape without waiting for him.

Chapter Text

    Zuko walked, arms extended like a gymnast, on the edge of the roof of the building next door. In one arm he carried a pillowcase stuffed full of every piece of glass that they had scavenged from the dilapidated store and the accompanying apartment. IN the other, three stemmed wine glass were slotted between his fingers. 

    They rattled together whenever he moved, and his leap across the alley had broken some, and the sound attracted the attention of a few stragglers beneath him. It was better they heard him now, they would follow each other and more would come, but it was unnerving listening to their desperate calls. 

    Their plan was for him to throw the glass as far down the street as he could. The noise would hopefully attract enough zombies from the main road to allow them to safely circle back to where they had last seen their compatriots. 

    He felt nervous though, worried about the plan, about Iroh, and- he looked back at her, standing on the sloping roof he had just jumped from with her arms wrapped tightly in furs and clasped across her chest- he was worried about Katara. He worried about trusting her, and he worried that she wouldn’t make it out safe if she was too focused on finding her brother and not on survival. 

    Her lack of self preservation angered him. He wanted her to be selfish and run for the trees because he wanted to be selfish and run for the trees. 

    The plan was for him to make it across this roof and onto the next one, but he took one step forward and felt the structure beneath him sway. There was a loud groan and he knew it was coming from the shifting support beams of the house and not the growing number of undead collecting beneath him.

    “Zuko!”

    He looked back but stayed still, letting the house settle.

    “Jump back.”

    He wanted to protest but then a cracking beneath his feet warned him his time on the roof was limited. 

    Instead of trying for the next roof, he shifted the bag off of his shoulder and began reaching inside.

    He took hold of a decanter and sent it flying away from the center of town. It sailed through the air and then came crashing down against the stone wall of the last house on the street. He sent another glass, and then a vase, followed by the three wine bottles nestled between his fingers which he threw all at the same time. They shattered spectacularly against the sidewalk, houses, and the paved road. 

    For a moment it seemed their plan was working and his chest swelled with a sort of accomplishment.

    The zombies from the main road ambled toward them, but they did not all follow through to the end of the road to inspect the broken glass, some of them stopped beneath him to join their growling brethren just below Zuko’s feet. 

    Zuko shifted his stance carefully, and a wooden shingle broke from his weight. He stopped. He considered that maybe Katara had been right to call him back to the other roof.

    He had been able to get at least some sort of a running start when he’d jumped the gap to get over here, but he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t go plunging through the shingles and bring the whole house down on top of him if he tried that here. 

    He looked around himself and when he saw that the tree on the other side of the building was not growing beside it, but up through its foundation, his stomach dropped. 

    He knew it was now or never. 

    He whipped every last item of glassware in his little sack as far as it would go, and then spun on his heel to look back at Katara. 

    Between his planted foot and the edge of the roof there were about four steps. He could risk backing up a step but he was trusting the stability of the house less and less the longer he thought about the warning signs he’d ignored.

    She was waiting, her hands on her hips now, and he waved awkwardly when they made eye contact. 

    He only had one chance. 

    His first step was unsure, but he gained power on the next two, the closer he was to the edge of the wall the more sturdy the structure, and on his last step he pushed off with every fiber of strength in his leg. The wall slipped out from underneath him.

    The house began to collapse behind him as he hurdled through the air toward the hard metal of the roof where Katara stood. 

    He missed.

    He began falling just short of the roof and shot out his hands to grab the ledge before he could fall three stories to the rubble that now filled the alley. 

    He caught the ledge.

    His fingers screamed in pain for a split second before going numb, but they held. 

    In a flurry of warm hands and a single worried shout, Katara pulled him up over the side. His unsteady legs wobbled when he stood, and he collapsed down on the roof; next door the building crashed down around itself in a low boom that shook them and the building they were standing on, but their store did not fall.

    Katara grabbed his hands, yanking them toward herself and inspecting them with a frown burrowing a deep line between her eyebrows, “you should have come back right away, we could have thrown them from here, that was so stupid , I knew you shouldn’t have jumped, that building was so old, I can’t believe you waited-” s he went on like that until the plume of dust settled over them and when she sucked up a breath and began a coughing fit. 

    His hands began to regain feeling, and he pulled them back to bring his shirt up to cover his mouth.

    Katara did the same and when she stopped coughing she glared at him from above her dirty collar.

    He held up his finger to the approximate location of his mouth above the shirt and they waited for the dust in the air to settle and listened to the sounds of the monsters waiting for them. 

    Not even the sound of Katara coughing could distract the undead from the crashing building though. The sound had been so loud that zombies came streaming in from all over the town. They flocked together like birds and they all circled around the front of the house, a few stumbled their way up the tower of rubble but the weight destabilized it even more and the house fell further into its basement and they were swallowed by the shifting stones and wood. 

    Their plan may have worked in some respects, but the undead were now circling the remnants of the building right next door instead of down the street. 

    If they waited too long, they might disperse back into the town, but if they didn’t wait long enough they would be caught by the stragglers who were late to check out the noise.

    The dust settled enough to see more clearly after just a few seconds, but hung in the air around them like a light gray fog. 

    The dust made the creatures more noticeable, instead of looking like lightly injured survivors, they looked like the horror movie monsters they truly were. Yet, Katara looked the same as them, and he was sure he looked the same as her. 

    He lay down on the edge of the roof just like they had the first night. Had it only been the night before?  He flexed his hands, looking at the dark welts that had formed across his palms and on the lower part of his fingers. They ached when he moved them and he cursed himself for the recklessness that had led to the injury. He couldn’t help but think that if he’d been Azula he would have gotten out fine, she was born lucky , he thought angrily looking up at the clouds of debris that still twisted in the wind. 

    Katara kicked his foot lightly, distracting him from his conditioned self deprecation.  She nudged her head in the direction of the fire escape and then they both crawled, her on her hands and knees and Zuko slithering on his belly to avoid putting weight into his hands, toward their escape. 

    The house had fallen in on itself dramatically in the front where Zuko had stood, but the junction of two walls stood at the back; creating a barricade of rubble and stone wall to stop any of the gathered zombies from getting over to them, but they had to keep moving. 

    As soon as their feet hit the pavement under the fire escape, they hugged the walls and moved as silently as they could to get as far away from their distraction as possible. 

    While the distance had been impassable when they’d first tried to get back to the group, they now crossed the main road with no trouble now that every undead in the streets had flocked to the sound of the building falling. 

    Katara stopped though, Zuko couldn’t understand what she was doing, and he turned around to grab her arm and pull her out of the middle of the street but she shook him off.

    She started looking around, and he realized she was looking through the corpses for the staff she’d lost. Right now, she was carrying one of his dual swords, and he would have been happy to have been able to get it back but he wasn’t comfortable standing out in the open like this. 

    He went to grab her arm again, and this time when he did, she grabbed his thumb and wrenched it back, forcing his fingers to unclench from the fabric of her shirt.  Fine , he thought to himself, she can stay out here . 

    He slunk back to the wall and kept watch on her, his head swiveling back and forth, he refused to be caught off guard again. 

    He didn’t wait long and she jogged back to him. While she wasn’t smiling, her face glowed and her eyes sparkled. 

    “Someone must have grabbed my staff,” she whispered fervently.

    Zuko wanted to quip back that it could have been anyone who had been hiding in this town, could have been the person responsible for the horde, but he couldn’t stop himself from hoping that Iroh had picked it up, so he held his tongue. He understood this part of her, the part that was desperate to find her family, even if he couldn’t allow himself to hope. 

    When they got back to the last place they had seen their group, Zuko saw it before she did. Her eyes were on the skyline, looking at rooftops for signs of her bald little climbing friend he was sure, but his eyes slid around looking for any signs, and he found one.

    In the middle of the street, and extending back to the curb, was a comet shaped blood pool with a tail that hinted at someone being dragged.  The blood was dark, looking more like the black flows of cooled lava than the once bright red it would have been.

    It could be anyone’s , he assured himself, though there was little comfort in imagining who else it could have come from. 

    He felt Katara’s presence without looking up from the bloody trail.

    “Oh,” her voice was little more than a soft shuddering breath, “no.” S he went down to her knees. 

    Zuko looked around again to make sure it was safe for her to be breaking down, and then stood uncomfortably as her body shook under the force of her withheld tears. 

    She grabbed at something.

    Zuko hadn’t noticed it at first, covered in black blood and trampled as it was, but once she held it he recognized it. 

    A length of fur identical, save for the gore, to the ones that wrapped around her forearms and shins. 

    Zuko closed his eyes.

    The leaves filtered out what little of the last light of sunset still hovered at the edges of the horizon and Zuko could barely see in front of himself. He shuffled through the underbrush, using his feet and hands to make sure he wasn’t walking into any trees or zombies.  Behind him, with her hand hovering above his shoulder but never quite touching, Katara moved so quietly that he could have pretended she wasn’t there. 

    Moving through the dark like this was stupid and dangerous, but their other options had been more dangerous. He knew they were almost there, he had found the first of the marked trees right as the last of the light had receded, and now he was operating simply by memory and the hope that nothing had moved in while they were gone.   

    He walked like that until his foot hit the stone edges of their camp.

    He stopped, and Katara’s hand bumped into him gently, stopping her from walking into him. 

    His right eye had begun to adjust to the dark, and he tried to look up to the sky to see if he could discern which tree the narrow hunter’s cabin had been nestled against.  He began to grow frustrated, every second he waited was a second that one of the undead could hear or smell them. 

    Katara moved to stand next to him, and began to look around, “I think I see it,” her soft voice came from his right hand side, and he looked toward her. 

    He moved his hand to rest just above her shoulder like she had done to him, trying to single her to lead the way. 

    There was a moment of hesitation but then she began to move. 

    Once he had his hands on the wooden posts he took over leading them and climbed the ladder first so he could guide Katara over the top. He waited outside on the last rung of the ladder though, listening to the cricket marked silence. He could not see if the cabin was empty, they had covered the window and the small door with pieces of an outdoor rug that they had scavenged. It protected them normally, but now it shrouded him from knowing whether it was safe to enter. 

    Katara's hand grabbed for the rung his foot hesitated on. She recoiled and it sprung him into motion. He drew his dagger from his belt and pulled the fabric aside. 

    It was empty.

    He sighed and crawled in before turning around and helping Katara to make her way through the entry blind. 

    Once she had cleared the door, Zuko pressed himself as far to the other side of the small tower as he could, and grabbed the small crank powered lantern that was the only light source in the pitch black tomb. 

    He began to wind the handle, and a wan blue light filled the little room. 

    “Oh,” Katara gasped softly. She looked around and Zuko started cranking the spindle as fast as he could so that he could put it down for a moment and find them food. 

    They hadn’t eaten in hours, and Zuko was hoping to find that no squirrel-bats had made off with their stash of nuts and to grab some of the purified water that they saved in an old soup pot and its matching lid. 

    Once he hung the lamp from the small hook they had crudely installed in the ceiling, he went into the only storage space, a wooden chest that Zuko slept pressed against most nights and would wake to shoo away the rodents that scurried along the wood looking to steal their food. He grabbed a chipped porcelain tea cup, dipped it into the water and took the first drink before refilling it and handing it over to Katara.

    She muttered what he thought must be either a prayer or a curse in her country's tongue, and took small deliberate sips of the water. 

    He doled out food, nuts, a few jade-oranges, and pieces of hardtack bread they had made from bartered rice flour. 

    “So you’re really not with the Fire Nation anymore?”

    Zuko’s eyes shot up to find hers, and then the lantern went dark. 

    He jumped up to work the crank, and tried to maneuver it without removing it from the ceiling. 

    “Really,” he said with an acerbic hiss, “you followed me the whole way here and still thought I”-

    “Thank you, I’m sorry,” she interrupted him, “may I have some more water, please.”

    He kept charging the lantern and almost told her to get it herself, but then she would have to push her way past him, and he knew she didn’t want to rub against him as much as he didn’t want to rub against her. 

    “One second,” he muttered instead. 

    Once he settled back down after handing her the refilled cup, he popped pieces of his bread into his mouth and leaned against the pile of blankets pressed up against the wall.

    “I didn’t have a choice,” he informed her, squirming under the weight of the memory.

    Katara stayed silent, watching him as she slowly partook of her water and small dinner.

    “I believed what they told me. I thought I could make things better.... I saw it with my own eyes... and lied to myself until I couldn't any longer. When I spoke up...” Zuko cleared his throat, dry skin from the roasted nuts clinging on their way down his restricting airway. “When my dad originally banished me,” he growled, “I was 15, and I had never thought... I had been.... Well... you said I’d been kicked out, and that isn’t that far from the truth.”

    Katara shifted in the black fabric of Iroh’s sleeping bag, and moved her leg so that it stretched out in the space between them, “would you go back?”

    “S’ not worth thinking about. There’s no going back.” 

    “What if there was”-

    “No. Not now.” His voice shook slightly, anger rattling in his chest and his throat. 

    His fingers ached from clenching them to his sides, and he lifted himself up to charge the dimming lantern before it could go out again.

    Katara’s head fell, and she threw the last of her nuts into her mouth and chewed hard.

    The silence between them was colder than the air that crept through the cracks in the wooden planks of the walls, and he tried not to keep replaying their conversation and wishing he’d been able to say more. To be angrier. To tell her everything about what had happened. With his dad. With Azula. No one wanted to listen to him talk though. Only Iroh had ever cared, and now he was probably dead. 

    Separation could be just as final as death now anyway.

Chapter Text

    “I apologize again for my nephew injuring you,” Iroh said once Zuko had stalked off angrily and turned the corner.

    “It’s actually fine,” Sokka grinned mischievously and stood from the curb, “but I really worked him up, didn’t I.”  Riling up the prince had a twofold benefit for Sokka, he enjoyed getting a rise out of the spoiled Fire Nation exile, and it bothered Katara too. 

    So, maybe Katara was right and Sokka was a little immature? He didn’t really understand what the point of being mature was anymore. When he was younger, making his father proud, following in his footsteps, being a role model within their tribe, those were the kinds of things that mattered to him. None of that even existed anymore. Almost every single day was a struggle to survive and even when it wasn ’ t, it was still a challenge. So why not goof off? Why not ham up an injury to annoy a guy who annoys you? Why not harass your little sister like you were still children. Any moment could be their last.

    “That it did,” Iroh said, chuckling, “he should not take everything so seriously, I think.” 

    “If only there was a way to transplant some of his seriousness into Sokka,” Katara said, and her tone was clipped with anger.

    “Are you still upset?” Sokka asked, exasperated. If only Zuko had known he’d grabbed the necklace of the one person in their survival group that held a grudge better than a weapon. 

    “What’s he even doing? It’s stupid to run off on your own,” she muttered and stamped her staff to the ground before putting it away and turning, “I’m gonna follow him.”

    “Knock yourself out,” Sokka called after her. He watched her for a second and then turned to Suki as she watched Katara go off, “she’s a big girl, Suki, she’ll be fine.”

    “Feels wrong though, letting her go off like that. More of a chance she’ll start a fight than him.” 

    “And it’ll be good for her to get it out of her system… with someone other than the three of us,” he gestured to Aang to bring him into the conversation.

    “I don’t know, I’m kind of with Suki in this one,” Aang admitted sheepishly.

    Iroh slipped his hands into the loose sleeves of his pale green shirt and frowned, “Zuko has been through much in his life, as has everyone, but he is good. I’m sure at most they may have a verbal altercation.” 

    Sokka wasn’t sure he agreed with Iroh but he loved commitment to a joke, and pressed on. 

    “Again, her taking her anger out on someone other than me is always fine in my book. I know you and Suki don’t care as much because she has you both wrapped around her little finger.”

    Aang blushed fiercely, but Suki just laughed loudly and said, “you just get her bad side because you fuck up so much.” 

    “Yeah, yeah yeah,” he brushed her off with feigned annoyance and looked around, “we should split up to search.”

    “I’m not standing guard,” Suki announced, and before the words were fully out of her mouth, Sokka’s hand was flying to his nose. 

    “Not it!” He shouted.

    “I always stand guard,” Aang whined. 

    “Because you’re the best at climbing,” Suki assured him. 

    “That helps me get into houses too, not just stand up on the roof,” he huffed. 

    “I can stand guard instead, my young friend,” Iroh offered.

    “Aang’s the best look out, he can climb practically flat walls, it’s crazy,” Sokka said, and partially it was because he trusted Aang more, even though he was more than happy to be pleasant with most anyone, Iroh was still General Iroh of the Fire Nation and the uncle to the Prince. It wasn’t entirely that either, though, because part of him did want Aang to be able to keep an eye out for Katara and Iroh would see much less from the ground.

    “Watch this,” Aang said, flashing a wide smile but before he could start toward the stone building in front of them, a man shuffled from around the corner.

    Except it wasn’t a man, Sokka’s eyes shot open in surprise, it was a freshly turned infected. 

    “How the fuck did this guy get here? Is there someone in this”- Sokka got cut off when Suki shouted, loud enough to hopefully be heard by Katara.

    “We’ve got company!” 

    Just as silently as the first one had appeared, about a dozen more began turning the corner.

    Sokka watched affixed to the road like he’d been frozen, as the first one that had turned the corner grabbed onto Aang. He had still been part of the way to the wall and was closer to them than anyone, “Aang!”

    Aang shouted and tried to push the creature away from him but it grasped onto his arm and pulled him closer. The infected began a crescendo-ing chorus of moans and hungry growls as they began to swarm their prey.

    Sokka let cry the birdsong that signaled the most urgent danger and launched into action. He followed Suki as she fought her way through to get to Aang.

    “Climb!” she ordered Aang as she used her mostly retired katana to slice her way through the onslaught. She was deadly in her accuracy, but there wasn’t enough time. 

    Sokka struggled with two of the infected, they kept coming, and while Suki was building a wall of headless corpses around her, Sokka’s sharpened bone club wasn’t as efficient. He couldn’t see Aang or Suki anymore but, when Suki’s wail sliced through the air, he knew what happened without needing to look.

    Aang had gotten bit.  Aang who never even killed them, who would usually just run away. 

    Sokka roared, and anger fueled him to the maximum of his ability. He crushed the heads of the infected without a thought for safety. He pushed their bodies back at their ranks to build space between them, but some of them tripped and began to crawl at him and he was forced to back up.

    Iroh was beside him then, and he knew at first only because of the sounds of the man’s labored breathing as he fought his way toward Aang as well.

    The space Sokka had made between himself and the undead closed, and one of the crawlers began tearing at the fur wrappings around his leg ravenously. 

    He reacted out of instinct, terror wrapped its tendrils around his brain and forced his body to move. He began to kick his way out of its grasp, his leather straps and fur loosening and coming free of their binding as he thrashed against her hold. It gave him the freedom to truly move though, and he threw himself backward several feet, rolling once he hit the ground and quickly popping back up, just as the closest undead shuffled within arms reach of his new position.

    With the upper hand regained, but ground lost, he continued the ceaseless battle against the onslaught of an enemy that never tired and could not feel pain. 

    A slow sort of desperation came over him as he realized that more and more of them just kept spilling onto the street. There were probably about 50 of them now, not including the ones they’d already disposed of, and there was too much space between him and Suki. 

    “No,” he groaned, and his breathing began to pick up, not like this , his arm moved as if it was possessed and he tried to back up.

    “Sokka, keep fighting,” Iroh called from somewhere to his left. 

    And then, another voice, “Sokka!”

    He looked toward Katara’s voice, he could just barely hear her over the endless groaning and screeching of the attacking infected, but he looked to where her voice was coming from.

    It was his downfall.

    “Sokka, where are you?”

    There was a sharp jerk on his unprotected leg, then, pain. It was dull at first and then it shot up through his knee and thigh. 

    Iroh again pulled him back, and he screamed as the pain in his shin exploded.

    He looked down, and there was one of the crawlers. He may have been a Fire Nation soldier at one point, but the monster he was now had a mouth full of Sokka’s blood and the soaked crimson fabric from his pants. He went in for another bite and pulled more flesh away from Sokka’s exposed shin bone gluttonously. 

    Iroh dragged him back, faster than any of the infected could stagger, and they moved even further away from Sokka’s only family. 

    It’s better this way, he thought, now Iroh can take me out where no one has to see .

    He tried to help, but the longer they walked the colder he got, and his left foot felt like it was a solid wooden block. 

    “Here!” Iroh exclaimed, and there was a moment of shuffling when Iroh propped him against the wall and kicked the door open, “get in,” but Sokka could hardly move his lower leg, and he was getting so tired that Iroh had to drag him through the door as well. 

    “Kill me, please, I don’t want”-

    “Silence,” Iroh boomed, and he kept pulling Sokka through the blurring door frames before depositing him into a chair. He choked back a sob as the force of his fall sent sharp waves of pain up his leg.

    Iroh ran off for a while, while Sokka looked around the room. There was barely any light despite it being midday, but the light that did shine through the drawn but rotted curtains, illuminated a small room lined with cabinets and countertops, and a large chair with a cobwebbed covered stool next to it. 

    He saw very little of the fine details though, as a dull radiating pain consumed most of his attention.

    His leg. He looked down to the blood and the tilt of his head was enough to have black spots burning holes in his vision. He leaned back and found himself falling down into a chair that was reclined almost completely. 

    Iroh tore back into the room. He blurred past Sokka and began wildly opening cabinets and drawers. He threw some packets and a few bottles onto a small metal tray that sat suspended in air by a metal arm next to where Sokka sat. 

    “Ah,” Iroh exclaimed excitedly and hurried back to Sokka’s side, “smell this,” Iroh demanded and brought a hand which had only a towel in it to Sokka’s face. 

    The low yellow light of the oil lamp cast flickering shadows against the wooden walls and the tapestries that hung from them. Sokka watched as the warped and elongated shadow of his mother moved back and forth across the ceiling as she rocked Katara against her chest. 

    She was murmuring in a soft, raspy, voice, something resembling a tune was present underneath the tiredness that exuded from every part of her body. He listened to her lullaby, and watched her as she rocked back and forth, clutching Katara as she fussed and squirmed against the constraints of her swaddling. 

    Despite the protests from the sick infant, Kya’s head would nod forward slightly, her eyes fluttering and then closing. Her head jerked up, as she woke back up, and for some reason, he couldn’t remember, it made him laugh. He could remember the sound more than the feeling. He’d been sick for days as well, and his voice was as raspy as hers was.

    “What are you giggling for,” his mother asked with a small smile.

    “You fell asleep,”

    “So did you.”

    He awoke screaming, the sound ripping him out of his memory, and the smell of burning flesh, acrid and overwhelming, assaulted him as soon as he was conscious.

    He writhed on the reclined chair, and his cries were echoed by the banging of the undead at the door.

    “Quiet now, my boy, please,” Iroh begged, and he brought his hand back up to Sokka’s face. The bitter air calmed him and made everything fuzzy around the edges, but it did not lessen the pain. Iroh’s face was wet, dripping even, and flushed bright cherry pink as he ran into the darkness and came back again.

    Sokka giggled, and when the mask was removed he rasped, “ I like the drums.”

    The now damp towel in Iroh’s hand pressed to his mouth and Sokka inhaled the burning sweet smell until there was nothing. 

    “Sokka,” Suki trilled, her voice a song as she called out to him amongst the trees. 

    He waited for her to find him, smiling brightly. He knew he had covered his tracks better than ever before and he hoped she would walk right past him. 

    He brought his hand to his mouth as slowly and quietly as he could, covering his smile to mask his breathing. He could hear the sound of her feet now, and that meant she had to be coming up right beside him.

    She stopped. There were only the sounds of the forest, and he had to resist the pull of his impulse to turn to look around the tree. He waited in agony to see what she would do. 

    “The funny thing is, I know you think I don’t see you,” she laughed, and her voice was loud, right next to him. 

    “What!” He jumped back, shocked and indigent.

    Suki began laughing loudly, and she threw herself at him, tackling him to the ground, her clear strong laugh peeling loudly through the empty woods. 

    They wrestled momentarily, and Sokka pretended she didn’t let him get the upper hand just so he could roll on top of her. She flashed him a coy smile before wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down to kiss her. 

    The room was humid, sweat clung to his arms and plastered his clothing to him uncomfortably. Iroh was slumped over in a chair, his light snoring buzzed like a swarm of bees. He blinked to clear his eyes and opened his mouth, it was so dry it hurt to move his tongue.

    It was almost too dark to see, but a small amount of reddish light filtered in through a window somewhere beyond Sokka’s sight. He tried to move his legs. He remembered the injury, remembered the pain.

    He shook with fear as only his right leg moved. He fell back to the chair as soon as he attempted to sit up. He tried to lift his left leg again, and his thigh lifted slightly from the bed, pain radiated throughout his entire leg. 

    I didn’t turn . He thought with the most mental clarity he’d had since he’d been bit.

    He shifted his torso so that his arm could reach down to try and feel his leg. His fingers gently caressed the gauze at the top of his knee. He tried to shift further, but blackness vignetted the little he could see and a wave of dizziness washed over him. 

    His hand moved lower though, and he tried to adjust his leg to feel the injured lower limb.

    His fingers met air. 

    Beneath the bulbous pack of rough gauze that encased his knee there was nothing. 

    He took in a sharp rough breath that ached as it passed through his arid mouth, and Iroh jolted from sleep.

    “Mmm-” he could not speak past that garbled sound.

    Iroh’s hand roughly pulled his head back, grabbing the small tuft of his bound hair and forcing him to look up.

    A sweet and salty concoction flooded his mouth, spilling over the sides, dripping down his jaw, and rolling down his neck until it was absorbed by his already sweat soaked shirt. He drank though, swallowing in large gulps, his mouth still parched even as he drank from the cup Iroh tilted toward him. 

    “Drink,” Iroh encouraged him softly.

    He did not need to be told.

    He grasped at Iroh’s forearm to steady the cup and when he couldn’t drink anymore he pushed the hand away. 

    “You’re alive,” Iroh sobbed, “he’s alive.”

    “Leg,” he said, roughly, his vocal chords already unused to making speech. 

    “It’s ok,” Iroh assured him, though his voice was high and warbled from crying. 

    He fell back into darkness.

    There was only darkness.

    Then, “Sokka!”

    “Sokka, where are you?”

    It was bright when he woke next, and he was clasping Iroh’s hand, “you’re awake,” the older man gasped, and brought a cup to his lips, “drink a little, just a little.”

    Iroh put the drink to his lips, despite the dark. Sokka was expecting water but was greeted with pure apple juice. The sweet and tart juice was too much and he smacked his lips while he adjusted to it. He tried to sit up but fell back against the chair. 

    “Water,” he croaked.

    “There is none, drink a little more, you need to regenerate blood and this is the only way”-

    From somewhere outside, a loud crash reverberated through the streets, and on the walls anything hanging shook just slightly. 

    Iroh exclaimed, and turned toward the light, but then he turned around and just urged him again, “drink, drink, it’s fine.”

    Sokka managed little more of the juice before drifting off again.

    The sound of seabirds squawking overhead, and the briny scent of the sea, weren’t enough to raise Sokka’s spirits on their hunt. 

    “Why does she get to come,” he sneered, glancing quickly  at Katara, who was barely recognizable underneath her coat and furs. 

    “She doesn’t get to come, Sokka, she has to come. Katara has to help feed our tribe as much as everyone else.”

    “The other girls do the washing and help with the babies,” he observed, meaning to hint to his father where she should be instead.

    “Well, we need to see what she’s better at before we decide that, don’t we?”

    “None of the other girls were better at fishing?”

    Hakoda chuckled, “none of the other girls wanted to, but Sokka,” he squatted down to look at Sokka at eye level, “she wants to be just like her big brother, can you blame her?”

    Sokka pouted, “yes.”

    “I’d wanna be just like you if you were my big brother too, Sokka, why not give her a chance?”

    Sokka, ego boosted but not fully convinced, turned to give Katara a dirty look, “I guess.”

    Sokka awoke again to the sound of weeping. 

    “Water,” he begged, his mouth practically sticking to itself. 

    Iroh was back in his view, face still dripping, and he brought the juice to him again.

    “I want water,” he said in a light sob, but drank the juice still and greedily finished the cup. 

    “I will look for water,” Iroh promised him, and brought a new bottle to his lips, “it’s the last of the tea I brought from our camp,” he warned him. 

    He tried to finish this as well but Iroh stopped him, “if you throw up I don’t want you to be out completely.”

    Sokka tried to push the last of the liquid around his mouth, his teeth were so dry they absorbed everything. 

    “Aang is dead,” Sokka said aloud, but his tone was upturned, a question, a small hope.

    “Yes, he was bit.”

    “I was bit.”

    Silence hung precariously above him, and when he looked to Iroh, he realized the man was crying.

    “Katara?” His voice was so soft, he didn’t want the answer but he couldn’t stop himself from asking. 

    “I heard her that day, while you were unconscious. She was alive.” 

    Sokka didn’t have the tears to shed, but a low guttural groan escaped his throat and he took in a ragged breath, he moaned again, “Suki?”

    “I don’t know.”

    He did not even think to ask about the man’s nephew. His relief was only that Katara was alive, but his grief overhung any happiness it might bring. He had survived, but at the cost of losing and being separated from the only family he had left. 

    He stared off into the distance, eyes blurring and painful with their attempts to make tears. He took respite from his despair moments later when sleep took him away from his thoughts. 

    “You’re not allowed to be in here,” a voice whispered next to his ear, and he jumped up, twisting like a cat to see who was behind him. 

    He already knew he wasn’t supposed to be there, but the allure of the weapons stored at the temple where the Kyoshi Warriors trained had been too tempting.

    It was hard to tell how old the warriors were with their intense makeup and matching uniforms, but this girl was not in uniform. She wore a roughly hewn brown shirt and matching cropped pants that ended at her mid calf. Her reddish brown hair skimmed her chin and she had dark lashes that rimmed deep blue eyes. He could tell she was around his age in her casual attire. Around his age, and beautiful.

    “Hi,” he said, stupidly, “I’m just... looking around?” He brought his hands up in an awkward shrug.

    “I could get you in sooooo much trouble right now,” she smiled deviously at him, and he was dumb struck.

    “I wanted to see the artillery,” he admitted.

    “You planning on stealing something?”

    “No! I just wanted to...” he didn’t want to admit what he’d wanted to do was pick some up and swing them around for fun, “admire them.”

    “You some kind of weapons nut, big guy?” Her tone was getting more derisive. 

    “Just bored mostly.”

    “It does get pretty boring here,” she admitted. She crossed her arms and leaned forward, “suppose I let you go, you ever gonna come back here?”

    “No, nope, nada, I promise,” he pressed his palms together in plea. 

    “Hm,” she waved him off, and followed from a distance while he scrambled back out the window.

    He would certainly be back.

    Iroh woke him. He was brought to consciousness gently, with a small shake and soft but persistent voice. 

    “You need to wake up, Sokka.” 

    He tried to feign sleep to avoid being awoken, but Iroh cooed, “I have water.” 

    Sokka cracked an eye open.

    Iroh brought what Sokka now recognized as a canteen, to his lips and he drank in halting but large gulps.

    “I want you to drink this whole thing over the course of the next few hours.”

    Sokka brought the metal top away from his lips and looked down to see his leg for the first time.

    Except there was no leg. He had hoped that had been another dream. 

    His head dropped back to the seat and he could now feel his heart beating painfully against his chest. 

    “Did you know it would work?” His voice was so soft when he spoke he hardly believed it.

    “No,” Iroh admitted.

    Sokka closed his eyes tightly but there was no stopping it as tears pushed their way through and spilled down the sides of his face before running into his sideburns. They burned as they made their way.  

    “How do I survive like this?”

    “Humans can learn to adapt to anything, Sokka, this too will become something you surmount.”

    Sokka felt like thrashing against the chair and screaming. Neither of those would do anything for him.

    He took another sip of his water, opening his eyes and allowing the tears to fall freely.

    Iroh rested his hand against Sokka’s forehead and the small gesture made him freeze.

    “Drink carefully,” Iroh warned him, either ignoring his reaction or not noticing it. 

    He was weary to a point of infection, it had slithered its way back into every joint and aching muscle, “I’m done.”

    He was asleep again within minutes. 

Chapter Text

    Katara waded into the creek up to her knees. The cold leached heat from the water and spilled it into the morning air, surrounding her in a fog that coated her with a fine layer of dew as she moved. 

    She had never been the best at fishing. She was great at finding fishing spots, but when it came time to make the kill she usually hesitated. Her brother had made relentless fun of her back when they lived at the South Pole, she used to cry herself to sleep over it. 

    She thought of the blood soaked fur wrapping.

    Her hand shot into the water.

    No tools. Only instinct and a dull blade at the shore to spare them a long death. 

    She came back with a clump of water plants and threw them back toward her hungry knife and its amphibious appetizers. Some of the greens would be edible at least. 

    She moved deeper, and when the water began to soak into the boxers she’d been forced  to wear since she’d grown out of her wrappings, she stopped.

    Patience had never been her greatest strength. Tenacity, passion, compassion, faith, these things had always guided her movements, but patience had not. Her father used to say that she was scaring the fish away with the way her foot would rap incessantly against the wooden floor of their canoe. She had some patience for people, patience is a type of kindness when it comes to dealing with others, but she had always been too quick to move when it came to fishing and most other things in life. 

    While the water was warmer than the air, it was still cold against her core as it soaked into the crotch of her underwear and she shivered as gooseflesh raised the hairs on her arms to greet the rising sun. 

    Something slipped past her ankle.

    She did not shake. 

    She closed her eyes and let out all of the air in her lungs, spraying visible breath like a dragon’s flame. 

    She tensed. 

    She did not feel the movement in the water like one feels the clinging fingers of seagrass around their ankles, but instead she felt where her hand needed to be like one feels eyes on their back.

    Katara’s hand sliced through the water without creating so much as a ripple. It glided through the water as if it were simply air, and flexed to grab just as the fish connected with her palm.

    She raised her arm into the air, prey wriggling in her hand, desperate for life. She imagined that this fish was safe and one of many that had spawned in the absence of human fishing, in the absence of human waste, in the absence of humans. 

    The fish doesn’t feel guilty for eating the bug, Katara , her dad whispered from a memory, it only knows that it needs to eat the bug to survive .

    She could be the fish. 

    On shore, she stabbed it through its brain first. 

    “I thought you’d run off.”

    Katara was only just beginning to become used to the absolute soundlessness in which Zuko moved. 

    Two mornings, now three, had lapsed since they had lost their families, and they had stagnated at his little camp, unsure how long they should stay, neither one able to say that they didn’t believe Iroh was coming to join them. 

    Zuko looked over her small bounty and nodded, “You didn't learned to fish that way in the Southern Water Tribe.”

    Zuko had spoiled her good will toward him last night; he'd blown up over the way she’d “suffocated the fire” and stormed off into the darkness. She‘d never felt more alone than when he’d left. She hated him, and she needed him, and she hated that she needed him. 

    So, she chose not to rise to his attempt at goading her into a conversation. Instead, she kept processing the fish, exactly in the way she had learned at home, and just shrugged. 

    Zuko stood over her, bouncing back and forth between the heels of his feet.

    By the time she finished the fish he had moved to the edge of the water.

    “I think we should go,” he said with his back still turned to her.

    She bit her lower lip and looked down at her blood stained hands, “we’ll go to my camp. Maybe…” she wouldn’t let herself make a scenario that would hurt either of them, so her words trailed off. 

    “Maybe,” Zuko repeated, his voice lacking any hope. 

    Zuko and Katara had no choice but to retrace their steps back to the accursed little village that had pushed them together, but they did not stop to rehash the pain that radiated off of them as they walked along the outskirts hoping to not be ambushed again.

    What Katara hated more than the walking, was the flies. She had heard once from a refugee, who claimed to have been a Professor of Natural Science before the world ended, that beetles were the most common life form. She imagined now it had to be flies. The closer to water, or the old remnants of camps, they wandered toward the worse it was , but there was no place truly free of them. 

    Big fat angry black flies that bit at any exposed skin, tiny flies that swooped at your ears and dug into your hair, generations of flies that had only known an excess of rot in a new world order of death. 

    She would be killed in these woods, she often thought, summoning the undead while slapping herself like she was ringing a dinner bell. 

    There were a few of the infected hunting amongst the trees and the closer they were to the village the longer Zuko took when killing them. When he lobbed off their arms or sliced through their torsos before taking their heads, she had to look away. She wanted to ask him if he remembered that once they had been a person with a family, but she had to fight them herself, and she did not need the reminder. 

    She had comforted herself that once they passed the village they were almost done but any relief she might have felt was short lived.

    It may have only been about an hour's walk left, but it was the longest hour of walking she’d ever done.

    The forest she had walked through in near silence only days before was teeming with the infected. Her borrowed blade offered more distance between her and the snarling undead than the cooking knife she had on her hip, but she had trained little with smaller weapons, relying on the staff that she had hoped one of her friends had managed to take before fleeing the city. 

    Her arm ached again and she wasn’t sure that she could keep going.

    Then, they passed the first line of defense. 

    “Watch your feet, here come the pits,” she called, and just as she did she passed the first one.

    They were as long as Sokka and Suki laying down head to toe, as deep as Sokka was tall, and wide enough that when she jumped over the next one, she had to time it perfectly. 

    Three of the infected fell off the edge trying to grab her, hitting hard dirt and exposed rocks before sinking into the sucking mud that filled the bottoms. 

    She used herself as bait then, standing and softly calling to the ones in earshot, leading them to her so that they could also fall into their trap. 

    Zuko ran up to her, weaving through the pits that created a semi circle around the slope that began after them. He panted as they stood there waiting for the remaining few undead to stagger their way toward them, some fell into other pits as they made their way over. 

    Katara had expected the sound of their struggling and groaning from beneath her, but she could hear the same sickening sound emanating from several pits around them. She wondered just how many of the horde had passed through this area of the woods. 

    “Follow me carefully, the next phase is metal tooth traps.”

    “Metal tooth traps?”

    “They’re like a set of jaws, and if you step on them they shut hard enough to break your ankle and the sharp teeth are like an inch long and most likely still covered in the blood of the infected.” 

    “That won’t kill them,” Zuko pointed out, but fell in step behind her.

    “It doesn’t need to kill them, just slow them down enough that we can get behind the wall.” She watched the ground as she walked, stepping softly through the leaves.

    “There,” she pointed once they came across the first one she had noticed, “ and they’re not just for the infected.”

    The metal trap was covered in a thin layer of decaying leaves and Zuko looked between her and the trap with a hard expression she didn’t care to investigate. 

    She kept working her way up the steepening slope.

    “How far up do they go?”

    “The traps? Until they can’t lie flat anymore,”

    “How steep is this hill?”

    She stopped, looked at him, and then looked behind her. She watched as across the moderate distance they’d created as a straggler fell victim to the pit traps as well.   

    “It’s steep but then it flattens out pretty completely, just another little bit,” she said with a cold clip to her voice that silenced further inquiry. 

    She tried hard not to imagine that all of her friends would be waiting for her when she got back to the camp. The closer they got though, the harder it was to quell the treacherous hope that had begun to fester in her belly preparing to gut her when the camp was empty. 

    The steepest part of the slope required using the slender pale barked trees as leverage and Katara grasped every one with an intentional sturdiness. She used to fly up this hill, racing back to their base with her scavenged goods or in anticipation of the safety of their wall. She had been sick amongst these trees, she’d cried behind them to hide the effects of the horrors she’d seen on runs, she’d laughed beneath them with her brother. 

    She may never do any of that again. 

    Just as she’d prepared him, the slope flattened and she pulled herself up the final step with a leaden ball of dread weighing her down. 

    After just a few steps forward, Zuko stopped walking.

    “How did you...” he trailed off, looking at their wall in awe. 

    “Sokka’s idea, but Suki’s the one who figured out how to make it work.”

    The sharpened wooden spikes were a mixture of new sharp white wood, fine and dangerous looking, and then the dulled dark stained spears that had yet to be so worn down that they needed to be replaced.

    “How did you all have time for this?” He muttered, walking toward the wall now at a clipped pace. 

    She fell behind him, not ready to be confronted with her biggest fear, not ready to accept they really might not be there. 

    When he was standing at the wall, his finger testing the sharpness of one of the fresh spikes, she pressed her hand to her chest and tried to swallow the acid that was lapping at the back of her throat. 

    She almost forgot to wait for him when she finally steeled herself and went for the entrance, but she hesitated just as he turned to see where she was going, and he jogged over to her. 

    The wall of spikes spanned between several trees, and at a spot where three trees created a small triangle, a break in the wall allowed for her to just barely squeeze through the space and shimmy behind the wall. 

    She would have heard them if they’d been there, but when they walked through the entrance and were greeted by absence Katara began to cry. 

    At first her eyes burned and the tears held themselves at the edge of her eyelids, waiting for the strength to drop past her lashes, but once the first few broke free her grief broke through its own wall, and she howled. 

    She ran to the cabin, her breath coming fast and harsh, sobs flying unbidden from her soul as she checked to make sure they were really alone.

    The cabin was just as they had left it. A mess of projects covered all the surfaces, half finished and just started, the floors and walls were littered with found objects from homes and the woods. Bright stones and crystals lined the window sills, sleeping bags were piled together in the corner, and their larder was still shut tight with all of Sokka’s tools splayed on top of it to pretend it was only a workbench. She lurched forward, and her hand grasped the little twig model of a new trap he’d created. The sharp whittled edges stabbed into her hand. She threw it to the ground and bellowed and stamped on it. 

    He wouldn’t need it again anyway.

Chapter Text

    It rained for three days, alternating between a downpour and a light drizzle before settling into a steady rain that soaked through the wooden floorboards of the cabin. Katara felt as if she would never be dry again. Even her normally thick frizzy curls were lank and heavy against her scalp as the constant moisture weighed down her braid. 
    If she had been at the cabin with Aang, Sokka, and Suki, they would have played their invented card games with their homemade deck and lit one of their small collection of scavenged scented candles. Suki would have joked about creating a cozy ambiance and Sokka would have retorted with some stupid comment about setting the mood. Katara would pretend to be grossed out and Aang would start them all laughing.  
    Katara would have hung all of their sleeping bags to dry on the dilapidated taxidermy cat-deer that watched them from the tall walls downstairs, made space for them all in the loft until it dried, and she would have badgered   Suki into letting them dip into their store of honey to make some small treat. Then, Aang would have played music on the small set of drums he’d found, or the reed pipes he’d made, while she cooked. 
    She wasn’t with Sokka, Aang, or Suki though and the first day she did not even leave her sleeping bag. 
    Zuko moved around the cabin and brought her water throughout the day, but they did not speak to each other once. It felt wrong to have him there. The cabin had been their refuge away from him and the Fire Nation. The one good thing of all of the pain they had gone through to get to the continental Earth Kingdom.
    She could do nothing about that though, and her despair overshadowed any discomfort. She had no energy to yell at him or act disturbed by his presence or even to notice the demands of her body as she lay in the damp cold. 
    She was awake through most of the night. She felt the water creep into her blanket as the ground became oversaturated. 
    The second day again, no words, but he brought her more water and a hunk of some jerky that he had no doubt found looking through their things, but she could not be moved to care. She did not eat the jerky. 
    On the third day he shook her awake.
    “Stop it,” she fought against him as she rose from sleep.
    “You have to get up,” he said, his tone verging on yelling
    “I’m fine.”
    “Your lips are blue.”
    She pressed her fingers to her lips and they came back clean but shaking.
    She supposed she was a little cold. 
    “You’re soaking wet.”
    He wrenched her up from the floor, ignoring her protestations, and brought her over to the wicker chair Sokka had carried on his back for miles to bring into their little home. It was their first chair. She clutched the arm and thought of how many nights she had fallen asleep while Sokka sat in this chair tinkering. 
    Outside of her wet blankets the cold felt more present, and she wrapped her arms around her torso to stop the air from stealing all of her heat. 
    She watched with something like the ghost of detached bemusement as Zuko unzipped her red flannel sleeping bag and threw it over the antlers just as she would have. He threw down a rag and tried to sop up as much of the water as he could, but stopped himself when the rag was soaked as well.
    “Do you have dry clothes?”
    She drew the line at him dressing her.
    The small loft above the main area of the cabin was Sokka’s and Suki’s bedroom, but it also housed their weapons and their most valuable possessions and one of Katara’s most valuable possessions was her little bag of clothes. Especially the small stack of underwear she had managed to collect for herself. 
    She slipped out of her wet, dirty, stale, clothes and used her musty undershirt to wipe her body dry. They had soap, and had she been feeling better, and had better company,  she may have run outside in her underwear with the soap to shower in the rain like they had done a thousand times before, but today she simply dried herself as best she could, and pulled on a pair of soft dry boxers. 
    She crawled into the little love nest that had been left up there when the physical exertion of changing overwhelmed her. Next to the sleeping pad, which was just two sleeping bags zipped together on top of a bed of stolen towels, there was a pile of haphazardly folded clothing, and she slipped an arm out from the covers to grab a rough linen tunic she’d seen Sokka wear a million times, before pulling it into the sleeping bag with her.
    While she twisted and turned to pull the shirt over her, she caught the faint smell of her brother coming from a lumpy pillow of feathers, one just like what they had all made themselves. She grabbed the pillow and breathed deeply, wrapping her whole body around it. It smelled awful. Like sweat and smoke, and the sour smell of fabric that had been wet and took too long to dry. She couldn’t feel repulsed, in some ways it was like she had found a small piece of him hidden in the fibers of the woven wool cover.
    She began to cry again. 
    The sunlight that filtered through the dark clouds slowly dimmed as she lay there. At some point she fell asleep again.
    It was dark when she woke. Zuko sat next to her and was struggling through reciting the words to a poem, or flatly singing the lyrics of some repetitive song. By the time she had stirred to full consciousness he had stopped. 
    “I made food.”
    The room was warm, and she sat up from the covers without any sting of cold tingeing her movements with regret.
    “You cooked,” she said without a question. The wood burning stove that had made the place so desirable filled the loft with heat when used. 
    “Soup,” he handed her the bowl as he spoke, “I used my last bullion cube, but I used more jerky and some of the stored vegetables and stuff.”
    She took the bowl without comment, and took a deep drink of the salty broth. They collected their own salt when they ventured down to the crack between their cliff peak and the next to go fishing in the sea, and the extra salt from the stock, and what he must have used from their little jar, was overwhelming. She brought the bowl down to her lap and thanked him in a soft voice that did not belie the hatred she felt toward him for being the one that had survived with her.

    They lingered at the cabin for a week before they began to worry about food. Katara hadn’t done much more than she had in the first few days, but her tongue loosened around Zuko as she began to adjust to her newest change in reality. 
    She had come to realize that Zuko just kept moving. His hands never stopped, and whenever he could find any excuse to jump up to work on some task he would. He brought her food when she wouldn’t get up, and kept the cabin warm and dry. Probably more so than their store of chopped wood could sustain, but while she had sat upstairs she’d heard him, once the rain had cleared enough, chopping wood somewhere beyond the view of the window. 
    She came downstairs on the clearest day of the week while the sun was high in the sky, wrapped in a blanket they had taken with them from Kyoshi Island. 
    Zuko was standing next to the wood burning stove, stirring something in their only pot, and he was looking at her once she finished her descent from the ladder.
    “Morning,” she grumbled.
    Zuko nodded and kept stirring, looking away from her after a moment. 
    “Soup?”
    His spoon slowed, and he gave a slight shake of his head, just barely moving his fringe across his forehead, “eggs.”
    She remembered the chopping.
    She walked toward him, and looked into the pot to see a meager portion of scrambled eggs mixed in with a disproportionate amount of vegetables. 
    “Did you”-
    “I checked for”-
    They both stopped. Katara motioned for him to go. 
    “I didn’t see anything when I had a light up to them,” he said delicately.
    She nodded, and walked over to sit in Sokka’s chair. 
    “I found dandelions so I made tea.”
    Katara let out a surprised laugh, it was short lived and sharp, and she startled at the sound.
    “What?”
    “Tea?”
    “Yeah, tea,” Zuko bristled, and turned his back to her.
    “I just... haven’t had anything but water to drink in a while, it seemed...” she couldn’t find the words.
    Zuko turned to her, his face a near scowl, “why would you have a kettle then?”
    “A what?”
    Zuko grabbed the spouted metal pitcher they used to heat their water and held it out in front of her, “this?” His voice raised incredulously.
    “Oh... that was already here, we use it for boiling water.” Katara shrugged, “I’ve only ever heard ‘teapot’ in Earth Kingdom. That’s what Suki called it.”
    Zuko put it back down on the stove and shook his head, and he smiled, she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen him smile before and then he looked away. 
    “I thought you were saying you didn’t... know what a tea kettle was at all for a second.” 
    “Well, if you’d called it a tea kettle I could have figured it out,” she muttered, casting her eyes to the wood grain of the little table.
    He poured her a cup, using a clay mug that sat with their set of dishes, and placed it in front of her.
    “Here.”
    She took the steaming mug in both her hands and held it in front of her, the scent was slightly bitter.
    “You went out from behind the wall alone?”
    “I wanted to kill the zombies in the pits, I knew their noise would attract others. Alive and dead.”
    Katara grunted, “easier to get ‘em out alive.”
    Zuko shrugged, “I didn’t know.”
    She blew across the surface of her mug. 
    “Eat,” he told her, putting a fork down on the table in front of her, and one big plate of all the food in the middle.
    She cringed slightly at the idea of sharing a plate with him, but felt ashamed to show it. 
    “Cutting down a tree makes a lot of noise too.”
    “I only cut down a branch.”
    “The one with the bird’s nest?”
    Zuko rolled his eyes and took a bite of the scramble.
    “What’s in it? These weren’t here.”
    “The green stuff? I’m not sure, I found it down by the water with a bunch of weird looking rabbits going to town on it.”
    “I guess if the rabbits can eat them it’s probably fine,” she conceded, and added as an afterthought “we think they’re chipmunk rabbits.” 
    Zuko nodded and kept eating.
    Katara picked around the edges, but once she tasted it she went back in for more just as voraciously as she ever had, “they’re garlicky and oniony.”
    He agreed with a nod.
    “We don’t normally go past the wall alone. Especially all the way to the water.”
    “Good for you guys.”
    She scowled and set her fork down, “it’s not safe.”
    “Are you really that worried about my safety?”
    Her face slipped into a frown and she looked down at the table, “well, if you’re not then I won’t bother.” 
    They ate in silence. Katara was close to speaking several times, almost on the verge of explaining that she actually did care, because you couldn’t survive out here alone, not really. 
    Once the plate was finished, Katara looked up to find him watching her, “what,” she snapped at him.  
    “I won’t go alone again, but I needed to put down the zombies and we needed more food. I didn’t want to… bother you.” 
    She felt ashamed and nodded, “yeah, ok.”
    “What’s the plan for the day?” 
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like… fishing or scavenging or what?”
    “Oh... right.”
    The need to find food superseded any emotional breakdowns she wanted to have.  
    “Well, let’s check the larder first.”
    She went over to the chest, Sokka’s tools now neatly stacked on the shelf where they were supposed to be, and she lifted the lid and locked it into place with the little metal kickstand. 
    “There isn’t much,” he tried to warn her.
    “We haven’t even had any rice so it’s not like we’re going to starve.” 
    “Rice?”
    “Yeah, there’s a river up toward the swampy areas that had wild rice in the fall. I guess Aang and Sokka were fishing and started accidentally knocking it into their boat and Suki realized what it was when they got back. We’ve still got some…” she stared at her hands in the larder. She had spoken of them so casually that the realization that she might never see them again, that they all might be dead, rocked her once more with force, “it’s in here, under the false bottom.” 
    Her hands scurried through the larder to find the seams that would reveal the hidden compartment, but certainly they were not a part of her. She watched them, resting her chin against her own shoulder and looking down at herself like she was possessed. 
    You’re just showing him everything? It was Sokka’s voice that hissed from her other shoulder, and they looked at each other in the mid space between reality and derealization. 
    Her hands kept moving, animals focused solely on survival. They did not care for moral arguments, but sought out sustenance where it could be found, even in the corpse of their family. 
    She pulled the roughly hewn sack of dried wild rice from the belly of their home, the black grains shone like organs spilling from an opened stomach.
    Once she held the bag though, she stopped, and she looked to her right like Sokka would actually be there to argue, but it was just Zuko.
    “Katara?”
    His voice was insistent, and she found herself blinking back tears without having felt the clenching of her throat or the stinging in her eyes, “s-sorry, just, just...” she didn’t have words, but she presented him the sack as if it was all he needed. 
    Zuko nodded, “yeah, just....”
    He took the little sack and weighed it in his hands like a merchant at a stall.
    She reached back into the darkness, and hesitated to grab the last thing hidden in the folds, but she saw the futility in it, and she thought Suki’s not here to tell me to save it. Then, bitterly she thought, it’s not like he’s the one who killed them. So she clasped the glass jar they’d salvaged, filled a little more than half full with honey, and lifted it for him to see “for the tea?”

    They sat with their legs dangling over the sides of the sheer cliff face behind the cabin that overlooked the ocean. Over them, a gray sky scattered with streaks of pale blue shifted in the wind that rippled over them, and beneath them a worn rattan mat kept the wet grass from soaking too far through their pants. 
    “Before we go hunting,” Zuko said while he worked at pulling the rope that was tethered to the stone between his legs upwards, “we should set some communication standards.”
    Katara nodded, taking the slack as he pulled up the rope and coiling it around a wooden spool, “meaning?”
    “You have your hunting calls, I sign, but neither of us know what the other’s means.”
    “So, you want to pick one?”
    Zuko shook his head, “We should use both. It will be more advantageous if we can communicate over both smaller and larger distances.”
    “So... teach each other?”
    Zuko nodded, and then stopped his arms for a second, “your turn.”
    They switched positions quickly, and Katara took her first turn at pulling up the rope. She started pulling the rope herself and while she’d known he’d taken a much longer turn than they normally would, she was relieved to see the treated blue Fire Nation nylon rope that heralded the near end. The rope was wet now, and heavy, salty, speckled with barnacles and twisted with seaweed, “save that,” she prompted him before he folded edible greens into the rope spool. 
    He threw it into her bucket along with the few crabs that had braved the trip only to be slaughtered later, and she smiled, “if that’s not too old it’ll make good stock.” 
    “Right, for the Seafood Boil.”
    She looked out of the corner of her eye to access his face.
    “I told you,” she emphasized her words with strong pulls of the rope, “if you boil seafood, it’s a seafood boil.”
    Zuko sighed, “and I told you that it’s the name of an actual- it doesn’t matter. Anyway.” He was silent for a moment though, and she could almost hear him going through the argument in his head before continuing, “can we get back to the communication acquisition?” 
    Katara snorted, “acquire then, what do you want to know?”
    “What’s the Albatross Krill call?”
    Katara gave him a full sideways glance when he asked that, and her eyes narrowed, “you were just out listening and tracking our calls already?”
    “Katara... I heard it almost every single time before I saw you. I mean, it’s not exactly the local fauna.”
    She harrumphed and went back to pulling up the rope, “this better be worth it,” she muttered watching as more and more seaweed appeared from beneath the sea, but no fishing trap.
    “It’s an obsessively long trap.”
    “It’s a last resor- crab!” She jerked the rope up and Zuko grabbed the crab as she had done for him.
    The blue nylon gave way to the blessed last rope, a stained green but once white woven rope from the boat they had sailed here on. “Almost done,” she announced, and just as she did, the water gave birth to the fish trap, and just from feeling alone, she knew there was at least something in there, “please have been worth it,” she muttered, her hands already feeling raw from the wet rope. 
    “So what is it?”
    “I don’t know, probably fish?”
    “N-no, the call?”
    Katara snorted in spite of herself, “right, um, Fire Nation.”
    “Hm.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing, just.... I could have guessed, I suppose. What about the zombies?”
    “Usually best not to make noise for the infected, but if you need to it's a short whistle, like as short as you can do it. Loud and clear but not long enough to give them a good location on you.”
    Katara felt the first repurposed boat fender hit the rock’s edge, alerting them to the proximity of the trap, “here, you’re taller, let’s switch.” 
    She showed him how to swing the trap out to let the fender hit the rock instead of the little wire trap, and together they coaxed the fishing trap up onto the rattan mat they had just been sitting on. 
    “So, more of a crab boil,” she suggested looking at the writhing mound of crabs in the traps.
    “So, what about your other calls?”
    Katara rolled her eyes, grabbed the trap, and started bringing it back toward the house before Zuko grabbed the other end and started walking with her.

Chapter Text

    Zuko awoke with a start, his heart beating in his throat.

    When he looked up Katara was standing over him, her hair was loose from its normal braid, and hanging over him in dark ringlets. In the little light that made its way through the windows from the moon everything on her was dark.

    “Zuko?” Her voice was soft, barely more than a whisper. 

    He shot up, hitting himself with the ends of her soft curls and sending her reeling back, “what’s wrong?” His heart was hammering already, and he felt the cool air of the room catching on a thin layer of sweat on his forehead. He was imagining any horrid scenario that would have her waking him in the night. He began rummaging for the shirt he’d thrown off before falling asleep to prepare to run if necessary. 

    “You were having... I think... you were talking in your sleep.”

    “Oh.” He stopped moving, and embarrassment settled heavily into the pit of his stomach.

    “I just came down cause... I wanted to see if...” she paused, “are you ok?”

    “Yeah,” he said it too fast, and he scratched his bare chest to seem more casual.

    “Ok,” she shifted her weight back and forth between her feet for a second and then said, “ok, good night,” before scrambling back up the ladder into the darkness. 

    He laid back down and sighed.

    Whatever dream he’d been having had fled from his mind as soon as he’d woken, but his stomach churned wondering what weakness had escaped him while he slept.  

    When he finally laid back down, he turned over again and again and did not fall back to sleep until the first gray light heralding dawn began to diffuse across the sky.

    Zuko leaned back against the wall, sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him on Katara’s sleeping bag, and shook his head vehemently, “no, because your nondominant hand is the one that stays still, but the hand gesture was right.”

    “Shit, that’s right, sorry,” she repeated the sign, and smiled when he nodded in approval.

    “So, how would you tell me you were going to go check under a table?”

    Katara shifted, digging her feet under the blanket at the other end of the sleeping bag, and thought for a moment. He watched from under his fringe as she worried her bottom lip with her teeth, and smirked. He was trying not to enjoy their lessons too much, but it was hard to pretend that teaching her EKSL wasn’t his favorite way to pass the long nights. 

    The sun set later everyday, but without real lights they had to find a way to circle around one small candle that just barely illuminated the loft enough to see each other clearly. They could have sat downstairs and used the faint light of the wood burning stove, but they had grown uncomfortable sitting at the table, and the steady rain had returned to soak the floors. So they sat in the loft, both occupying different corners of the conjoined sleeping bags, and a candle sat on a plate between them. 

    After a moment she began her attempt, and he watched her sign with scrutiny. 

    “Good?”

    “Yeah, but you should be keeping your hands up in the space we talked about.”

    “Should we do a new word?”

    “We should do the alphabet again, if that’s solid you can fingerspell anything we can’t go over.”

    Katara nodded, and started going through the alphabet slowly, when she got to ‘F’ she paused, “what’s it again?”

    “Like this,” he pressed his index finger to his thumb and showed her the sign. 

    “Right, ok,” and she made an exaggerated ‘F’ and moved through the rest of the alphabet. 

    “So you basically know them all, which is good, but your movement is clunky. Try going slower and focusing on the transitions.”

    They worked on her signs for a while longer, but then Zuko caught the height of the candle out of the corner of his eye. It had melted almost halfway, and they didn’t have enough candles to spare that much wax.

    “We should go to bed,” he said, disappointment dripping from his lips like wax down the side of the candle. 

    “Yeah, probably,” she agreed, looking toward the candle as well, “my fingers hurt anyway.” 

    Zuko chuckled, “I remember that, when I was learning it happened, but once you build up the muscles it will stop.”

    He had moved his sleeping bag to the loft to avoid the puddling where he usually slept, and he reluctantly moved from his spot on her bed to go over to his own. When he laid down on his mat he looked back over to Katara, who was bending over to blow out the candle, her hand tucking her hair back to avoid it spilling into the flame, and he marveled at the way her skin reflected the warmth of the light. He admired the swell of her breast as she leaned, and when he caught himself he tucked his head under the blanket and grimaced. 

    After a moment he peeked his face back out, the cool darkness washing over him where there had once been warm light. He looked up toward the small square window above them.

    From the darkness, he heard Katara speak, “you should tell me something about yourself, Zuko.”

    He was silent for a moment before hesitantly asking, “what do you want to know?”

    “I don’t really know anything,” she said slowly, contemplatively, “what was your favorite food?”

    “My favorite food?” He was surprised, not sure what he expected she would ask but still caught off guard.

    She waited for him quietly.

    “Sweet buns with berry filling,” he thought of the first thing that came to his mind from childhood and then mused, “I would probably throw up if I ate one now, let alone as many as I used to eat.” 

    After a second he asked, “what about you?”

    “I probably wouldn’t have said it then, but my Gran-Gran’s stewed sea prunes.”

    “What would you have said when you were little?” He turned over onto his side and rested his head on his arm, looking off into the darkness but tilting his face to look off into the darkness toward her. 

    “Hm,” she took a second to think and he knew she would be biting on her lower lip without having to see her. When she started speaking he couldn’t hear her but he caught “... like berries and whipped tallow. It gets chilled and then it’s sweet and chewy and melts in your mouth,” she began to mumble and he lost her words again, “... but we couldn’t chill it. It was still good, but not the same.… Since I asked a question, now it’s your turn.”

    “Why?”

    “I don’t know,” Katara huffed, “you don’t have to.”

    “That’s my question.”

    “That’s not a full question, we both have to be able to answer it.”

    Zuko grunted, he wasn’t sure why she wanted to answer banal questions about each other but he sat up and scooted his sleeping bag until it hit the edge of hers.

    “What are you doing?”

    “I can’t really hear you,” he admitted and then got comfortable again. 

    “Oh... right, um, ok. What’s your question?”

    “I’m still thinking.”

    They sat in silence for a moment while he wondered what to ask. Too many questions felt off limits. How could he ask about siblings, parents, memories? When he knew all too well how most of the people in her life had ended up because most of the people in the world had ended up that way.

    “What’s your favorite animal?” He finally asked once he’d figured that he should start with an answer he was comfortable giving. 

    “Probably a penguin. They’re birds that can’t fly and they slide down the ice slopes to move fast. When I was little we used to climb them and we called it ‘penguin sledding’ when they would slide down the ice to try and get away from us.”

    “Sounds like it wasn’t much fun for the penguin,”

    Katara chuckled, “no, definitely not. What about you?” 

    “Mine are turtle ducks.”

    After a second Katara whispered, “turtle ducks?”

    “Now you ask a question.”

    “Why turtle ducks?”

    “I was told that kind of question didn’t count.”

    Katara let out a breathy laugh, “fine, um, what’s your favorite color?”

    “Blue. You?”

    “Probably blue too. What kind of blue?”

    Zuko turned in his sleeping bag to face her, but her head was at the other end of the sleeping bag, and he just watched the mound in front of him for a moment, “bright blue I guess? Like the character from this play from when I was little.”

    “Mine would be like, like the blue dye we used on our clothes back home.”

    He knew that would be her answer. He’d seen her jacket and she’d been dressed in that blue the first time he’d seen her on Kyoshi Island. 

    She yawned, “your turn.”

    “I know...” he sighed, “do you play an instrument?” He’d seen a set of small drums downstairs, but he couldn’t imagine her sitting at them. He imagined her dancing.

    “No, that’s Aang’s department,” she said quietly, he cursed himself for asking, “you?”

    “Yeah, actually, I had to learn one, something about tradition.... I played the Tsungi Horn.”

    “Like tradition for princes?”

    “Yes.” He hadn’t meant for the word so some out so sharply or so coldly, and as soon as it passed his lips he regretted it. 

    Katara quieted, and she shifted in her sleeping bag, though he couldn’t tell if she was turning toward him or away.

    “What’s your favorite story to tell?”

    Zuko let out a breath through his nose and almost told her he was done playing the game, but then he thought of the Blue Spirit again.

    “Back when spirits roamed the earth…” he began just like his mother had and probably a million mothers before her in the Fire Nation.

    He dozed off half way through the story to the sound of Katara’s soft snoring.

    Every morning when the first true rays of sun made their way into the cabin he awoke and put a single log in the still burning coals from the night before. Zuko wasn’t sure if he preferred a routine, or if one had just been beaten into him since his youth and now he didn’t know how to survive without one. 

    He would eat his breakfast, put aside Katara’s, and then walk into the open patch of sparse grass to perform the exact same basic training forms he’d been going over since he’d been old enough to walk. He could do them without thinking, but he took time to think through every step, imagining the voice of Iroh at his side, correcting his form and badgering him. 

    This morning though, he lingered. 

    It had stopped raining a few days ago, and the bottom floor was finally dry enough that he could no longer excuse staying in the loft with Katara. He welcomed the time alone, but he’d struggled to fall asleep without her badgering him with questions like she had for the past few nights. 

    Katara , the thought of her brought back images from his dream, and he became uncomfortably aware of his body. 

    He was laying face down, and he could feel his erection trapped in his pants and pressed against the ground. 

    You see her everyday, of course she would end up in your dreams, it doesn’t mean anything it just... he tried to console himself, but arousal flared in his stomach every time he let his mind wander and it went back to the dream. 

    He turned over onto his back, and relished in the solitude as he started untying the drawstring at his hips. It’s a natural bodily process. He coached away his anxiety, listening for any sound from above him. If you don’t think of her it’s just a normal reaction to an erotic dream .

    He couldn’t hear anything from the loft, not even the sounds of her sleeping, but he knew she would normally sleep well beyond this time. He slipped his pants down over the swell of his glutes and freed his angry cock. 

    He took his erection into his hand and hissed. The first few strokes he thought of nothing but the sensation. It had been so long since he’d last had the time or privacy or will to touch himself, but his mind provided stimulation as soon as he adjusted. 

    He told himself he wouldn’t think of Katara while he actually did it, it was one thing to dream, but once he had his shaft in his palm he had no accountability. He replayed his dream in his mind over and over.

    How they’d been stuck together in that corridor, his bulging erection pressed between the cheeks of her ass, and how she’d ground back against him whispering about how she wanted him inside her. He could still hear it in her voice and the sound of her breaking his name with a moan stayed as well. 

    Zuko’s mind wandered from the dream though, creating new fantasies, imagining her beneath him, on top of him, wrapping herself around him and begging for him to fuck her. His mind was so full of her that he lost track of himself and came like a shot into his hand. 

    When he’d cleaned himself up and fastened his pants he felt guilt creep into the places where his lust had been. He went outside into the misty morning to go to the bathroom and threw the rag he’d used to clean up over the cliff, like destroying the evidence could absolve him, but he knew what he’d done, and that he would probably do it again.

Chapter Text

   On the eve of the fall of Gao Ling, Toph had been lounging on a daybed, listening to her nanny, Yeonsoo, read through one of the many scrolls of Earth Kingdom history that her father insisted that she memorize so that she could be a civilized human. She hadn’t been paying any particular attention, just picking at a string that had come untethered at the hem of her long silk sleeve. When she’d heard the first bullet, the thread had been wrapped around her little finger, and it snapped once the sound of the bullet had sliced through the night. 

   The sound of bullets was not something entirely foreign to her life. They often heard the sounds of guns being fired from the front gates of the city, but this one had sounded as if it had been fired from much closer. 

   Yeonsoo stopped reading.

   She picked back up after a second, but was interrupted yet again by three bullets fired off in quick succession. 

   When Yeonsoo was interrupted a third time, Toph laughed. 

   “It’s not funny,” Yeansoo’s normally soft voice was sharp.

   “You should see if you can find out what’s going on,” Toph suggested, trying to get out of her history lesson.

   “If it’s that important, they’ll find us.” 

   She continued her lesson.

   Toph settled back into the cushions and twirled the tassel at the end of a decorative pillow for lack of her sleeve’s dangling string.

   It wasn’t until the next morning that they would know anything. 

   Toph was awoken to the sounds of her mother’s panicked voice, and drawers being opened and closed in haste. 

   “Good, you’re finally awake,” Yeonsoo said as Toph lifted herself to sit up. 

   A burst of semi automatic fire from the distance quickly ushered her into full consciousness. 

   “What’s going on?”

   “We’re getting ready to leave. We’re not sure what’s going on”-

   Her mother interrupted Yeonsoo, “everything is fine, honey, we’re just going on a little trip out of the city for some fresh air and”- more gun fire- “let’s get you ready to go.”

   “Mom,” Toph protested, “something is clearly happening. I’m blind, not stupid.” 

   “Of course not, darling, but it’s nothing for you to worry about.”

   “Seems like there’s a lot of bullets being wasted for something I don’t have to worry about.” 

   Yeonsoo undressed her even as she complained, and she lifted her arms and complied as she had done since she was a child. 

   “I didn’t ask for your opinion, Toph, and I’m expecting your obedience,” her mother said gravely, and while Toph had thought the fighting sounded serious, she realized it must be even worse than she had imagined. 

   “Tell me something”-

   “We’re leaving, that’s all you need to know.”

   She stood so Yeonsoo could tie her robe around her waist for her, and then swayed back and forth for a moment before speaking up, “where are we even supposed to go? Isn’t the whole Earth Kingdom infected?”

   “Infected?” Her mother gasped, “you shouldn’t speak about that kind of foul stuff. Ba Sing Se will be safe.” 

   “We’re going to Ba Sing Se?” She called out, surprised. She had never been beyond the doors of her antechamber before, never explored her own home fully, let alone traveled to a new city across hundreds of miles. 

   Wood slammed against stone, “there’s no more time,” her father’s breathless voice entered the room, “the soldiers at the front gate are retreating, we need to leave right now.”

   “How could they do that?” Her mother cried. 

   “They won’t risk getting trapped here, and neither will I, we need to leave now .”

   Yeonsoo began dragging Toph forward. She went through one door, then another, and suddenly she burst forth through the doors that had held her captive for 16 years. 

   The hallway’s air felt lighter than the stagnant air of her rooms. 

   She was moved down the hallway, and she had to use her free hand to hold up her robe so that she wouldn’t trip on the flowing fabric in front of her.

   She couldn’t tell how long they walked before she was allowed to stop. She had always known, on some level, that the house beyond her two rooms was large, but she couldn’t fathom how long they had had to walk before they were outside. 

   She had never been so subjected to the elements. Sun beat down on her heavy clothes, wind gently tugged at her skirts and her sleeves. She could have danced. They crossed a path that moved under her feet, like so many crumbs upon the earth, and she shuffled her cloth bound feet through the debris savoring the new feeling. 

   When they stopped walking, there was a strange creaking, and stamping, a sound like someone large breathing heavily and too quickly. 

   “It’s going to be one big step up, my lady,” Yeonsoon instructed her, and guided her forward a few steps.

   “Oh”- her father’s strangled voice cut them off, “oh no.”

   Her mother screamed. 

   Yeonsoo dragged her backward, “run” she instructed.

   Toph had never run more than the length of her room before, and her legs wobbled under the new strain. Her mother’s small hands pushed at her back. The shifting earth beneath her stabbed at her feet through her soft shoes, some parts sharper and more painful than others. 

   Then, their footsteps echoed off the stone walls of whatever new terrain they now raced down. 

   She wasn’t sure where they were anymore.

   A door slammed behind them and Toph was dragged horizontally. Another door slammed and she was pulled to a halt. Her breathing was heavy and labored. A smell like spring in a chamber pot attacked her once she calmed.

   “Where are we?” She asked, but there was only silence. 

   After a little while, Yeonsoo said, “we’re in the stables.”

   Then, a horrific bellowing screech filled the air. Toph jumped, and reached into the darkness for Yeonsoo, who grabbed her. Yeonsoo held Toph to her chest and held her hands over Toph’s ears, dampening but not ending the sound. 

   It lasted for hours, or seconds, Toph wasn’t sure, but once it stopped, she felt her knees wobble and then she collapsed to the ground. It was sharp and poked through her skirt but she sat without moving. 

   “What was that?”

   “An Ostrich-horse.”

   “What happened to it?”

   Yeonsoo was quiet, but then said, “it was eaten.”

   Toph’s stomach lurched, “and my parents, where are they?”

   “I’m not sure, I thought they were right behind us. Lao was holding the barn door for us... it should be safe to check...” 

   Yeonsoo moved away from her, and Toph heard the sound of wood scraping against the floor, and then snarling. The door shut again, and there was a series of metallic clicks. 

   “I didn’t... I thought he...” 

   “What’s happening, Yeonsoo, you have to tell me.”

   “We’re trapped. We’re trapped in the stables . They’re inside.”

   “Who’s inside? My parents?” 

   “No.”

   On the morning of the day after the fall of Gao Ling, Toph awoke with a dryness in her mouth the likes of which she had never encountered. She tried to swallow but the dryness prevented her tongue from moving correctly in her mouth. 

   She sat up, “Yeonsoo,” she croaked.

   There was no response.

   “Yeonsoo,” she called out again, fear gripping her stomach. 

   “I’m here,” Yeonsoo said, her voice soft and raspy.

   “I’m thirsty.”

   “There’s no clean water,” Yeonsoo said bluntly, “this is all I have.” 

   Toph felt Yeonsoo’s hand as it grabbed hers, the normally dry, rough skin was damp and cold. She placed a crinkling wrapper into the palm of Toph’s hand. 

   “A candy?”

   “Suck on it, it will help.”

   Toph obliged, popping the candy into her mouth and dropping the wrapper to the floor. 

   The candy was tart and citrusy, and sour enough that she felt her face pucker inward, but Yeonsoo was not wrong, and while she would have killed for a glass of water, the candy was better than nothing. 

   They sat in silence for a long time before Toph had the courage to ask, “Be honest. Do you think my parents are dead?”

   “Yes.”

   Toph nodded, “how?”

   “I didn’t see anything, I assume they were bitten.”

   “How does it work?”

   “Being bitten?”

   “You know they never told me.”

   Yeonsoo sighed, “a bite or scratch can do it. A bite is faster. A scratch... a scratch is... slow,” her voice trailed off.

   “And what happens then?”

   “You get sick, like a flu but worse, and then you die.”

   “And?”

   “And then you come back.”

   Toph blew air through her nose hard, and if she had been standing she would have stomped her foot to the ground, but instead she hit the rough floor with her fist, “why? What makes them bite people? What does it turn them into? Why does it happen?”

   “I don’t know ,” Yeonsoo snapped, her reedy voice high and tight, “but they do, and it does. They turn into monsters who attack you, who can smell you and who will track you through the woods and”- Yeonsoo stopped and took a deep shuddering breath, “I don’t think anybody knows why it happens.”

   “ Someone has to,” Toph muttered.

   “Well, they’re either dead, or might as well be for how much it helps us right now.”

   Toph flinched at her caretaker’s tone, and looked away from the sound of her voice.

   She wondered if it was her parents moaning on the other side of the door.

   The day stretched on in tense silence, but when the first cool tendrils of the evening breeze made their way through the window, Toph heard Yeonsoo retch. 

   She couldn’t place the sound at first, it was far away. Toph had no understanding of how large the room was, and she walked with her arm stretched out, feet barely shifting forward to keep herself from tripping, and when she found a wall, she followed it toward the sound.

   “Yeonsoo? Are you ok?”

   There was no response.

   She heard the retching sound again, and moved another few feet forward before meeting a gap in the wall. 

   “Yeonsoo?”

   A low moan came from somewhere beyond the empty space. The wooden wall was smooth and polished beneath her fingers and she flattened her palm against it, waiting. 

   Something held her in place. Some instinct or subconscious fear. She listened to the quiet. The groaning that still reached her from the other side of the door, the soft sounds of leaves brushing on the underside of a window, the chirping of cricket-skunks from some hidden place outside. She heard the sound of Yeonsoo’s breathing, strained and weak.  

   She could not bring speech to her throat, when she opened her mouth to call for Yeonsoo again, she couldn't. Cold dripped down her spine, raising hairs along her arms as it went.

   Yeonsoo’s ragged breathing stopped. 

   Toph stepped one foot back, her hand dragging on the cool wood and catching on the splinters missed when it had been treated. 

   Toph walked backwards a few more steps. 

   Behind her, the sounds of the monsters at the door became heightened, she felt an energy course through her, she felt the urge to run. 

   She began to wish she was still trapped in her room, being hand fed sweets in blessed ignorance, she began to wish she was anywhere but right here. 

   The groans from outside echoed, mirrored by the sound now coming from in front of her. 

   She turned and ran back, not sure where she was going, or whether the path was even clear. 

   She hit the door, slamming against the wood, rattling the locks that held the door closed. 

   She imagined herself still in her room, not trapped between two death sentences, and scrunched her face up, balled her fists, and prepared herself for the inevitable. 

   Then, she was falling.

   “Am I dead?” Toph asked herself, aloud, for not the first time in the unknown hours she had spent wandering in the dark. She had hoped that if there was really an afterlife, it would have been more than just a long cold hallway, but she was failing to come up with a better explanation for what had happened. 

   “Maybe I’m unconscious, currently being eaten, and just here until I officially die?” She suggested to no one. 

   Her musing was interrupted by a yelp, her own, and she reeled back, pulling her foot up to hold onto her toes. They had all but ripped clean through the fabric, and she leaned against the jagged wall, pulling the slippers off and throwing them back where she had come from. She kept moving forward bare foot, and she felt more in control feeling her feet grip the stone beneath her. 

   She slowed her pace so that she wouldn’t kick a rock again. 

   She wasn’t sure how she knew it was a rock, or that the walls and floor were rock and stone as well, but she knew.

   Ahead of her, she began to hear movement, deep scratching against the stone. She slowed even more. 

   She heard snuffling, like one of the dogs trying to get the full scent of her dinner from the crack at the door. She came to a complete stop. An animal was better than a monster, but she supposed that she wouldn’t really know the difference. 

   She could almost tell the size of the creature by the heavy tread of its feet against the earth as it came closer to her, but she didn’t feel afraid.

   Its wet nose brushed against her breast bone where her robe separated. Little hairs tickled under her chin and on her neck and she laughed.

   Both her and the creature stilled, and then she reached out her hand.

   Its nose filled her palm and more, and it sniffed her deeply. It was even larger than she had thought. 

   She felt its fur brushing against her in the narrow tunnel as it turned away from her and went back to scratching against the wall. She could hear now, the soft sound of the stones hitting the ground as the creature tore them away from the wall.

   She was struck with a memory then, and clasped her hand over her mouth as she realized. She was in a badger mole tunnel. 

   Her mind began racing. 

   She had fallen through the floor. Had the badger mole bent the earth to save her? Had she?

   She reached for the wall again, finding it with the tips of her fingers and then stepping toward it. She pulled her arm back and wound it up, she let her fist fly. 

   She would either break her hand or be the first earth bender in generations. 

   Her knuckles hit the wall first, and though she felt a blow, she did not feel pain. 

   Rock cracked, and fell away from the wall. She stepped forward and inspected the opening with both of her hands. There was a crater too large to have been caused by weak rock. 

   She tested it again, more confident. Even more rock fell away, blasting past her, a chunk of it scraped her cheek as it flew behind her. 

   She laughed, and began punching the wall with both hands. She hit the wall, laughing, until she had punched so far that her fists no longer reached stone in front of her.

   She imagined herself moving a whole chunk of the wall back, pushing it away from her so that she could walk forward. 

   She pushed against the stone.

   It did not budge. 

   She planted both feet firmly to the ground, and pushed with all her might. 

   It did not budge.

   She dropped into a wide squat and pushed again. 

   The stone shook, but did not move. 

   A sharp coldness pressed against her face and she jumped back, shrieking. 

   She reached out and rubbed the short fur on the bridge of the badger mole’s outstretched snout. It nuzzled against her hand. Toph smiled. 

   “I’m gonna call you Whiskers.”

   Five days after the fall of Gao Ling, Toph emerged from the earth. She missed the feeling of the sun and needed water.  She stood on the earth’s surface and looked around her. Instead of nothingness, she could sense where the earth met the world, could feel roots sinking into the topsoil and down to the ground water, felt the vibrations of the steps of a herd of cat deer as they galloped away from where she had ripped the ground open. It wasn’t a clear picture, but it was more than it had been before.

   She had come up to drink from a river she had sensed, and found that when she stepped, she could see even farther, her world lighting up with each new connection to the ground. When she hit the edge of the river, the other side lit up, and she could see a body leaning against a tree across the bank.

   It started to stand. 

   She wondered if she would have to wait for it to attack her before she found out whether it was a human or a monster. 

   It stood at the edge of the bank. 

   She started moving back toward her exit hole.

   “Wait!” A voice called out to her, and the body across the river’s arm raised and began to wave. 

   A human. She still considered retreating. 

   “Hi! Wait there!” 

   It was the voice of a young man, cracking still but deep at times.

   He began to wade across the river, sinking to his waist before coming up on her side. 

   “What do you want?” She growled.

   “I- uh-” he hesitated, “just...well, I was just excited to see someone else... I got... separated from my group a few days ago.”

   She grunted, crossing her arms over her chest and stamping the ground to try to get a better look at him. He was taller than her by a head or two, and skinny but with broad shoulders and large hands. His face was blank except for the bump of a rounded nose at the end of a flat bridge.

   “How did you get here?” He asked, his head swiveling around before landing on the opening in the earth behind her. 

   “Me? Well, I’m the greatest earth bender in the world, I walked here.”

   “Earth bender?” He asked, awed. 

   “Yeah, so watch yourself.”

   He ran toward the cavern and peered in, she kicked the ground again and watched him inspect her work.

   “That’s... that's amazing!” He exclaimed, and ran back over to her, “I have so many questions.”

   “I don’t have answers, and even if I did, why would I tell you?”

   His head hung and he dragged his foot against the ground, illuminating himself well enough that she could see ridge in his brow as he frowned. 

   She grunted again, her stomach clenching with guilt, “I don’t know how it happened, I needed to escape and I did.”

   He looked up and nodded, saying with deep seriousness “it happened because you needed it to happen.” 

   “Something like that. The name’s Toph, by the way. You?”

   “I’m Aang.”

Chapter Text

    The sun had just hit the peak of its trek across the sky when he stopped their training to grab water. She watched him with her arms crossed over her head, panting, and hung back. As he crossed the grass to where he had placed the tea kettle, he stripped his sweat stained tunic off over his head and launched it toward the cabin. His back was pale except where it was marred with old burns and scars. Most of them were small and hard to distinguish from the distance, but one jagged slash spanned diagonally across his back from just below his left shoulder blade to just above his right hips.

    He grabbed the water and as he reached down, then stood again, she watched the muscles on his back stretch and flex. She shook her head, and felt her cheeks heat under the curtain of her escaped strands of hair. 

    “Thirsty?” He called out to her, and when she looked to him, the sun caught off a few errant droplets of water that had trailed down his chest. 

    She imagined licking it off of him.

    “Y-yeah,” she cleared her throat and stalked off toward him, hoping to pound her embarrassment into the ground with her heels. 

    This had never been a problem when she’d trained before. 

    She took the water from him, fumbling when their hands brushed and practically yanking it away from him in her retreat. 

    “Getting tired?” He chuckled, and then pushed the sweat drenched locks of hair across his forehead. 

    “No,” she protested despite the fatigue in her muscles, “are you?”

    Zuko scoffed, “please, this is light work.”

    The dark wet streak down the back of his discarded shirt told a different story, but she didn’t want to call attention to noticing his body. 

    “Oh yeah? I can’t imagine you were doing more out in the woods.”

    “Living out in the woods is just harder,” he motioned for her to hand back the water.

    “I haven’t even had a sip yet.”

    “Then hurry.” 

    When she brought her lips to the spout she contemplated chugging the whole thing and handing it back to him empty but he had been the one to get the water to boil so she didn’t. She just took a long drink and then handed it back to him. 

    “Here’s your precious water, even though you’re not even taxed by your work out.”

    “ My precious water ,” he grumbled and took another sip, “I’m trying to stay optimally hydrated for”-

    She kicked the ground and sent a wad of dirt and grass at him. It connected with his shin just below his knee.

    Zuko looked between her and the grass clump that lay at his bare feet, and frowned, “that was unnecessary.” 

    Katara kicked the ground again to try and send more grass flying toward him but then her foot just brushed the dirt and sent a few blades toward him. She laughed. 

    Zuko scowled at her and then looked down to watch the sad few blades of grass that floated down and landed around his feet. 

    She laughed again and then kicked out, this time bringing her leg up to the outside of his thigh and stopping short before hitting him. Just as her leg stilled, Zuko’s arm shot out and went to push it away. 

    “You’ve got to be faster than that,” she taunted, allowing him to push her leg away.

    As she spoke, his fist went flying toward her face and she smacked it out of the air just as it slowed so that he wouldn’t hit her and he smirked, “looks like your reflexes could use some work too.”

    “No way, if that was a real punch I would have blocked you.”

    “No, I would have been going way faster you never would have”-

    She shot her hand out, palm flat to pretend to chop him in the neck. 

    He hit her hand away and faked a punch toward her kidney. She deflected and leaned back, bringing her foot up to kick him again, but this time, his hand wrapped around her ankle and held her suspended in the air. She hopped, and burst out laughing, but somehow managed to yell indignantly “let go of me.” 

    “You’d be so dead now,” he said, letting go of her ankle. 

    She adjusted herself, face flushed hot, “no, absolutely not.”

    “I think we’re gonna have to have a real match and see,” he grinned at her.

    “Oh, you wanna fight?”

    “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

    Really , she assured herself, it won’t be any different from all the other times we’ve fought , but it was. 

    She’d never been more aware of the faces she made when she fought than then, and she kept flattening her expression, wasting priceless milliseconds thinking about what her face looked like. She was usually very aware of Zuko’s body when they were fighting, but she wasn’t paying attention to his attacks as much as she was focused on the way he looked. Her mind caught on the contours of his abs, the lines of his hips that fled below the waistline of his pants, the way the sun caught at the span of his pectorals and gleaned off his sinewy biceps. 

    She stumbled her way through the first few steps of their martial dance before managing to pull herself together; she couldn’t lose their fake match because she was distracted . 

    They were both pulling their punches, but it had taken on a more serious air than their play fighting before. She smacked him a little too hard a few times, and took a blow to the arm that throbbed. 

    He grabbed her wrist when she went to hit him again and in an instant, he had her back pressed against his chest, and his arms were locking hers above her head. 

    He crowed, and waved her body around from the grip he had on her underarms, “looks like I’m the better fighter, Katara.”

    She felt her bottom brush against the tops of his thighs. She jolted, the muscles in her core tightened. Arousal, sharp and needy, throbbed in her clit. 

    Zuko dropped their arms and he stepped away. 

    “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to- I didn’t mean”- he stopped, and rubbed at the back of his head. 

    “It’s okay,” she assured him quickly, but then followed up, “I mean, I know it wasn’t- I know you didn’t mean to.” 

    “Okay,” he stepped back, “well, now that we’ve settled who the better fight”-

    “You call that settled?”

    “I had you, there was no way you were getting out of that.”

    “We’ll never know for sure though, since you decided to”-

    “I didn’t decide”-

    “SINCE YOU DECIDED”-

    “I DIDN’T DECIDE”-

    -“TO GRIND ON ME”-

    “I WASN’T GRINDING!” Zuko’s voice cracked and they both stopped, looking at each other and then she smiled, and he smiled back and suddenly they began laughing, and Katara thought, I suppose you can get used to anything... eventually . 

    They had put the candle out when it was just a wick floating in the remnants of wax, and that had been so long ago that Katara could no longer see the moon out of the small window in the loft. There was no rain, but Zuko lay on his sleeping bag lined up next to hers. She couldn’t pinpoint when that had changed, but he hadn’t moved since the last rain. 

    They were facing each other, though she could see little more than his faint outline against the darkness of the room. 

    “Can I ask you a more serious question?” Zuko said into the dark, “you don’t have to answer.”

    “Yeah... that’s ok,” she whispered, both curious about and dreading what he would say.

    “What really happened at Kyoshi Island?”

    Katara pressed her lips into a firm line and tried to collect her thoughts, “why don’t you tell me what you heard first?”

    “I had stopped to refuel at the harbor and Zhao ,” he said the name like it was sour in his mouth, “told me that they had just captured a mutineer in the camp who had killed two Fire Nation guards and broken a criminal out of their jail, and then Iroh agreed to go see because he’s... he had other reasons I suppose, but he told me it was because he wanted tea. So we went, and you know everything that I saw until you escaped. But then after you guys escaped”-

    A jolt shot down her spine, and she cried out, interrupting him, “Zuko? Did my dad get captured?”

    “Your dad?”

    “Did any of the water tribe men get captured?”

    “Yes.”

    Katara had already known the answer to that in her heart, but she grabbed at her shirt when she heard his answer all the same, “do you remember if a man named Hakoda”-

    “I didn’t know any of the prisoner’s names, Katara,” Zuko said softly.

    “But, do you remember what they looked like? What were they wearing?”

    “Katara...”

    Katara swallowed hard, “No, I know, I get it, sorry, I just... I’ve always wondered, you know?”

    “All I know is that Zhao didn’t get the people he explicitly wanted. I know one was you, one was Aang, and one was the leader of the rebellion.”

    Katara did reach out for him then, and grasped on to the first thing her fingers found, his shoulder, “the leader?”

    Her body ran cold, and her contact with him felt burning hot by comparison. She now had confirmation that he had made it out, but why hadn’t he made it to the boat? Had they left too soon? 

    She strengthened her grip on his shoulder, “my dad was the leader of the rebellion.”

    “Oh,” Zuko’s hand covered hers and pressed her even more firmly to his shoulder

    “And the others?”

    “Zhao was furious and he....”

    “Executed them all, didn’t he?”

    “Yes.”

    Her fears had been confirmed. She thought of the other Kyoshi Warriors, and the other survivors she had grown up with, and of their last moments. 

    “Zhao commanded forces to go look for them and he... implied that by retrieving you and Aang, I would make my father proud and”- Zuko stopped abruptly. 

    She waited for more, but it did not come.

    “Zuko?”

    “All I was told was that you were murderers, wanted criminals of the Fire Nation, and I never... questioned it. Not for one second. Not for all I knew and hated about Zhao myself. All I cared about back then was getting back home, and... and that’s why I want to know your side of the story.”

    “Why Aang though?”

    “At first, I thought it was because he must have been the killer, but... then I met him.” 

    “Well, for starters, those two guards deserved to die. They had been... preying on the little girls.... You know, when we first got to Kyoshi there wasn’t Fire Nation. We were fine in that village. Fire Nation came and took over when I was... ten maybe? Before that, we felt safe and we had almost cleared the whole of the island from the infected. Fire Nation came in and declared the village a safe zone, said they’d leave some soldiers to help with refugees that they would be sending there. Oyaji, the village leader, didn't want them to send anyone, soldier or refugee, and it was a huge debate. I was too young to be a part of it, but I remember the arguments. Ultimately, they took so long debating that the Fire Nation troops showed up, and then there was no choice but an all out war or accepting. The walls were constructed, then their buildings, and for a while that was it. There were clashes with the soldiers occasionally, and overcrowding when new refugees from the major earth city kingdoms started getting sent to us, and the more they flooded us with the indoctrinated survivors of huge city collapses, the more they started taking away our freedoms. Then, Zhao came and replaced Shinu and all of his men. The first thing they did was turn their administration building into a prison. Zhao’s men were just as bad as him... some of them worse. It was dangerous to be a 13 year old girl then...” her voice trailed off and Zuko squeezed at her hand again, “when our rebellion started it was just them conspiring to hide the evidence of who killed the guards, but when they did that, the rules cracked down even harder, people started getting arrested for nothing and spending weeks getting tortured before being let out or... not. My dad and some of the Kyoshi warriors broke into the prison to get out my uncle, he’d been rotting in there for almost a month, and we couldn’t sit by anymore not knowing....” Katara’s elbow ached and she pulled her hand away, but Zuko held on, and their joined hands fell between them. She laced her fingers between his, “we found Bato, but we found Aang too. I guess he’d been sent right from one prison to the next and he hadn’t been out in so long... he looked so skinny and little, but he was 13. They got out but everyone had to go into hiding. They started raiding houses, I-I was stupid, I tried to fight them when they came for my dad- I- cut a guard with a kitchen knife I-” 

    Zuko shifted his hand, and she realized she had been squeezing. She relaxed her hand and continued.

    “In the prison,” Katara said, her voice low and hollow, “Zhao told me that he would kill everyone else when they came for me, and then... keep me...” she stopped. 

    “Katara, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I asked. I’m sorry I”-

    “Stop.”

    He went silent, and she tried to calm her breathing, “you get it? Why we couldn’t- why we hated you? You were trying to take us back to... to a monster.”

    Zuko was quiet and then he said fervently, “yes, Katara, I- I should have known better. I should have looked into it myself I’m”-

    “Sorry, yeah,” she pulled her hand back from his, suddenly unwelcoming of the contact. 

    They laid there for a while in silence, so long Katara began to wonder if Zuko’s steady breathing was that of sleep. 

    “Would it make you feel better if I told you that I kicked his ass in ritual combat and embarrassed him in front of all of his men?” Zuko’s quiet, unsure, voice warbled out, surprising her. 

    “Not really,” she admitted, but then let out a watery laugh, “I think if I’d seen it though.” 

    “If we ever run across him I’ll do it again just for you to see.”

    “If we ever come across him again, I want to do it.”

    Katara shifted in her bed to lie on her back and looked up into the darkness, thinking, “I’m still confused about Aang.”

    “Me too. So he wasn’t in your group before you left Kyoshi?”

    “Only for like 12 hours tops, but once he ate and once we were on the boat out of there we just accepted each other.”

    “Did he ever tell you why he was being held captive?”

    “No… I only asked once and he… I didn’t want to see him act like he did after I asked ever again… it was like he was… reliving something terrible. Honestly, I just thought that he was Zhao’s… special captive or something like he’d threatened me with, you know.”

    Zuko grunted and waited before speaking, “when Zhao wanted me to go after you guys, he really acted like the Fire Lord would especially want you guys caught, but he never said why. Maybe Aang had something to do with it.”

    “Maybe.”

    They were quiet again, and in the quiet Katara yawned widely.

    “We should go to bed,” he said.

    “I’m not sure I could actually sleep.” 

    “Ok, then, what’s something you want to ask me?”

    “How'd you get your scar?”

    Zuko sucked in a sharp breath and then quietly said, “I’d rather not.”

    She frowned up at the shrouded ceiling and whispered, “ok,” and then elapsed into silence. After a second though she asked, “what’s your favorite memory from before,” her voice floating up into the dark.

    Zuko was quiet, but then whispered, “I don’t know, you go first.”

    She already knew her answer for this response, “I was at my Gran-Gran’s house and we were all listening to my dad tell a story about when he pulled a prank on her when he was little, and I just remember how animated everyone was. Laughing, and shouting, and we’d all already heard it, but we played along anyway. Even my Gran-Gran was acting exasperated and interjecting where she always did. I remember that I wanted to be a part of it so I jumped in and did the spooky voice from the prank, and my mom cried laughing, and she said to my dad, something like, see how much you tell this story and he responded I’m teaching her the stories of our people , or something like that, and I just... I don’t have a lot of concrete memories of us all together and happy, and yeah... that’s- that’s my favorite.” 

    She wiped a small tear away from the corner of her eye before it could roll down and tickle her nose. 

    “You’re family sounds like they were really close,” Zuko said quietly, and shifted against the rough fabric of his sleeping bag.

    “Yeah, it’s hard when you’re not close, with how much time we spent together in the winter it kind of forces you to get along.” 

    “We definitely weren’t that close,” Zuko’s voice was muffled by fabric.

    “I’m sorry,” she muttered, scooching closer to the edge of her sleeping bag and toward him. 

    “I was close with my mom,” his voice was even quieter, “my favorite memories are of her reading to me before I went to sleep.” They were both quiet for a moment before Zuko said, his voice thick, “I never saw her get bit or anything. There was an outbreak at the palace and she was just... gone when the army cleared it.” 

    Katara closed her eyes and the memory of her mother, infected and snarling, played on a loop across the darkness. She couldn’t speak while thinking of the terror that had gripped her that morning.

    “I did,” she whispered, “I did see her. Not get bit but... after” she trailed off, not sure she could tell the story. “She’d still been at my Gran-Gran’s house when I went to bed and when I woke up she was in the living room and she was… infected. My dad had to… had to kill her. She almost killed me.”

    “Oh, Katara,” Zuko muttered, and she felt his hand searching across the fabric for her again. She moved her hand to meet his and their fingers locked together. 

    “I’m sorry,” she said, and tears spilled hot and heavy down her cheeks, “I feel stupid crying, but I can’t help it.”

    “It’s not stupid,” he said fiercely, clenching her hand.

    “Thank you, Zuko, I’m not really sure what I would do without you these days.”

    “You’d survive. I’d bet anything on that.”

    “You think so? I’ve been kind of a mess.”

    “You would have made it out without me in the town, and you would have come right here and been fine.”

    “I’d have been alone though.”

    “Yeah, me too.” They both squeezed the other’s hand tight. 

    She wasn’t sure that was a part of gratitude or acceptance though. 

    They’d been at the cabin for so long that the weather was beginning to break. Early spring storms were finally giving way to the mild breezes and bright wildflowers of late spring. 

    They’d been foraging when Katara had decided she wanted to have an old fashioned campfire once it got dark. They collected huge mushrooms from the trunks they had propagated in the woods, and Zuko had flipped his shirt up to make a basket for the early berries they had found budding on several bushes near a stream.

    They made a campfire as soon as the sun had dipped far enough beneath the horizon to paint the sky awash with oranges and reds. 

    The black smoke curled up toward the darkening sky, and Katara fanned the fire with a decorative version of one of Suki’s fans. 

    “You’re going to put it out,” he warned her, lounging on a blanket he had thrown down over the grass, and casually whittling a stick to use to roast their mushrooms. 

    “I’m going to put you out,” she barked back, and shifted from squatting to sitting cross legged. 

    He laughed and kept whittling. 

    She smiled despite herself, and took a second to enjoy watching him. His long legs stretched out away from the fire, and a sliver of his pale stomach showed from where his shirt bunched up beneath him. His dark hair was growing scraggly and long, no longer just covering his scar, but brushing his jaw, and at the back it fell over his collar.  

    He was filling out. The abundance in the area that had once allowed four to survive now allowed two to thrive. She knew she was filling out too because her boxers barely went over her hips, but their training kept them toned. He looked chiseled from marble, so pale compared to her, and so perfectly sculpted. She imagined him laying there shirtless for a moment. 

    “You’re staring at me,” he informed her calmly without looking up.

    “Just making sure you’re doing that right since you’ve got so much to say about the fire:”

    Just then she noticed the flame dwindling and threw another handful of grass and bark at the starting fire to keep it going.

     “Why don’t you just pay attention to your own task since you clearly can’t multitask.”

    “It’s weird ‘cause I know you’re not saying it but all I hear is ‘smack me in the face Katara, please, I deserve it’.”

    “I’d like to see you try, I’ve got a knife.”

    Katara threw more kindling to the fire and laughed, “you’re the one asking for it.”

    The fire caught and began to burn the bigger logs, she got up to sit on the chair Zuko had brought out for her, but decided to sit next to him on the blanket instead. 

    He looked surprised, and curled up his legs to give her more space, but then smiled down at his roasting stick. 

    “Know any good campfire songs, Zuko?” She asked, lounging back on her arm and spreading herself out so that her forearm pressed against his shin. 

    “No, and you wouldn’t want to hear me sing if I did.” 

    “I bet you have a beautiful voice.” 

    “I bet I don’t.” 

    “You’ve got a nice talking voice, it can’t be that different.”

    Zuko pursed his lips, “don’t flatter me.”

    “I wouldn’t.” She nudged him with her arm where it touched his leg and he kicked back at her a little bit. 

    They sat around the fire and cooked the mushrooms on sticks and ate them until they ran out and then ate berries and then little bits of the rabbit jerky that they had smoked the day before. It wasn’t their most filling meal but Katara knew not every meal could be. They’d gorged themselves on limpets, cat tail reeds, and little silver fish the day before and not every day could be a feast. 

    “Do you know any good campfire songs, Katara?” 

    “As a matter of fact, I do,” she smiled at him, “Sokka taught me this one.”

    She began singing, starting with her best voice, “I know a song that gets on your nerves, gets on your nerves, gets on your nerves, I know a song that gets on your nerves and this is how it goes…” she repeated the same verse three times before Zuko stopped her.

    “If you say ‘gets on your nerves’ one more time I’m going to bed.”

    She cackled, throwing her head back. 

    When she looked up at the sky it was clear and bright, with the perfect sliver of moon, and so full of stars it could make you dizzy to keep staring up at them. 

    “It’s beautiful,” she murmured, not for the first time about this same view, though to a different audience.

    “Yeah, this place is kind of perfect,” he sighed. 

    Around them was nearly silent, save for the first few bugs of the season and the small animals scurrying around in the forest. She leaned into his leg more and he uncurled them so they were tucked behind her back supporting her. 

    “I know a scary campfire story,” he said after a while of them admiring the stars.

    “Hm, it’s gonna have to be really scary to get me.”

    “It goes like this. Once two teenagers who were in love went to the drive-in and, oh wait, actually they drove up to the mountain to”- He stopped mid thought, for a moment she wondered if he’d forgotten his story but then he said, “did you hear that?”

    She sat up straight, and turned to look toward the woods, “no, I didn’t hear anything, what did you-”

    There was a terrible scream from the trees. 

    They both jumped to their feet. No infected could make that noise.

    “Do you think it could be?” She made off toward the fence, wondering if one of her lost family had made their way home and gotten lost in the dark. 

    “Katara, wait!” 

    Her braid thumped against her back as she sprinted toward the small gap in the wood. She was about to call out to them, her mouth already making the shape of an ‘S’ but then, a string of Fire Nation curses carried through the air and froze her to her spot. 

Chapter Text

    Katara and Zuko retreated back into the cabin after kicking as much dirt over the fire as they could sacrifice the time doing so. They burst through the cabin door, and both ran to the ladder to grab the weapons stored in the loft. 

   “Stay down here, I’ll hand them down to you.”

    “Wouldn’t it be better to be upstairs to use the window?”

    “Can you reach the window?” 

    “Point taken. Go.” 

    She went to the wood burning stove, using the poker to spread the embers. The already dim light diffused to near darkness. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement near the ladder and went back over to grab the handle of the spear Zuko was holding down for her. She went back and grasped the fire poker as well. 

    The sounds of men shouting carried through the window, and Katara grasped the wooden shaft of the spear so tightly that a small sliver of wood pricked at the palm of her hand. Zuko came to stand beside her, and she chanced a look at him as she wondered what they were saying. Zuko stared out the window, and even in the shadows she could see the crease of his forehead deepen. She pressed her lips together, tamping down the desire to ask him to translate, and made her way through the dark to the window. She kept close to the wall, and when she got there, she pressed herself against the window pane.

    She waited, hoping they would say something she understood, and tried to use her small understanding of the dialect to put together some semblance of information. She understood a few words here and there, some were cognates, some she recognized from contact with the soldiers, but it wasn’t enough to understand fully. 

    Zuko had followed her, and crouched to make his way to the other side of the window, and in the lighter part of the cabin she could see the bow in his hand. 

    There was just enough light to sign, and once they locked eyes, they placed down their weapons and Zuko began slowly going through a series of signs. 

    She got that he was warning her that they would have guns, but he did not explain what they were saying, so she tapped her chin twice, furrowing her brow and pointing toward where the voices were coming from. 

    He finger spelled debating and then signed, they fire fence . 

    Katara gasped.

    Zuko glared at her, and put his finger to his lip.

    She sneered at him, and signed, we stop them .

    How?  

    She motioned to his bow and he shook his head vehemently. There was another shout from the men outside, and he stopped moving. 

    What ? 

    Zuko motioned for her to crouch, and he sidled up next to her, whispering, “they were calling for a man I know, Colonel Mongke.”

    She studied his face, the fold of his brow and the curve of his frown, “not a friend, then?”

    Zuko snarled, “no, and we’re in worse trouble than I thought.”

    Katara closed her eyes and pushed out a small breath, trying to calm the sharp spike of her heartbeat. 

    “We need a plan,” Zuko whispered.

    “Any ideas?”

    Zuko looked off into the darkness. Katara straightened back up and risked a peek out the window. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the warm glow of fire. 

    She dropped back down. 

    “They already lit the fence, we need to do something now,” she hissed. 

    Zuko handed her the bow and removed the quiver from around his neck, “if they have guns, we’re better off fighting them close up.”

    “So we just wait for them to attack us?”

    “Take the bow. Stand by the door so you’re behind it when it opens,” he commanded her, “we’re not waiting for them to come in,” he explained as she took the quiver from him, “once they’re close enough, I’m going to attack the closest man and use him as a shield. As soon as the first man shoots, I want you to shoot anyone who has a gun drawn and then take cover, move to the window and take a shot at anyone straggling”-

    “Then back to the door?”

    “The rest is on you,” he grumbled, and then took one more look out the window, “I’ll watch.”

    She grabbed the bow, “you’re going to get shot.”

    “No, I won’t.”

    “This is a stupid plan.”

    “Look at me.”

    She looked up from where she had focused on the wood grain of the bow. She searched his face, wondering if this would be the last time she saw him alive, and she reached out and desperately grabbed his forearm with her free hand.  

    “We have to kill them all ,” he told her, holding eye contact gravely, “but we’re going to be ok.”

    Katara swallowed. The idea of having to kill, of not being able to let them run away, sent bile to the back of her throat, “Zuko...”

    “If they get away they’ll bring a whole infantry company back here with them.” 

    She nodded, “ok, I get it.”

    He put his hand over hers on his forearm, squeezed lightly, and then pulled at her arm to get her to stand, “go.” 

    She put her arm through the bow and took the spear and the fire poker with her to the door, resting them both against the wall behind her. 

    The room was mostly black now, the few embers that remained in the wood burning stove were just glowing red lines amongst the soot, and she watched them as she waited for Zuko to make his way from the window to the door. Her heart hammered but it felt like it was coming from her stomach, and she clutched onto the bow like it could keep her safe. 

    Zuko ducked under the window and came to the door. He grabbed her hand, and leaned in, pressing his forehead to hers. 

    She pressed back, feeling the warmth his body radiated and breathing in the scent of him.

    “Be safe,” she whispered, her throat tight. 

    “I thought you didn’t care if I was safe,” he quipped. 

    She shut her eyes as tight as she could and nodded, “that’s right, so go out there and do whatever.”

    “I’m going to be fine, and so are you.” 

    “I know I’m going to be fine.”

    Zuko snorted and then pulled back from her, “open the door for me.”

    She nodded, and grabbed the handle of the door, giving him one last look over her shoulder before pulling it open as quickly as she could. 

    She watched him run through the door, the urge to call him back almost choking her. She cocked an arrow in the absence of any other option. 

    There was shouting, and then, her signal. The first bullet thundered as it left the barrel, the loud crack heralding the beginning of its journey toward Zuko. 

    Katara jumped out from behind the door, her bow drawn and ready to shoot, and just as Zuko had told her, she aimed at the first man she saw brandishing a gun. 

    More shouting, and once she fled behind the door, she dropped to the ground to crawl over to the window.

    Three guns fired and two bullets ripped through the swinging door as she made her way to the window. She waited for a second, securing her second arrow, and jumped up.

    Her target was obvious, a large man running at full speed right toward the window. She let her arrow fly, though it had only a few feet to go before it met its mark. She had aimed for his eye, but the arrow lodged itself in his throat, and he fell to his knees as he grasped at the wooden protrusion and he made a horrific gurgling that Katara knew would haunt her as soon as she heard it. 

    There was another man, farther away, running toward Zuko, and she grabbed another arrow from her quiver. Before she could shoot, a volley of shots filled the air, and tore into the wooden walls of the cabin. She dropped, looking through the holes they had left behind, but she was not hit. He had said it was up to her after the second shot, and she picked herself back up. She could see no one from the window now, but they knew she was in here. Instead of shooting out the door again, she slung the bow over her shoulder and ran for the spear, and then went back to the window. She hauled herself up by the ledge and used the spear to steady herself as she jumped.

    The crack of a gun came from the woods, and the bullet went through the wood side of the house right above her head. She dove for the back of the house, going around the corner and sprinting from one end of the cabin to the other. Another gun fired as she turned the far corner. 

    From there she could see Zuko, he had backed up to the edge of the cliff. In the light of the moon, it was almost impossible to tell where the land ended and the air began. Just as she thought to shout to warn him, Zuko side stepped, grabbing the shirt of the man he was fighting, and flinging him over the edge. She crept forward and placed the spear on the ground, readying her bow with another arrow. 

    She stepped out just enough to see, and aimed at the man farthest away holding a gun. 

    Katara had never been the best shot amongst her group. Aang refused to shoot, Suki was a perfect shot, and Sokka had taken to most weapons training with a natural skill, but she had trained and trained and trained just to be able to reliably hit near her target.

    She was glad for it now. She’d aimed for his head but her arrow sailed through the air and hit the man square in the chest, between his pecs, into his heart. 

    She watched with grim satisfaction, but then the sound of heavy foot fall had her looking away from him. Just as she registered the man running toward her, he tucked his shoulder down and into her stomach, and she was flying through the air. 

    When she hit the ground her breath flew out of her and she failed to suck in more air. She was still struggling for breath when his fist stuck her across the face.

    Pain, sharp and hot, shocked her back to reality, and her first shuddering breath was a gasp as it radiated through her skull. She fought against the heavy weight of him, but he lifted himself up, reeling an arm back to strike her again. She began kicking her legs, trying to destabilize him, and when his fist came down she was able to move her head enough that he punched the ground instead. 

    He swore, loudly, and pulled his hand back, but his other hand smacked her across the face without warning. Katara screamed, not out of fear or pain, but a primal, guttural scream that scratched at her throat as it left. Her arms flailed, and her hand hit something wooden. She grasped at it. Her hand circled around the shaft of the spear. She kept kicking at him and dragging the spear closer to her as she did. 

    The man swore again and instead of hitting her, he reached down to wrap his hands around her neck. 

    He was going to kill her.

    Instinctually, her hands went to pull his hands from around her throat but, even pulling at his thumbs like Suki had taught her, he would not let up. Her ears started ringing. She clawed at his hands with her jagged nails. Her name was being called from somewhere very far away. 

    She reached up, feeling his face, pushing at his cheeks. He bit at her fingers but missed. She wasn’t sure she had the strength. White pinpricks began twinkling at the edges of her vision, and her tongue felt too large for her mouth

    Her thumbs found his eyes.

    She pressed her nails into them and she dug her fingers in the hair falling over his ears to hold her hands in place. He screamed, squeezing harder and trying to sway to throw her off. She dug her nails in, searching for the seam of his eyelids. Her vision started going black, tunneling down so the only things she could see was a small patch of his chin and his throat. 

    She felt them pop. One after the other. Liquid poured down her thumbs. 

    He howled. He let go. 

    When she sucked in breath it felt like it was tearing through her. She started crawling away, turning to her belly. The black vignette returned to her vision again, but she kept going, frantic to get out from under him. She crawled until she had made it to the edge of the cliff, and then she collapsed to the ground, still gasping for breath.

Chapter Text

    From the moment he’d seen the Rough Rhino running at Katara until the moment she’d managed to break free, Zuko felt as if time itself had slowed down so he could watch her die. 

    He’d fought her himself so many times, both for real and in practice, that he should have known she would survive, but it wasn’t until he managed to kill the man coming at him with a wakizashi, and run over to her, that he was able to believe it. 

    Before he got to her he passed her attacker.  In his rage, or was it fear, he could not bring himself to let the man live. He slammed a sword down to the back of the man’s neck and ripped it back out. The body fell to the ground and he went to Katara, crouching down by her side to assess her. She was laid out in the grass, and her breath sounded ragged, weighed down.

    “Katara?” He put down his swords and leaned over her, brushing his fingers gently against her throat as he inspected her neck. 

    “Zuko,” she whispered, her voice coarse, “in the woods.” She gasped for breath before coughing, and he watched helplessly while her face contorted with pain. 

    “Stay here, Katara, I’ll go after them.”

    She shook her head, and began to try to sit up

    He placed his hand on her shoulder and held down just firmly enough that she could intuit his meaning, “stop.”

    She acquiesced, but once she was laying back down on the grass she brought her arms up to dig the heels of her palms into her eyes. 

    He reached out to brush the hair away from her face, but pulled back at the last second and stood, “I’ll be right back.” 

    He grabbed his dual swords and ran around the dark side of the cabin, heading toward the fence. 

    Zuko had a feeling that the right thing to do would have been staying with her. In some other world, maybe he would have. Maybe he would have been the type of man who would have been so overcome with worry that he wouldn’t have been thinking about killing. 

    In this world, killing was the only thing on his mind. His blood sang for revenge, his mind sharpened to focus. He knew one of them had run off and he knew there was at least one injured in the woods. He knew he would be outnumbered and he knew he couldn’t be sure how many were waiting for him. 

    It didn’t stop him.

    His feet beat a brutal rhythm against the ground as he sprinted toward the darkness and the unknown, only being interrupted by the leap he made over the burning section of the fence. He made it to where the land began to tumble downward. He grabbed onto the closest tree to stop himself from slipping when some of the dirt on the edge crumbled beneath his feet. It was pitch black beneath him but he knew his silhouette would be lit up by the fire behind him, so he plunged down into the darkness. 

    The slope made it so that any stealth in the dark was practically impossible, and he had to slow as much as possible, searching with his feet before every step so that he didn’t break any fallen branches, or step into any of the jagged metal traps. 

    He made it to the bottom of the slope, and tried to see through the darkness. The little moonlight that trickled through the leaves was patchy and so faint most of it did not reach the forest floor, and even in the best of lighting the vision in his left eye was muddled and narrow. He could hear little better out of his left ear, and what he could hear was simply the breathing of the woods, little sighs from the treetops and the hiccups of bugs chirping in the brush. 

    He pushed forward, feet sweeping out in front of him until he hit metal, and had to push a trap away from himself. He hadn’t made it much farther when he heard a sound, like a sputter and a growl at once. A sound he hadn’t heard in a year or more. 

    The sound of an engine roaring to life.

    He jolted as if he would break out into a full sprint, but stopped himself, wary of the traps that lay ahead of him in the dark. They were leaving, they were running away, and he would have no way to quell the craving for revenge that screamed at him. Worse, their escape meant that the cabin was no longer safe. 

    He found her in the loft. She was holding a shirt to her face, an awkwardly shaped reformed candle flickered from a plate beside her on the double sleeping bag.

    “Katara.”

    She jumped up from where she sat, eyeing him wildly, before throwing herself toward him, wrapping her arms around his neck and crushing herself into his chest.

    He circled his arms around her waist and held her to him, pressing his cheek against her head. His heart raced and fluttered at his neck and the feeling reminded him of her injury. 

    “Are you ok?” He asked and loose strands of her hair clung to his lips. 

    She nodded, but didn’t speak, and tightened her arms around him. 

    “They got away,” he said, his voice hollowed by guilt. 

    She pulled back, her face crumpling, and she let go of him to bring her hands in front of her to sign. It came haltingly, she had to stop and think before every sign. He wasn’t worried about her form though. Between her signs, he could only think about how much her throat must hurt for her to turn to signing when they were free to speak. 

    The two of us need leave?

    He nodded, unable to speak for a second as he thought about the extent of her injuries. The guilt from leaving her earlier surfaced as acid in the back of his throat.

    When?

    He began to sign in response, but made himself speak as well so that she could interpret the signs she didn’t know yet, “probably first light. It will take them more time to get back here than that, but we should get as much distance as we can.”

    Her head fell, and then she picked it back up to look around the room. As she looked toward the candle, he could see the shine of the flickering light reflecting off the tears welling in her eyes. He wished he knew what Iroh would say right now. He wished he was anyone else. He wished that he were someone Katara would have chosen to comfort her. 

    “We should decide what we’re taking with us and try to get some sleep.”

    She scoffed and shook her head before signing. Sleep? I don’t know.

    “I said try , we should at least lay down.”

    Katara began to sign, We , but then shook her hands and scowled. The tears that had been holding out amongst her eyelashes dripped down her cheeks. 

    They come middle sleep .

    He swallowed, and his eyes closed for a moment before he could respond. Her voice had been a breathy whisper, barely audible except in their close proximity, but even that faint whisper was tight and cracked.

    “I don’t think they’re coming back without backup and sunlight.”

    She scowled, balled her fists, and went to speak, but she stopped herself.

    She looked away, toward the window above her bed, and stood silently.

    “I’m going to start packing.”

    She didn’t respond. He brushed past her to grab one of the canvas bags that they kept stored amongst the other junk that lined the walls and he squeezed her shoulder as he did. She remained imobile, and Zuko began to wonder how long she would stay frozen. He stood at the ladder, watching her.

    “Katara, come help me pack.”

    She looked at him, finally moving, and nodded, shuffling her feet along the floor as she followed after him.

    Relieved, he began his descent to the first floor. 

    Zuko awoke to the first high pitched calls of the blackbirds perched in the treetops. He wasn’t sure if he’d fallen asleep at all, one moment he had been laying in the dark and he was still laying in the dark. Now though, a faint gray streamed through the window as the eastern horizon painted the world awash in pale light. He sat up straight immediately and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He stretched out his arms above his head and twisted his torso to crack his back. 

    He got out of his sleeping bag and began to roll the rough canvas to be able to attach it to his backpack. He was surprised when Katara raised herself from her spot across the loft. He looked over at her after a second and asked, “did you get any sleep?”

    She shook her head no, cleared her throat and attempted to speak but the only sound that came out was a small squeak.

    “Let’s get you some tea and see if that helps.”

    They attached their rolls to their packs, and Zuko handed them down to Katara through the opening. He stoked the woodburning stove, though it needed little encouragement as it had been put out not long ago, and set the kettle to boil. 

    Katara went outside and he gave her privacy, setting up the herbs to make her tea and heating the last of the vegetables they had set aside the night before. The cold morning air blew through the bullet holes that now lined the walls of the cabin, and when the wind blew strongly a faint whistle filled the air. 

    Katara came back inside after a few minutes and walked up to stand beside him. He looked over at her and in the growing light of the dawn and the glow of the fire, he could see the bright red and faint purple of a bruise beginning to blossom around her neck. He could see the lines from the fingers and the impression of the thumbs clearly in the pattern made by the splotches of crimson that had formed while they slept. His stomach flipped.

    He reached up to brush his thumb against them, but caught himself and instead reached for the salt. 

    “Water should be hot in a second,” and just as he said it the kettle whistled. 

    She grabbed the pot holder and used it to grab the handle. 

    He moved the vegetables around in the small amount of tallow they had saved from their pack to cook breakfast, and the smell began to permeate the room. 

    He had spent time before falling asleep calculating the chances they had to defend the cabin if the Rough Rhinos did come back with more soldiers. He half entertained the possibility that they had scared them off for good, but he knew Colonel Mongke’s body was not among the dead and if he was alive, he would be coming back. 

    At least, as far as Iroh had told him about the man’s character, and he had felt the now familiar pang of grief that stabbed him whenever he wished he could speak to his uncle as he had been laying in his pack imagining ways that they could stay. 

    Katara was sipping her tea cautiously when he brought the food over for their breakfast. 

    “Is the tea helping at all?”

    She nodded, and spoke, “feels like it.” Her voice was hoarse still, but louder, audible without seeming like she was straining.

    Zuko nodded, and for once he knew for sure what Iroh would say, because of course the tea would help, tea always helped. 

    He excused himself, stepping out into the crisp early morning and taking a minute to calm his breathing. The scent of smoke still clung to the air and he stopped to look out over the destruction of the fence and felt the weight of its collapsed panels as if they were atop him. He ran his hands through his hair, one after the other smoothing down the overgrown inky mass that obscured his vision even more. 

    He was beginning to believe that he was a harbinger of doom as well as a failure.

    He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, but he stared at the burnt wooden spikes until he felt Katara’s hand on his shoulder.

    “Eat,” she said in her soft raspy whisper.

    He nodded, dropping his hands to his sides and turning to face her. 

    “Food’s done?”

    She nodded with her fist after removing her hand from his shoulder and he followed her back inside. 

    They sat down to eat at the table for the last time. Katara ate a few bites and then turned her head toward the rest of the room and sighed, “it doesn’t feel real.” Then, she placed her hand to her throat and frowned, “this part does.” She brought her mug up to her lips to drink again and then looked up at him, her eyes shining.

    He looked away once their eyes met, instead looking at the steam as it rose off of the vegetables between them. Once again, he found himself falling short of being able to comfort her, and grappled to find the words he thought she would want to hear. He couldn’t promise her they’d find somewhere better, or that they would even find somewhere safe. He couldn’t assure her that it was all a dream and that she would wake soon. He couldn’t even meet her searching gaze, or find it in himself to reach across the table to take her hand. 

    In the absence of a response, Katara began eating, and his view of the heat rolling off of the food was disrupted. He looked up. He opened his mouth and it hung open for a second before he said, “that part will get better.” It was the only assurance he had. 

    They ate in silence, and he dreaded the sound of the metal cutlery on the cast iron pot. Yet, it grew in frequency, and the more they ate the more they exposed the bottom and the closer they got to having to leave. When the food was finished, Katara took a long drink from her mug and slammed it down, empty on the table.

    “No point in doing dishes,” she rasped, and stood.

    Zuko pulled himself from his chair and moved toward where their bags were leaning against the wall. They both donned their packs, and headed out the door. Katara shut it behind her, and looked up at the cabin. 

    They made it to the fence before she stopped him.

    “What if they come back?”

    “They’re definitely coming back, Katara, that’s why we have to leave.”

    “No I- I meant Suki or Aang.” She looked down. 

    “Oh,” he tried not to show his shock on his face, straightening out his frown.

    “I have to warn them.”

    “Leave another note then.”

    She studied him for a moment, “you don’t think they’ll see it.”

    “I didn’t say that.”

    Katara scoffed, though it sounded more like a wheeze, and then she bent down, pulling a blackened piece of wood off of a half burnt spike. She ran back over to the house, and scrawled across the door with the hunk of charcoal:

    Not Safe. FN. Z. K.

    She dropped the wood and wiped her hand off on her tan shirt, smearing it with black dust.

    “Ok, let’s go.”

    The sun had just broken over the tops of the trees and they headed toward it.

Chapter Text

     Zuko stopped walking abruptly, throwing his arm out to the side and catching Katara before she could make the same mistake he almost had.

     “Wha- oh.”

     A stick she had nudged with her foot careened over the edge of the cliff, hitting against jutting rocks and gnarled roots as it went. 

     “It’s getting dark,” he muttered, looking away from the edge to the golden light filtering in through the leaves, “we need to make camp soon.”

     “No great place.” 

     “We may need to lower our expectations.”

     “Not sure they could be lower,” she croaked, “cave?”

     “You mean that bear cave?”

     “No bear.”

     “Because he was out hunting, now he’s going to sleep and he’s going to want his cave.” 

     Katara sighed, the sound scratching on its way out, “don’t want to sleep in a tree again.”

     Zuko nodded, looking up at the slender branches of the trees that surrounded them, “that’s not really an option either.”

     “If there’s a bear, we leave.”

     “I don’t know if the bear will agree with that plan.”

     “Hypothetical bear”-

     “Katara,” he hissed and turned to glare at her, “enough with the cave. We’re not risking it and we’re not losing ground.”

     She glared in return, and signed, why ?

     “I showed you the bear fewmets, Kata”-

     “Just say ‘shit’, we’re not on a royal hunt, your highness .”

     She had been using her voice sparingly over the few days they’d been walking, running away really, but she had let that fly and he was shocked by how gravely and pained she still sounded. It blunted the usual anger he felt when he was reminded of his previous title, but he still had to consciously stop himself from lashing out. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose before he could even think of how to respond, “don’t.”

     Katara stepped toward him, and her foot skimmed the edge of the cliff just enough for her to wobble. 

     He grabbed her, fear and anger wrenching his fingers around her upper arm and yanking her back from the drop.

     They stopped speaking for a moment, both staring at each other as the light fled behind the mountain and the treetops.

     It was almost dark when she said, “let go.”

     He dropped his hand, and when he stretched his fingers he knew the strain meant he had been holding on too tightly, so he whispered, “sorry.” 

     She rubbed the spot on her arm where he had held her and looked down at the ground, “yeah, same.”

     Shame filled him faster than he had reacted to grab her, and he took a step away from the ledge and away from her. 

     “Let’s keep moving, the further up we go the more sun we’ll have.”

     They reached the summit in moments, and while there was a break in the trees and more vantage for sun, it was hardly enough to have wasted the time to get there. 

     On the very edge of the top though, a large pine tree had been struck by lightning so long ago that its hallowed corpse lay withered and graying. Its stump was still rooted to the ground, but branches and pieces of bark littered the patches of grass clinging to the areas that got sun throughout the day. 

     “We can make a fence,” he said, grabbing a sharp piece of bark and stabbing it into the dry dirt. When it wouldn’t stand up, he slammed it harder, but little pieces broke off and shot out. He shouted incoherently at the pieces and threw the last bit left in his hand over the side of the cliff. 

     Katara moved toward the tree to inspect the hollow trunk and he watched her instead of continuing to try to hammer the brittle bark into the earth.

     She leaned over the edge and his heart sputtered, he moved toward her but stopped himself from reaching out, his hand clenched at the air halfway between them. 

     “Ledge,” she pointed over the edge of the summit, and looked back at him. 

     His hand dropped and he looked over, coming up to stand beside her, “how do we get back up?”

     She signed while she spoke, omitting words she knew the signs for and Zuko nodded along.

     “So, I wrap the rope around the rotting tree ?”

     Katara rolled her eyes and pointed to where the roots sunk deeply into the ground, “sturdy.”

     He looked over his shoulder at the darkening wood and shook his head, “let me check it out first.”

     He took the rope from his bag, it smelled of salt from the fishing trap still, and they worked together to fasten it to the tree securely. He threw it over the edge, and in the light he could just make out the rope hitting the grassy ledge that jutted out from the cliff face.

     He pulled at the rope with his whole body weight twice, making sure it would neither come unraveled nor rock the tree from its foundations, and when he was assured enough for how little time they had, he began climbing down.

     It was only a few feet, just far enough down that it would be impractical to jump, and he clung to the rope with his hands while he slowly put his full body weight onto the ledge.

     It was wider than they had been able to see, and recessed into the stone and dirt of the cliff face enough that there was plenty of space. He stamped his feet and jumped, still holding onto the rope, and when he was truly sure that it was safe, he called up to her.

     “Katara, come on.”

     He felt the rope lift from his hand and he heard her raspy voice call back, “bags.”

     When he had them and had placed both bags down against the wall, he heard her begin her descent, and he stood beneath her, hoping to guide her to safety now that the light had left them and darkness had fully settled over the mountain.

     “Zuko?” She whispered, and he reached upward, his hand hitting the bottom of her shoe. 

     “You’re almost there, I’ve got you.”

     She kept climbing down, and he kept moving his hands further up her leg, ghosting over hip just before her feet hit the ground. He took her hand and moved them away from the edge and toward their bags. 

     There was a moment of blind searching before one of them found a light source. 

     He heard her cranking the lantern that they had taken from his little camp before they’d ever been to the cabin, and he stopped digging while he waited for the light. 

     The pale blue light illuminated her face, and the little bit of dirt from the cliff behind her, and she grimaced, squinting her eyes. 

     He used the light to find the pack with their rations, and began doling out some of what little was left from what they had brought with them. 

     Once he had handed her food, Katara handed him the canteen, and he took a small sip of the water, swishing it around in his mouth to hydrate what had dried out while breathing through his mouth during the hike. They did not have enough for him to drink his fill, but it felt good to move the water through his teeth and hold it against the inside of his cheeks. 

     He swallowed dramatically, and handed back the metal canteen. 

     “Should have thrown down some of that bark to start a fire,” he muttered, once she had handed him the lantern to take charge so she could eat. 

     She nodded and shoved raw wilted greens wrapped around jerky into her mouth while staring out into the darkness. 

     They both finished eating in silence, and then rolled out their sleeping bags without speaking as well. 

     He did one last large crank on the lantern, hung it from a root sticking out from the cliff, and climbed into his sleeping bag. He watched as Katara did the same, and when she settled, she was facing away from him. 

     They awoke as soon as the sun hit their faces the next morning. It was late though, as the sun was already almost halfway across the sky by the time it reached them. They hadn’t slept so fully since before the Rough Rhinos had attacked them four nights ago. 

     The warmth had already started waking him before then, but he had clung to his dream and stayed in his bed despite knowing that he should get up. 

     When he finally opened his eyes, Katara had shoved her sleeping bag so close to him in the night that they were face to face. 

     “Morning,” he mumbled, as her eyes flickered open.

     She shot away from him, and he reached out instinctively to stop her from going too close to the edge on her other side. 

     She ripped her hand out of his grasp, and they both stared at each other. 

     He wondered how much her arm hurt her from the day before. His stomach fell, guilt opening a hole for it to plummet to his feet.

     “Sorry,” he said, for grabbing her then and for before. 

     “S’kay,” she muttered. 

     He looked up at the sky, obscured partially by the tree and the summit looming above him, and didn’t move until she spoke again.

     “Breakfast.”

     A lump hit his chest, and he grabbed it, sitting up and opening up the leaf wrapped wad of jerky, nuts, and mushrooms that they had put together before leaving. Katara did not waste time unwrapping hers, instead eating the leaves and the food as if they were a large- dry- dumpling. He could not manage the bitter taste though, and dumped the contents into his mouth before discarding the greens over the edge and watching them ride the air down until he could no longer see them. When he looked up, she was glaring at him, but she did not speak to chastise him for wasting food.

     They repacked their belongings and Zuko waited while she climbed back up the rope. When he joined her at the top she was looking out at the horizon with her lips shut in a firm line.

     He came to stand next to her, and surveyed what he could see of the world in front of him, and tried to make sense of the landscape.

     “Do you have any idea where we are?” He asked, his eyes narrowing toward the east where the mountains began to shrink away.

     “No.”

     “Any idea where we should go?”

     “Need food.”

     Zuko sighed. He’d had a brief interlude at the cabin, but here he was again. Ever since he’d deserted from the Fire Nation, his entire life had circled around one need. 

     He pointed toward where the mountains turned to hills and said, “it’s as good as anything.”

     “Less climbing, more people.”

     He nodded, “but people also mean food.”

     “And danger.”

     “That’s unavoidable.”

     They locked eyes and she smirked before looking down at her feet.

     When she looked back up her eyes were glassy, shining in the light of the morning sun, “doesn’t feel real.”

     Zuko’s brow furrowed before realization set in and he nodded, “I know, Katara, I’m sorry,” and he was. 

     “We need the water, Katara,” he said, his mouth was dusty, dry, and his voice sounded scratchy. He looked away from the rain barrel to glare at her and cursed himself for how his chest hammered when he looked at her even when he was in a foul mood. He pushed his sweat soaked bangs back into the rest of his hair, but they fell back before his hand was back at his side. Heat reflected off the hard packed dirt and radiated off of every surface. 

     “Not this water. I can see lightning-mosquito larvae floating on top.” 

     “It’s the only water we’ve come across all day, and your canteen is empty.”

     “You can’t boil that out.”

     “Well, then it’s extra protein.”

     “You’re disgusting.” 

     “Die then. I’m going to try and drink it.”

     “Enjoy your parasites.”

     “I’ll skim them out!” He called after her but Katara had already stormed off and he watched the dust she kicked up into the air as it bloomed into tan clouds around her heels. She took a little step up onto the porch of the cabin and, despite her anger, carefully opened the wooden door and gently closed it behind her. 

     They had found the little wooden shack in the decrescendoing hills of the valley beneath the mountain range. A little two room building made of wooden planks that had grayed and faded in the sun, with a rotted out thatch roof, and a door that was just barely still resting on its hinges.

     He shook his head, and scooped up the water from the rain barrel with the pot that had been digging into his vertebrae through his backpack since they’d left the cabin over a week ago. He brushed the visible bugs off the top, and some of the algae that had grown in the stagnant water as well, and carefully carried the pot over to the small pile of wood they had gathered to build a fire. The few dry branches he was able to find were stacked together on top of a bed of dry grass, and stabbed through with tinier branches from the low lying shrubs around them. When they had been wandering through the woods he never thought they would be wanting for wood but here he was, worrying over whether or not the fire would burn hot enough, for long enough, to actually purify the water.

     With the fire lit, he placed the pot on a rock as close to the flames as he could. As it heated up he used his sleeve to protect his hand as he turned the pot.  

     Zuko watched the sun as it nestled between two golden hills at the edge of the horizon. The sky was crimson. 

     The sun had begun to set later and later, and it seemed almost surreal to have sunlight for so long after having been in the woods for almost a week, but with it came the heat. Walking out into the plains from beneath the trees had been like walking into summer. Everything around them had dried out and the sun had begun to scorch the earth, casting a red hue on the dirt. Walking through it all day had dried them out just as well.

     Little bubbles began to form on the side of the pot that was facing the water, and he rotated it again. He glanced back at the cabin.

     He tried to imagine what Katara was doing inside. He knew she was mad, but he couldn’t see her just sitting inside doing nothing but fuming. He listened intently, trying to hear any noise from inside, all he could hear was the crackling of the fire and the faint sound of buzzing coming from the rain barrel. 

     The water finally began to boil just as he started watching the fire consume the last of the real wood. He rotated the pot again, and then Katara came outside. 

     She walked over and stood next to him for a moment before whispering, “I know I have to drink the water. I just don’t want to.” She dropped a pile of wood, and a small metal cabinet knob that bounced when it hit a stone sticking out from the dirt. 

     “I don’t really want to either,” he took a shard of the wood and placed it over the dwindling fire. It was so dry that it sparked and took to flame almost immediately.

     “I know.”

     Zuko looked up, the sun was just a sliver of light on the horizon, and the constellations had begun to take shape above them. The fleeing sun had taken most of the heat with it, and when he let himself look beside him, Katara had wrapped her arms around her torso.

     “It should be done in a second,” he told her, just to have something to say.

     “Ok,” she mumbled, and stepped closer to the fire.

     “Do we have any food left?”

     “No... I’m sure we’ll find more tomorrow though,” she did not sound very convincing. 

     “Right.”

     Later, once they had drunk the water and settled into their sleeping bags for the night, Katara asked, “do you think we should go back to the mountains?”

     Zuko turned to look toward where she had laid down, “I don’t want to turn around.”

     “We haven’t found any food, and we’ve barely found water.”

     “We could follow the mountains east, without going back into them... except maybe to hunt or something.”

     “And then what? Just keep going until we hit the next shore?”

     Zuko sighed, “or until they catch up with us.”

     In the bright light of the moon streaming through the open window and the cracks in the plank walls, he could clearly see her sit up, “do you really think they’ll catch up with us? What are the chances they want us so bad that they’ll cross the mountains looking for us? And, we had to have lost them when we went down that stream.”

     “You think just walking in water for a little bit will stop them?”

     “I just feel like it doesn’t make sense for it to be worth it to them.”

     “It doesn’t matter what you feel like Katara.”

     “All we’re running on right now is what you feel like, so I don’t see how my feelings on the matter are any less important.”

     “Not on what I feel. On. What. I. Know. This is the Fire Nation, in case you managed to forget, and not just the Fire Nation either, Fire Nation mercenaries who’s whole job is to drag people out of their cozy little hiding places and into the safe zones. We killed six of them. Their whole job is to find people like us, and they have nothing but time and resources and motive.”

     “Don’t talk to me like that,” she snapped. 

     “I’m not talking to you like anything,” he hissed and he heard it in his tone when he did. 

     “I don’t need you of all people, to tell me how evil the Fire Nation, can be,” the sharp edges of her icy voice stabbed at him from across the distance between them, and he flinched, “and if they’re tracking us no matter where we go, why did we even leave? If they’re going to find us no matter what, we should have fortified the cabin and stayed to defend my home . I would have rather died”- Her voice cut out and when she spoke again it was as rough and raspy as it had ever been, “I would have rather died there, then being tracked through the hills and mountains like a fucking animal.” 

     Zuko moved to speak but could not find the words to explain his rationale. His only thought had been escape, his only motive fear. He forced a sharp breath out through his mouth and then in through his nose, some semblance of a grounding exercise Iroh had once tried to teach him, before he said, “Katara”-

     And then she was crying, “it’s not fair, and I know nothing is fair, but it’s just not right. How many times did we run into you and your uncle? Over and over and over and then suddenly when it’s my family? When it’s Sokka?” She stopped speaking to take several gasping breaths, “and now, even if they did come back, now we’ll never...” she shuddered, “and we’re just... starving and walking, and tired. I’m tired , Zuko. And now you’re saying we never get to stop? What are we even doing out here? I want to go home. I want to go home.” 

     He watched her rock back and forth for a moment, watched her wrap her arms around herself. This time, when the impulse hit, he couldn’t stop himself. He crawled across the dusty wooden floor, flooded onto her sleeping bag, and pulled her against his chest. 

     He knew it was his fault. He’d been the one to lead her away from her family in that town, he’d been the one who couldn’t stop the Rough Rhinos from getting away, he’d been the one who decided they needed to flee, and it was his family who started all of this in the first place. 

     She sagged against him, and for a moment he was the only thing holding her up. She shook for another second before her breaths began to become controlled and purposeful. 

     “I’m sorry,” he murmured against her bound hair, and the words rallied her. She pushed him and he fell back onto the sleeping bag with a soft thump. He looked up at her, propped up on his elbows, and frowned, “Katara, I”-

     “If you say you’re sorry one more time I’ll scream,” she shouted, but then laughter bubbled up and she began wiping her face, “sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

     Zuko, for whom affection had come so sparingly for so long, shrugged. It was his own fault, “I shouldn’t have hugged you.”

     “No.” She shook her head, and grabbed his knee, the closest part of him to her hand, “no,” she repeated, softer, “that’s not it.”

     He sat back up and placed his hand lightly on top of hers, “my thought process,” he began to explain, “was that if we were on the run, they would be on the run too. That they’d have to use a smaller force to go over the mountains, and they’d get tired, and I didn’t think past that. I was,” he bit at his cheek, “I was afraid.” His voice came out slightly strangled, and he cleared his throat uncomfortably. 

     Katara turned her hand so that their palms touched and her fingers slid into place above the throbbing pulse of his wrist, “of the Rough Rhinos coming back?”

     In the dark he could see her before him, but he could also see the memory of her, laid out underneath the soldier with his hands around her neck, could feel the helplessness wrap itself around his own throat. He nodded, unable to speak. 

     He had left her. 

     They sat in silence and Zuko felt the spiraling black pit of his stomach begin to suck up all the warmth left in him. Her hand was still warm against his. 

     “We still need a plan,” she whispered, “I like the idea of following the mountain. We need a vantage point, and trees.”

     “We need water,” he croaked, trying to pull himself back out of the darkness.

     “Trees mean water, animals, and fruit.”

     “The plan is... finding trees then?”

     “Well, it’s going to the mountains, but yeah.”

     Zuko nodded, pressed his lips together, and looked up toward the moon peeking through the holes in the roof.

     She clasped his hand, “we should go to sleep.”

     “Yeah, we’ve got a lot of walking to do tomorrow.”

     Katara snorted and let go of him to lay herself down on her sleeping bag, “what’s new?”

     He made his way back over to the other side of the small room, sank back into his spot and turned to face the wall. His mind began to spin the tale of how none of this would have happened to her, if it wasn’t for him.

     A soft scraping sound from behind him jolted him from his side to look back toward Katara.

     She was standing over him, her sleeping bag dragging behind her. 

     “Hey,” she whispered, and laid her bag down next to him. He watched, wide eyed, as she settled down next to him. “You seemed so far away.”

     He nodded, unsure what she meant, but unwilling to speak against it. 

     They lay next to each other in the near dark, with only the sound of his pounding heart in his ears to distract him from the little sounds of her breathing or moving against the rough cotton fabric. They had slept like this many times in the last weeks at the cabin, but it had made sense to him then, or it had seemed to more than this, more than her seeking him out. 

     He watched as she turned toward him, watched her hips wiggle to move herself across the space between them, saw her arm swing out to grab hold of his, felt her fingers fit round the cleft where his bicep became the inside of his elbow, but held his breath like even the smallest puff of air would dispel the illusion. 

     He didn’t move until her even breathing gave way to sleep, and then he crossed his arm over his chest and draped his hand over her forearm.

Chapter Text

    By the time they reached the foothills of the mountain range once more, Katara had begun to wonder if each aching step forward was toward somewhere better, or just farther away. Her blisters had burst and dried and blistered over again, and then done it a million times more. She kept her hands wrapped tightly around the straps to her bag, trying to hold it up as much as she could, the bag still hit the small of her back, but at least some of the weight was off her spine. 

    She scanned the horizon, looking for trees, or roofs, or anything other than sand dunes, cacti, or the rare shrub that sometimes looked disappointingly like a tree on the other side of a sand dune. 

    She had to let go of her backpack to wipe the sweat out of her eyes.

    “This sucks,” she sighed.

    Zuko agreed with a grunt, and kicked a stray rock across the sand.

    The hissing sound of shifting sand ripped Katara’s attention away from complaining, and she gasped, “a rabbit!” Excitedly, she reached to grab at the bow on her back. It scared the rabbit away and she lurched forward, following through the cascading sand dune after their potential dinner. She could already taste the roasted meat. 

    “Wait!” Zuko called after her, but she was already running.

    He caught up with her on the top of the dune and grabbed her arm, “please”

    “What?” She asked, and almost shook loose of his hand but he let go before she could, resting it on her shoulder instead.

    “You’re just scaring it away, and what if something or”- he stopped, his eyes fluttered closed and he sighed, “look out.”

    At the bottom of the dune, an infected clad in Fire Nation armor clawed at the sand, pulling it down over him.

    “He must have gotten stuck,” she murmured. 

    “At least it’ll be easy to kill.”

    She rolled her eyes, “I’d rather kill the rabbit.”

    “Well, you scared that away, so let’s put this thing out of its misery and then canvas the area.”

    Zuko pulled out one of his dual swords and began making his way down the sand.

    “Careful,” she cautioned, watching the sand around the indents of his feet spill toward the infected, who’s arms pulled the sand out from underneath him.

    “I’m being care”- he yelped, and lost his balance. The infected began frantically reaching toward him, snarling, and bringing more and more sand around itself. 

    “Zuko!” 

    She leapt forward, flanking them so that she wouldn’t fall into the same trap. The sand sucked at her feet and she watched in horror as the infected grabbed hold of Zuko’s leg. He swung out with his sword, and the tip slashed across the infected’s forehead, but not deep enough.

    Zuko grunted and tried to pull his leg back. Her heart thundered in her chest, and fear sharpened her senses. 

    “Look at me!” she called from right behind the infected, but he was too focused on the meal already in his hand. Zuko swiped at it with his sword again, but he wasn’t able to get the leverage, and the dulled blade stuck in the monster’s skull. 

    “Katara!” He yelled, looking up to see where she was. 

    She grasped her spear, and plunged it into the infected’s skull.

    The undead soldier fell, the sand around his legs holding him like a stake in the ground.

    Zuko stopped struggling.

    “Are you ok?” She asked, panicking. She rushed over to him, shoving the corpse out of the way as best she could and yanking his leg to inspect it for injuries. The hot sand burned through her pants as she kneeled next to him. His toned calf was free of any marks, but she kept looking it over. 

    “I’m fine,” he assured her, laying back.

    “Are you sure?”

    “I’m sure.”

    “Ok,” she nodded and pulled his pant leg down to cover his shin again, brushing the wrinkles out and some sand off of them.

    They both stayed there for a minute, just breathing. 

    “He’s got a backpack,” Zuko said, pulling himself out of the sand and crawling toward the corpse. 

    Katara frowned but looked off at the horizon, the sand stretched out until it faded into the bright blue sky and she ignored the sound of Zuko rummaging around the dead man’s bag.

    They were starving, and he was Fire Nation anyway.

    Her heart had finally settled when he plopped down next to her in the sand. 

    “Here,” he mumbled, and he poked her in the arm with something that crinkled against her shirt.

    She looked down and there was a Fire Nation ration bar denting the soft skin on the back of her arm, “oh,” she grasped the bar and his hand, “I could cry.”

    “I thought you’d enjoy that.”

    “Is there one for you?”

    “And an extra one.”

    “I think I might actually cry,” she took the bar from him and ripped the package open. It was warm, and fell apart when she tried to take it out, so she ripped pieces off and popped them into her mouth. When she ate, the sand from her finger ended up in her mouth, mixing in with the gummy melted meal bar, but even the grit between her teeth could not retract from the pleasure of her first bites of food in days.

    “There was also this,” he showed her a little tan sachet, “it looks like some kind of jerky, or fruit leather.”

    She shoved the last bit of her meal bar in her mouth and took the bag from him, looking into the small opening at the stringy dried chunks. 

    “Smells like soap,” she said, handing it back to him, “like the flakes we used to use to wash our clothes on Kyoshi.”

    “Yeah, definitely soapy,” he pulled the strings to tie the bag tight and shoved it into his backpack, “we’ll keep that as a last resort.”

    “Aren’t we already at ‘last resort’?”

    Zuko smirked, “we just ate.”

    “It’s kind of weird, right? How many of the infected we’ve seen?”

    Zuko chewed and then said, “they’re probably ones that got pulled away from the horde that swarmed that town. They’ve had plenty of time to get out here since then.” 

    “That was weird too,” she muttered, looking away from him as she tried to fight off the memories from that day.

    “I hadn’t seen that many all at once in a long time,” he agreed, “something must have happened.”

    “I wonder where they came from,” she looked away from the horizon and back at Zuko. His normally pale face was reddened by sunburn and glistening with sweat.

    “They’re mostly Fire Nation. Maybe one of the safe zones? Or, we were close to Gao Ling, there’s usually a fair amount of soldiers there.”

    “I thought Gao Ling was a safe zone?” She shifted to rotate which parts of her were touching the hot sand. 

    “In all but name, I suppose.”

    “What does that mean?”

    Zuko grimaced, and shoved his crinkled up wrapper into the pocket on his left calf before standing up. He offered her his hand, which she accepted, and he pulled her up to stand with him, “basically,” he said as they started walking again, “Gao Ling might as well be a safe zone. The only difference is that they got talked to like it was their choice, and the Fire Nation doesn’t officially recognize them as a safe zone.”

    Katara felt like she was looking at a puzzle with a few crucial missing pieces, “but why do they get treated differently?”

    “Poppy fields.”

    “Like the flower?”

    “Exactly.”

    “I don’t get it.”

    Zuko sighed, “opium is made from poppy seeds.”

    “Opium?” She’d heard the term before, “like the drug?”

    “Yeah, so some Fire Nation general reports that Gao Ling is overrun, they officially move on, but use the city to traffic the opium into the other safe zones and into the Fire Nation.”

    Katara nodded, and beads of sweat fell into her eyes, she wiped them away like tears, “does your dad know?”

    “My da- oh, um, probably? At least, I’m sure he has some idea, but... I wouldn’t know.” 

    Katara watched him out of the periphery of her vision, his face contorted and then flattened. She had come to recognize that deadening of his emotions when it came to speaking about his father. His immediate burst of anger, and then the mask slipping into place. She almost wanted to ask him what he meant, why he looked upset, but it felt more like poking a sleeping tiger-seal than starting a conversation. 

    “I haven’t spoken with my father since I was 15,” Zuko said quietly, and she stopped, surprised not only by what he had said, but the fact that he had said it.

    “Oh,” she shook her head and kept walking, “he’s alive though, right?”

    “Yes.”

    Questions bubbled to the surface, even through letters? Why? What kind of a father would do that? What kind of a person? But every one led to the inevitable conclusion, if Zuko knew the answer, he wouldn’t be here. Not just trekking through the desert with her, but in the Earth Kingdom in general. Zuko never would have left his palace home to begin with if it weren’t for his father. Memories of her time with her own father flashed across her mind and she felt a sudden welling in her eyes, “I’m sorry.”

    Zuko grunted, “yeah.”

    They walked in silence for a second before Katara prompted, “you’ve never really told me anything about your dad.”

    “That’s on purpose,” he snapped, and then sighed, “sorry.”

    “It’s ok, you don’t have to, it's just... it seemed like you maybe wanted to talk about it a little?”

    “I don’t.”

    “Ok.”

    They continued walking beneath the brutal sun in silence. 

    They found the village tucked away in a valley of dying trees at the edge of the desert in the first rolling of the hills. Most of the one or two room wooden houses were rotted away, but a few still stood collecting sand in their crevices and scorpions in their dark corners. They had stayed in similar houses along the way, but the one they chose was cleaner than any other and its windows were still mostly covered by moth-eaten curtains. 

    “This isn’t terrible,” Katara said with her hands on her hips after using a dry branch to sweep the scorpions out of the house.

    Zuko mumbled something in assent and began rolling out his sleeping bag.

    He flattened himself against his bag a moment later.

    She shut the creaking door and shoved the little table from the kitchen in front of it before following behind him.

    He hadn’t spoken to her since earlier when she had asked about his father, so she placed her sleeping bag across the room from him, under the window where the twilight trickled through the holes in the curtains. A second after she had laid down, her stomach grumbled angrily and the sound stretched across the room and roused him from his sullen silence. 

    Zuko actually laughed, “me too.”

    “Maybe we should split the last meal bar?”

    “I don’t know,” he sighed, “that would be a good breakfast.”

    Katara placed her hands on her stomach and tried to ignore the gurgling. 

    “It’s so fucking hot, I can’t stand it anymore,” he shot up from his sleeping bag and began rummaging through his bag.

    “What are you doing?” She propped herself up on her elbow to watch him. 

    “Looking for my knife,” he growled.

    She sat up fully, “why are you looking for your knife?”

    “I’m getting rid of this hair.”

    “No!” She called without thinking. 

    He paused, “what?”

    “I just- I- you could cut yourself,” she said lamely, not able to tell him that his hair was gorgeous and she would miss the way the sweat curled it against his forehead or the nape of his neck. 

    “You do it then,” he said brusquely, walking over and offering her the handle of his knife. It felt heavy in her hand. 

    “It’s so blunt, what if I just braided your hair instead?”

    “Cut it off, Katara.”

    He sat down, cross legged, in front of her and bent his neck downward to stare at his lap. 

    She sighed and stood, “I’m not doing this on my bed, the hair will never come out. I’ll sit on the stool over there, grab the lantern.”

    She had cut Sokka’s hair plenty of times over the years, and even Suki’s once or twice, so she knew she was capable, but she hated being the one who would take away her own pleasure in watching him play with his bangs or lift the back to expose his neck to the wind. 

    She realized though, once they had situated themselves across the room and he was sitting in front of her again, that this meant that she had an excuse to touch his hair herself.

    She immediately carted her hand through it, starting at the front and pulling it all back into a ponytail. She let go and did the same thing three more times. His hair was softer than she could have imagined, so different than her own thick, coarse, waves. It slipped through her fingers and cascaded like the sand that she shook loose with every pass. She dragged her hands through once more and her fingernails trailed lightly against his scalp. Zuko moaned, just faintly, and she paused. She did it again. He cleared his throat.

    “Are you gonna do it?”

    “Yeah,” she whispered, and pulled his hair into a ponytail again, “how short do you want it?” 

    “As short as you can get it, but off my forehead and my neck for sure.”

    She groaned internally, and picked his knife up from the seat beside her. She pulled the ponytail down until she had the mass of it at the nape of his neck and asked, “are you sure?”

    “Yes!” He exclaimed and then let out an exasperated chuckle, “just do it, Katara, please.”

    She wrapped the hair around the knife, angled the blade toward the wall so if it slipped it hit neither her hand or his head, and started sawing through the thick of his hair. Just like the silk it resembled to the touch, it was strong against the dull edge of the blade and by the time she finished she had left behind a mangled mess. 

    “Here.” She handed him the ponytail and went back to cutting. She pulled the hair together again, farther up on his head, and repeated the process. This time the chunk of hair was too short to handle and the strands fell from her grasp along his shoulders and into the floor.

    “Probably should of had you take your shirt off,” she mumbled half to herself. 

    “Ok,”

    “It’s too late”-

    But his shirt was already off, and the hair that had fallen onto it went floating up and then down to scatter around them and all over her lap.

    “Thanks,” she grumbled, and brushed as much of the black strands off of her as she could.

    “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, looking behind him to watch her wipe the hair from her legs. 

    The lantern died and Zuko reached for it and began charging it up, “how’s it looking?”

    “Bad.”

    “At least it will be cooler.”

    “You should sit on the bench now so I can do the front,” she commanded, standing up and brushing her pants off again.

    He shifted up into her seat without complaint and placed the newly charged lantern on the window sill behind him.

    She had to get up close enough to him to cut the hair around his face and it was a strange new perspective. The pale blue light of the lantern accentuated the blue bags under his eyes and the new gauntness to his cheeks but also the pearly white of his skin and the hard ridges of his scar. She hadn’t seen his scar completely unhidden since they had been young teenagers. Back then it had always seemed red and angry but now, with its redness diminished by the blue light and the years since it had marred his face, it just seemed heavy. It pulled down on his face and obscured his eye, and the healed skin was textured and thick.

    She began to play with his hair again, trying to find a plan of action, where to cut most efficiently, and she couldn’t help but notice how far back into his hairline the bald scar stretched and then came to a sharp point. She had never let herself look at his scar for so long, had never had an excuse, but now she could see it more fully, and for the first time she noticed that it was almost a perfect square. 

    She took the knife to his bangs and hesitated, “you’re going to look ridiculous,” she warned him, hoping to save at least some of his hair and to distract him from how long she had been staring. 

    “That’s the least of my concerns. You’re the only one who ever sees me anyway.”

    “And you don’t want to look good for me?” It was supposed to come out as a joke, but she wasn’t confident enough to make it come across that way. It sounded small, vulnerable, and too sincere. 

    “That’s not what I meant,” he said, and he matched her tone so his voice was soft and nicer than it had been toward her all day. She stepped in to take hold of his hair, and he brought his hand up and grabbed her forearm and asked, “do you want to leave it there?”

    “If it’s bothering you, I’ll cut it.”

    “Do you- do you want me to keep it covered?”

    She realized that he had noticed her staring and completely misinterpreted her hesitation. She moved the knife so that she could reach up and cradle his scarred cheek in her hand, he flinched lightly,  “that’s not what I meant,” she whispered.

    “I know that’s not what you”-

    “I just meant that your hair will look crazy”-

    “I shouldn’t have assumed”-

    “I don’t want you to think that I”- 

    They both stopped interrupting each other and she brushed her thumb along his cheekbone. He placed his hand over hers and pressed it hard against the rough, tight, skin, “I know you’ve asked before...”

    She shook her head, on the heels of their earlier conversation, she wouldn’t risk pressing him, “you don’t have to”-

    “I know.”

    She waited, her hand still sandwiched between his cheek and his hand.

    “When I was 15,” he whispered, his voice rough, “I found out that they were sending troops to try and take Ba Sing Sae, even though our intelligence showed that it was safe from the infection, during a ‘war meeting’... that’s what he called them.” Zuko took a deep breath, and looked past her, though his hand still clung to hers, “I asked why we would do that in front of everyone and... my father... he had always been... violent. When my mom died it got worse. That was... the worst of it.”

    The words whizzed by her head and she frowned, “Zuko”-

    “He put the shovel in the fire first,” his voice was barely audible, “he put the shovel in the fireplace before I’d even entered the room. He knew the whole time. He knew he was going to do it, he planned it.”

    Cold understanding washed over her, and her throat constricted, “your father...?” 

    “It glowed red. It was glowing red. When it... when he... and I...”

    She stepped further into the space between his legs and pulled his head until it rested between the valley of her breasts, and tried to calm her breathing. 

    Zuko fitted his arms around her waist and they hung onto each other. 

    “I’m so sorry, Zuko,” she mumbled, and pressed her cheek to the top of his head, “I could kill him,” she whispered more savagely. His chest bounced like he was laughing, or crying, and she pulled back a little to try and check which one, but he kept his arms so tight around her that she couldn't pull back enough to see. 

    The lantern went out, plunging them into darkness save for the last light of the setting sun that trickled through the ripped curtains. 

    “I could forgive him,” Zuko confessed to the dark, “if he asked, I could forgive him.” 

    Katara’s eyes fluttered shut. She took a shuttered breath in, then blew out through pursed lips. She thought a million evil, ugly things about the Fire Lord, about what she wanted to say to him, do to him, but none of them would help. None of them would comfort Zuko. She remembered the vivid red that had consumed his face the first time she’d seen him, how painful and tight it always looked, the way he rubbed against the aching bone in the dry heat. His father had done that to him, just for speaking his mind.

    She had wanted to kiss him many times before this moment, had examined his lips in the low light of candles while they practiced EKSL, had imagined them locked feverishly with hers in the solitude of the loft. She felt the familiar desire then but not in the same way and as if she could offer him any comfort with her embrace, she used her hand on his face to tilt his head up, and in the small light left of the day, she found his lips and pressed a kiss against the chapped skin there. 

    His hands fisted in the cloth at the waist of her shirt and just before she pulled away, he kissed her back. For a moment they melded against each other, barely moving their lips, but soon she retreated and brushed what was left of his bangs back from his forehead.

    “He doesn’t deserve you, or your forgiveness,” she told him firmly.

    He looked up at her through shining eyes before cracking a faint smile, and then looking away from her. She ran her hands through his hair again, this time more confidently scratching at his scalp while she did. 

    “Thank you for telling me,” she whispered when he hadn’t spoken for too long.

    He nodded, and then cleared his throat, “we should finish this haircut.”

    “I’ll miss the long hair,” she admitted, “but you’ll look good without it too.”

    “Yeah?”

    “Of course , Zuko.”

Chapter Text

    They found the encampment near mid-day, just when he had felt as though he could go no further. The sight of the white steeples had buoyed him though, and they had scrambled across the burnt rocks to find the abandoned camp. 

    It was easy for him to forget that every abandoned house and village was once the stage of some tragedy, but here the evidence of the drama unfolded in front of him. Corpses that had clung to the chain-link since their demise had finally dropped to the waiting earth and their remains dotted the fence-line like shards of porcelain. There were two trucks flipped, almost intentionally, in front of the entrance with large red Fire Nation insignias painted on their sides, and a collapsing tent city with two rows of melted tarp piles and only a few standing structures. 

    The whole encampment was pressed against the side of what had once been a large building, but now only three walls stood surrounded by fallen stones, and black charred beams. 

    “Looks like there was a fire,” Zuko said, pointing at the rubble.

    Katara merely nodded, staring at the porcelain remains by the fence in solemn contemplation. Standing beside her, Zuko reached his arm out to place his hand on her shoulder, but it hovered over the sharp peak. 

    How many times had he been here, he wondered, on the edge of comforting her but unable to follow through? His hand lowered and brushed along the worn fabric of her shirt and came to rest on the slope of her shoulder. She looked up across the camp and then over to him with a faint smile.

    “Let’s check it out,” she muttered, stepping away to start the march toward the tents, his hand dropped to his side, and he followed behind her. 

    Their first walk of what remained of the camp was tense, but with no surprises. The place was empty, mostly picked over it seemed, but there were enough visible supplies that his excitement began to grow. He started imagining what they would find. His stomach growled. 

    Zuko peeled off to check out the trucks and left Katara to check the tents. Every so often he would look up, popping his head out of the truck and scanning the tents inside the fence looking to see if he could catch a glimpse of her dark hair or slender frame. 

    He sifted through the piles of sand and dirt building in the corners of the truck bed, and his hand hit something plastic in the debris. He pulled out a long, silver foil strip of individuated packets.

    He inspected them for a second and found, written in Fire Nation letters, in the smallest black print, just at the perforation between packets:

    1 Water Purification Tablet. 

    On the other edge of the packet, there was an expiration date. He took a second to do the mental math, first figuring out what year it probably was, and then how long it had been since they expired. 

    They’ve either been expired for two months , he thought as he shoved the strip into one of the pockets on his cargo pants, or they expire in ten months… either way , and then he spent the next almost half an hour searching every crack and crevice of both trucks hoping to find another hidden treasure. 

    When he’d gotten to the last place he could think to look in the second truck, he hadn't found anything else yet but he stood staring down at the metal chest attached to the back of the flipped transport truck, enraptured. The original contents had long been stolen but the greenest beetle he’d ever seen crawled along the edge, its iridescent wings catching the golden evening light and shining emerald against the dark metal.  

    He had been staring so intently that when a hand grabbed his shoulder he jumped, grasped onto the wrist and turned quickly.

    Katara stood before him, her index finger pressed to her lips, and he swallowed.

    They waited for a moment before Katara dropped her hand, “I heard voices… men’s voices.”

    “Where?” His back shot up straight.

    “At the edge of the camp, I was standing by that green camouflage tent over there, and I heard them talking but I just stayed still, and they kept moving,” she pointed toward the green tent, “seemed like they were walking... west?”

    “You don’t sound very sure.” 

    “’cause I’m not, but they went toward the desert.”

    Zuko nodded, tilted his head slightly sideways, and grinned, “so, north?”

    “Whatever.” 

    He chuckled, and in retaliation she shoved him halfheartedly in the chest, but he took her hand and used it to pull her to him.

    “Stay close,” he whispered, “let’s stay in eye shot.” 

    They held eye contact for a beat before Katara dropped her gaze and smiled at the ground. Her tan cheeks flushed rose gold and she twisted her hand to weave her fingers between his. He swallowed, his heart in his throat, and then looked back out to where she had heard the men. Just in case. 

    “I think we should go to the tents then,” she said, pulling away from him but keeping their hands together.

    “Yeah, the trucks are empty,” he fished into his pocket with his free hand and pulled out the packet he’d found though, “found these though.” 

    Katara frowned, cocked one eyebrow up and scrutinized the strip of foil packets. She looked back at him with a little snarl in her upper lip, “and?”

    “It’ll be nice not to have to boil water?” His voice lifted at the end and his eyes shifted between her and the foil strip. His stomach dropped, unsure of what he had done wrong, but sure he had done something. 

    She stopped, “why wouldn’t we have to boil water because you found condoms?”

    Zuko stammered, almost dropped the foil strip and then shoved it back into his pocket, “th-they’re not condoms , Katara, why- never mind, they’re water purifying tablets, and they’re only a few months expired so they’ll probably still be full potency.” 

    “Oh... I was gonna say...” but she didn’t say anything more for a moment and they restarted their walk to the tents, “anyway, I guess we should go back to the blue tent, there’s a ton of water tablets in that one, I thought they were condoms.”

    Zuko blew through his nose, half embarrassed just to hear her say the word, and half in appreciation of the irony that she would recognize condoms and not water purifiers.

    “At least we we’re still here to grab them when you found out,” he offered, trying to fill the lull in conversation with something other than the word condom, but then, a thought struck him and he blurted out, “you really thought I would just”- he stopped himself, face hot, and started walking quicker. 

    “Well, I didn’t think you would, that’s why I was so surprised.”

    She stopped them in front of the blue tent, pulled the tarp’s opening aside, and gestured toward the pile of silver strips that lay out on a yellowed and molding cot. 

    He walked in and grabbed one from the pile, but the shape of the pills was different. 

    He read the small lettering, gasped, and grabbed another strip.

    “What?” 

    “These aren’t...” he was distracted by the second strip, “wow, Katara, this is,” shoved the two in his hands into his pockets and grabbed a few more, “acetaminophen... penicillin?” He looked over, smiling broadly, “this is extremely lucky.”

    “Good thing you can read Fire Nation,” she mumbled as he kept grabbing packets and shoving them into his pocket.

    “Right, we would have”-

    He picked up the last strip and paused, a laugh tore through him. She hadn’t been completely wrong.

    He looked up at her and held up two strips, “these ones actually are condoms,” he threw them down on the bed and looked back over to her with a tight smile.

    “Yeah, I was pretty sure the one I grabbed was a condom, that’s why I was so sure that’s what you had.” 

    He walked out of the tent, pocket stuffed and surveyed the remaining tents, “now, if only one of these is housing a secret functional bakery.”

    “Oh,” she sighed, “don’t talk about fresh bread right now, I think I’ll cry.”

    He snorted and then turned back to look at her, “so, which ones haven’t you”-

    There was a moment where the sound was an abstract concept to his mind, just a loud noise interrupting his question. Katara’s eyes widened and she spun around. He looked out where she was facing, where he supposed it must be coming from, and that’s when the sound solidified in his mind. A scream. A sharp, high pitched shriek. Followed by a broken howl. Ended abruptly. 

    Katara spun back around, blue eyes wild and her braids whipping at her cheeks. 

    “We need to go help,” she cried.

    Zuko recoiled and scrunched up his face, horrified, “Katara, are you kidding me?” 

    “Obviously,” she said, very slowly, “I’m not kidding you.”

    “You just heard a group of men pass by, and you want to go running toward screaming?”

    She looked him up and down, half turned away, and then quietly said, “that’s exactly why I need to go.” 

    “Katara,” his voice softened with understanding, “there are so many reasons why that is a bad idea that I won’t even begin to name them. I know it’s terrible but we’re safe here and”-

    “No. What if it were Suki? I would hope someone would help if they heard...” she turned back to face him and whispered, “what if it were me?”

    He closed his eyes and breathed out slowly through his nose. He felt her fingers intertwine with his and he opened his eyes again.

    “Zuko, this isn’t up for debate. I’m going to see and I’m going to try to help.”

    “No,” he exclaimed, “you could get hurt, or worse, and besides it’s… it’s probably already too late.”

    The thought spurred her to action. She dropped his hand and started heading back to the gate, calling behind her, “if it is too late, fine, but Zuko, I’m not the kind of person,” her voice cracked but she kept going, “who puts their head in the sand and tries to ignore the world. I’m a helper. What kind of person are you?”

    He wasn’t a helper. He didn’t have the capacity in him to love and care for the whole world like Katara did. He didn’t know what he would call himself, but he did know one thing. He wasn’t letting Katara run off to save the world without some back up. 

    He groaned, caught up with her, and said, “I’m the kind of person who’s going to spend a lot of time trying to make sure you don’t get hurt, apparently.” 

    “Well, I’m going to try to make sure you don’t get hurt, either,” she sounded slightly affronted. 

    He stopped at the entrance where they had first laid down their bags, and slid his backpack into place, and unsheathed his dual swords. Katara followed suit, untying the spear and bow from the front, and slipping into the straps. 

    There was another scream, and she bolted through the gates, weaving through the trucks and leaving him behind again. He followed her out toward the desert. 

    The screaming stopped and started intermittently, leading them like a siren to the rocks. His theories shifted as the noise grew and evidence began to build. Words, the pitch of the voice, the secondary smaller voices that revealed themselves. He decided shrill wasn’t the right word. High-pitched, but unlike a woman’s voice, raspier. 

    A child’s voice . 

    In front of him, Katara stopped and then she began to sprint.  

    He took off behind her, quickly overtaking her with his longer legs, and he put his hand on her shoulder, wanting her to stop but not wanting to yank at her arm again.

    She started signing as she slowed, but he grabbed her hands and whispered, “run to the sand dune with the two pronged cactus, and then we’ll stake it out for a second.”

    They started running together and his mind raced ahead of them to what lay beyond the rise. He found himself in the curious position of really, really, hoping that they were about to face off against a zombie. Several zombies. A horde , he prayed, be a whole fucking horde of zombies . Let the men have passed by and have nothing to do with this.

    He felt it in his heart that it was the men though, and the implications tore through him like wildfire.

    They hit the sand dune, but once they were there, they had to immediately drop down to avoid being seen. 

    The group was much closer than he assumed they would be when he chose this spot. For once, he was glad for the sand, it seemed his gritty enemy had muffled their encroaching footsteps enough that despite how close they were they had not been heard. 

    They were just in time to watch as a woman being held up by two men was punched in the face by a third. The blow connected so squarely with her jaw, that a spray of dark blood from her mouth splattered across the light shirt of one of the men holding her. 

    He learned then that the screams they’d heard were the pleading sobs of a young boy who was being held down by a knee in his back several steps away from the assault. The boy clawed at the ground. The man holding him down laughed. 

    “There’s only four,” Katara hissed, “I’ll kill two of them before you’re even over there.” She ripped the mostly empty quiver off her back, grabbed the second last arrow, and had the first man in her sights. 

    He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the kid. He felt his chest tighten. His heart shuddered against his ribcage as desperate to escape as he was. His fingers remembered the way clawing against someone holding you down felt, remembered the pain, held onto the helplessness. 

    “Zuko,” Katara jolted him with a light nudge to the shoulder. 

    He stood, “I’ll get the kid, you get the guys with the woman.”

    He ran parallel away from them at first and then curved back so that he was running up from behind the men. The closer he got, the more his body reacted to the memory. The left side of his face began to burn. 

    15 feet. 10 feet. 

    The man with his knee on the boy's back looked up, his eyes widened, he started to stand, his mouth began to shape a word. Zuko placed his foot perfectly, his form a combination of muscle memory and pure adrenaline. He did not feel the impact of the blow or the tug of friction as his blade went clear through the throat of the boy’s captor before he could even speak to call for help or alert the other men. 

    He kept his momentum going, passing the falling corpse just as Katara’s arrow felled the man who had punched the woman.

    “Gansu,” one of the other men gasped, dropping his hold of the woman, who slumped down and tumbled out of the hands of the man who had not let go.

    “What”- 

    Katara’s second arrow pierced the bicep of the dumb-struck man, who had still been looking at his dead companion with a blank expression. He screamed, clutching the shaft of the arrow and falling to his knees. 

    The man who had gasped locked eyes with Zuko, and before he was close enough to land a blow, the man turned and began to run. 

    “Fuck,” Zuko shouted after him, and began to follow.

    He cornered him between the house, the shed, and the fence. 

    There was nowhere to go. 

    The man pressed his back against the graying, weather wood planks of the shed, he cringed and pleaded, “please, man, it wasn’t my idea, it was all Gansu, that guy was crazy. You gotta believe me. I wasn’t gonna do nothing to her or the kid, I was just”- 

    “I don’t care.”

    The man kept blabbering. 

    Zuko slowed, walked up to him, got close enough to him to smell the rotten stench of his breath, the sour sweat of his body, and see the hollow sunken cheeks of his starved face. Spittle hit him on his cheeks and forehead as the man begged. He brought his blade across the man's throat, and then it was silent. 

    Zuko stood in the shadows created by the two looming structures on either side of him. He wiped the blood off of his sword with the dead man’s back. He jogged back to Katara, winded but worried she may still be fighting with the man who had been shot in the arm. 

    When he got there, she was fighting a different battle. 

    Katara had laid the woman out where she had fallen and was attempting to use the newly removed bottom half of her shirt to stop the bleeding on a wound the woman had received to her leg. 

    The little boy was kneeling next to Katara. His balled up fists were pressed up against his eyes, and he was sobbing. 

    “Tell me what to do,” he said, standing across from her and then squatting down to her level.

    “There isn’t much to do,” she grunted, tying the scrap of fabric off around the woman’s mid-thigh. 

    He grimaced at the tourniquet, “won’t that”-

    Her head snapped up and she stopped him, “don’t. We’ll deal with it later.” 

    His eyes flashed to the sobbing child, “should we stay here?”

    “I don’t see how we’re supposed to move her.”

    “I’ll carry her.”

    Katara frowned, “what if we stayed here for the night?”

    “No!” They both looked over to the kid in surprise and he continued through hiccups, “what if- what if they come back?”

    “There’s no one to come back,” Zuko said in an attempt to comfort him.

    “What if they weren’t alone?”

    Zuko squinted and tilted his head sideways just a few degrees. He appreciated the caution, and turned to Katara to ask, “you think we shouldn’t move her?”

    She looked between him and the sniffling boy and brought her blood soaked hands up to sign, I fake for baby. Before morning she dies . 

    He closed his eyes for a beat before opening them to look down at the pale woman, her chest rose and fell too slowly. She’s going to die anyway , he signed slowly, hoping she would understand without verbal accompaniment, we leave for safety in a few minutes . Back to haircut house .

    She bit her lip, looking up at him and processing before signing, you think she die on walk and baby stay with us?  

    You think she’ll die on walk?

    He had almost forgotten the boy was watching them, and Zuko flinched when he interrupted them, “what are you doing?” The boy’s voice was hoarse but had lost the panicked edge it held before. 

    He turned to the boy, “signing. What do you need if we leave?”

    “Um,” the boy sniffled and rubbed the shiny snot that had been oozing down into his mouth onto his sleeve, “my bag, my mom’s bag.”

    “Do you have food? We haven’t been able to find enough.”

    He nodded again, “We have some.” His eyes flashing down to his mother and Zuko followed.

    She was still breathing, he noticed thankfully, but otherwise her condition seemed not to have improved. Zuko looked back to the boy and hoped he would come to his own conclusions about her fate before she went. He wasn’t sure if he could handle watching the boy lose his mother regardless, but he imagined it would be easier if the boy knew it was coming. 

    “Well, let’s get moving. The sooner we leave, the better.”

    Zuko prompted the boy with his hands, waving him toward the house, but the boy stood still. 

    “Honey,” Katara whispered softly, “what’s your name?”

    He took a shuddering breath before answering weakly, “I’m Lee.”

    “Hi, Lee. I’m Katara, and this is my friend, Zuko. We’re going to help as best we can, but we need your help too. Can you get you and your mom’s stuff? If you show Zuko where everything is he’ll help you. Ok?”

    Zuko wanted to reach out and run his hand across her cheek or press a soft kiss to her chewed lips. He already knew she was, but she looked so kind and was so comforting that his heart lurched in his chest. 

    Lee shuffled toward her, “my mom... is she... will she...?”

    “I don’t know, Lee, I wish I did. I’m going to try my best.”

    “Do you... have you ever...?”

    “I trained under a healer when I was a little older than you, and I’ve worked on injuries like hers before, but I’m not a doctor or anything.”

    Zuko shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to remember if Katara had ever told him that before, or if she was just lying to comfort the kid. 

    “I’m sorry,” she mumbled as Lee began crying again.

    “She looks dead,” he howled.

    “Look,” Katara said, taking him by the hand and pulling him closer to his mother, “she’s still breathing. Right now, Lee, the best way to help her, to help me help her, is to get your things and some food. We’ve got a place we can hide out for a few days and then we can come back if you want.”

    Zuko’s stomach dropped. If this woman died and they were the ones left with her kid, there was no way Katara would ever let him go. They would be stuck with him. 

    He wasn’t sure he was up to the responsibility. 

    Still, once Lee started moving toward the house, Zuko followed dutifully behind him, and hoped his mom would make it. 

Chapter Text

    Zuko stood, peering over Lee’s shoulder, and the sun stood over Zuko’s shoulder to threaten them both with darkness as it began to sink below the mountains to the west.

    “Better,” he commented austerely, and began pacing again. 

    He kept reminding himself that it was always harder to work when someone was watching, but he had to fight the need to control what was happening like a tightening noose. 

    He looked over to the sunburnt hut where Katara was making Sela comfortable and frowned. 

    “I got a spark.” Lee’s voice was bordering on excitement, but still fell flat.  

    “Keep going,” he encouraged, albeit sharply, and squatted down to walk him through transferring his ember to the little twig and hair nest they had made.

    A small thin trail of white smoke began to rise from the blackened track in the wooden plank, and Zuko urged him, “ok, now move it.”

    “With my hands?”

    “Lift the board and dump the coal onto the nest like I showed you.”

    “But then I lift it with my hands?”

    “I can do that part if you want but move the ember before it goes out.” Zuko said urgently, 

    Lee clumsily flipped the fire plough and almost missed the little nest entirely, but it slipped between the twigs and caught somewhere in the middle.

    “I’ll do it,” Lee assured him, grabbing the smoking nest, and blowing into it as he cupped it in front of his face.

    “It’ll catch fast, careful.”

    The boy blew until the smoke began to pour out.

    “Ok, put it in the tinder pile”—

    He snatched the little ball from the boy’s hands just as the fire consumed the outside layer of twigs, and he tossed it into their waiting pile of slightly larger twigs, dry grass, and bark. He turned to Lee, frowning again, “well, now you know how fast it can catch.”

    Lee nodded, and watched as the fire grew.

    Zuko began setting up a little pyramid of wood around the licking flame.

    Both of them jumped when they heard Katara close the door shut as she left Lee’s mom, Sela, to come find them.

    That woman feeling, how? He signed.

    “She’s sleeping now, I gave her some pain medication and some water, but the walk back here took a lot out of her.”

    Zuko flexed his hands remembering the strain of carrying her back to this settlement over all the hours it had taken them to walk away from it. 

    Lee said nothing and kept staring into the fire. 

    “Did we grab enough water to wash her leg again? It got gross from her pants on the way here.”

    “I’ll start boiling some to drink and you can take some from there, or you could use one of the tablets.”

    “For the wound we should probably boil it, just to be sure.”

    Zuko took her by the elbow and led her a few steps away from the child and the fire, and he whispered, “how do you feel?”

    “Exhausted.”

    “I can relate.... Is surviving the walk a good sign?”

    Katara shrugged, “too early to tell,” but what her face and voice said was no, not really . 

    Katara looked off, biting her lower lip, and concentrating before turning back and pointing to her temple, she made the sign, soft , and then made a motion to swipe it away before she signed, break . Mind break . He put the sickening image. He finger-spelled S.K.U.L.L and then raised his eyebrows to show her he was asking. 

    Her eyes shut as she agreed but then they opened to flicker toward Lee, “you can... feel it ,” she said in a low whisper and then shuddered. 

    Zuko winced, and stepped closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder, “do you... want a hug?”

    She pushed her way around his arms to squeeze his torso and nodded into his shirt. He placed one hand on her head where it lay against his chest and the other, he wrapped as best he could around her shoulders. 

    “Did you learn anything else from Lee?” she asked, muffling her voice with his chest.

    “Supposedly, there’s a dad out there looking for a brother who went missing,”

    “Yeah, so who knows,” Katara sighed and then in a lighter voice said, “we saved Lee though, right? That’s a win.” 

    “True.”

    “We did the right thing,” she commanded into the valley between his pectorals, “the right thing is just hard sometimes.”

    He wasn’t sure what the right thing was, but he was glad that they had saved Lee, “why don’t you lay down once you’ve cleaned her leg again, I’ll stand guard.”

    She extracted herself and put her hands on her hips, “you’re not staying up all night, wake me up… and sometime before dawn.” 

    “Then, the sooner we get the water boiling the better.” 

    “The sooner it boils the sooner I can sleep,” she groaned and then went to sit by Lee at the fire.

    He looked over at them and wondered if this picture would be his new norm. He grimaced watching the recalcitrant little boy shift away from Katara and then turned away to grab their pot and the supplies they had taken from Lee’s farmhouse. 

    They would eat well for the first time since they had left the little seaside cabin, but he wasn’t sure it was worth the cost. 

    The next day brought heat more intense than any day before it. By midday Zuko had stripped his shirt off to wrap it around the heatsink of his black hair and beside him Lee had done the same. Zuko could already feel the sting of the sun's bite across his pale shoulders, and he knew it was only the beginning.

    They had begun wandering without aim, abandoning their initial project out of boredom, and they were lucky to find a small building tucked away between sand dunes, with its door almost buried in sand, and they took refuge from the sun beneath the smooth clay roof. The building was dilapidated on the inside, and larger than it had seemed, with hallways leading back into parts of the building that were completely concealed by sand outside. The cover of sand cooled the dark rooms considerably, and after a small break to drink water, they began to explore the front room. 

    Zuko sifted through the papers on the front table and found ledgers and receipts with ink so faded they were mostly illegible. The only sheet that he could read was dated 2 years before the plague had reached him in the Fire Nation, when it had begun everywhere else, and was an account of bets being placed on some sport. He looked around the room, wondering what kind of building they had stumbled upon, and saw a trunk tucked away in the corner gathering dust. 

    There was a locking mechanism, and he realized it was truly more of a safe than a trunk, but he’d never met a lock he couldn’t pick or break before, so he pressed his ear to the door and began messing with the rusted tumblers. It fell apart in his hands at his first frustrated attempt to force it. The little numbered pieces fell out, and then he was able to manipulate the guts of the lock to open it up.

    Inside the trunk was an old-fashioned pirate’s treasure from the stories he’d been read as a child. The dim light of the room still caught on the gold coins the corners of cut gems. There were necklaces and earrings, so many rings he couldn’t count them. He took a handful of the rings on top, all solid gold, simple bands, and let them fall through his fingers. Wedding bands. He thought of two possible theories, either these had existed here before the start of the apocalypse and this was some sort of pawn shop, or someone was hoarding their stash in what appeared to be an abandoned building and could be back whenever. 

    He looked back toward the dark hallway and the hair at the back of his neck stood up. He went back to rifling through the contents of the treasure chest, sorting the useless paper money into a pile at his knees. If nothing else , he justified, it will be good for burning . He pocketed as many gold coins as he was willing to carry on one side of his cargo pants, Fire Nation soldiers could still be bribed with gold, and then hovered over a pair of dark sapphire earrings. 

    Katara probably doesn’t even have pierced ears , he caught himself thinking, and snatched his hand away from the earrings. What use would Katara have for them? At best they’re worthless, and at worst they’re a target on her back .

    He went back to shuffling through the useless hoard of old-world riches, and his hand hit leather as he came across a jewel encrusted sheath. He tossed the white leather aside and admired the knife that had been hidden within. It was blunt, probably never used, but its mint condition had saved it from most corrosion and it could be cleaned and sharpened and put to good use. 

    He would have to find a more practical sheath for it, but for the moment he settled on re-sheathing the knife in its original home. 

    He tossed it to the ground and leaned back in to get a better vantage point.

    “I’m thirsty,” Lee said, appearing next to him.

    Zuko startled and hit his head on the lid of the trunk.

    “Don’t sneak up on me,” Zuko hissed, rubbing the throbbing spot at the crown of his head.

    “I didn’t?”

    Zuko grimaced, “here,” he thrust his canteen at the boy, and grabbed the knife, assuming a little boy would find interest with the weapon, “look what I found.” 

    “Oh, pretty,” Lee said, taking the sheath from him as he revealed the blade.

    “Oh… yeah, I think they might be rubies.” 

    “The knife is cool too,” Lee said, moving into the shaft of light coming from the open door and playing with what reflected off the gems.

    “Right,” Zuko snorted, and then smiled as he watched Lee shine the colored spots of light around the room, “Keep it, you should have a knife on you.”

    Lee dropped his hands and looked at him, “you wanna give me the knife?”

    “You’re old enough, you should be able to defend yourself.”

    Lee smirked and shoved the glittering case into his pocket. His hand rested on the bit of the handle that stuck out and he tentatively asked, “do you wanna see what I found?” 

    “Yeah, what did you find?”

    Zuko sauntered over to him as the boy started peering at the ground trying to re-find his object. 

    He took two tentative steps forward, and then suddenly snapped at the knees and dropped down, slamming his hand in the dirt. When Lee stood back up, his gap tooth smile brightened his face for the first time since they’d met, and Zuko looked down at his cupped hands expectantly. 

    “Look,” Lee opened his hands and a bright green grasshopper jumped from his palm to Zuko’s shirt and then sailed off into the room.

    Zuko blinked, turned his head to watch the little creature escape, and then turned back to Lee. The boy watched him expectantly, and Zuko nodded, pressed his lips together, and then laughed. It was just one hard press of air that pushed out his nose, but enough that Lee kept smiling and went back to digging through the dirt. 

    Zuko swallowed, cleared his throat, surprised to find a tightness constricting his airways.

    It was surprisingly easy to be kind to a child. Even when they weren’t being helpful. He walked back to the chest and stared into the gilded contents unseeing. His whole life, it had seemed having children around was such an annoyance, a burden.

    It’s different , he thought, unmoving while he rationalized, dealing with a child once in a while versus dealing with one every day. That’s bound to be annoying after a while, of course you would, of course a parent could—

    “Wanna see something else?”

    Zuko looked down and sure enough there was another bug in Lee’s hands, a long, armored thing curling its many legs around Lee’s fore finger.

    “I hate the leggy ones,” he croaked. 

    “I hate the ones that fly, mostly,” Lee shrugged and placed the millipede on the ground gently.

    “Should we check down the hallway? I brought a flashlight,” Zuko reached behind himself to grab the flashlight from the side of his backpack. 

    “What are we checking for?”

    “Food, tools, bugs, whatever.”

    “Maybe a shovel would be nice?”

    Zuko thought of the hand trowel sticking out of the dirt back at their camp, waiting for him to go back to his original responsibility of the day, digging a latrine. The responsibility he had abandoned to go wandering around with Lee, “yeah, a real shovel would be nice.” 

    He led them down the dark hallway, and he felt less sure every step. 

    “‘Cause I was thinking back at the camp, ‘how are we gonna dig a hole with no shovel’ but we can’t go back home for tools and we gotta” —

    A crash came from somewhere beyond the small cone of light from his flashlight. He reached out his hand, catching Lee on the chest and stopping him. 

    “We should” —

    “Zuko!”

    Lee flung his hand up to point just as a jackalope the size of a large dog bounded out of the darkness. It slammed through the gap between them with its velvety antlers, throwing them against the walls on either side of them, and then fleeing into the small room they had just barely left, unable to find the way out. 

    Zuko rubbed his shoulder and stared off, trying to catch a glimpse of the jackalope as it ricocheted between the walls too scared to follow its senses to the door. 

    Lee cackled, “I-I thought- I thought we were gonna get ate.” He doubled over, clutching his stomach. 

    “We would have been fine,” Zuko chided him, retrieving his jagged hunting knife from his belt loop, and bouncing his eyes around with the jackalope to find an opening to kill the frantic beast.

    Lee’s laughter ceased and he asked, somberly, “you’re going to kill it?”

    Zuko turned just enough to catch Lee out of the corner of his good eye, and then fully shifted to face the boy. His eyes were shiny and red rimmed, and he was clutching at his dirty shirt.

     “It was just... living here... you know? And we... and we came up on it– so it has to die? Just ‘cause– it’s just that” —

    “Breathe, Lee,” Zuko reminded him as his voice worked up into hysterics, “just focus on your breathing.”

    Lee took a halting breath in and then let out a loud, shaky, exhale, “tell me the truth.”

    Zuko bit his lower lip, “the truth about what?”

    “My mom’s gonna die, isn’t she?”

    Zuko’s stomach dropped, and he sucked in a sharp breath before whispering, “yes.” 

    Instead of a wail, Lee cried out in anger, he screamed and stamped his feet on the ground and beat his fist against the wall behind him, but soon, tears began their descent down the hills of his baby fat padded cheeks. He crumbled to the ground, pulled his knees to his chest, and tucked his head in to cry. 

    Zuko shifted to sit next to him. The jackalope stopped jumping around in the other room, and he quietly listened to the sound of Lee crying until the kid lifted his head, “I knew it.”

    Zuko took a deep breath, then another, and his voice shook when he spoke, “I’m sorry, Lee.”

    “It’s not fair ,” he cried.

    “No, it isn’t.”

    “Why did they do that? Why did they hurt her? I don’t get it.”

    “I don’t think it’s possible to understand evil people like that,” Zuko said quietly, “not on any level that matters. Some people just want to hurt other people.”

    Lee sucked up his dripping snot and then wiped his face with his sleeve, “I’m glad you killed them.”

    Zuko sighed, he knew this was when Katara would insert something about not being happy about killing people, and maybe that was what this kid needed, but Zuko was glad he’d killed them too, “killing people is... hard. It’s not a choice you make lightly. I’m glad I was able to save you. I wish we lived in a world where none of that ever had to happen.”

    Lee sniffled and whispered, “me, too.”

    They sat together while Lee cried, his bony chest heaving with the weight of his grief. 

    Zuko settled in under the familiar mantle of his own loss as he watched Lee cycle through ragged breathing and heavy crying. 

    He had spent countless nights staring at the moon from his bedroom window, creating scenarios where his mother survived, sometimes he’d convince himself she’d gotten amnesia and was living somewhere as a maid, other times he prayed she had just taken advantage of the chaos to escape her violent husband. It had taken him so long to admit to himself that she was really dead, actually never coming back, but Lee did not have the luxury of denial. He had seen the blows that would lead to his mother’s death firsthand. 

    Zuko swallowed, rubbed at the tip of his nose, and adjusted himself on the dirty floor, “Lee...” Zuko ventured, probing for a reaction.

    “What?” Lee snapped, and then hid his face again. 

    Zuko blanked, and the first thing that came to mind was survival, “you should drink some water. You’re going to get dehydrated.”

    Lee lifted his head, and Zuko shot up and ran for the canteen. 

    He was halfway there before he remembered the Jackalope. 

    The massive rodent squealed, reared back, and started jumping around again.

    “Shit,” Zuko hissed, and just as he caught sight of the canteen, the jackalope tore past him, jabbing him in the rib with the point of its horn.

    He grunted and staggered back.

    I should have killed the stupid thing, we could use the meat , but he knew he wouldn’t, and watched in reproach as the animal finally found the door and bolted out into the blaring sun. 

    He looked over to Lee, who was standing now, and when they locked eyes, Lee grinned and then began to laugh, “you forgot!”

    Zuko grasped at his chest, and took in a painful breath, “I think it broke my rib,” he muttered.

    “Should we go back to Katara?”

    “All she’s going to do is tell me I should be more careful,” he winced, “we should go back and dig that latrine before I run into another wild animal who wants to kick my ass.” 

    Lee cackled, and then took in a gasping, shuddering breath, and wiped at his face, “ok, let’s go then.” 

    Zuko went to grab his bag, and suddenly thought of the dull knife in Lee’s new jewel encrusted sheath. He started digging through the front pocket. Then, squatting down, the little pouch on the right, then the left side. He opened the larger compartment, and went into the small pocket, and then into the bottom. He’d emptied most of the contents out before they’d left to unburden himself, and he knew he hadn’t taken out the knife then, but it was nowhere in his backpack at all. He sat back on his haunches and glared at his bag. When was the last time he’d seen it? When was the last time he’d used it? But he couldn’t remember. The knife Iroh had given him, the one he had carried since he had been Lee’s age, was gone. He felt a hollowness form in his chest, cold and empty. He would check with Katara, but he had to rub his nose and blink away some dust before standing. 

    “Yeah, let’s get out of here.” 

Chapter Text

    “... and that’s why you don’t stick your hand in the fire,” Zuko said calmly, and the corner of his mouth tugged just slightly upward as Lee sucked at his fingers.

    Katara smiled at them, but it dropped quickly, weighed down by her dread. Just a few feet away Sela was taking what may be some of her last breaths, and there was nothing she could do about it. 

    “ You stick your hands in the fire.”

    “Strategically.”

    “Or you’ve just burned yourself so many times you don’t feel it anymore,” Lee grumbled. She watched Zuko still, Lee looked up from the flames and over to where Zuko was sitting, statuesque, “how did you get your scar anyway?” 

    “ Lee ,” Katara gasped, “why would you ask that?”

    “What? It’s just a question.”

    She locked eyes with Zuko, whose face was obscured by shadow, and she began “Lee that’s...” but she didn’t know how to finish and petered out. 

    “Do you remember what I said about evil people earlier?” Zuko said quietly, and Katara frowned, studying his face as he stared into the fire. 

    “Some people just hurt people?”

    She furrowed her brow, that was his profound explanation?

    “Yeah. Somebody just hurt me, and it’s not worth thinking about.” Zuko nodded, resolute. 

    Lee mirrored his nod and held his hand just out of flame’s reach, “did you get to kill them, too?”

    She gasped softly in the back of her throat, and stood to do... something, she hadn’t gotten there yet when Zuko stood up abruptly from the rock he’d been squatting on.

    “No,” he cleared his throat, “excuse me,” before walking off into the dark.

    Lee moved to follow him, his face turned downward in confusion and Katara held her hand out to stop him, “Lee, go see your mom, let me talk to Zuko.”

    “I didn’t mean to make him mad,” Lee said, looking up at her from under his crumpled brow, “I’ll just”—

    “It’s ok, Lee, it’s just... it’s ok. Go sit with your mom for a minute.”

    She followed Zuko, the warm light of the fire growing farther away as she moved toward him. It was almost gone once she found him bent over at the waist and leaning against the side of one of the other wooden houses. 

    He looked up quickly and then put his head back down. 

    “Sorry,” he whispered without removing concentration from the wooden planks in front of him.

    “Don’t be,” she assured him, stepping over and placing her hand on the flat plane of his back. She stretched her fingers out to span the width between his shoulder blades and gently caressed the taut fabric connecting the two peaks, “take your time.”

    “I’m fine,” he assured her. 

    “You don’t have to be,” she said with a small frown, “I know that was probably really difficult.” 

    “I am.”

    He stood, and followed her arm with his hand until he could wrap his arm around her and pull her to his side, “thanks for coming after me.”

    “Always.” 

    “Where’s Lee?”

    “I told him to go sit with his mom while I talked to you, but who knows if he listened. You know he only listens to you,” she rolled her eyes and moved to hug him. 

    “What are we doing, Katara?”

    She pulled away from him, “I- I was just comforting you I thought”—

    “With Lee,” he interjected, stepping forward to bring her back into his embrace. She dug her face into his shirt. It was sour but familiar and she stayed there for a second, thinking. 

    “I don't know.” 

    “Katara, I don’t think I can... I don’t think we can take care of a kid. We’re barely making it through this desert ourselves.”

    “We’ll go back to the farm; they had more food. We could– we could build some Sokka traps around it, build up the fences. Fortify it. Plant food. It could be our next permanent camp. It’s only a year or two before he’s a fighter too, we can train him.” She felt frantic, thinking up a future for them with their new ward. 

    Zuko sighed, “yeah. We could.”

    “What?”

    “It’s just...” he looked up, and she watched the long line of his neck as his Adam's apple bobbed, he whispered, “I’m scared.”

    “I am too,” she said, “I never thought... I would have never dreamed this would happen.”

    Zuko looked back down and leaned forward to kiss the top of her head, her stomach fluttered. She was still mostly unused to his touch, and she shivered as electricity crackled beneath her skin. 

    The creaking of a door shocked them apart, and they both looked down the path between the two houses to see Lee standing on the front step of where his mother was resting. 

    “He probably thinks you’re mad at him,” she mumbled, turning back to Zuko.

    “Yeah, well, maybe a little, but he’s ten.”

    “He’s only ten?”

    “Yeah, he mentioned while we were... digging the latrine.” His gaze shifted away from her, and she rolled her eyes.

    “He showed me the knife as soon as you turned your back, I know you weren’t digging that latrine the whole time you were gone.” 

    “Oh,” Zuko grumbled, “snitch.”

    “Puh-lease. You were gone for hours; it doesn’t take that long to dig a hole. I had my own theories.”

    “Oh? Theories? I”—

    “I’m sorry I asked about murder, can we eat dinner now?” Lee called out, and they both turned to see he was still standing back on the front step, twisting the lower hem of his shirt in his hands nervously. 

    Katara rolled her eyes, and squeezed Zuko’s hand as she separated from him, “let me go cook something, take your time.”

    She gave Lee a disapproving look as she passed him on her way to the fire pit, and when she got there, she turned around to see Zuko standing by the step speaking quietly with Lee, whose chin was scraping his chest. 

    She bit her lip, but despite her curiosity she focused on trying to flatten a spot in the glowing coals for their pot. 

    By the time she nestled a flat rock on top of the burning embers, Zuko and Lee shuffled up to the fire, eyes a little red, but Zuko smiled at her, and it lit the molten gold of his irises. She felt a weight lift from her tired shoulders. 

    “So,” she asked, “who wants cabbage?”

    The world around her was lit in gold and green. Sun and shade, cool wind and the sound of waves crashing against a shore. The feeling of peace. 

    “Katara?”

    Suki bent over her, the sunlight filtered through the green leaves above her to cast purple shadows that made her bright eyes pop against the dark.

    “It’s your watch.”

    “Go away,” she muttered, and turned away from her. There was no need to stand watch in the middle of the day, and she had just gotten comfortable.

    “Katara.”

    “Fivemeremins, Suki,” she insisted, trying to go back to the hammock in the woods in the cool spring breeze.

    “No... Katara!”

    She whined, digging her face into the pillow. Her eyes burned and hung in her sockets like they were swollen with black bruises. It wasn’t Suki though, the voice was darker, deeper than Sokka’s too....

    “ Seriously ? I’m exhausted, Katara.”

    She shot up from the bed, “oh, Zuko, sorry,” she said while rubbing her eyes as even the dim light from the candle on the floor was harsh, “took forever to fall asleep.” 

    She wasn’t at the stream in the hammock, she wasn’t in the woods by the cabin, Suki could be dead for all she knew. She blew out through pursed lips and blinked back the flash flood that the sharp reminder of her loss had called forth. Her emotions were always overwhelming when she was deprived of sleep, and she still hadn’t recovered from staying up with Sela most of the first night. 

    The sleeping bag shifted as Zuko moved to unlace his boots and she rolled toward him, crawling out of the bed against all the forces of the universe and looking around to orient herself. She grabbed her clothes and they both stood to begin the same routine but inverted. She slipped into her pants as he slipped out of his, and pulled her shirt over her head as he pulled his off. 

    She caught a glimpse of his torso in the flickering warm light and gasped, “Zuko! Your ribs!”

    He glanced down, winced, and looked up, smiling apologetically, “I’m fine.”

    She glared at him, she was beginning to hate hearing him say that, especially when he was clearly not fine. 

    “Is this why you didn’t tell me about going exploring with Lee? What happened?”

    Her tiredness wasn’t completely forgotten, but she fought through it, propelling herself to his side, and gently brushing her hands over the little pricks of red on the outer edge of the deep red, beginning to purple, bruise around his lower ribs.

    “It was stupid,” he grumbled, but stayed perfectly still for her inspection.

    “What was stupid,” she sighed, skimming the pads of her fingers over the lines of his bruised ribs, “was not telling me. A broken rib can puncture a lung, Zuko. I mean...” she trailed off as she looked up. He watched her with a soft expression, his eyebrows quirked up and his golden eyes swimming in the inconsistent light of the sputtering candle. She paused, “what’s wrong?” 

    He looked up toward the ceiling as he struggled through a hoarse throat, “sorry, nothing’s wrong,” he looked back down and his lower eyelashes had clumped together in little black triangles.

    “Did I hurt you?”

    “No, I was just... lost in thought.”

    She gave him a tight smile and stepped away from him, snatching the scrap of cloth she used as a hair ribbon and plopping down onto their conjoined sleeping bags to braid her hair in silence.

    She stared at the floor, replaying all the times he’d shut her out similarly in her mind, and took out her frustration on her unruly hair. 

    From above her, he hesitantly said, “it was a jackalope.”

    She didn’t respond and began undoing the braid as she was making it too tight. 

    “It ran past me and hit me with its antlers. If it had been something... if it had been more serious I would have told you right away.” 

    She flicked her eyes up at him, “a jackalope?”

    “It’s like a rabbit with antlers.”

    “Oh, I know. A jackalope hit you in the ribs?”

    “It was huge!”

    She snorted, dropping her braid and her annoyance, “I find it hard to imagine that a rabbit was big enough to do that.”

    “Well, for starters, I’m pretty sure they’re technically hares, which are usually larger anyway.”

    “I don’t think that matters.”

    “I’m telling you, Katara, this thing was the size of a dog.”

    “Famously an animal with a variety of sizes.”

    “Ok, a medium sized dog.” 

    She laughed, “you’re telling me, a rabbit the size of a dog did that to your chest?”

    He shifted his weight onto his back leg and hooked his thumb in the graying boxer shorts that hung dangerously low at his hips, “how else would it have reached my ribs?”

    She sucked in a quick breath. Had it been so long that there was enough light while they changed that she had forgotten that Zuko was half naked when he slept? Or what that really meant? The movement of his hand brought her attention to the sharp line of his hip bone, and that led her eyes to the outline at the seam of his boxers. She flinched, looking away and then sneaking a look at his face to find him smirking.

    He squatted down and crawled onto the sleeping bag closest to the wall. She followed the movement of his body with her eyes, savoring the ripples of muscle.

    “Did you see anything? On watch, I mean.”

    “A few zombies in the distance, but nothing else.”

    “What direction?”

    “Toward the desert.”

    Katara finished her braid and dropped her head, rubbing at her neck.

    “Are you ok, Katara?” he asked hesitantly.

    She perked her head back up, “why wouldn’t I be?”

    “I don’t know… you seem... it’s been... rough.”

    She shrugged, tied the end of her braid, and flung it over her shoulder, “I just keep reminding  myself that this seems pretty manageable in comparison to some of the stuff we could have found. Ya know? Besides, mostly I’ve been sitting around giving her pain medicine every few hours.” Her head swung down again though, and she said, “I’m just tired.”

    She felt him move, and then the warmth of his hand resting at the base of her neck. His thumb began to make small circles in her sore muscle.

    “You can take a nap later in the day,” his voice was husky, deep, and practically in her ear. She suppressed a shiver. 

    He increased the pressure of his thumb and she moaned softly, “a nap sounds nice,” she breathed.

    He scooted closer to her, working his hand up her neck and then back down to the knot of bone at the top of her spine. She melted into his touch as her neck muscles received the first tender attention of their life.

    “Just let me sleep for a little while and I’ll take over again,” he whispered gravelly.

    “That’s not fair,” she mumbled, and hummed as both his thumbs went down the sides of the column of her neck. She groaned, “I’ll never get up if you don’t stop.”

    His finger’s stalled, but hovered, “sorry.”

    “No– I didn’t, well I did, but...”

    “Just another minute,” he mumbled, moving in close enough for her to feel his breath on her neck, “and then I’m going to sleep anyway.”

    She felt the familiar jolt of arousal and she curled her toes against the ground.

    He resumed kneading, now branching out to the muscles in her shoulders before going back up to her hairline. 

    “That feels good,” she sighed.

    Zuko cleared his throat, “what does? This?” He repeated the same motion, and she moaned in appreciation.

    “You could even go harder,” she encouraged him.

    “Yeah, you want me to go”— 

    His hands dropped away from her neck, and she turned around to see what had happened “what’s wrong?”

    “You’re not... of course you wouldn’t... I’m sorry.”

    She shifted to fully face him. 

    As she turned, he reached out, snatched the folded blanket-pillow from where she had been wrapped around it before, and piled it onto his lap. Her heart quickened and she could feel her pelvic muscles coil and tighten, and she smirked, “if I’d known you like giving back-rubs so much I would have asked for one sooner.”

    “Whatever, Katara,” he grumbled, “and that just means you want to give me...” his voice faltered.

    “An erection?” she offered and, as if she was speaking from down in the heat of her clenched thighs, her voice was deep and honeyed.

    His eyes narrowed to slits and he shifted the blanket in his lap, “shouldn’t you be on watch?”

    “Why? D’you need some alone time?”

    His nostrils flared and his face set in a firm resolve. He leaned forward, letting the blanket fall, and moved back over to her, “unless you want to stay.”

    She swallowed, she supposed he was only volleying back, but she could lean in and kiss him without much effort, and the desire to do so gripped her. Her eyes darted up to meet his, and then they strayed downward. The baby pink tip of his tongue ghosted across the seam of his lips, and she closed her eyes, leaning in.

    The skin of his hand was rough against her cheek as he cupped her face, and she craned her neck as far as she could to eagerly meet his kiss. 

    He was so close to kissing her that the prickles of stubble on his upper lip tickled the sensitive skin below her nose, but before their lips touched, they heard a thud from somewhere beyond their walls.

    “What was that?” she asked, springing up from the floor.

    Zuko went for his pile of clothes and started slipping back into his pants, “we should go check on Lee.”

    She went for the door, but Zuko called her back, “do you have a weapon?”

    She grabbed the small knife she normally kept in her pocket, and the spear leaned against the wall, and they both fled the one room house prepared to fight. Zuko, shoeless, shirtless, and wielding his dual swords, trailed behind her by a step as they rushed out into the brisk nighttime air.

    There was a low moan.  

    A soft cry.

    Zuko lurched in front of her and grabbed the handle to the door.

    “Lee,” Zuko cried, “no!”

    Katara expected to see Lee on his knees next to his dead mother, but in some horrible reversal Lee was laying on the ground next to his mother’s sleeping pad, and she was the one on her knees beside him.

    Sela’s animated corpse rose from the floor, growling and then began to lurch forward, stretching her arm out to them.

    Zuko didn’t move. 

    Sela kept moving, dragging her wounded leg behind her and snarling at them. Her face had turned a shade of foggy lilac, and her eyes were taken over by a milky film. Black, thick blood oozed from the cloth bandage around her scalp. She grabbed for Zuko. 

    Katara exploded forward, knocking Zuko out of the way with her shoulder, and positioning her spear so that Sela walked into the blow. The sharpened blade entered beneath her jaw and pierced through her brain.

    She stopped moving. Her corpse collapsed to the floor, taking the spear with her. 

    Katara stepped over her, rushing across the room to the small lump on the floor, surrounded by a slick black puddle. She fell to her knees, looming over him. He had curled in on himself. 

    Lee groaned when she put her fingers to his neck to find a pulse and instead of finding soft skin, her fingers dipped into the open wound there. Her pointer finger prodded something that squelched and Lee spasmed. 

    She snatched her hand back and it steamed in the stark cold night of the desert, almost black but for a violet highlight cast by the blue light of the moon.

    She quickly turned him over. As she moved him, the last few spurts of blood surged from the artery in his neck, and there was a sickening splat and rush of light at the corner of her eye. His abdominal cavity had been ripped open, and the long trail of dark organs left from Sela’s feast had sloshed onto the blood waiting beneath him. 

    Katara gagged, looked up to the ceiling sucking a strangled breath through her closing throat. Saliva pooled at the back of her mouth. She swallowed and it hurt the whole way down. She forced herself to look back down.

    “Lee, you’re ok, it’s going to be ok,” she said to him gently, brushing the hair away from his forehead and leaving behind a dark streak. She took the small knife from the pocket of her pants and gripped it tightly in her hand.

    “She didn’t get bit,” Zuko screamed from behind her, his voice torn with confusion and anguish, “how could she turn?”

    She couldn’t listen to him. She knew what she had to do. Lee was likely beyond pain already, but every second was a second closer to him turning. 

    Ice dripped down her spine. Her hand trembled. She turned his head so that she couldn’t see his face. Behind her, Zuko wailed.

    She began to take quick, sharp, deliberate, breaths. Consciously making herself inhale and exhale as she didn’t trust herself to breathe otherwise. The knife in her hand shook so badly that it slipped from her slick palm and clattered to the ground next to Lee’s shoulder. She picked it up again, holding it so tightly the metal bit into her flesh.

    “Everything is going to be ok, Lee,” she whispered again, “everything is going to be ok.”

    She pressed the tip of the blade to the depression where his head and his neck met. 

    “Zuko,” she whimpered, and then more strongly told him, “go stand outside. Now.”

    It had to be her. 

    Once she heard the door clatter shut behind her, she ended Lee’s suffering.

Chapter Text

    They ran away without burying them, burning them, or giving them any last rites at all. Katara had run from the hut to their things, bawling, and from there they had packed their bags and fled into the night. They scurried from shadow to shadow until daylight exposed them. They abandoned their strategy of following the mountains west, and by the time the sun was at its peak, they were high above the desert and beneath the few sparse trees surviving in the rain shadow of the larger snow-capped mountains ahead of them.

    Neither of them had spoken a word since they left, falling back on basic signs and grunts to communicate as they marched onward, but once they crested their first small peak, Zuko shouted, “son of a bitch,” followed by a string of Fire Nation curses.

    Rocks and pebbles rolled down the hill away from him, and she mustered enough energy to walk over, but not to hurry, “what happened?”

    “Nothing!” he roared, and then kicked the fist sized rock in front of him, his boot compressing as it hit the hard stone. He reared back, pulling his foot up. The stone flew several feet in the air and then smashed into the smaller stones covering the ground. It rolled, and the pebbles cascaded with it. Zuko swore again, and dropped his foot, and fell onto his knees.

    She winced, the sound of bone hitting unyielding rock painful even to hear.

    “Sorry,” he moaned, shoving his palms into his eyes and gnashing his teeth.

    She walked over and squatted beside him, ignoring the rocks in her shins and the burning in her eyes, wrapped her arms around his hunched shoulders and grasped him with every ounce of strength left in her. Held him so tight it hurt. 

    “I don’t understand why she turned,” he sobbed into her chest, his voice breaking, “I don’t get it. She never got bit. She never got”— he lost the ability to speak. He brought his arms up and grabbed fistfuls of the back of her shirt, pulling her collar tight against her neck. Her throat was already burning, and the tightening caused her to cry out, releasing her own dam of tears.

    In her mind, all she could see was the darkness of the hut. She could feel the heat of the blood soaking into the fabric of her pants and the rapidly cooling blood on her hand. 

    “It was probably already happening at the end of my watch,” he groaned, “if I had just went to check in on them, if I had just”—

    She stroked the back of his hair and nuzzled her face into his neck, taking comfort as much as she tried to give it, “I’m the one who should have been on watch,” she muttered, “if I had gotten up right away I could have stopped it.”

    “I’m the one who distracted you though, I never should have done that, it was stupid– selfish– I should have...” his breathing became erratic, he kept inhaling and inhaling but never quite exhaling enough 

    Katara frowned and eased her embrace to bring her face to level with his, and pressed their foreheads together, “look at me.”

    His eyes flickered upward to meet hers, and she brought her hands to rest on his cheeks, “do you believe I did everything I could? Do you believe I did something wrong?”

    “No? Katara, how could you have”—

    “Right,” she cut him off, “and I don’t think, given the information we had, that you did anything wrong either. Sometimes you do everything right and still lose, Zuko.”

    He closed his eyes.

    “But we tried,” tears trickled down her cheeks and tickled the tip of her nose, “we tried.”

    “I didn’t try. I didn’t even get a chance to fight for him, if I had lost, if someone had– if there had been something... but he was just... gone.”

    “We got there as soon as we could, we tried to do something.” 

    “I just stood there.”

    “Zuko...”

    “I just stood there, and you had to do everything. I’m useless. I’m just as weak and pathetic as my father always said,” he slumped forward.

    She jerked her head back, and he chased her, following her movement until he sunk his head into the hollow below where her collar bone met her shoulder. Hot tears seeped into the fabric and spread. 

    “Oh, Zuko,” she mumbled, cradling his head to her chest, “don’t say that. He was wrong. You’re wrong. You’re not worthless,” he shook against her, and she held him tighter, “you’re not pathetic or weak.”

    “I am,” he ripped away from her, “just look at me.” 

    His face was flushed, snot trailed from his nose to the seam of his mouth, and his uneven sideburns clung to his face, wet with tears. 

    “I’m crying all over myself when you’re the one who just had to– who just...” he squeezed his eyes shut and his eyebrows knit together.

    "Don’t,” she whispered, closing her eyes, “please, don’t say it.”

    I killed a child .

    Zuko’s knees knocked against hers as he came back in, wrapping his arms around her. Katara sank her weight against him, and he pushed back against her, and they held each other up.

    In the distance, she heard thunder. 

    Katara waited to wake him until her fingers were so sore that they refused to bend around the stick any longer. She crawled over to his sleeping bag, staying low to avoid scraping against the waterlogged roof of their makeshift lean-to, and sat in the divot of his knees to avoid getting rained on. 

    “Zuko,” she said, while gently shaking his thigh, “I need help with the fire, it’s too wet.”

    He shot up from the bed and he whipped his head around, eyes wild, before settling down to look at her, “sorry, I was dreaming... what’s wrong?”

    “I can’t get the fire started.”

    He nodded, rubbed his face aggressively and then crawled out of his sleeping bag.

    She gave him as much space as she could, exposing her bare forearm to the mist at the very edge of their shelter.

    “Is this the driest log we have?” 

    “No, it’s the wettest one, I chose it purposefully to make things difficult,” she muttered, moving to sit behind him so she could watch over his shoulder. 

    Zuko snorted, “it was supposed to be incredulous, not accusatory, Katara.”

    She sighed and stretched out her hand, pulling her fingers back to stretch her wrist as well, “I’ve been trying to get that thing to light for like”—

    “Got it.”

    “— an hour. What?” She blinked, and watched as the orange blossom enveloped their damp pile of wood. 

    “Must have been right on the edge,” he said before blowing into the little pile of tinder.

    If she had lifted her arm she could have touched his back, but it felt too far a distance with the sharp slant of his shoulders and the cold snap of his voice. She hugged her knees and watched as smoke rose to the roof of the lean-to before spilling out into the gray drizzle. 

    There was a loud crack, and she turned back to him. His bent arms flexed downward, and there was another snap as he broke one of the longer branches in half. She studied him carefully as he constructed them around the engulfed tinder pile. His long, lean, fingers deftly placing kindling and then snapping back from the biting flames. Soon the wet logs were pouring dark, thick smoke and sizzling, but Katara could stand the smoke if it meant they could get some of the rainwater boiling. 

    With the fire dancing around their largest chunks of wood, Zuko turned around.

    “You going back to bed?” Her voice was tinged with her desperation for him to speak with her.

    He nodded, and she pushed herself against the dirt wall they’d built up against to let him pass. She followed him with her eyes as he retreated to his bed, chewing on her lower lip.

    Once he was slipping his legs into his sleeping bag, she asked, “can I ask you a question?”

    “Of course.”

    She stared at him intently, pressing her lips into a thin line. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but she knew most of her questions would be met with silence, or a stiff I’m fine . He began to shift his eyes around, unable to meet her stare any longer, and he seemed to wince, as if expecting her to say something painful. 

     “What's your favorite shade of purple?”

    “My favorite...” she saw a slight pull at the corner of his mouth, and then he put his head down, staring up at the smoky ceiling, “I don’t know, you go first.”

    “Probably a soft grayish purple, I like a lot of purples, but there’s something... delicate about it, yet sophisticated.”

    Zuko nodded, and quietly added, “I guess I would say mine is a plum purple. Something deep, almost black. What’s your– uh– favorite season?”

    “In the Earth Kingdom or back home?”

    “Either?”

    “Ok, um, probably summer here. In the Southern Water Tribe summer isn’t even as warm as winter is here, most of the time at least, and I like the heat...” she remembered the past few weeks and shuddered, “ok, I like heat when there’s water. I miss the cold when it’s too hot though, so I guess my real favorite season is whichever one I’m not being bothered by at the moment.”

    Zuko cracked a smile, “that’s my answer too.”

    She crawled back over to him and waited until she was seated at the edge of his sleeping bag to ask, “how are you feeling?”

    “Tired,” he grumbled, and looked away from her.

    She placed her hand on his shin, “I’m worried about you.”

    “Don’t be.”

    “I can’t help it.” 

    He let out an irritated sigh and sat back up, “Katara, I’m fine .” 

    She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and looked down at the canvas fabric of the sleeping bag, “you want me to just stop asking, I know, but I know you’re not fine. Who could be? But I’m... I’m not ok, and you’ve been laying down since we finished building, and Zuko... that was like two days ago. Say you don’t want to talk about it, tell me you’re not ready, but don’t say you’re fine. It’s not fine, and... and I know I laid around after,” her voice quieted, “after Sokka died,” she cleared her throat, “but I”—

    He took her hand and pulled it from his shin to clasp it between both of his hands, “tomorrow,” his voice dragged, tired, “we’ll go tomorrow.”

    “That’s not... that’s not what I’m trying to ask or say or...” she broke her hand free and lurched forward, wrapping around his middle, tucking her head under his arm, “I don’t want to be sad alone, I don’t want you to be sad alone.” 

    Her legs slipped out from underneath her, and she shoved them both to the floor. 

    He circled his arms around her, pulling her so she lay on his chest.

    “I don’t know how to... be sad with someone.”

    “This is a start,” she said while rubbing her face into his shirt. 

    His arms tightened around her, “Katara, I... if you could have any weapon what would you use?” 

    “You go first,” she murmured. Behind them the fire burned against the dark, smoke clung to the logs above them, and all around them the rain hammered against the woods, but Katara looked up and all she could see was Zuko.

    “Ugh, I don’t know what I would choose,” Katara lamented, using a skinny tree trunk to slow her descent as they made their way down the steep slope. 

    “I already gave my answer, so you have to pick something.”

    She bit at her lip and launched herself to the next tree, calling back to him, “honestly, I think if I could eat anything in the world right now, I would just choose a fresh loaf of soft, warm, bread, and a disturbing amount of butter.”

    Zuko moaned and then said, “I hurt myself imagining that one,” as he caught up to her.

    Katara swallowed, “thinking about butter is making me drool. I could eat a fistful of it right now.”

    “And then promptly throw it up.”

    “I think the bread would make me throw up too,” she sighed. 

    “Is there a food you wouldn’t even eat right now?”

    Katara snorted, “I don’t know... I used to hate watching my dad eat the eggs when he was cleaning a fish, but I would slurp ‘em right down if they were in front of me now.”

    Zuko’s face scrunched involuntarily, but he nodded, “yeah, no way I’m turning that down, but I did hate fish eggs as a kid too.”

    Katara looked down the slope again, aiming for the next tree, “what about you?”

    “I think on principle I’d like to say ash-banana, but I know I would eat it anyway.”

    “First, what’s an ash-banana, and second, what did they ever do to you?”

    “It’s a kind of… mushy fruit. I threw up a bunch of ash-banana pastries when I was a kid, my... my little sister put something in them.” 

    Katara snapped her head back to look at him.

    “Your...?”

    “Yeah... Azula.”

    “I never knew.”

    “I know I... we’re very different. She’s...” he looked up at the canopy and then back down to her. His hand floated up and landed on her shoulder, and he wrapped it around her backpack strap, “she’s the perfect daughter.”

    “Hm. Well, with what your father has accused you of, I’m not sure how to take that.”

    He tilted his head up and smiled, “she’s a lot like my dad. I don’t think the two of you would have much to talk about.”

    “Oh, I think we probably would though,” she spat out, the picture of Zuko’s childhood was crystallizing more in her mind’s eye, and her stomach sank like a rock to the ocean floor. 

    She could imagine what kind of person the Fire Lord would consider a ‘perfect’ child, the depths of cruelty she had come to know him for, even without considering his nation’s foreign policy, told her enough. 

    Zuko's face fell, and he pulled her to him, “I hope you never have to meet her.”

    She disagreed. She thought that she would very much like to meet Azula and demonstrate how her father taught her to take care of bullies, but she didn’t give voice to the feeling. 

    She didn’t ask any more about Azula as they made their way, from tree to tree, down the soft pine needle-covered mountainside to the sunlit valley below. 

    Katara took her water skin from her side as they stepped into the light and drank deeply, which felt gluttonous after so long without. 

    “It's pretty here,” she told him as he came to stand beside her.

    “Yeah. We could set up here if you wanted. It’s gonna get dark soon with the mountains behind us now.”

    “And those clouds,” she grumbled, looking off toward the horizon where more dark thunderheads pierced the blue sky.

    “That probably won’t hit till nighttime,” Zuko said with authority, and took his backpack off, “what’s the plan?”

    Katara looked around at the valley and the woods surrounding it, “there’s no cover here, let’s go to the rise over there and see if we can see anything.”

    Zuko reluctantly picked his bag back up.

    “We can always come back for it.”

    He shook his head, “no, that always backfires.”

    They walked slowly through the grass, and Katara savored the break on her aching thighs. At least in the desert , she thought, half serious, only my feet hurt .

    The sea of grass began to rise around them, and they started going down a gentle hill, as the rising tide had concealed the curve of the earth.

    She brought her hands up, dragging them over the sharp blades and letting the fluffy heads of the tallest pieces drag between her fingers. As they moved through the tall fronds, she admired wilted white flowers, with long hanging petals that curled and browned at the edges and plucked one from the plant, something hardy with seed pods hanging heavily from its other stalks. She brought the white flower cup to her nose and breathed in the mildly sweet and pollen heavy stamen. 

    She wrinkled her nose and then sneezed, knocking the flower out of her hand. 

    “Someone’s thinking of you,” Zuko mused, reaching out and grabbing a seed pod laden stalk with a flower still clinging to life on top. He snapped it off and handed her the stem.

    “How’s that?”

    “I don’t know... that’s just what my mom always said, or someone’s talking about you.” 

    “Sometimes I think you’re probably the only other person left who even knows my name,” she winced once she spoke and looked up, fidgeting with one of the browning seed pods toward the bottom of the stem. 

    “I shouldn’t have– it was just a knee-jerk reaction. I’m sorry.”

    The seed pod burst in her hand. 

    The smell wafted up immediately. Sweet and heavy, smooth, a little buttery.

    “Katara!”

    “Do you know—”

    She laughed and brought the tiny white pips up to inspect them, “are these really?”

    “I haven’t smelled sesame since... since before I was banished.”

    Katara breathed in, and exhaled dreamily, “this had to have been planted here,” she exclaimed just as the thought struck her.

    “You’re right! There’s probably a village around here or something.” Zuko pushed forward through the greenery as Katara began shoving her pockets full.

    She had only managed to fill her front pants pockets when he came back.

    “Katara, come here.”

    His voice was grave, and she followed after him.

    She had only to take a few steps before the skeletal remains of the village came into view. Her heart shuddered against her chest. 

    “Well, it’s better than sleeping out in the open. That one house’s roof looks ok, at least the one part, and we could always scavenge and put something together up here,” she said, infusing her voice with false optimism. 

    “I mean, it’s just for tonight... it’ll be fine.”

    “As long as it’s... actually empty.” 

    She squirmed. She didn’t know if either of them could handle that. 

    Zuko grunted.

    “Let’s check it out.”

    “Take some sesame,” she instructed him, “might as well have it on us. Just in case we can’t come back.” 

    Zuko smiled absently, his worried face empty save for his sharp eyes fixed on the little village, “right,”

    A gilded, crimson, Fire Nation flag waved, half burnt, in the center of town but neither of them mentioned it. 

    “Can I roll over?” Katara asked, doing her best to look over her shoulder at Zuko to see if he was still awake.

    “Again?”

    “My stomach is still upset.”

    They had dragged a few panels of wood from the burnt village up into the valley and tucked themselves just within the tree line in a sad wooden tent with only enough space to lay down one sleeping bag. They had intended only to take a break to eat when the last of their sesame seeds had finished roasting. 

    She had cleaned two rocks in the little stream running by the town, and she used them as a mortar and pestle to crush their sesame into a paste. They scraped it off the rock with their fingers, too hungry to wait. Katara had closed her eyes at the first taste, in ecstasy after a diet of vegetables, rodents, and foraged meal bars. 

    She was regretting her earlier voraciousness now, as the fatty seeds sat heavily in her gut and caused her stomach to cramp.

    She shuffled against the tightened wall of the sleeping bag and faced Zuko’s broad shoulders. She dug her forehead into the space below them, “can I put my arm around you?” She asked, hoping his warmth might soothe her stomach if she could just get close enough to him. 

    She waited for his response, and he took a moment before whispering, “yes.”

    She slid her arm under his, wrapping it around his concave stomach and pulling herself flush to his back.

    “You’re so skinny,” she muttered against his bare back.

    “I’ve been thinner.”

    “Not since I’ve known you.”

    “That’s accurate. You’re the thinnest I’ve ever seen you too.”

    She made a throaty noise of agreement and breathed in the briny scent of his skin, she tilted her head toward the fresh air and admitted, “my pants keep falling down, but the knot in the drawstring on my pants is impossible to undo.”

    “Let me look at it tomorrow. You know, I lived on a ship for a long time.”

    “Really? Like a sailboat?”

    “No, but, still...”

    “Sure, we could even wash our clothes in that stream tomorrow if it’s nice.”

    “That would be committing to spending a whole other day and night here while we wait for them to dry though. Your other shirt is ripped and neither of us have extra pants.”

    “Right... clean-ish clothes sounds nice, but I don’t really want to stay here.”

    “Agreed.”

    “What do you think happened there?”

    “Could have been a million things,” he sighed, and brought his hand up so that their fingers intertwined on the hard plank of his stomach.

     “It just... feels like it isn’t a coincidence that both of those Fire Nation camps we found were burned out the same way. They were probably just overrun though, right?”

    “Lot’s of the little Fire Nation camps you stumble on are from the initial wave of troops who pulled out, they would lock the gates and burn them down when an infection broke out. Which was often.”

    “There’s no fences or gates here though.”

    “Could have been a regular fire broke out and the wooden houses went up, or... they just... locked the residents in their houses and started the fire.”

    “The infected residents?”

    He paused; she knew from his silence.

    “The initial wave... was primarily focused on containment. Anyone they thought had even the smallest possibility of being infected was killed. Sometimes that even meant their own soldiers.” 

    Katara buried her face into his back again. 

    “That last camp though... seemed newer. This place has probably been abandoned since the beginning, but to have unexpired med supplies.... I don’t know.”

     “How many ‘waves’ of Fire Nation soldiers have come to the Earth Kingdom?”

    “Well, and bear in mind a lot of this is just what I remember being told as a child so its accuracy is... debatable, but as far as I know the first wave went right after the first reports of people setting up refugee camps in Pohuai and that’s where the first safe zone was established. Then the second wave came after most of the first wave were killed, but they only reinforced Pohuai and, like I was telling you before, technically failed to take Gao Ling. My grandfather was the Fire Lord for the first two waves. I remember my father wanting to convince him to send more troops to take the larger Earth Kingdom cities as Fire Nation safe zones as well, but after the outbreak at the palace he was maniacal about it. He had parliament on his side, forced Iroh to abdicate, and then... the second outbreak at the palace happened.”

    “I always heard the Fire Nation was safe from the sickness.”

    “It is... now, and... well... the outbreaks only happened at the palace. The second one only killed members of the parliament, which empowered my father to re-seize full monarchical control of the Fire Nation. So....”

    “Are you trying to say your dad... purposefully caused the second outbreak?”

    “I think he caused both.”

    Katara clung to him, pulling him even closer, “but your mom?” she whispered, grappling with the idea. 

    “I know.” 

    “But, how would he have... been able to ensure that it didn’t spread? Did he import an infected person and just set them free in his own house? If there were no other outbreaks, where did it come from?”

    “However he did it in the first place, I don’t know, an injection or something, maybe he spiked their tea or food.” 

    “In the first place?”

    Her stomach cramped again, but this time she barely felt it as she started piecing his words together in her mind. 

    “I thought... I thought most people assumed...”

    “Assumed?” Her voice jumped an octave and she pushed herself up.

    Thunder crashed. 

    They both flinched. 

    The rain began.

    A flash of light brightened their tent as lightning streaked across the sky. 

    She frowned, staring at him while she could make out his face. His brow was upturned, and his mouth slightly opened. 

    “That the Fire Nation created and spread the infection on purpose.”

    She grabbed at the sleeping bag and clenched her fists around it. 

    “Your father ?”

    “He’s not a scientist but... whoever he paid was.”

    “Your father !? Your father?”

    Katara dropped the fabric to clasp her hand over her mouth. 

    This whole time , she thought, this whole time you’ve been with the son of the man who killed your whole family .

    “You should have told me, why didn’t you say anything? How could I have known that?”

    “I thought that was part of your anger already! I thought it was,” he tried to take her hand in his but she ripped it away. 

    She needed to get out. She needed to get away from him. 

    “You... I... I never”—

    She smacked her head on the slanted roof as she stood.

    “Katara don’t, where are you”—

    “You lied to me.”

    “I never lied, I just thought you already knew.”

    “How could I have known that? How? Do you think I would have followed the son of the man who”—

    She bit her tongue, looking off into the dark and scrunching her hands into fists. 

    “Just say it.” His voice was guttural.

    She leveled her gaze at him and hissed, “do you think I would have knowingly followed the son of the man who killed my mother, my brother, probably my dad, my whole tribe , and almost every person I’ve ever loved. Do you think I ever would have trusted?”

    “No,” he mumbled, “I should have known.”’

    “Oh,” her face crumbled, and a groan ripped from her throat, “I killed people, uninfected people. I killed people to protect you.”

    “You killed people to protect yourself.”

    “I never had to before.”

    “Just because you left the ugly part of survival to Suki doesn’t– listen, Katara, I”—

    There was another low rumble of thunder. 

    “I’m just, I can’t even be near you right now.”

    She turned to leave, and he jerked up to grab her wrist, “no, stay, I’ll sit up in the tree. Don’t run off.”

    “Let go.”

    “I will, please, don’t leave.”

    No flash of lightning ever came. The low rumble continued. The rain kept coming down. 

    He released her wrist, “I’m sorry.”

    “Then, stop doing it when I”—

    The sound intensified, like wind howling, but when she looked toward the opening of their shelter the rain still fell straight down, splashing into the puddle that had formed around their entrance. 

    “The water is rising,” Zuko said, surprised.

    It spilled over into their shelter. 

    They both rushed out of their tent.

    A tree snapped somewhere uphill.

    Water soaked the cuffs of her pants and crawled up her legs.

    “It’s a flood,” she cried out in shock, having only seen their devastation before, “the water, it’s coming down the mountain!”

Chapter Text

    “His Majesty Fire Lord Ozai requests the presence of Your Imperial Highness for a matter of the utmost urgency,” the servant told her, folded on his knees in a full bow before her. She required it of them whenever they felt it necessary to intrude upon her while she was in her chambers. 

    “I wonder what he wants,” Tai Lee mused distractedly, flipping through a magazine and reclining against the pearlescent ivory silk pillowcases at the head of Azula’s bed.

    “Something urgent, it seems,” Azula drawled and closed her notebook before standing from the desk. 

    “Where is he?”

    “The Fire Lord awaits you in the luncheon chamber, your Highness.”

    “Let him know I’ll be there expeditiously.”  

    She reached for the silk robe she had thrown over the post of her bed and wrapped it around herself. She took the golden belt hanging from its crimson belt loop and tied herself up. 

    “Well, go,” she said, annoyed, when she looked back, and the man was still bowing. 

    He hurried to his feet and gave another smaller bow before scurrying out of the room. 

    “How irritating.”

    “Well, you did smack the last servant to leave before you dismissed them,” Tai Lee chirped and smiled when Azula looked up at her, glaring.

    “I had obviously dismissed him. He’s an idiot.”

    “Obviously,” Tai Lee rolled her, “I mean, he’s a servant .” 

    Azula smirked and checked how she looked in the mirror, smoothing the fabric at her hips and then fixing her hair. 

    “I’ll be back shortly, I’m sure.”

    “Have fun!”

    Azula snorted.

    Two waiting women were stationed outside the door and bowed low as she walked out.

    “Bring Tai Lee something sweet while she waits for me,” she commanded the taller one as she blew past them.

    She didn’t wait for their reply.

    She had always been a fast walker, taking long, powerful strides and outpacing her maids, but today she made her way down the hall faster than usual. The small strands that hung in her face flew back to tickle her ears as she went from the hallway of bedrooms to the wing with her father’s personal chambers. 

    His headman was outside the door when she got there, his hands in front of him and his head bowed in reverence, “Princess Azula,” he rose and opened the door for her. 

    “Father,” she called as she entered, and then looked to the head of the table where he sat cross legged on a heavily ornamented zabuton, “what can I do to assist you?” She sank down into a bow and then went to sit at her normal spot two seats down from him on the right. 

    “Azula,” he said, speaking slowly, sounding as pleased as she knew him to be capable, and sporting a half smile, “I have good news.”

    “Oh?”

    “I have heard news from the Earth Kingdom. You have heard of the Rough Rhinos, I presume?”

    “I believe so, Father, if memory serves, they are a group of contractors working for Fire Nation interest in the Earth Kingdom. I’m not sure of their exact objective however.”

    “Correct, and I’ve just been told that they have encountered devastating losses near a village called Chin on the eastern shore,” he paused to take a sip of the tea from the black porcelain set in front of him, “reports indicate that they were beset upon by a young Fire Nation man with a large scar covering the left side of his face, wielding dual dao swords.”

    Her head shot up and she scanned her father’s face trying to determine how she should respond, “Zuko? I thought he had died.”

    “It seems we were all mistaken,” Ozai took a letter from the floor and shoved it toward her on the table. 

    She quickly skimmed the letter, “it doesn’t say anything about Iroh in here though, but that’s unsurprising.”

    “Is that your first thought, Azula?”

    She flicked her eyes up from the paper to look at him, her mind racing to figure out what response he was expecting from her, “just an observation…. Tell me, does Zuko disappearing and then attacking Fire Nation patriots count as treason? Or desertion?”

    Ozai chuckled darkly, “wondering about succession, Azula?”

    She shook her head so that the loose pieces of her hair fell back from her face, “I think only of the security of the Fire Nation, father, and justice.”

    “Of course,” he grinned wickedly, “and justice is why I called you here, Princess Azula.”

    “I’m ready to do whatever it is you ask of me, Fire Lord.”

    “Good, and it won’t be much of a hardship for you, I’m sure, since I’m only giving you what you’ve been asking for.”

    She smiled like a wolf baring its teeth, “I finally get my turn then?”

    “Go to the Earth Kingdom and find your brother.”

    “And then what?”

    “Justice, Azula, don’t be dense.”

    She watched him cautiously, “my will is the throne’s will,” she bowed just to avoid his gaze, “I will bring justice to the traitor.”

    “Admiral Zhao’s leave ends, and he sets sail, in two days. I suggest you find passage on that ship, and mind what he tells you about the infected lands, Azula, and I expect nothing will go wrong.”

    “I will not fail you. May I be excused to begin my preparations?”

    He nodded and waved her off as he reached for the newspaper lying beside his teacup. 

    She strutted out of the room and down the hall, but as soon as she was out of sight of the elderly man at her father’s door, she ran. 

    “Tai Lee,” she cried as she entered her room, and caught her breath.

    Tai Lee sat up from the bed and put down a bowl of sorbet, “what happened?”

    Azula smiled wickedly, “looks like we’re going to get to visit Mai sooner than we anticipated.”

    “Princess Azula, to what do I owe this honor?” Admiral Zhao oozed, slicking back his greasy, thinning hair as he stood from his bow. Azula grimaced and adjusted on her throne as she watched the smarmy man try to charm her.

    “I require two things, for now, of which I assume you will grant me without question. Passage on your vessel to the Earth Kingdom village of Chin, and a thorough understanding of what awaits me when we land. I have no need for basic information, only that which is pertinent to survival.”

    “Your Highness, whatever I may do to be of assistance to the crown is my pleasure, but I’m afraid I have to ask if the Fire Lord is aware of your departure.”

    “He’s the one who has ordered it, Admiral, and you do not have to ask, you simply have to do what you’re ordered.”

    He cleared his throat, eyes shifting off to the side and then bowed again, “no offense meant, your Highness, only caution. You are welcome on my ship, and as far as information... there is much to be given, how would your Highness wish to receive the information?”

    Azula pondered his request and shrugged, “write me a reference page or two, Admiral, and have them to me by tomorrow morning. What time do we depart?”

    “We’ll depart with the tide, Princess, near to midday.”

    “If you have need of anything to supply the ship as befitting someone of my station, ask the clerk. How should I prepare myself?”

    “Have you received the vaccine, Princess?”

    She rolled her eyes, “of course, I’m not stupid. I’ve got the damned bruise to prove it and everything.”

    “Then I would recommend you prepare a pack with essentials, including medicines. You won’t find anything on the continent that hasn’t been contaminated with the virus.”

    Azula vaguely recalled that scheme, she’d been privy to the meeting but hadn’t found it that interesting she supposed. Something about ensuring the continuation of the infection until they had eradicated the Earth Kingdom nationals. It had bored her.

    “Yes, yes, anything useful , Zhao?”

    He gave her a tight smile and shook his head, “nothing I can think of at the moment, your Highness, but I’ll be sure to send word immediately if I do.”

    “Then leave,” she jumped up from her throne and walked out of the room, smiling.

    If Zuko could survive, there was nothing for her to worry about, and she was finally getting the chance to prove herself. Maybe she would conquer a new safe zone while she was there just to further drive home how much more deserving of the succession she was than her traitorous, idiotic brother. 

Chapter Text

    There was only a second from when the water first knocked her off her feet until the moment her head broke through the surface again, but when she popped back up again she had lost all sense of where she was. The frigid water had dragged her away from the tree line and was beating her against the debris it had carried down the mountain with it. Every time she went under the world went so black she lost all orientation. She clawed at the things that brushed against her, trying to grab onto anything floating. 

    Something slammed into her head and she dropped under again, and had to kick wildly to push herself above the surface. Her shin hit something and she cried out and then choked on the muddy water and pine needles that swarmed into her mouth. She sputtered and spit as the roaring got louder, and the water began to race. 

    The world fell out from beneath her.

    She held her breath as she plummeted, wrapping her arms around her head, and crashed into the surface of the now coursing river that had once been a meandering stream alongside the village.

    Her back hit the silt of the river bed and she bounced back up. 

    The water falling from above slammed her back down and her head bashed against the ground.

    Panic seized at her chest and she thrashed under the force. Her fingers dug into the earth as she tried to push herself up. Her lungs spasmed in protest of being held. A bubble of air escaped through her lips. 

    This is how I’m going to die .

    The water pulled her back up again and she fought against it, screaming out all of the air left in her lungs. 

    I want my mom .

    She could almost see Kya’s face in the static fuzz taking over her vision, and Kya reached out for her. Her mother embraced her. She could feel her mother’s arms wrap around her, enveloping her. Water rushed by her face and pulled at her clothes as Kya began to pull Katara out of the water.

    She had reached a point though, where every thread of will snapped and smooth muscle, despite itself, took over. 

    She took a breath.

    Pain woke her. 

    She was choking.

    The man was standing over her and his hands reached for her face.

    He’s going to start choking me again . 

    I’ve been here the whole time , she rolled away, weak, I’ve been here the whole time, it never ended . I hallucinated the whole thing .

    Water ripped itself from her lungs, she fell on her side, as she convulsed. Pine needles scratched their way out and smacked against the back of her throat, gagging her. She began to vomit while she struggled to expel the water from her lungs.

    She smacked against the ground hard as she stopped breathing at all. Her eyes rolled back and she shook as a stabbing pain in her throat overwhelmed her.

    A tight vice grasped her lower jaw, forcing it open. He shoved his fingers in her mouth.

    His finger hooked against the back of her throat.

    Whatever had been blocking her throat was removed, and his hand retreated. She began desperately sucking down air.

    He released her jaw and forced her onto her side as she began heaving the water from her airways and emptying her stomach again. 

    “I thought you were dead,” he sobbed, clutching at her sodden shirt, “I thought you were dead.” 

    The burning in her lungs abated only to reveal the searing pain in her throat.

    She rolled onto her back, “Zuko?” she rasped. 

    He pulled her into his lap, resting her head in the cradle of his elbow, “what? What can I do? Are you ok?”

    She lolled her head back, draping it over his arm, and closed her eyes tight, “I saw my mom. She pulled me out of the water, Zuko, I felt it.”

    Her voice gave out. Zuko began to rock back and forth.

    They sat in silence, listening to the rushing flood waters and being pelted by the rain that still bore down on them. Her consciousness fled, and she floated away from the pain into her mind.  

Chapter Text

    The wave crashed into his legs and ripped the dirt out from under his feet.

    “Katar”—

    He was thrown beneath the water and it filled his mouth, cutting him off. A log zipped passed his head and he felt the branches scrap across his skin, sending him spinning.

    He broke through the surface long enough to take a panicked breath, before another log smashed into his shoulder, piercing into his skin and sending him under again. It was impossible to see, so he squeezed his eyes shut to stop them from being stung with debris. He wrapped his arms over his head to protect himself, and the shift in body weight began to bring him up again.

    Then, before his head could crown from the flood, his ankle caught, yanking him down unprepared and stopping him in the path of everything caught up in the flood waters. When he reached up his arms they were out in the air, but he couldn’t bring his head up to breathe.

    He bent at the waist, struggling against the force of the tide to reach his ankle.

    He grabbed his pant leg to pull himself down, but the resistance caused whatever was holding him to break and he went tumbling back through the water.

    His back smacked against the trunk of a rooted tree, and he used it as leverage to pull his head out of the water again. He took a moment to breathe heavily, but his back was being thrashed by the powerful water and something sharp dug into his shoulder every time a new item crashed into the makeshift dam building around him.

    He began to climb the skinny tree and shivered as his battered body met the night air. His soaked boxers clung uncomfortably, and he had no other cover to protect him.

    “Katar-a!” he screamed, his voice breaking on the last syllable. He hit his head against the rough bark of the tree, and pain burst through the thin skin of his forehead. He shrieked until his voice went hoarse and he ran out of breath.

    There was a loud crash, and he tightened his hold on the trunk, swaying along with the tree as it was bombarded from below.

    He heard a crisp snap amongst the din of roaring water. His stomach dropped and he began to fall, still desperately clinging to the tree.

    As he was falling blindly to the water, he heard his name.

    “Zuko!” Katara was screaming.

    He went under.

    The water was warm this time, as the air had cooled him, and so he kept his wits better without the shock. He protected his head and kicked until he surfaced.

    “Katara!” he called back, once he had caught his breath, and he figured she must have gone under again. His heart seized, and he tried to tread water but soon he felt the pull of gravity at his stomach, and he remembered that the valley was overlooking a village. The water was taking him downhill.

    He was going to go over.

    He began reaching out for anything to hold onto, but the water had only become stronger. He knew there wasn’t a full river beneath them, no matter how flooded it was now, and he began to imagine the hard earth and sharp rocks waiting for him just below the surface.

    Every branch he managed to grab broke under the strain and he was rushed over the edge, screaming.

    He hit the water hard and sank quickly, but he’d jumped off waterfalls in the Fire Nation and he began furiously kicking with his legs and pushing water behind him with his arms. He felt the sucking force trying to pull him back under, but he broke free.

    He dragged himself to shore, coughing, and collapsed once he was fully on the sodden grass.

    Katara.

    He groaned and shook under the effort of lifting his own weight. Once he stood on wavering legs again, he cupped his hands over his mouth and called out for her. Thunder boomed in response, and he waited, squinting into the dark, for the flash of lightning. When the white light came, he spun, “Katara,” he shouted. She was nowhere to be seen.

    Nothing looked the same as it had earlier either. Where the sesame plants had grown was now a torrential waterfall, and the bank of the river had crept up to the edge of the village.

    It went dark again.

    He was paralyzed. He stared, glaring, into the blackness as his eyes readjusted to the night.

    He wished he’d drowned.

    He heard a splash, a thud, and he moved toward it, arms wrapped around his shivering torso.

    “Katara?” he whispered and walked up the edge of the river. The water lapped at his bare feet, and he shivered.

    Thunder roared again, and he waited for the lightning. The dark pushed in all around him, oppressive, as he waited.

    He was rewarded for his suffering by a small crack of light against the clouds that provided just enough to see the dark lump of a body at the river’s edge next to the largest fall of water. He stared at the form until he lost sight. He kept staring once he could no longer see. There had been no movement. No noise. No signs of life at all.

    She had gotten to the bank, but had he found Katara or her corpse?

    The fear stalled him, but training stepped in and propelled him to her side. Iroh had once taught him how to revive a drowned person, but that had been during the first days of his banishment, and it had been years since he had thought of it.

    His knees screamed as he slammed into the ground beside her, blindly groping for her and turning her onto her back.

    “Katara?” He whispered, voice tremulous, as he hoped for a response, any response.

    She lay motionless and he wrapped his hand around her wrist, searching for a pulse, and finding the light fluttering of fading wingbeats where a strong rhythm should have been.

    Zuko traced a finger from her clavicle to where he thought the end of her sternum was and placed his hands atop each other.

    His first compression was too weak, but he could only think of the likelihood he would break her ribs. His second one was still too light, but stronger, and punctuated by a burst of thunder. There were a specific number of compressions he was supposed to do before assisting her breathing, but couldn’t remember, and after what felt like was enough time he moved upward, reaching to grab her face.

    When the lightning came, it had been so long Zuko had forgotten to expect it, and as he went to take her face in his hand, her eyes shot open, and fear flashed across her features.

    He jumped back as she rolled away.

    Her whole body heaved as the final glow of light left them, and he watched in horror as dark water began to erupt from her mouth. He moved over to sooth her, and she began to gag. He reached out for her to make sure he could find her in the dark. His hands grazed her waterlogged shirt, and he felt her collapse. All noise but the grumbling of retreating thunder ended abruptly.

    He lunged. He clamped his hand down on her jaw and forced his way into her mouth to try and clear an airway he couldn’t even see. A clump of stiff pine needles jabbed his pointer finger, and he scooped it out. The sound of her desperate gulps of air brought stinging tears to his eyes and he roughly turned her to her side as she began to retch again.

    He kept his hands on her shoulder and listened to her in relief. When he’d seen her body on the shore, he’d been so sure. He grasped her shirt tighter, unable to stop himself, “I thought you were dead,” something broke and he began to sob, “I thought you were dead.”

    The noise stopped again; this time he could still hear her breathing but the fear that had set in sobered him.

    Her arm and hip pushed into his knee as she turned over onto her back.

    “Zuko?” Her voice was weak, and it reminded him too much of the days after the Rough Rhinos for him to resist pulling her into his arms. He adjusted himself to cradle her in his lap without moving her as much as possible.

    Her head fell into the crook of his elbow, and he looked down even though he couldn’t see her, hurriedly asking, “what? What can I do? Are you ok?”

    It was whisper quiet, a scratch amongst the banging of the night or the roar of the water, and his hairs all stood on edge, as she said, “I saw my mom. She pulled me out of the water, Zuko, I felt it.”

    If he had pulled her out of the water himself, he could have more easily said it was just oxygen deprivation, and he still told himself this as he began to rock forward and pull himself back. He told himself it was a hallucination, but he’d seen the shoreline after the first lightning strike. She hadn’t been there. He couldn't think of logical explanations though, no, his mind was full of ghost stories; and every time he talked himself down, the question, how did she get that far up shore, plagued him. Maybe he was romanticizing mothers, maybe he just wanted to believe in spirits, but he could almost feel her there, watching over them. It was a small comfort while he sat alone in the dark, listening for any sign of what could be the next horrible thing waiting for them.

    For her 12th birthday, Azula’s friend Ty Lee had her birthday party at a roller rink. Every girl in their class at the Royal Academy was there, and all of Ty Lee’s identical sisters and their classmates were there as well. Despite being privately rented, the place was bustling. Loud. The flashing neon lights, and thumping base, had made his chest feel tight the whole night, and if Mai hadn’t hung back to lean against the graffiti covered white brick wall, he would have been all alone in the huge crowd too. He hadn’t even known why he’d been invited.

    He was relieved when it was time to open the presents, the noise had skyrocketed but it meant it was almost time to leave. He sat next to Mai near the head of the table, and Azula sat across from him at Ty Lee’s right hand. Around them, the entire class circled as one of the Lee family’s servants brought forth the presents one by one for Ty Lee to unwrap.

    He remembered it while he sat in the dark, wondering when sunrise would relieve him of his constant dread, because of a particular present.

    Ty Lee had excitedly ripped back the silver foil paper, and shrieked as she presented the gift to the group, “Seriously! Mai! How did you get this? It’s like totally sold out!”

    He had looked between Mai and the gift and watched her normally flat mouth quirk just slightly upward, “whatever, I didn’t try very hard.”

    “What is it?” Azula asked, irritation lacing her tone. Her anger set off his anxiety more than the noise or the crowds ever could, and he began to pick at the skin around his thumbs.

    “It’s a special edition bubblegum pink Comet Boyz digital watch! It plays Fires of Love when your alarms go off! Thank you, Mai!” Ty Lee squealed.

    Azula gave a tight smile and fake chuckle, before saying, “I don’t see why you’d need a digital watch, you can always just ask a servant for the time.”

    The memory struck him as he looked out into the void of night and wondered, where’s a time telling servant when you need ‘em ? And then, just to make himself feel something other than fear, he thought, you just can’t find good help these days , and snorted lightly.

    For most of the night, though, he did not think of home, or his family. He thought only of the small noises of the night, and the weight of Katara against him. The feeling of her chest rising and falling. Rising and falling. Alive.

    He knew something was wrong the next time he went to stand. The bottom half of his legs were so numb from how he'd sat throughout the night that he had expected to wobble, but instead he collapsed.

    Katara was already a few steps ahead of him, leading the charge back up the muddy slope to see if any of their stuff remained, but she turned when he slammed against the damp earth and came rushing back.

    “What’s wrong?”

    “I just lost balance, I’m fine,” he insisted, but when he looked at his ankle the whole top of his foot was stamped in deep violet. Right . It had all happened so fast it was hard to remember, but something had caught his ankle when he’d been under, “maybe I’m less fine than I originally estimated.”

    Katara gasped, and winced, “oof, Zuko, that looks...” she grimaced. 

    “Your head, too, looks pretty painful,” he said, deflecting her sympathy.

    She brought her hand to her forehead, brow wrinkling the cut as she frowned, and rubbed her fingers just underneath the scab, “I didn’t even notice.”

    “On your other cheek, too.”

    She wrinkled her nose, “that one I noticed.”

    “Let me get some blood back into this foot and try again,” he said calmly, while gingerly rotating his ankle. 

    She crossed her arms over her chest, “be careful.” 

    “I think it’s just superficial,” he said, trying to keep his voice light as the blood came rushing back and brought with it the first wave of throbbing pain. He squinted at it and looked back up to her, “I shouldn’t have looked at it.”

    “So, it isn’t superficial?”

    “That’s the question,” he sighed, “I can move the ankle ok, but... well, let’s see,” and he pushed off on his good foot to stand, lifting himself onto one leg.

    She scrutinized him, eyes hawkishly focused on his leg as he took an experimental step.

    Pain shot through him like lightning, and he grit his teeth as he put more weight on it to see if he could walk. He took a few steps, limping through the throbbing, and then looked back up to Katara.

    She was frowning, and her arms were crossed over her chest. 

    “I can do it,” he told her confidently, “it’s just going to suck.” 

    “Just... sit, we can find something to wrap the ankle and support your foot. Give me a minute, I’ll find something.”

    “Katara, I”—

    “Sit.” 

    Her voice was cold, and he tried to search her face, but she turned from him and stalked off toward the village. 

    He lay back down, the blades of grass poked at his back as they had sprung back up to reach toward the morning sun, and he flattened them again. He lifted his injured leg so that it pointed toward the sky just like the grass underneath him had wanted to do, and above him the sky swirled through his watery eyes. She’s still mad at me , he thought, swallowing hard, she deserves to be . He turned his head as if the sun was the cause of his blurring vision, and a small tear dribbled from the corner of his eye down his cheek.

    Shame gripped him, and he clenched his hand into a fist and brought it up to push against the ridge of his brow. He knew the pain would distract him, and the ache in his brow bone persisted even after he dropped his hand, reminding him of his weakness. At least I’m not crying like a fucking baby anymore , he glared off into the canopy of leaves above him and gnashed his teeth. Whatever, she can be mad , and quieter, without wanting to, he thought, at least she’s alive .

    His stomach jolted at the sounds of her encroaching footsteps, and he dropped his leg to sit up so he could see her coming. 

    She took her time crossing the short distance from the village to where he sat, but she stopped humming. She had a dark bundle pressed against her chest that she held onto tightly. 

    He wanted to call out, acknowledge her, just speak to her at all, but guilt stopped him, clenching his voice box and forcing his eyes to the ground. 

    “This’ll be easy,” she told him once she was sitting in front of him, “but it will probably hurt.” 

    He frowned and nodded, digging his fingers between the blades of grass around him.

    She worked quietly, guiding his leg where she needed it to be without speaking, and Zuko let her, not wanting to provoke or upset her. In truth, he wasn’t even sure what to say to her now. He didn’t know what she was thinking, where they stood, what she felt. He felt his cheeks heat and he kept his head down, I’m an idiot , he chastised himself, for even thinking she would want to be with me in the first place . 

    “Keep still,” Katara hissed at him. He hadn’t even realized he’d begun shaking his leg. 

    He stopped moving and muttered an apology without looking at her. 

    She tightened the cloth around his ankle with a quick jerk and he cried out, surprised when the pain seized him. 

    “Sorry,” she whispered, and then placed her hand on his shin gently, “I’m sorry, Zuko.”

    He looked up, unsure. Her eyes stood out as brilliant as sapphire against the red rims of her eyelids, “It’s fine,” he assured her quickly, “it wasn’t that bad, I just wasn’t expecting it.”

    “No, for being… it’s just I... I keep thinking about what if... what if the last thing I had said to you was... that ,” she brought her arms back to wrap around herself, “I’m just... angry, and I know it’s not your fault but...” she gave a laugh devoid of humor, bleak, and she turned up to the sky, “It’s just like... I used to at least get a year or two before the major traumatic events, but I just feel like... ever since that village it’s been non-stop, and this whole time I kept thinking to myself, ‘you know, at least I have Zuko’ and then I don’t even get time to process the fact that your father is the one that plunged the world into this fucked-up mess before we get,” her voice began to rise and shake, “hit by a freak flood! I just want a break; I just want a minute. I’m so tired, Zuko. I just want to be able to be angry! And the Fire Nation prince is right here , but how can I be angry with you ? When your father is the type of person who would do this, who would burn you like that? I just need– I don’t know,” she looked back down, quieting. 

    Zuko’s heart pounded, and felt the bricks begin to pile around him as his walls went up at the mere mention of his burn, but she kept going.

    “I’m glad those weren’t my last words to you. I can’t help feeling angry, but I shouldn’t have said, or implied... I just want you to know that even if I had known from the start, that with everything we’ve been through, and that you’ve done, I would still trust you.”

    He processed her words slowly, mouth slightly agape. He wasn’t sure how to feel, confused, surprised, he studied her face as if it somehow held the answers. 

    “And also,” she said, her voice losing confidence, softening, and her head tucked toward her chest, “just in case we don’t make it out of the next one, Zuko, what I really want you to know is that... I love you.”

    He felt a pang in his chest, and he frowned, and quietly repeated in disbelief, “you love me?”

    “Of course, of course I do.” Her lower lip trembled as she leaned in, reaching for his shin again. He intercepted her with his hand and clasped their hands together awkwardly.

    His throat was tight as he went to speak again, and it struck him that the last time he had said ‘I love you’ out loud to another person, his mother had been alive. He stumbled over his words, “I– I love you, too.”

    “Good,” she smiled, “it would have been kind of awkward otherwise.”

    He nodded and tried to smile back but his lips just wavered, and he looked down into his lap to avoid her eyes.

    “I wasn’t kidding though, Zuko, I– I’m tired. I don’t know if I have another big one in me. I don’t know.”

    “I don’t know if I do, either.”

Chapter Text

    She didn’t hear a voice. 

    There were no words. It was the hum of a chorus of voices coming together on one note, the wind going through the reed of an instrument, the feeling of music in her chest. A rhythmic vibration that spoke as much as her words, or the movements of Zuko’s hands. Something is in the water that doesn’t belong.

    “Hold up,” she told him once they’d stepped over the creek, and abandoned him to go back to the water.

    “What are you”— Zuko began, but stopped and sighed once he saw her drop down to inspect the bank.

    Her hands shifted through the silt, and she pursed her lips, unable to find that something or quell the nagging feeling in her gut that there was something to be found. Then, she felt metal. Cold from the water and biting into her hand. She let go quickly, feeling the split of skin and sting of a new cut, but then she went back. This time her hands found soaked fabric, a few inches higher than before. She grasped at it and pulled. Nothing happened, and she began wiggling the post back and forth, trying to free it, “there’s something here,” she called back.

    “What do you think it is?”

    “I’m not sure,” she muttered, taking hold with both hands and bracing her feet on the grass so she could pull again, “it’s metal and it’s stu”—

    She flew back as it dislodged from the ground and she splashed down into the mud behind her. 

    At least the mud is soft , she grumbled to herself, and rubbed her wet butt as she stood back up, triumphantly holding up the shining lone dual sword that had been embedded in the water beneath where the main waterfall had been. A tendril of fabric fell down to wrap around her wrist and she looked up, frowning.

    She shrieked in excitement when she saw what she was holding.

    “Look, Zuko! Zuko! Look,” she turned to show him and he was watching her with a small half smile that morphed into open mouthed disbelief as he saw what she had retrieved.

    “Katara that’s...” he lurched forward holding his arm out for her to hand it to him, “how did you even see that?” 

    “I don’t... know. It was weird, I just...” she watched the light play off the brown surface of the water and pulled her eyebrows tightly toward the center of her face, “knew. I don’t know how to explain it,” her voice dropped to a whisper, “almost like... it called to me.”

    Somewhere in the trees a bird called out for its mate, or as a warning. Katara shivered and clenched her fists to ignore her fingertips, which tingled like they had gone numb. 

    Zuko hummed thoughtfully before saying, “sometimes our brains pick up on stimuli without consciously processing it.”

    She handed him his sword, nodding in resigned agreement, “let’s finish getting up the hill.”

    They only made it up the next rise before they had to stop again. 

    As they caught their breath, both malnourished and exhausted enough without the mud tugging at their legs, Zuko stretched his back and then went rigid. 

    She chanced a glance up to him and she saw him looking toward the town. She winced.

    “Zuko?”

    “Is that where my wrap came from,” he asked through gritted teeth.

    She looked back to see the now empty flagpole and then down at his crimson ankle, “I needed some fabric...” and, trying to soften the blow, added, “I hid the emblem.”

    “I should have known.” Zuko faced forward again, glowering up at what remained of the path, “whatever. It’s not like you had any other options.”

    He braced himself against her side, and she sighed as she began walking again, watching the ground as she tried to balance Zuko’s weight and keep her own in the shifting mud.

    Every step she took she had to fight against the mud, the pebbles and stones hidden beneath the surface dug into her bare feet, and her thighs shook from the exertion on a perpetually empty stomach. She kept her face down, taking each step deliberately. She set her mouth, and let Zuko set the pace, and knew eventually they would make it up. It became easier to walk as the slope flattened out and they entered the valley, but the mud was thicker, and puddles still dotted the once grassy field. 

    When she took a quick survey of the area she saw a wooden board that they had used in the shelter held up against two slanting trees all the way back up where they had set up camp the night before. She used it as a marker for how far up they needed to search, but they had to start at the bottom of the hill.

    By the time they made it to that board, it was the hottest part of the day, and her stomach was cramping around its own emptiness. Zuko had found one of the sleeping bags caught in the branches of a tree and laid it out in the sun to dry, but otherwise their search had been fruitless.

    So, when she pulled the board back and saw her back pack, she gasped and dropped the board in shock. It fell back to the tree with a sharp clap.

    “Katara?” Zuko called, and came rushing over, still limping.

    “Zuko! My backpack!”

    She pushed the board over and tried to pull it out from where it had been jammed amongst the wild roots of the trees, but her spear was still tied to the outside and had lodged itself into the ground. 

    “Here,” he said, trying to grab the handle.

    “You’re hurt, just give me a second.” 

    He grumbled but stepped back, and she yanked the spear from the ground, taking the whole back pack with it. The main pouch was unzipped and it flopped open as she pulled it up, spilling water and trailing the balled up socks that had been at the top of her bag. She dumped the water out and shook the rest of the sopping contents onto the ground.

    “What were you carrying?” His voice was pitched high with excitement.

    She threw the damp piles of clothing to the side and started rifling through the items, “I can’t remember... you should check the pockets,” she told him as she stared adoringly at their flint. 

    She took the two hunting knives from the pile and put them aside with the flint and her clothes, before sorting through the waterlogged food they had stored in her bag. 

    When she found two edible tomato-carrots she looked up to hand one to Zuko, but he had gone still, staring at something in his hand. She stood and shifted to see around his shoulder.

    The light caught the foil strip of condoms she had snuck into her backpack what seemed like a lifetime ago. She tried to suppress the laugh that bubbled up in her throat but it forced its way out her nose, causing her to snort painfully. 

    His head flicked over and they made eye contact. He hurriedly shoved the condoms back into the small pouch inside her bag where they had been squirreled away.

    “No,” she said, calming herself, “you should throw them in the pile so we can turn that thing inside out and put it with the sleeping bag.” 

    “Right,” he said as he clumsily grabbed them and tossed them over toward the hunting knives like they burned his hand, “I– uh– hadn’t realized you’d grabbed those.”

    She was a little disappointed that this was how he’d found out, and she sighed slightly before admitting, “I was waiting for the right time to tell you.”

    He pressed his lips into a tight line, and shot a look up toward the trees before flashing her a crooked smile, “it’s kind of funny, right?”

    “That out of everything that we could have really used right now, this is what we found? Yeah, it’s a little funny.”

    “I would have preferred something to eat,” he sighed. 

    Katara smirked, and her heart panged for her brother’s quick, often inappropriate, wit, as she imagined how she could segue to telling him about the food she’d found.

    Zuko scowled at her, without even having to hear the joke she wanted to make, and his face flamed up till even the tip of his gnarled ear went scarlet. 

    She laughed so loudly that all the birds in the trees around them fled, which only made her laugh more, and she leaned over to prop herself up on her knees as her head went fuzzy from the exertion. 

    “You’re laughing at your own joke, and you didn’t even make it,” he pointed out, a little sourly, and then asked, concerned, “are you ok?”

    “Yeah,” she swooped back up, her braid smacking against her back, “just got a little light headed.”

    He shook his head and she saw him trying not to smile. She rolled her eyes, “here, let me look through the bag. I found some food, you can eat.”

    “You’re the one about to pass out from laughing,” he accused, “maybe you should stop and eat too.” 

    She snatched her bag back as they sat around her little piles. 

    “These two are fine,” she said, handing him one palm sized tomato-carrot.

    “Sad.” He turned the red vegetable over in his hand before taking a small bite from the pointed tip.

    “Yeah, there’s this too,” she grabbed the little plastic baggie holding the soapy plant leather they’d stolen off the infected soldier in the desert, “but I don’t know if I’m there yet. I’m still about 80% sure it’s soap.”

    “Once we get some clean water we can see if it lathers.”

    “Smart,” she said, throwing the bag back down and taking a bite of her own breakfast, “I wish we could find that pot. Was it in your bag?”

    “It was still at the fire pit.”

    She scowled through her next bite.

    “I would think it would sink, so it can’t have gotten far, right?”

    “Maybe we’ll find something else we can use in the town? We weren’t looking for that the first time we went through, we might have overlooked something.”

    “We have my water skin in the meantime. It’s a little more than half-full.”

    “That’s good, at least for right now.”

    She finished her food and went back to looking through her bag, hoping to find some other edible something squirreled away and safe.

    There wasn’t anything Zuko hadn’t unearthed on the inside, so she went to the pockets on the face of the bag, and as her hand slipped past the front pouch undeterred by the button closure, her stomach dropped. 

    “Zuko... the medicine, it was in this pocket, it’s... gone.”

    “How much was even left?”

    “I don’t remember. Doesn’t matter anymore,” her shoulders slumped forward and she put the bag back down, “it’s just... so much. We lost so much, and if I hadn’t... if I’d just put them somewhere safer....”

    She focused on her hands, tracing the lines on her dirty palms with her eyes and trying not to let tears spill. 

    “But we found the backpack right? Even if it was completely empty it would still be a good find, and it wasn’t empty. Also, if you hadn’t had your spear tied to the outside like you did, who knows if it would have stayed in the roots?”

    She nodded and closed her eyes as he brought his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her against his side and she swallowed thickly.

    “Thank you,” she said, her hoarse voice betraying the ache in her throat, “for being the Team Optimist for a minute.” She leaned up and pressed a kiss to a patch of smooth skin on his cheek.

    He shrugged, but his eyes moved around wildly, shifting between the trees in front of them, her hair, the ground, some spot above her head, and anywhere but her face. He dropped his head and muttered, “you know, it’s ‘cause I– I love you... and stuff.”

    “Well, that’s good, since I love you too and stuff.”

Chapter Text

    Eight weeks. That’s what Iroh had told him. Somewhere around eight weeks. It felt like a lifetime. It felt like nothing at all. 

    As Sokka stood at the edge of the clearing, leaning against Iroh on one side and bracing himself against a tree on the other, staring out at what had been his camp, he remembered the last time he’d been at the compound. The morning they’d left he’d eaten his breakfast with Suki, their feet dangling over the edge of the cliff face, watching the seabirds swoop down to the water’s surface, and holding hands in the dew damp grass. Then, later, when they’d all been standing just feet from where he was standing now, ready to leave, he had screwed his face up all serious and asked them if they’d heard a noise. Once they had all quieted to listen, he let rip a loud fart that had sent the group into a spiral of laughter and shouting. His mouth twitched upward for a brief moment just thinking about it, but it was quickly tamed as the weight of the sight in front of him settled on his shoulders.

    It had only been 8 weeks since he left, but nothing was the same. 

    The fence had set fire and come down, or had been torn down. The stakes were scattered over the ground around his foot, covered in the blackened marks of fires long since quenched, and they formed a trail leading his eyes to the husk of their cabin. 

    The roof had collapsed and had taken everything to the ground in a pile of charcoal. The walls had been wood, the shingles had been wood. The whole thing had probably burned so hot and so fast that nothing much could have made it. Only two walls still stood, though they were also cracked and scorched, and their meeting point stood higher than any remains around them despite being partially consumed. 

    “I expected it to be empty,” he muttered, “but this... what happened?”

    Iroh helped him to navigate the fallen fence, and he hobbled forward on his hand-carved peg leg. He felt the wooden bottom give way on some uneven patch of dirt and he started going down but Iroh’s hands were only a second behind him. The older man grabbed him by the shoulder to stop him from falling. Sokka looked behind him, glaring, to find what he had tripped on. 

    Metal caught the light and stole his attention. A bullet casing. 

    “Iroh,” he said, pointing to the offending silver shell, and spoke his thoughts aloud as they came to him, “they must have been attacked. Someone survived and came back, but then they were attacked.” 

    His heart hammered painfully in his throat. He turned to look at the cabin’s remains, “I wonder if they’re in there.”

    Iroh shuddered and began to pull away, “we should look through the debris.” 

    He followed after Iroh, wincing with every step as the fragile, fresh, skin over his amputation wound rubbed against the vinyl liner of his prosthetic. He was more stable than he’d been when they’d left the village three days ago, but the journey had been hard on him, and he’d developed stinging blisters along the edge of where his skin was pinched against the wooden sheath. 

    He pushed it out of his mind as he approached the charred wood pile that had once been his home. He reached out, as if he would find a thin veil he could pull back to reveal the cabin as it had been the last time he’d seen it, but his hand met the cold, cracked wooden remains of the door frame, and he knew it had to be real. 

    Iroh began throwing some of the smaller sections of what was left of the roof out of the way, and the smacking of the shingles as they hit the ground reminded Sokka of their task, and he shifted his weight to his strong leg and bent to grab the closest piece he could find.

    He hoped they didn’t find anything, and hesitated before grabbing every piece, wondering if this would be the one that would uncover Katara or Suki. Yet, if they didn’t find anything, he may never know what happened, and so he kept digging. Dreading the knowledge as he sought to find any clues he could. 

    He fought against his body more than he fought against any of the chunks of roof or the remnants of floorboards.

    He was either over exerting his leg or his back, and whenever he stood up too fast blackness crowded in and the world seemed to get farther away. Sweat trickled down the side of his head until it was absorbed into his sideburn, and he stopped to wipe his forehead only a few steps into the cabin.  He could see the wood stove peeking out from under a section of ceiling panels, and he made his way toward it hoping to be able to take a seat on it. 

    When he stooped down again, a flash of blue amongst the coal caught his eye and icicles dripped down his spine. He raised his hand, fingers trembling, and stretched out to grab hold of it. He was halfway there before he fully processed that it wasn’t the right shade of blue, and when he finally touched it the heavy flannel felt luxurious in his relief. He recognized the sheet from those they had taken from a home on the southern coast, and snorted as he wondered how he could have ever confused the royal blue for Katara’s parka, and for thinking that Katara would have even been wearing it this time of year anyway. 

    By the time he made it to the wood burning stove, his arms were black from his fingertips to his elbows, and he sat on the stovetop, holding his head in his hand as he tried to regain some composure. 

    “I feel so weak,” he laughed as the black tunneling at the edge of his vision began to fade.

    “It is natural,” Iroh sighed, and his knobby knees shook beneath him as he stood to come stand next to Sokka, “your body is putting so much energy toward healing that it does not have the resources to fuel our excavation.”

    “I can excavate,” Sokka denied, “I just need... a small break.”

    “As do I.” 

    “Should we eat something? Fire pit’s over there and I can still see some logs.”

    Iroh cast his eyes around the wreckage and out to the sea before nodding absently.

    Neither of them moved. 

    After a moment Iroh sprang toward him, grasping his elbow, “here, let me help you.” 

    He acquiesced, leaning on Iroh as he stood to hobble to the small stone circle. Iroh helped him to sit on the old tree stump and Sokka examined the fire pit, eyebrows knit together. There were mostly burnt logs, and some just barely touched, but they were all covered in dirt, and there were ruts in the space between the stones and the logs from someone digging the dirt out. Someone put this fire out in a hurry , he thought, and tried to control the impulse of his mind to wildly speculate about what could have happened. He reminded himself that, for all he knew, someone completely random and unknown to them had found the place and been attacked. 

    Next to the fire pit there was a crumpled up blanket, wet and dried again, and likely sour from mildew. He recognized the pattern as one from the top floor of the cabin, but wasn’t sure it hadn’t been left out there before they’d gone on their supply run. He imagined Katara or Aang could have laid it out before leaving, but he knew Katara would have packed it back up if it were her, so it had to have been Aang if it had been before that fateful supply run. It could have been anyone though, someone from their group who had survived and come back or a complete stranger. 

    Sokka shifted his weight around on the stump as he tried to find a comfortable way to have his ramshackle prosthetic rest against the ground, and Iroh walked over to the blanket and picked it up, shaking it out. The green comforter whipped through the air as he tried to beat the dirt off it.

    There was a soft thud.

    Iroh stopped and the blanket floated down until it was reunited with the soft grass.

    “Did you hear…” Iroh moved to inspect the ground.

    “I think something just”— Sokka started at the same time and then cut himself off, “what is it?” He asked as Iroh slowly bent to reach down.

    “Some sort of small blade, looks to be…”

    Iroh straightened back out, silent.

    “What is it?” Sokka practically whined and wanted to get up but his stump leg throbbed in its wooden prison. 

    “This knife,” Iroh whispered, voice strangled, “I gave him this knife.”

    “What?”

    “Zuko…” his voice cracked and he took a deep breath, “I sent this knife back to him right before... right before my Lu Ten died. He had to have been here.”

    Sokka stared at the knife, the light bouncing off of it as it shook in Iroh’s hand, and began to hope, “Katara was with him. She could have...” but he stopped, turning over at his soot stained hands as he examined them, “she could have brought him here.”

    “So they’re together,” Iroh whispered, “that’s good.” He lifted his free hand to stroke his overgrown beard, “I think I’ll imagine that they are, and that they’re ok.” 

    Iroh turned to watch the sea, his golden eyes shimmering in the sun as they pooled with tears.

    “Yeah,” Sokka nodded, closing his eyes to imagine Katara, somewhere, safe. He smiled, opening his eyes again and asking, “d’you think they’re still fighting?” 

    Iroh’s smile forced his tears to spill, and they raced down his cheeks to sink into his beard, “I would hazard a guess that their fighting has taken on a new...” he sniffled and patted his cheeks, “has evolved.”

    Sokka’s eyes narrowed, “well, that’s not a part of what I’m imagining.”

    “It would be nice for them to find some... comfort with each other though.”

    “Not that kind of comfort.”

    Iroh laughed and walked over to him, and held out the knife, “here, hold onto this for me.”

    Sokka reverently took the knife and promised, “just until we see them again.”

    A shadow came over the map Sokka had laid out in front of him on the grass and he looked up to find Iroh standing over him. He pushed himself up to sit on the ground with his thighs spread and the map between them, “find anything good?” 

    “Not by your standards,” Iroh sighed, carefully lowering himself onto his knees in front of the map, “there were some mice in the traps though. Did you finish your new leg?”

    Sokka twisted his torso as he tried to see where he had placed the new model, “yup,” he smacked his ‘P’, “check it out.” 

    He snatched the metal embellished wooden leg and held it up. “This one has a foot shaped base so it's a little more sturdy. It also has a knife sheath and a secret compartment for snacks or... whatever really....  And the woodworking looks pretty good if I do say so myself. ”

    Iroh chuckled, “at least you have your priorities in order. Have you tested it yet? Is it the right height and comfortable?”

    “I don’t know if anything I can make is going to actually be comfortable , but it’s better than the 2.5, and I do need to shave the foot down a little, but I can do that whenever. I wanted to read the map while I had sunlight.”

    “The 2.5?”

    “Technically the last model was the 2.5.”

    Iroh stroked his beard and frowned thoughtfully, “I understand the ‘2’ due to your previous attempt but, please, explain where the ‘.5’ comes from.” 

    “I just added it because it felt science-y, and this one is model ‘3.1.1’ because I like the ring it has.”

    Iroh smiled and shook his head, “well, have you learned anything from the map?”

    “So. Much. I never knew how little of the continent we’d explored. I wish we’d had this when we were trying to decide where to settle when we first got here.”

    “Could you figure out the key?”

    “Enough, I was a little surprised by how few Fire Nation safe zones there actually are, I thought they were everywhere. They made it seem like the Fire Nation was in control of everything in the Earth Kingdom.”

    “Yes, for all of my brother’s faults he certainly understands the importance of propaganda. It’s much easier to convince a group of people to accept unfair treatment if they believe that it’s worse elsewhere.” 

    “His many faults,” Sokka grumbled, and went back to the map, “I was thinking we should just head straight up to Ba Sing Se. We’d all heard of it being safe, they might have gone too.”

    Iroh hummed pensively and tucked his hands into his robes.

    “What? You don’t like Ba Sing Se?”

    Iroh’s face fell, and Sokka squinted, wondering if he’d said something he shouldn’t have.

    “We don’t have to go”—

    “No, Ba Sing Se is a beautiful city, and I’m sure we will find many refugees on the road, and you’re right, we may even find our lost family.”

    “But?”

    “Ba Sing Se is... different. Many of the issues you found at the Kyoshi Island safe zone were as rampant there before the pandemic as they are now. Political and police corruption, socio-economic stratification, crime. Also...” Iroh looked off, “the last time I was there my son was killed,” Iroh’s voice was tight and he kept his eyes trained on the gently waving treetops.

    “You... oh. I’m...” Sokka rubbed the back of his neck, “well, sorry, I didn’t know.”

    “How could you have? Please, I simply wished to... better explain my hesitance.”

    “We don’t have to go to Ba Sing Se, Iroh, Chameleon Bay has an Earth Kingdom safe zone, we could go there instead. It’s closer but we’d have to go through the mountains or through a desert, neither of which sound particularly fun.”

    “No,” Iroh insisted, “we’ll go to Ba Sing Se. If Zuko is out there, he’ll go somewhere he knows, and I know he’s out there,” he cast a glance at Sokka and added, “Katara and Suki as well. I can feel it.”

    “Yeah, and somehow Aang magically survived being bitten by the infected and he’s out there too. It’s a fairy tale and everyone survives,” Sokka bit back acerbically, and then grimaced, “sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

    “Don’t apologize, Sokka, like water bursting through a dam, we must let ourselves feel our emotions or we can be overcome by them.”

    “Right,” he hid his rolling eyes by looking down at the map again, “we’re going to skirt the desert going to Ba Sing Se too. We’ll cut through the swamp and then dip into the desert to avoid Omashu and Shen Guan, then we can take the serpent’s pass to Ba Sing Se.”

    “There may be an easier route. When we were still with the Fire Nation Army, there were rumors that the Earth Kingdom was getting refugees to the city from Full Moon Bay, by taking boats across the water.”

    Sokka harrumphed, “we can check it out, I guess, but I don’t know if I trust that.”

    Iroh chuckled softly, and then untucked his hands from his sleeves to clap them together, “we’ll stay one more day to try and fill our rations, and then onto Ba Sing Se. Let’s start a fire for some tea.”

    Sokka nodded absentmindedly and went back to studying the map as Iroh began to shuffle to the fire pit. He looked over the worn page and traced the lines of mountains and rivers with his eyes and wondered, if they really are out there, where could they be ?

Chapter Text

    “I have to stop,” Zuko said, his voice tinged with disappointment. 

    “Your ankle?”

    “Yeah.”

    Katara turned around as he lowered himself to rest on the river bank and shrugged her pack off so that she could join him on the grass. She folded her legs underneath her and sat cross-legged beside him.

    “I wonder if it’s broken.”

    “It’s not broken,” he assured her, “I wouldn’t be able to walk on it at all if it was broken.”

    “You’d probably still try.”

    He flashed her a grin and laid back, tucking his hands under his head. The shirt he had borrowed from her stretched tight across his chest and pulled up at his waist, exposing the snow-capped peaks of his pale, jutting hip bones, and the smooth valley of his stomach.

    “That’s not something to be proud of,” she muttered, lowering her eyes to her lap. She examined her hands; she’d lost three finger nails trying to claw her way out from under the waterfall and the fresh pink flesh of her bare nail beds looked angry.

    “I didn’t say I was proud of it.” 

    “I could feel the smugness radiating off of you.”

    Zuko grunted and stared up at the cloud brushed cornflower blue sky without comment.

    She reached out and placed her hand on his bony knee, “how is it?”

    “Just throbs.”

    “I bet elevating it would help,” she said, twisting to grab her backpack and then dragging it over to him, “here, put your leg up on this.”

    The muscles in his stomach tightened as he lifted his legs and she forced herself to look at where she was placing the backpack. 

    “Thanks,” he sighed as he rested his legs onto the lumpy surface.

    She spread herself out on the grass beside him, laying on her side and stretching up so that she could see his face.

    He turned his head and she saw his eyes stray to the cut on her forehead like it had many times in the two days they’d waited for him to be able to walk, “is it bad?”

    “Hm?”

    “My cut? You keep staring at it.”

    “I’m not staring but yeah… it’s just… it’s a decent sized cut and we don’t exactly have antibiotics anymore. It’s… stressing me out.”

    She smiled faintly and said, “it feels fine, and I washed it as best I could when I cleaned your shoulder up.”

    “The best we can wash them is just with clean water and using a boiled sock as a rag so that’s part of what worries me.”

    “I don’t think it’s going to get infected at this point as long as I don’t mess with it.”

    Zuko sighed and looked back up at the sky, “and that’s only like number twelve on a list of about 60 things I’m worried about.”

    “Yeah, what’s your number one?”

    “That’s obvious,” he snorted, “food.” 

    She turned over and watched the streaky clouds creep across the blue expanse and contemplated how she could get them their next meal.

    “If only we had a fishing rod,” Zuko mused.

    “The water’s moving too fast for fish anyway.”

    “Mhm, that’s right, I forgot you’re a fishing expert.”

    “Fishing expert?”

    “You grabbed that fish right out of the water when we were first together.”

    Katara tilted her head, flexing her wrist to allow the movement, “that fish...” her mouth popped into the shape of an ‘O’, and she nodded, “right, yeah... that was luck I guess, or just good timing. You know how like...” she frowned and stopped speaking. 

    “How what?”

    “You know... it’s exactly like when I found your sword,” she sat up, crossing her legs again, looking out at the river and ripping at the skin on her lower lip, “weird.”

    “Well, I mean, like I said then, our brains pick up way more information than we realize. Maybe you just got lucky or maybe the water was just clear enough for you”—

    “My eyes were closed,” she whispered, and watched as a long branch floated down the river, poking a rock and spinning around like it was trying to draw her attention to it. 

    “That doesn’t really preclude the theory, sight isn’t the only sensory input.”

    “True... I don’t know, but you know what I do know?”

    “What’s that?”

    “There’s probably some crayfish in there.”

    She jumped up and began to undo the tie to her pants.

    Zuko sat up, “what are you doing?”

    “Getting in the water,” she retorted, with an implied ‘duh’, pulling her pants down over her hips and letting them fall to pool around her ankles, “stay here, I won’t go far.”

    “I’m not going anywhere,” he chirped, “didn’t you say the current was too strong?”

    “For fish,” she called back as she took her first steps into the shallow water at the shore, “and besides, I mostly grew up on Kyoshi so I’m an excellent swimmer.”

    He mumbled something she didn’t catch and turned around to glare, “what was that?”

    “Even experienced swimmers drown, Katara.”

    She laughed, shaking her head, and bent down to flip her first rock, “you sound like me.”

    “Take your own advice then.”

    She dropped the rock, “I’m trying to get us something to eat.”

    “Why would crayfish stick around when the other fish wouldn’t?”

    She scrunched her face up and stood fully, “a crayfish isn’t a fish, Zuko? It’s a little... well a little bug sort of, kind of like a crab.”

    “A bug?”

    “A crab.”

    “You said bug first.”

    “You too good to eat bugs?”

    Zuko barked out a laugh and shook his head, “no, far from it.”

    “That’s what I thought.”

    “What does it taste like?”

    “Like... like unsalted crab? Stringier? I’m not sure how I would describe it.”

    “Here’s hoping I get to try it.”

    She dipped her fingers beneath the surface of the water and took hold of her second rock, tilting it up and checking for claws or a bloom of sand as it retreated, but she found nothing again, “might even be too fast for crayfish,” she mused as she went for her third rock.

    Zuko sighed dramatically, the air buffeting against the roof of his mouth and shuddering as it came out.

    She went a little further down the river, just a few steps, and chose another rock a little further up the shore. She caught the flash of red as soon as she lifted the smooth stone edge, and she jabbed her hand under the rock, “spoke too soon!”

    “You got one!?”

    Pain stabbed at her index finger as the little crustacean clamped onto her groping hand, and she yanked back pulling it up and waving it around, “now I do.”

    She scampered up the bank and over to him, sliding on the grass as she came up to her back pack. The pinch had faded to a dull discomfort, and the creature’s body flailed as it tried to engage in combat with her phalange. 

    “It looks like a mini-lobster.”

    “I don’t know ‘lobster’,” she said as she snatched the little saucepan they had unearthed from the wreckage of a home back at the abandoned village and whipped the crayfish into the pot before draping her ripped shirt over the top to keep it in, “but ‘mini’ is right.”

    “Yeah, I could eat about a hundred of those.”

    “ And you only eat the meat in the tail.”

    Zuko glowered at the river, “I’ll come help.”

    “No. I don’t want you slipping on a rock and messing your ankle up worse. If you're feeling up to it, collect some wood and start a fire.”

    He grunted, “Hm. I guess we’re gonna have to cook up all those crayfish you find.”

    “That’s the spirit,” she chuckled, “at the very least we can drink some shellfish flavored water and refill my waterskin.”

    Zuko shifted his weight, and she reached out, offering her hand, “going for firewood now?”

    He grabbed onto her, and she helped pull him to his feet.

    “Yeah, should be quick and easy to find some, but shout if you need me.”

    “You too.”

    He brought his hand up to caress her cheek and she leaned into his palm, eyes flickering shut.

    “Can I kiss you?”

    Her eyes shot open, she pressed her lips together and nodded. Her eyes flit around his face as he leaned in, a smile ghosted at the corner of his mouth, and his gilded eyes glittered in the afternoon sun.

    He pressed a peck against her dry lips and began to pull away, but once she felt his lips against hers, the soft pressure, and the warmth, she reached out, clutching the taut fabric across his chest and keeping him close enough that she could kiss him again. She pushed harder than he did, hungry for the feeling of their bodies locked together, and he responded eagerly, shifting closer and wrapping his arms around her waist. His chest pressed against her bound breasts and their bodies fused to the hip bones. His fingers began to strum against the small of her back, gently coaxing heat in her stomach with each small stroke. 

    She moaned into his kiss, and he froze, finger flexing against her back as his grip tightened. He pulled his mouth away, knitting his brows together and wetting his lower lip with his tongue, “we should… um… do that.”

    “Do what?”

    Zuko blinked, swallowed, and said, “food, fire.”

    Katara laughed breathlessly and nodded, “yeah... definitely... those crayfish aren’t going to catch themselves.” 

    She straightened her shirt as she moved away from him, feeling exposed without her pants until Zuko quickly turned away from her and began limping toward the forest. The heat in her stomach evaporated as she watched him struggle up the gentle incline to the edge of the tree line. She bit her lip, tracing the new bruises and cuts, along with the old scars, on his back with her eyes as he retreated. 

    She went back to the river and began her hunt for crayfish, hoping she could find some food to at least take one thing off their list of worries for the time being. 

    Crickets sang in the tall grass around them while Katara shuffled forward, watching the perfect half circle of moon that hung brightly in the cool evening sky. It was a crisp white reminder of the passage of time since they’d been oppressed by the unyielding heat of the desert. The night they’d first spent on the river, the moon had been little more than a bright rip in the dark blanket of night, but now it hung heavily in the sky with enough shine to stand out against the first tinges of dusk on the horizon.

    She cast a glance over her shoulder where Zuko was trailing just a few steps behind her. His limp had softened, especially with the elevation flattening out the further they moved from the mountains. He flashed her a nervous smile when he caught her eyes, “what’s up?”

    “I was just thinking, how long do you think it’s been since we left the cabin?”

    She slowed to walk next to him as he thought.

    “I’m not really sure. The weather has changed but not that much . Maybe three months?”

    She sighed and reached out to squeeze his hand, “I miss calendars.”

    “I miss clocks.”

    “I miss paper.”

    “We could technically still make paper.”

    “We could technically make a fishing rod too but look how that’s turning out.”

    He laughed and started to swing her arm between them, “I’ll admit the thread-as-fishing-line idea went poorly, but I was thinking maybe we could use that shirt to make a small net, tie it onto a stick or something.”

    “We could make a hoop from a skinny stick,” Katara supplied, and around them the evening sonata of bugs died off, “and then...” she trailed off, “Zuko?”

    “Mhm, I noticed.”

    They turned, pressing their backs together and slowly spinning as they scanned the waves of green and the tree line. In their silence she heard it. A light gasp, a barely shuddering breath. She moved away from Zuko toward the noise and only had to stagger a few steps to see the mottled leathery skin shrinking away from a skeletal foot that peaked out from behind a tree.

    She let out a short chirp of a whistle to catch Zuko’s attention and grabbed her spear off of her pack. The infected made no move to lunge for her as she rounded the tree. She wasn’t sure they could. 

    Around them there were swaths of skin that had rotted away and fallen off the yellowed bones of their arms and legs. Their face was melting down their skull, gravity pulled the skin down their forehead and it covered their eyes. There was the smallest head movement as another shallow breath rocked their sunken chest. Katara shuddered.

    “I’ll kill it,” Zuko grumbled, taking his sword from where it hung off the back of her bag and abruptly thrusting it into the infected’s neck, severing the head from the body.

    She flinched and turned away before she maneuvered her spear to fit back into its sling. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt the tug on her backpack as Zuko replaced his sword.

    “Hey,” he said softly, “what’s wrong.”

    “They must of been here a long time,” she whispered.

    “That’s how they used to all be, remember?”

    She mumbled her agreement and started back toward the bank. Zuko snatched her hand, moved with her, intertwining their fingers as they restarted their journey.

    “Like a year ago,” she muttered, pulling them to the river’s edge to walk in the water and trying to let the unexpected gloom wash over her, “seeing a single walking infected was rare, let alone a horde of them. We used to talk about...” she swallowed hard, the memory fighting back as she tried to push it back down, “what I meant to say is... how? You said there was a city that had been nearby, that the horde had probably come from there, but how did so many people get infected again?”

    He opened his mouth to speak but she kept going, cutting him off, “I know, all it takes is one person, but then there was the soldier in the desert and... and Sela.” 

    Her voice cut out and she quickly turned to study his face, but he didn’t look upset. His face was set with tense stoicism. An alabaster mask.

    “And then the newer camp? It was almost... too perfect. Something... bigger is going on, right?” 

    He was agonizingly quiet, and she ran her upper teeth over her lower lip as she waited for him to speak. 

    When he did, his voice was soft, “I don’t know anything for sure really, ok? Everything I know for sure is from before my father banished me, and the rest is... technically conjecture from my uncle.”

    “Technically?”

    “He always claims to know what he’s talking about.”

    “What did he think then?”

    “Iroh said that it was our grandfather’s dream to have the royal family reseize control of the nation and to retake the land we lost in the Great Comet War like a hundred years ago. That my father was obsessed with Fire Nation superiority, which I can confirm, and that he wanted to expand the empire.”

    “So, he unleashed a disease to kill the rest of the world?”

    “That’s the theory.”

    “That’s... that doesn’t even make sense.”

    “Iroh says that the first recorded outbreak happened on the anniversary of the start of the Comet War, in the same place the Comet War started.”

    “Where was that?”

    “The Southern Air Temple.”

    She stopped, her stomach turning violently.

    “What’s wrong?”

    “Sorry, it’s just... that’s who brought it to us.”

    “That was the point. They were all about to embark on some cultural walking tour. My father wanted them to spread it.”

    She shook her head and looked back up at the brightening moon, pushing herself to keep walking and kicking water as they curved around a grassy hill with the river.

    “He’s trying to recreate this old war?” 

    “I think it’s more like he’s paying homage to it. His real goal is just... killing everyone who isn’t from the Fire Nation.”

    “Then why put up the safe zones?” she cried out.

    “To round people up, give them somewhere to run toward.”

    She thought back on her last weeks on Kyoshi, and the tightening noose of Fire Nation control, the unexplained deaths, and the imprisonments. She shook her head, “it just... it doesn’t make any sense.”

    “Evil people never make sense , Katara.”

    “There’s a logic though right, it just seems... so elaborate.”

    “You’re forgetting, he also wanted to make them suffer as much as possible. To have their loved ones kill them and force them to kill their loved one.”

    “He didn’t want to,” her tongue felt heavy as she spoke, “he did.”

    Zuko nodded and squeezed her hand.

    They rounded the hill fully and Katara went dead in her track again, looking past the river to a huge clearing of trees and beyond.

    Rows and rows of identical buildings separated by cracked gray roads had infested a huge tract of land between two of the last large hills to the south. 

    “What is it?” she asked, marveling.

    “A housing development.”

    He sounded unsure, and she tore her eyes away from the strange houses to give him a wan smile, “looks like we found our campsite for the night.” 

    “I’m not sure Katara... this seems... anyone who came across this would want to stay here too. Maybe we should keep moving.”

    She glanced up at the sky and back to him, “we don’t have much time to find a spot far enough away to make a difference.”

    “We’ll stake it out, lay low for a bit just to be safe.”

    She turned back to the housing development, “explain what it is while we wait.”

    “You’ve never come across one before?”

    “No... why are they all exactly the same?”

    “I think it saves money on building costs.”

    “Must have been hard to remember which one was yours.”

    “I don’t know... I only know what they are from Iroh letting me sit in on meetings with infrastructure committees.”

    “It’s a little eerie, honestly.”

    They both watched the houses in stunned silence as the sun set over the hills behind them until Zuko whispered, “I wonder if there are beds in there.”

    She grasped at his arm tightly, “maybe one of the houses has a backyard garden?”

    They locked eyes and smiled; the previous conversation forgotten for the moment.

    There were three bedrooms in the home they had chosen as their own, but once they had swept the house and barricaded the doors, they still crawled into the same bed together. The stale scent of the decaying sheets was like perfume compared to their musty sleeping bag, and Katara sank into the creaking bed as if it were a cloud and not a decomposing mattress in a long-abandoned house. On the other side of the small room, Zuko fixed an extra blanket over the window to keep in the light from the scented candle they’d found in the bathroom and shoved the dresser against the door as. 

    “Come lay down.”

    “One of us should stay awake in case.”

    “We’re safe here for the night at least, we waited till it was pitch black to even come into the neighborhood and we didn’t see so much as a squirrel-mouse.”

    He walked over and stood next to the bed, his thighs pressing into the mattress to hold himself up, “you’re wrong but I’m too tired to fight you.”

    “Just lay down, Zuko.”

    He snorted and carefully took his shirt off, still cautious of the wound on his shoulder.

    “Actually… I wonder….” he walked over to the dresser against the door and opened the drawer, “ew.”

    She propped herself up on her elbows to see, “what?”

    “Bugs, but there’s some stuff in here. Mostly socks, which would be better if we had shoes.” 

    “Any underwear?”

    “That’s what I’m looking for.”

    He shut the first drawer and opened the next, “hungry for grubs?”

    “If I was 100% sure they wouldn’t poison me the answer would obviously be ‘yes’.” 

    He pulled out a pair of navy boxers that looked as if he could fit his whole body through one leg, and he held them up to his waist. 

    “I don’t think those will work.”

    “Maybe before the desert.” 

    He tossed them back in the drawer and shut it, going one more down.

    “These will work,” he turned around, proudly displaying a pair of gray shorts with a white drawstring and only minor holes from hungry bugs at the hem.

    She dropped back to the bed and covered her eyes with her arm, “did you see any shirts?”

    “Yeah, hold on.”

    She listened to the soft sounds of him changing and then felt something light hit her stomach. She grabbed it and opened her eyes. It was a light blue T-shirt with a missing armpit, but the fabric was soft and clean. She pressed it to her nose and reveled in the lack of body odor.

    She looked up and Zuko was watching her, smiling faintly.

    “What?”

    His head dropped and he mumbled, “nothing, you’re just cute.”

    “Cute?” She scoffed.

    “Yeah,” he said, looking back up, “I said it.”

    “I’m not cute .”

    “I don’t think that’s up to you to decide.”

    “Turn around so I can change.”

    He shook his head, not quite laughing and spun around.  

    She took it by the hem and lifted her dirty shirt over her head, tossing it over onto her backpack. The air in the room was stagnant and warm, but her skin prickled and the hair on her stood on edge. She had to quell the anxious turning of her stomach with a slow breath out her nose. It’s different , she thought to herself, as her thumb brushed the edge of the tucked end of her chest wraps, undressing next to each other before lying down in a bed .

    In the woods, in their separate sleeping bags, it had been clinical. She had changed inside of her sleeping bag and thought nothing of it. Laying in a real bed though, the feel of exposing her bare skin to the room felt weighted. The implication hung like humidity in the air, heavy and near suffocating. She untucked her wrap. Normally, she slept with it loosened, but still on, and she had only taken it off to bathe. Her breasts fell as she released them, and her nipples pebbled in the air despite the heat. She quickly pulled the shirt over her head, the excess fabric billowing around her as it fell in place. She wound the wrap around her hand and threw it over to join her shirt.

    “I’m done,” she whispered.

    He stood with his back to her for a beat, and she studied the map of scars across the shadowy span. He went over to the candle, blowing out the little flame and plunging them into darkness. She felt the weight of the mattress shift as he crawled into the bed next to her, she looked away, her face hot, pulling the covers to her chin. The freeness of her chest felt alien and loose after weeks of keeping them bound, and when she turned to face him, she could feel her nipples rubbing against the fabric. She shivered and the sound caught his attention, she felt him move to face her and he whispered, “how could you possibly be cold right now?”

    “I’m not,” she snorted, and then paused, struck with the realization that she did not have an answer to give him that wouldn’t mortify her or be a lie. 

    He didn’t ask her to elaborate though, and instead lay silent beside her as the tension cloaked them. It had been so long that she’d had time alone that even the unspoken suggestion of lying next to each other in a bed was enough to have hot blood pounding at her core, and when she pressed her legs together, she could feel the rhythm of her heart.

    Time dragged on as she lay in the dark, torturing herself with fantasies of what would happen if she reached out and brushed her hand against his arm. She wouldn’t have to move much, she could feel the heat of it close to her own, all she would have to do is sneak her hand out from the blanket and then anything could happen. Or, picturing his hands snaking under the covers and coaxing her out from beneath them. She imagined the way the heat of his body would feel against her while the weight pressed her into the bed and how he would fit perfectly between her thighs. She had never taken anything more than her own fingers inside her, but she felt cavernous with want. Empty.

    She tried to wait for sleep to relieve her, but it wouldn’t come. She was wired with energy and every moment clawed its way forward. 

    “Are you still awake,” Zuko whispered after an excruciatingly long time.

    “Yeah,” she cleared her throat, “I thought it would be easier to fall asleep without rocks beneath me, but I guess I was wrong.”

    Zuko blew out sharply through his nose and turned to face her, “it’s almost too soft. Kind of makes me realize how much my body just hurts when I can’t blame it on the ground.”

    She made a soft noise of agreement in the back of her throat, feeling a little foolish for being all wound up when he was just thinking about being in pain. 

    “Where’s the worst place you’ve slept since you left Kyoshi?” he asked, trying to start their game.

    She just grunted at first, her perceived rejection sapping the fun out of it for the moment, before saying, “you were there. It was definitely that night on that mountain ledge.”

    “Really?”

    “Absolutely. I spent half the night worried it was going to drop out beneath us and the other half jolting awake thinking I was rolling off the side,” she rolled, bringing herself closer to him though it was still too dark to see, “what about you?”

    “I slept in a tree and woke up during a thunderstorm. The whole thing was swaying, and I was sure I was going to get struck by lightning.” 

    “Did you climb down?”

    “After a bit, but I was tied in and wasn’t sure I wouldn’t get thrown while trying to untie myself. Your turn.”

    Sweat had started to collect under her knees and on the bed beneath her, so she pulled the blanket off and used it as an excuse to scoot even closer to him, her stomach swirled as she thought of questions and she finally settled on, “when was your first kiss?”

    “My first...” he hummed, “when I was 16.”

    “What was her name?”

    He paused and then sighed, “Mai.”

    She waited for him to continue but he was quiet until he asked, “what about you?” 

    Her question had backfired, she bit at her lip and cursed herself for making him think about another woman. Or a girl, really. 

    “It was last year, actually, so I guess 17? Or maybe 18? It was late fall, near my birthday, Aang and I were sitting up... we were up too late, and it was just hormones.”

    “You guys...?”

    “He kissed me, it was fine, but I just felt like... like I was being forced into it. Like ... of course Aang and I would get together, it’s Suki and my brother, and Aang and me, and I just didn’t like that.”

    “ Aang ?”

    “You sound...” she propped herself up on her elbow, “what’s wrong with Aang?”

    “Nothing, it’s just... so you two weren’t... together?”

    “No.”

    “But you kissed?”

    She scowled, unsure of his intentions and embarrassed by his interrogation, and she snapped, “what?” 

    She felt him shift away from her as he rolled onto his back, she reached out and grabbed his forearm. It was hot to the touch, feverish.

    “So, is that what... is that us too?”

    She let go of his forearm, relieved despite not knowing what she was afraid he would say, and swatted him lightly, “I told Aang that night how I felt, and he backed off. I’m the one who kissed you, remember?”

    “Pity kiss,” he whispered.

    “Pity?” She scoffed and then smiled widely, “thankfully,” she drawled, “I know exactly how to prove you wrong.”

    She swooped in, taking his cheek in her hand to lead herself to his waiting lips, which were already puckered when she pressed her own against them. She tucked her legs up so she could lay across his chest. When she settled, he brought his arms up, one draping around her back to pull her tighter against him and the other mirroring her own to press his palm against her cheek. His hand didn’t stay, instead trailing down her neck to stroke as far down to her shoulder as he could reach and then coming back up to tangle in her hair for a moment before beginning the circuit again. She let her own hand wander as well, and his chest was just as hot as his forearm had been, and lightly damp with sweat.

    She broke their kiss and chuckled, “you run so hot.”

    “It’s stifling in here.”

    “Want some space,” she joked as she pulled herself up to readjust her legs.

    “No,” he said quickly, snatching her by the waist, “get back over here.”

    She laughed and wiggled, “no, let me unpin my legs.”

    He let go and she hiked a leg up, throwing it around him and sitting on his stomach. He grabbed her by the hips and took a deep breath that shook as he exhaled.

    “Is this good,” she pushed on his torso and slid down until she could feel the hard line of his erection, “or should I go lower?”

    He tightened his hold on her hips and breathed out, “that’s low enough.”

    She wiggled her hips and he moaned, “sorry,” she purred with a coy smile, “just getting comfortable.”

    “Katara,” he grumbled, and she stole the rest of his words from his lips with a kiss, leaning down and sealing their bodies together from their junction at her thighs to the hardened peaks of her breasts.

    Zuko began lightly dragging a fingernail up and down her back. Her hair stood on end. She brought her hands up to his neck, slipping behind him into the damp hair at the nape and brushing her thumbs along his cheek bones. His other hand shifted from her hip to knead at the very edge of where her thigh became her backside, and she switched her weight to her closest leg to chase the sensation. Her chest lifted slightly when she moved and the hand Zuko had been using to run a finger along her back drifted to the seam of where her chest had just been pressed so firmly against his. She broke the kiss to prop herself up on her arms, hoping to encourage him to tend to her aching nipples. 

    “What are you trying to do, Katara?” Zuko asked, panting.

    “I was just moving so you could... touch me.”

    She felt the movement against the seam of her boxers as his cock twitched and she instinctively arched her back to grind against it, gasping.

    He moved his hands to rest above her knees and, his voice strained, said, “how do you... foresee this ending?”

    She bit her lip, and swept her hand along the trail of fine chest hairs that grew only between his pectorals, “how do you want it to end?”

    “How do you want it to end?”

    Her face went hot, her body went cold, and she choked on her words for a moment. She was too embarrassed to speak her desire out loud, so she leaned in, pressing their cheeks together to whisper in his ear with her voice rising like a question, “an orgasm?”

    She felt him nodding as she pulled back, but with his silence she felt too vulnerable to sit on him any longer. She slid back to her side of the bed, but he took her hand as she went and followed her.

    She landed on her back, and he put his arm under her head and laid on his side while almost on top of her. He edged a leg up to slot between hers and the full length of his hardness pressed against her hip. The urge to wiggle her hand up to touch it seized her and she barely stopped herself.

    He tucked his head down to murmur against the hollow of her ear, “I’d like to help in any way possible then,” he paused to brush his lips against her pulse, and she shivered, “any place you’d like to start?”

    “Taking my shirt off is as good a place as any, right,” she quipped, trying to sound casual while she felt like she was burning up.

    “Can I relight the candle?”

    “Seems like a waste of candle.”

    “But I want to see you.”

    “O-ok.”

    They flew apart and she ripped off her shirt. The candle was already flickering on the nightstand once she had pulled the shirt over her head, and she flung it at the floor.

    Her heartbeat was loud against the silence as Zuko stood at the edge of the bed, staring at her exposed breasts with his lips a sliver parted. She expected to feel more embarrassment but instead she felt only the fluttering of anticipation, and the urgent desire for him to get back on the bed. 

    “Should we just...” he took the drawstring of his pants in hand, “could I...?”

    Her mouth went dry, and she nodded, thumbing the waistband of her boxers as he hastily undid the knot. She stopped just before she lifted to pull them down as he finally triumphed over the knot in his pants and dropped them to the floor. 

    Katara bit her lip and stared as Zuko’s cock flagged in the dancing light of the candle. He left little time for admiration though, scrambling back onto the bed and laying on his side with his head on the pillow.

    Remembering her underwear finally, she slipped them over the curve of her ass and threw herself back to fall beside him. She felt a rush of energy and turned over to bury her head in his chest, giggling.

    “What’s so funny?”

    She poked her head up and kissed the underside of his chin, “nothing... everything,” she giggled again, “I’m nervous.”

    Zuko brushed his hand down her arm, “me too.”

    “What are you nervous about?”

    The corners of his mouth twitched up and he  closed his eyes, “about doing well, you?”

    “Same and not... having done anything before.”

    His hand trailed back up her arm and he stroked her cheek, “have you... touched yourself?”

    She broke away and hid her face against his chest, “of course I have.”

    His voice dropped in timber and came out strained, “if you show me what you like I can try to... help.”

    She froze, the idea of showing him, of doing it in front of him, was mortifying and tempting all at once and she tensed her thighs as she pictured it.

    “Or you could tell me what you imagine would feel good.”

    He pushed her hair off her shoulder and wrapped his arm around her to squish her against his chest, “or we could just... take a little break?”

    “No!” she pushed away from him and planted a series of kisses on his jaw, “no breaks.”

    Zuko caught her lips and eased her down until her head found the pillow. He ran his hand up and down her arm again, but soon branched out to her rib cage. She pushed her chest up, arching her back, and went to move his hand just as he took her signals. He feathered his fingertips across the soft skin beneath her areola, teasing her, and then finally palmed the tender globe. She moaned and tangled her hand into his hair, pulling his face down against her so that their lips could hardly move.  He massaged her breast as he repositioned his legs so he could trap his erection between them. Just as she felt it, he dragged his thumb across her nipple, and she surprised them both by bucking her hips. They both moaned in tandem, and they each gave a short breathless laugh in the millisecond it took for their lips to reconnect.

    He focused on playing with her nipple, testing out more torturously soft strokes, and then experimenting with a light pinch. The sharp shock of arousal made her clench her hand around his hair and yank his head back.

    “I'm sorry,” she gasped and dropped her inadvertent rein.

    “I kind of liked it,” he muttered and moved back in.

    She leaned in expecting to find his lips again, but he had ducked her mouth, lowering his head to swipe his tongue over the stiff peak of her breast and then suck it into his mouth.

    She pushed her hips up again and hissed his name. She dropped and wiggled her captive arm down to the burning line at her thigh. She wasn’t sure what she had expected to feel when she circled her hand around the taut feverish skin, but once she was there, she tentatively squeezed and got to feel when he jerked in her hand.

    “Fuck,” he groaned, lifting his shining mouth from her breast, “It’s too soon. I haven’t come since the cabin, Katara, I’m not gonna last two seconds.”

    “Sorry,” she tried to snatch her hand back but there wasn’t enough space to get more than an inch away.

    “Don’t be sorry, I’m sorry , even just having it touch your leg is... I’m trying to hang in here.”

    “Don’t you want to... come I mean?”

    “Just... it’s polite to make sure you... have a good time before I do.”

    “I’m already having a good time.”

    He rolled his eyes and dropped his head back down, sucking the air from her lungs along with the tawny pebble of her nipple. With his mouth on her breast his hand wandered down her side until it caressed her sharp hip bone. She threw her head to the side as he found the thicket of dark curls crowning her thighs. She bent her knee to open her legs and brought her hand down to join him. Zuko’s hand trembled as he followed her fingers to her dewy lips and hesitated when she parted them. His middle finger slipped between the folds and a high-pitched whine exploded from her.  

    “I haven’t either,” she panted, “since the cabin.” 

    He lifted his head and smirked, “let’s change that.”

    He laid his head down on the pillow next to her and whispered, “tell me what to do, left right, harder, whatever.”

    She nodded enthusiastically as he probed his fingers around her entrance, wetting them before coming back up to circle her clit with his slick finger. 

    “Higher.” 

    He obeyed.

    “Which do you like better? This one?” 

    She went rigid, unable to let out the moan stuck in her throat. 

    It had never felt like this alone. 

    “Or this one?”

    She broke, groaning and pressing her head  back as far into the pillow as she could, “First one, harder.”

    He repeated it and she felt her heart skip.

    She started nodding as if there were a question hanging in the air that begged an answer, and she pressed her heels into the bed, pushing herself up into his hand.

    “Harder?”

    “No. No, higher.”

    “Higher?” He whispered, incredulous and switched to using his thumb. She shuddered as the larger, rougher pad fit into the perfect spot. He began to move, and she felt herself reaching the peak. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter and began grasping at the sheets,

    “Zuko, please,” she pleaded.

    “Please what? Higher again?”

    “No, please, oh, I’m– I’m going to– Zuko,”

    “Fuck,” he groaned and thrust against her, wetting her skin when his tip touched her side.

    Stars erupted against the black of her closed eyelids. She clamped her legs shut around his hand, trapping him against her pulsing sex and screaming out.

    His thumb kept moving even as the waves of her pleasure faded, and she felt another stirring under his ministrations.

    “Stop,” she moaned and unlocked her legs from around his wrist.

    He pulled his hand back and laid down looking up at the ceiling.

    When she caught her breath, she turned to watch him, and he was smirking at the cracked plaster above them. He caught her out of the corner of his eyes and smiled at her, “how’re you feeling?”

    “Loose,” she chuckled, “you ready?”

    “For what?”

    “It’s your turn.”

    “I, um,” his eyes flicked down, “you don’t have to.”

    “I want to, can I?”

    He nodded once just barely but she sat up, shivering as she felt the remnants of her orgasm. She scooted down to reach and brushed her hand on the soft skin at the very top of his thigh.

    His erection twitched again, calling attention to the milky drop at the blushing tip, “do you do that on purpose?”

    “I can, but I didn’t,” he whispered.

    She wrapped her hand around the base of his cock, “how tight do I hold it?”

    “Start loose,” he mumbled, and adjusted his hand to cup the flash of her butt cheek he that could reach. She stroked upward experimentally, and he cursed under his breath.

    On the way down he encouraged her hoarsely, “a little tighter.”

    She tightened her hand just enough that she could still move it over the velvety skin and his hips followed her up, bucking into her fist.

    “Is that good?”

    “That’s great,” he choked out, “maybe a little”—

    She tightened her grip so there was just a bit more friction and he moaned and began babbling. She rubbed her legs together as the sound of his uncontrolled ecstasy reignited the fire in her core.

    “Yes, Katara, fuck, please, I can’t, I need you to, fuck, I love you, I love you, I”— 

    Her hand flexed and she dragged down harder than she intended but he tensed, and his hips started thrusting up as his sticky white cum came spouting out the top and spilling onto her hand, making her hand slick and his dick glide as she kept stroking him through his aftershocks.

    “Ok, ok, please,” he laughed and gently took her wrist in his hand to stop her.

    She fell back to lay next to him again and held her hand up, to keep it off the bed, “was that ok?”

    He sighed, “more than. Let me grab something...” he pulled himself from the bed and lurched over to the dresser, pulling out a balled-up pair of socks, “looks like they’ll come in handy anyway.”

    She laughed as he came over, untangling the socks and wiping himself off. 

    He threw the used sock and held out his hand, "here,” he said as he reached for her upheld arm. She leaned over to show him her hand and he took it. He patted her palm dry and swiped between her fingers, “good?”

    “Yeah, thanks.”

    He got back into the bed next to her, blowing out the candle and pulling her into his side. She laid her head on his bare chest and this time, despite the cooling wet sheets, she fell asleep right away.

Chapter Text

    Zuko woke up covered in hair. It clung to his face, slipped into his mouth, tickled his nose, and wound around his neck. He sputtered, plucking hairs off his tongue only to have another strand dart between his lips, and tried to untangle himself. 

    He dropped his hand and delicately sat up, slipping his arm out from under Katara’s head and trying his hardest not to pull her hair. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and wiggled his battered feet against the dusty floor before turning back to Katara. 

    Her back was covered only by a few stray curls, and his stomach dropped as he raked his eyes over the mottled purple and yellow remains of fading bruises that dusted the knots of her spine and her ribcage. 

    She turned over, half asleep, and reached for him. Her hand fell into the empty spot he had been in just a moment before, and one of her eyes cracked open.

    “Morning,” he whispered to get her attention.

    “I’m still asleep.”

    “You don’t sound asleep.”

    She went silent, her eyes shut tight enough to wrinkle her forehead.

    He snorted, shaking his head, and grabbed the gray shorts from the floor, slipping them up his legs as he stood.

    “I’m gonna go rummage, you keep sleeping.”

    She murmured her approval into the pillow.

    He kneeled on the bed, crawling over to press a kiss to her forehead. 

    I’m not the only one sweating , he smiled to himself and kissed her temple.

    “I love you,” he told her as he backed off the creaking bed.

    She spoke into her pillow again but he didn’t need to hear her to know her response. 

    The left side of his face ached as the weakened muscle tired from smiling, and he straightened his expression as he left Katara sleeping to go into the rest of the house. It was a strangely foreign experience, forcing himself not to smile, and he kept forgetting and finding the corners of his lips turning up and the ache beginning again. 

    He walked through the upstairs, padded across mostly intact carpets, and rifled through drawers and closets. There were empty hangers and missing items throughout the room but nothing useful.

    He went down stairs, looking in the closet by the front door. An old vacuum sagged against the wall in the corner, and a child’s green polka-dotted jacket lay on the floor beside it. 

    He closed the door and wandered into the kitchen. Every cabinet had been thrown open at some point and while the sight of a better cooking pot was exciting, the mostly bare shelves mocked him. An empty knife block sat on its side on the brown granite countertop with a few dried leaves as its only companions. His mind flashed to the people who had come before them, wondering how close they were, how equipped. 

    He left the kitchen and went through the archway into the dark green dining room with disintegrating velvet chairs that were so coated in dust that their color was indiscernible. A large wooden hutch stood in the corner and he made his way over to it. The china set visible through the fogged glass doors had been untouched since someone had lovingly placed it there.

    He imagined someone’s grandmother or mother had passed this set down, he wondered how long it had been in the family. He felt a familiar sadness grip him and he averted his eyes, pulling open a drawer to distract himself. 

    The formal silver utensils had long been pilfered, but a red and white checkered deck of cards stole his attention, and he slipped it into the pocket of his shorts. Katara will love this . 

    He caught his gaunt face in the reflection of the tarnished mirror at the back of the hutch and forced away another smile.  

    “Zuko?”

    He startled and twisted around. Katara was standing in the kitchen with the flat sheet from the bed draped around her.

    “You’re awake?”

    She yawned and said, “I couldn’t fall back asleep. I’m hungry.”

    “You and me both.”

    “Do we have anything left?”

    “That weird jerky.”

    She sighed, “we still have some water, we should make sure it isn’t soap first. And even if it isn’t... it’s not enough.”

    “I know, trust me.”

    “Sorry.”

    “Don’t be,” he walked into the kitchen and pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin, “I found some cards, we can play a game later... if you want.”

    She pulled her head away from his chest, “cards,” her bright blue eyes sparkled in their sunken sockets, “that’s a good find.”

    “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

    She rolled her eyes but a smirk broke through her act.

    He bent his head down and kissed her, still somewhat amazed when she kissed him back.

    “Soap?”

    “Go grab the water,” he snapped playfully and followed after her, snagging the end of the sheet and carrying it behind her. 

    It started a little more than a half an hour after they ate the bitter fruit leather. 

    The old deck of cards he’d found was spread out on the dining room table and the game was abandoned already in favor of Katara explaining when her father had first taught her the game.

    Zuko giggled. 

    Katara had forgotten the Earth Kingdom word for spatula and had tried to imitate the motion with her hand, and Zuko had practically batted his eyes, kicked his feet, and giggled at her. She tilted her head and the light that the sun cast through the window shot past her shoulder, and illuminated the shiny red and black faced cards. The numbers jumped from their homes as if they had become three dimensional and he did a double take.

    Katara reached for a card but her head snapped back up and the light was interrupted. She looked at Zuko confused, “did you see that?”

    He lost his train of thought, distracted by just how perfect the bow of her lips was, and asked, “see what?” as he leaned against the table. 

    When she looked into his eyes, she stopped and watched him, “your eyes...” she muttered.

    She hadn’t needed to prompt him though, as soon as they made eye contact he’d noticed.  Her normally cerulean eyes were churning, the irises themselves seemed to rotate and get darker and lighter as if the sun was catching waves. 

    “I can’t see my eyes,” he whispered.

    A dark shadow swept across the top of his vision and he shot back. With a jerky movement Zuko looked away from her and toward the ceiling. Dark fan blades loomed overhead and for a brief moment seemed to stretch down toward him, he burst out into a fit of giggles, “I thought the ceiling fan was melting.”

    She looked up at the immobile fan and shook her head before looking back at Zuko. He was smiling still. 

    “Something is happening,” she said, and her voice seemed so slow coming out of her mouth that he worried for a second but the worry was washed away by an intense wave of nausea that forced him to notice the twisting of his guts. 

    Zuko nodded and his hand went to his stomach, “I feel sick,”.

    He almost flipped the table shuffling out from his chair. 

    He fled toward the bathroom but, after he passed under the archway and went through the kitchen, the feeling disappeared and he stopped. The floor wobbled beneath him and he reached out for the wall to support himself, but he was too far away and stumbled into it when he began to fall.

    “Are you ok?”

    “Don’t move, I think the house is unstable,” he called back, and leaned against the wall fully. 

    “Zuko,” Katara’s voice was mournful and he looked back to see her standing in the kitchen, her hands in front of her as she examined them like she’d never seen them before, “I think maybe... nevermind they’re back to normal size.”

    “What?”

    Katara waved her arms around her, released from their spell, and stomped her foot, “the house is fine, we’re... we’re not fine.”

    “The fruit leather,” he said flatly, still holding onto the wall. 

    Zuko looked around himself, noticing the way every surface he focused on soon broke out into a fractal pattern that moved as if it were simultaneously expanding and being absorbed back into itself. 

    “It was soap,” she cried, her voice wavering in distress. 

    He tore his gaze away from the shifting wallpaper and watched as Katara’s knees wobbled together.

    A burp ripped through him without warning and echoed in the seemingly cavernous hallway. It shocked Katara before she could spiral and they both broke out into another round of laughter. They started making their way back to each other, his hand pressed to the wall for fear he would fall.

    They met by the archway and Katara reached out to grab the frame when she saw him do it.

    “I think it might have been drugs,” he said, and then laughed again.

    “No,” Katara covered her mouth and looked toward the ground, and when she pulled her hand away she was smiling, “I don’t know why everything is... so... funny...”

    “I feel... bubbly,” and he laughed again, “me!” 

    “Are we going to feel this way forever?”

    “No?” 

    Zuko smiled brightly again, and maybe he would have been more concerned about her mental state at a different time but all he felt was a buzz bordering on hysteria that made him want to laugh at whatever she had to say. 

    Then, he felt the nausea again.

    This time when he fled to the bathroom he made it there with no interruption, and he closed the door behind him with unintentional force. The sound reverberated through his mind uncomfortably as he stood in the pitch black.

    He breathed quickly to try and stop himself from throwing up, and he was successful enough. His stomach still sloshed ominously, but it subsided as the pressure of the dark began to push in around him. 

    He tumbled forward, knocking his knee on the toilet seat and then slamming into the wall. His face flat against the cool wall, he said aloud, “Ow,” and then, “I don’t like the bathroom.”

    He peeled himself off the wall and felt his way back to the door. He found the handle but couldn’t manage to open it. His hand felt wrapped in fabric, and his fingers couldn’t manipulate the door handle. A sense of dread descended on him as he struggled to get out. 

    He began to wonder if he was ever going to get out of the bathroom again. He wondered if this was where he was going to die, poisoned by fruit leather in a tiny dark room. A nothing death for a nothing prince. His breath picked up.

    In the dark he could see the shape of a memory beginning to form in the swirling darkness. A little boy. Locked in a closet. Head in his knees. His father’s voice hissing through the cracks. 

    “I do not like the bathroom,” he repeated, louder and more insistently, as he felt like the shape of the door handle morphed everytime he thought he’d grasped it. 

    “Are you ok,” Katara asked from the other side of the door, her voice betraying her concern. 

    “Yes,” he answered, because he’d thought for a second she’d asked if he needed help but then he quickly followed up, “no.”

    “Which one?”

    “Can you open the door?”

    Katara paused and then asked, “I can try?”

    With his hand still on the round door knob, he could feel her jiggling the handle from her side, and then it opened. 

    Katara’s eyes were wide, “I really thought my hand was going to go right through the door for some reason,” she said quietly, looking at her fingertips as she swayed them slowly in front of her face.

    “I was trapped in there.” Zuko rushed out of the bathroom and wrapped his arms around her, so glad to be out of that shrinking cage that he couldn’t stop himself.

    As soon as their bodies connected, it felt like he’d never been touched before in his life and he was overwhelmed with the heat and electricity that shot through him. His throat clenched painfully, he was blinking back tears before he’d even recognized them, and he started sniffing to ease a sudden itch in his nose. 

    He clung to her tighter. 

    Katara said nothing but her hands rubbed circles over his rounded shoulders. 

    It was another moment before he forgot what he was crying about, but when he did it was because he was slowly coming to the physical and mental awareness that Katara was rubbing his bare back. All of the little hairs on his body stood at attention because, while the world was still a shifting, morphing, landscape of unpredictability, there was one part of his brain, at least, that had begun, rather loudly, reminding the rest of him that Katara had a very nice body that was very firmly pressed against his. He knew the feeling was wrong, manufactured, and he got the violent urge to separate from her, but without the ability to do anything about it. 

    When he tried to explain to Katara what he was feeling, all that came out was, “none of this is real.” 

    “None of it,” she stopped moving her hands.

    “Some of it,” he corrected.

    She pulled away from him slightly, not disconnecting, and looked at him with a glare so intense he was reminded of their first interactions. 

    “Are you trying to fuck with me,” she asked, her voice pitching upward.

    “No, what I meant was…” he lost his train of thought for a second, eyes tracing the geometric patterns surfacing on her cheeks, “the moving, the color stuff, the house moving, getting trapped… the way touching feels. That’s not real.”

    She looked around and licked her bottom lip slightly before relaxing, “the house is real though?”

    “The house was real before we ate that shit,” he said confidently, willing it into being despite not fully believing it.

    Katara moaned and brought her hands to cover her face, “are we going to be like this forever? When does it end? I want it to be over. Zuko, how do I stop it?” 

    She broke away, squatted down, and spent the next few moments hyperventilating into her hands while Zuko watched helplessly.

    “Sleep?” he suggested, but he wasn’t sure how much time had passed since she’d asked. He started wondering about how much time had passed since it all started. 

    “I can’t sleep right now,” she moaned, “even when I close my eyes it’s still there.”

    “What’s still there?”

    “The swirling. I had it. Had did. Hate it.”

    He sat down on the floor and sagged against the wall.

    “It’s gonna end and it’s gonna end soon,” he assured her and himself, though he wasn’t exactly sure how long this sort of thing normally took. Drugs were talked of frequently in the Fire Nation Safe Zones, especially amongst the privileged soldiers, but he never would have tried them willingly, and had never truly sought out information about them. 

    He wrapped his arms around his knees, and worked against the fracturing thoughts in his mind to try to remember anything he could. If anything, he remembered the drugs you smoked. Opium, or hash, but nothing that could look like fruit leather. 

    He made the decision that she at least needed to be distracted.

    “What’s your favorite bug?” 

    He waited, but when she didn’t speak, he continued, “I think mine are the little bright blue grasshoppers in the Fire Nation, they used to jump onto my window sill in the summer and I would lay awake and listen to them.”

    He could almost hear them. Their sharp chirps amongst the sighing of wind through fronds. 

    He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his lids swirled and moved like a cloud of thick smoke, billowing but never moving closer.  His eyes flew open, and then he flinched as the world blurred like the space above a fire, and seemed too oversaturated with color.

    Katara’s eyes wavered too, the blue seeming at times electric and at others as dark as the night, but at least she was looking at him. 

    “I saw a purple and silver dragonfly once, though, about the size of my foot,” he wiggled his foot, nudging it against her slightly, “it was beautiful.”

    She smiled at him weakly, “I don’t have a favorite bug.”

    She crawled over and sat on the floor next to him, leaning against him. She pushed an errant strand of hair out of her eyes and Zuko blinked as her face expanded to take up his whole field of vision as if he were looking through binoculars. 

    “Not even to eat?”

    She snorted and then reared her head back, smashing it into the wall. She jerked forward, grabbing the back of her head and muttering.

    “What was that?” he asked, laughter bubbling up in his chest. 

    “The vibrations felt weird in my nose,” she sighed while rubbing her scalp. 

    He put his arm around her shoulders and she sagged back into him. They sat like that until his leg started going numb, but he wasn’t sure what time even was anymore, let alone how much of it, or how little, was passing. 

    Katara brought her hand up to rest against his knee, and began tracing a little bony outcropping on his exposed skin. 

    “Hm,” every ounce of concentration left in his mind went to the slight scratch of her finger nail, and the cold electric current that ran under his skin and made his hairs stand on attention. 

    Her palm flattened against his knee and she squeezed lightly, “doesn’t it feel real?”

    He swallowed and nodded as a sharp pang of arousal shot from his knee to his groin. He nudged his head against her frizzy hair, and got lost in the movement, repeating it until the coarse texture of her hair made his skin feel slightly raw. He ripped himself away, finding her eyes and her dazed smile.

    He reached for her slowly. It took too long for his hand to find her cheek but, like two magnets righting themselves to nestle together, his hand met her face like it belonged.

    She moaned, just lightly in the back of her throat but audibly enough that he stilled.

    “Your hand is so warm,” she said quickly, and she looked away from him as best she could with his hand holding her face in place. 

    He brushed her cheek with his thumb.

    He felt his stomach coil before he asked it, but the words would not be restrained by self discipline, and they tumbled out of him as if they had been waiting at the edge of his tongue for their escape, “yeah, does it feel good?”

    His voice was low, as if even his pitch had fled south along with his blood.

    He watched her swallow and he moved his thumb to brush just underneath her lower lip. 

    He needed to change course, but it felt like every place that touched her was quicksand, sucking him down deeper into his body's reaction, and he was unable to resist the hypnotic pull of the soft curves of her body. 

    He shifted his shoulders and brought his hand down from her cheek to the flare of her hips. Katara spilled her legs into his lap and shuffled in until they were close enough for their lips to meet. 

    “C’mere,” she purred, throwing her arms up to wrap around his neck. 

    The unexpected weight pulled him just far enough down that he couldn’t stop himself from falling the rest of the way. He caught himself just before his chest crushed into Katara’s and held himself there, as the sudden movement had brought his nausea back to the forefront of his attention. 

    His mouth pooled with saliva, and it felt too thick, like it was going to gag him. He rolled off of her, his back hitting the cold wall, and he looked up at the revolving rings of water damage on the ceiling.

    He slapped his hand against his mouth, breathing hard through his nose.

    Katara began to rub his arm gently and hum an unfamiliar tune.

    He almost wanted to throw up just to be rid of the feeling but he wasn’t confident he would be able to, so he stayed glued to the floor, a hand clasped over his lips, as sweat trickled down his temples. 

    Katara’s hand left his arm swiftly and she pressed the back of it against his forehead, “you feel like you have a fever.”

    She yanked her hand away and sat up on her knees. He could see the top of her head from where he was locked onto the ceiling’s water spots. The free strands of her hair mixed into the swirling above him but her face remained static, an unmoving frown amidst a stormy ocean. 

    “You felt hot last night too... I just assumed... let me look at your shoulder.” 

    He couldn’t move from his spot but he managed to give one small shake of his head, refusing her. 

    She brushed her hand over where his bangs had once been and then trailed her fingers down the side of his face, “it’s ok, Zuko, everything’s going to be ok.”

    She started humming again. 

    A cool wave of relief washed over him and he pulled his hand away from his mouth, sighing.

    “Better?”

    “Yeah.”

    “What were you singing?” 

    “Lullaby... I don’t remember the words though.”

    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, thinking of all the things he’d been taught by his own mother that he couldn’t remember, and tears sprang to his eyes, “I’m so sorry, Katara.”

    “Don’t be sorry,” she assured him, “It’ll come back to me one day, it’s almost there. Like a canker sore, just at the tip of my tongue.” 

    She turned away from him and he studied her profile, the slope of her nose, her pillowy lips, the edge of her chin. 

    “Zuko...” she whispered, quickly turning to look back at him and leaning in, “do you see the ants too? They’re coming out of the cabinets.”

    He frowned and examined the splintered cabinets, looking for ants amongst the swirling wood grain, “no ants,” he said, ripping his eyes away.

    “That’s what I thought. They can’t really touch me because they’re not really real.”

    He slid his eyes over to her, and she had balled her fists up.

    “Maybe we should go back to the room and lay down.”

    He rolled onto his stomach and slowly raised himself from the ground, cautious to upset his already sloshing stomach. Once he was standing he held his hand out and helped her from the ground. She took his hand but made no move to get up when he tugged on her arm. 

    “Katara?”

    “Sorry, the ants... they started singing back to me. Can’t you hear it?”

    “You’re scaring me,” he said, whipping his head behind him to look for phantom ants again, “please.”

    She bit her lower lip, and then nodded. He pulled her up to her feet, stumbling as she stood.

    They made it to the stairs, leaning on the countertops and walls, but when they got there, Katara stopped abruptly. He dropped his arm from around her and sat on the first step, running his hands over his head.

    He had been so sure there were only six steps earlier but now the staircase went up and up, into a churning black whirlpool. 

    “I can’t climb that,” Katara moaned.

    “We don’t have to climb it, we just... walk up.”

    “I think I forgot how to walk.”

    Zuko laughed, and fell back onto the stairs, clutching at his concave stomach and gasping for breath.

    “Don’t laugh at me,” Katara cried.

    “I’m not,” he said, recovering, “I think I forgot too.” He looked up behind him and shrugged, “I guess we could crawl.”

    “Crawl,” she followed his line of sight up the unending flight of stairs, “that could work”

    Zuko twisted, and began his four legged ascent, glancing behind him every movement to ensure Katara was following him into the abyss.

    Except, he realized once he’d counted six steps climbed, it was not an abyss. The stairwell did end, rather conventionally in the hallway, and though it was dark, he could still make out the walls and carpet.

    “It’s ok, Katara, you’re almost done!”

    Using the wall for stability, he managed to stand again.

    His head went through a layer of clouds though. Ice clung to his forehead and he looked out at the flowing haze of fluffy clouds around him, and above him a vast and clear sky of stars.

    He blinked and he was in the hallway once more, Katara standing at the doorway to their room looking back at him.

    He shook his head and met her at the door.

    They both took hold of the handle and met eyes before pushing it open.

    He didn’t know what to expect. The window was still covered by a blanket and the room was dark. 

    “We can just sit in the dark,” Katara said, stepping into the room.

    “No, I can light the candle.”

    “I don’t really want to sit in the dark, but... starting a fire right now...”

    “It’ll be ok, I can still... I....”

    How had he lit the candle before? He wasn’t sure anymore, in his mind he saw himself striking a match, gold embroidery in red tapestries illuminating in warm light, but he’d never lit a match here. His head began to pound and he rubbed the space between his eyebrows to soothe his frown.

    “I need to lay down,” he said.

    They left the door open to allow what natural light had traveled through the bend of the hallway to reach them, and that, along with that which worked its way through the cracks in their blanket curtain, was their only light. 

    The bed sank beneath and he threw his arms out to catch himself as the feeling of falling overtook him. 

    “Soft bed,” he reminded himself and brought his arms back to his torso as Katara lay down next to him.

    “I can’t believe this has lasted so long,” she whispered once they were settled, “it can’t last forever.”

    “No... no... it can’t,” he replied in a weak voice as he watched monstrous faces form in the blank void of ceiling above the bed. 

    “We won’t be like this forever,” she assured herself again.

    “We’ll take a nap, and everything will be ok again,” 

    Katara wrapped her arm around his waist and snuggled up against his side, resting her head on his chest. She sighed and nestled her head against him, before mumbling “it’s like your heartbeat is the sound of the world, you know, it’s everything, the undercurrent right?”

    “What?”

    “A heartbeat... in the plants,” she yawned and giggled, “in the ants too.”

    He tried to listen for the world’s heartbeat, but he could only hear his own. 

    “Plants have heartbeats?” he asked, after some more time had slipped away from him. 

    “Everything does.”

    The faces in the dark above him smiled cruelly, laughing at her, at him. 

    He closed his eyes but they were still there.

    “It won’t be like this forever,” he whimpered, and hugged her tightly to his side.

    “No... not forever. Everything changes eventually.”

Chapter Text

    Katara awoke to the sound of birds calling forth the dawn, and when she opened her eyes to the cold gray morning the world had finally stopped spinning. Zuko was sitting at the edge of the bed, watching her with a small smile that grew as she pushed the blankets away from her legs and scooted over to sit next to him. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

    “I’m surprised you woke up so early,” he whispered, taking her hand and holding it against his thigh. 

    “We went to sleep early.”

    “How do you feel?”

    She did a mental inventory of her limbs, her stomach, her vision, and then responded quietly, “nothing’s moving anymore, but that was... awful and I still feel... weird.”

    Zuko hummed his agreement and squeezed her hand.

    “How’s your stomach,” she asked, remembering the times he’d almost vomited throughout their foray into drug use. 

    “Better. I’m glad I didn’t actually throw up,” he chuckled softly, “not that there’s anything in my stomach to throw up.”

    She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her free hand, “and we lost a full day of looking for food.”

    “It’ll be ok, we can go back to the river and get more crayfish.”

    She grimaced, and looked over to the wall of their room that blocked her vision of the river, “it was getting muddy... not many crayfish where there aren’t rocks.” 

    He squeezed her hand again, “we’ll find something else.”

    She snuck a look from her periphery to survey his expression. He was eerily calm, the corner’s of his mouth edging toward a smile even as he sat staring out the uncovered window.

    “You took the blanket off the window? When?”

    “It took me forever to fall asleep, and...” he smiled and his eyes went far away, “I was watching the stars. They looked like smears of paint against a purple canvas....” He shook his head and mumbled,  “sorry, that’s weird.”

    “It’s not weird,” she assured him, “I just... can’t imagine enjoying that... at all.”

    “The stars?”

    “Yeah. The drugs... I felt so... out of control. Like, if something had happened we’d have been defenseless and nothing made sense, it was like I kept stumbling into new... I don’t know. I think it would have... swallowed me up.” 

    Zuko stroked the back of her hand for a moment and then said, “I felt that way at first, but once I calmed down it was... I can’t describe it... but I feel lighter now. I realized how lucky I am to be alive, and with you, and... I’m terrible with words, Katara, but... it feels like something connected. Some part of my brain that had been broken and I’m... not better, but... I know it’s going to heal, does that make sense?”

    “Not really,” she admitted.

    Zuko pressed his lips together and then whispered, “it feels like I finally have some breathing room.”

    “Did you not before?”

    He smiled, but his hollow eyes sought out the window again, and she swallowed as anxiety crawled up her spine. His voice was faint when he answered, “no. Not for a long time at least.” 

    She ran her front teeth over the ledge of dry skin on her bottom lip as she tried to make sense of his headspace. She whispered, “I’m a little worried you’re still feeling the drugs, Zuko.”

    Sun broke through the morning clouds and illuminated the spot on his thigh where their hands were clasped. He broke from his reverie and smiled, “no, just... well, I can’t for sure, but I just feel like I got a new perspective on my life. Now, I feel a sense of relief, I guess. It doesn’t make sense to me as much now that I’m sobering up, but I’m kind of glad we ate it.”

    She studied his face intently, looking for some sign he had been permanently altered by whatever they had taken, but he looked calm, and handsome as always, and instead of a permanent frown, his mouth seemed locked in a faint smile as he watched her inspection. 

    After a minute she just shrugged and said, “I guess I am too then, if it helped you... but I still think we should burn the rest.”

    He leaned in, watching her eyes as she sat stone still but receptive, pecked an unreciprocated kiss against her dry mouth, and then retreated, “let’s go try to forage for something to eat before I change my mind about being glad, though.”

    She snorted, feeling comforted to find the practical man she’d been traveling with peeking out of this familiar stranger.

    “Back to the river?”

    “There’s probably nothing left in this neighborhood,” he mused, “might as well. Maybe we can scrounge up something for breakfast?”

    “Is it breakfast if it’s the only meal you eat in a day?” she grumbled as she began to dress.

    He poked his head out of a holey, but clean, sage tunic, “it’s a hopeful title, you know, in case we get lucky enough to find lunch.”

    She shook her head, her suppressed laugh buffeting just shy of painfully against the roof of her mouth, and she felt some more of her anxiety melt away, “I like that, makes it sound purposeful too. We’re not just eating whatever we can find, we’re having breakfast.”

    “Here,” Zuko said, stopping her as she reached for the bag, “I feel good today, let me carry the bag for at least a little.” When he read the reproach in her face he smiled charmingly and cajoled, “I’ll give it to you as soon as my ankle feels even a bit uncomfortable.”

    She rolled her eyes, handing over the bag, “fine, but I know you’re lying.”

    “I’m not lying.”

    “Don’t start. You better hand it over.”

    He took her hand and they left the house. As they stepped out into the golden sunlight, she noticed that the grass looked greener than usual.

    The muddy riverbed supplied little chance to attempt crayfishing, and Katara’s stomach had surpassed aching to hang in sullen silence in her sunken stomach. It was an unyielding emptiness that weighed her steps down, and she barely lifted her legs as she slowly trudged forward. The sun was almost directly above them, and she sweat water she couldn’t afford to lose as the temperature climbed with it. 

    “I bet we could make a raft,” Katara sighed, her sock clad feet throbbing as she shuffled around a gnarled root that had crept toward the bank. 

    “That’d be nice,” Zuko mused from behind her.

    “We could just use the downed branches from the storm too, they’re everywhere. And then some springy live twigs to secure them together.”

    “We could hang a net off the back too, make it with twigs too, like a basket.”

    Neither of them deviated from their path though. All she could actually manage to do was keep moving forward, but she imagined the glorious raft they could build, how easy it would make traveling, how nice it would be for her poor feet. Her mind was as eaten up with thoughts of their potential luxury as her muscles were with fatigue, and only the fantasy could soothe them.

    She was halfway to the ocean in her mind when Zuko gasped, “Katara! I think those are berries?” 

    She glanced behind her and then followed the line of his pointing finger into the shaded cover of the forest, “I don’t see them,” she murmured.

    Spurred to action, Zuko moved away from the softer soil beside the river and began delicately navigating the rocks, twigs, and roots that littered the forest floor. 

    She followed him, but hovered at the edge of the woods, watching as he charged toward a glowing break in the tree cover. She was smiling until he lurched forward and fell.

    When he went down, she assumed he had tripped, and while she stepped forward, concerned, she did not run after him until he didn’t get back up.

    “Zuko?” she called out while running, crushing branches and sharp pine cones beneath her as she used some hidden reserve of energy to make it to his side as quickly as possible. 

    When she found him, he was on a flat patch of dirt, and there was only a spotty covering of grass to have tripped him. She dropped down next to him and turned him over.

    Zuko’s normally pale face was devoid of color, and his forehead was lightly damp with sweat when she pressed her hand to it. She tugged the straps of the backpack off his shoulders, and struggled with the weight of his unconscious body as she tried to lay him out on his back. 

    She was panting by the time she had managed to get him flat, and she leaned against his torso, fighting off the black tunneling at the edge of her vision. 

    She sat with him for so long that she had to check his pulse and breathing three times to remind herself that he was still alive. 

    She saw the berries as the light of the sun moved and shone on the blue clusters as if some spirit had chosen to illuminate them just for her. Her legs were too weak to stand and she crawled over to them. When she recognized the shining, tight blue skin of the mountain berries they had made into jam the summer before, she sobbed dryly.

    She went into a trance. She shoved the first few handfuls into her mouth greedily, eating stems or small pests without thinking about the crunch. They were so sweet she sucked her face in as if they were sour, and went back for more before she had even finished chewing. In the back of her mind she knew she should save some for Zuko, but some force in her kept her eating as if she were no longer in control of her own body. 

    Her hands were stained a deep purple before she managed to stop.

    She looked at the practically empty bush and then back over to Zuko, and immediately guilt flooded her eyes with tears and turned her stomach. She went back to the bush, finding a smaller one behind it and collected the berries she could, no matter how small they were. Combined with what she had not devoured on the first bush, she had enough that Zuko’s share was only a little shy of what she had stolen. She stashed them in her shirt, holding it up to make a basket, and shakily walked back over to his still form. 

    She dropped on her knees beside him, and mashed a berry between her fingers. She rubbed it under his nose and over his lips, and then tried to squeeze the rest of the juice into the seam of his closed mouth. 

    She sat back and waited. Every second that ticked by added to the mounting fear that sloshed in her stomach and set her nerves on edge. The gravity of their situation came into clearer focus as she watched his peaceful face. 

    Then, his tongue darted out, sweeping across his bottom lip, leaving only a faint tint of purple in its wake. 

    She sobbed but it came out as a moan, she grasped onto his shirt, lowering her head until his chest supported its weight. 

    “Katara,” he grumbled, his voice heavy with sleep, “what happened?”

    “I don’t know,” she cried, “you just fell,” and dark circles formed in his green tunic as her tears soaked into the light fabirc, “you’ve been unconscious for almost a half an hour now, at least.”

    Zuko stayed quiet, but caressed her back. She relaxed into his touch, her breathing evening out and her sense returning. 

    “I brought you some berries,” she sniffled, and lifted her head.

    Zuko closed his eyes and she scowled as she watched him suppress a smile.

    “What? What could be funny right now? I’ve been sitting here wondering if you’d ever wake up again!” She pushed away from him and the berries in her shirt spilled out onto the ground.

    He sobered and tried to sit, but he fell back, bringing his hand up to rest on his forehead, “I think I remember what happened now.”

    She started plucking the berries back up from the ground and collecting them into her shirt again, shame burning the tips of her ears.

    “I moved too fast and everything just went black. I think I just passed out.”

    “ Just passed out?”

    “As opposed to tripping on something, or getting hurt, not that it isn’t serious.” 

    He tried to sit again and she bit out, “don’t.”

    He laid back down and she brought him the berries again, saying, “here”, and holding one above his mouth.

    She put it to his lips and he took it, and they repeated the movements until she finished the pile.

    “Can you sit up now?”

    “I think so.”

    He sat up successfully and they stayed in the dirt, Katara’s mind whirling with everything that had and could go wrong, and how utterly alone and ill prepared they were.

    “I’m sorry,” he whispered, snapping her out of her catastrophizing, and she blinked. 

    “Why are you sorry?”

    “For worrying you,”

    “Oh, Zuko,” she sighed, and shot forward to launch herself into him, sending them both back to the earth, “I wasn’t mad, I was just scared, I’m sorry. I love you, I love you so much, I was so scared, and I... I ate so many berries I just went crazy and if there hadn’t been a second bush I would have died of shame.”

    “Ah. I can tell, your face is purple, that’s why I smiled.”

    Her hand flew to cover her mouth and then she dropped it, aware that there was no point in feeling embarrassed in front of him at this point. 

    “I’ve never felt... so out of control of everything . Between the drugs and the hunger... I’ve never even been hungry like this before. I put one berry in my mouth and it was like... like I was in a trance,” she shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Sometimes, in the winter, we would go a week or two without much to eat, but never, never , like this.”

    Zuko sidled up beside her, draping an arm over her shoulder and pulling her flush against his side. The warmth of him soothed her rolling stomach but it was his scent that calmed her the most. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smoky remnants of fires past and the musky scent of him that underlaid it.

    “After my mom died,” he started, moving his head close enough that his hair tickled her ear, “I stopped eating for a while. Not because there was no food just because... I don’t think I wanted to die but I... couldn’t choose living either. I didn’t feel it then though. I wasn’t hungry. I was numb. It got so bad my dad... he held me down and forced me to eat and it was like my body realized what it had been missing and I couldn’t stop eating until I couldn’t move and I was in so much pain.” He kissed her shoulder and said, “your body wants you to live despite it all. It’s hardwired to. Even if you’d eaten all the berries, I would have understood.” 

    She sniffled, rubbed the itch out of her nose, and nodded, unconvinced, “ok.”

    “Ok?”

    “I still feel like a monster,” she admitted, meaning her head to rest atop his, “and your dad is an asshole, Zuko.”

    “That’s the understatement of the century,” he muttered, “but that time it worked out, I guess.”

    “I hate him.”

    “I know. I get it.”

    “You don’t?”

    He shifted away from her and whispered, “he’s my dad.”

    Katara felt a rock form in her gut, and she pulled herself up from the forest floor, brushing the leaves and sticks from her pants, “I didn’t... I know, Zuko,” she sighed, “let’s keep moving.”

    She started without him, taking the back pack and following their trail back to the river, trying to hold it together.

    Katara wasn’t immune to the beauty of the woods yet, even in her hunger and desperation, the gilded light of evening dancing off the gently wavering leaves still caused her chest to swell with awe. The widening river had shepherded them around the base of the mountains, but as it bent toward the sea, it had opened up a wildflower dusted meadow and she had wandered away from the muddy shore into the tall grass, brushing her hands along the tips that reached up to meet her. She grabbed a yarrow stalk with a white fluffy head and gnawed at the end to curb her hunger.

    Zuko, who had stayed dutifully, but silently, by her side copied her and she turned to ask, “should we make camp here?”

    He frowned and looked off toward the tree topped mountain peaks, “I know it hasn’t rained in a while, but I don’t want to sleep outside on the mountain side of this river ever again.”

    Images of the flood flashed in her mind, and she thought of her mother pulling her from the waves, her heart seized.

    “I hadn’t thought of that,” she shuddered and watched the flowing current from the safety of land, and felt compelled to ask him, “I meant to ask before... did you pull me out of the river that night?”

    Some emotion flitted across his face so fast she couldn’t catch it, and she waited with growing impatience as he looked off at the horizon quietly.

    “You said your mom did,” he said heavily, weighed down by some secret hesitation.

    “My mom is dead,” she reminded him shortly.

    “It wasn’t me, Katara,” he sighed. 

    She wasn’t sure what she had expected to feel, mostly she had anticipated him telling her that he had been the one to drag her out from under the falls, but she hadn’t expected to feel the creeping unease that worked its way from the depths of her soul, up her spine, and down every tingling nerve ending.

    “I didn’t swim out.”

    She knew she had been pulled. She had felt the pain in her armpits, the friction of water breaking on her face as she was forced through the powerful current. 

    “It was too dark... I don’t know what happened, but,” he stepped toward her, offering her his hand which she ignored, struck still as stone by something she couldn’t name, something she knew, but had forgotten, something important that was just out of reach, “Katara?” He walked over to her, and placed his hands on her shoulders, “what’s going on?”

    “I can’t explain it...” the wind shifted and the loose stands that had freed themselves from the braids at her temples blew across her forehead.

    The scent hit her then. Pulled her from the unknown into the awful truth of the world.

    The putrid, saccharine scent of death blew into the valley, all too familiar, and though faint it brought the sting of bile to the back of her throat.

    “Do you smell that?’ Zuko asked, pulling his hands back, tilting his head up toward the wind, and narrowing his eyes. 

    She didn’t answer, and took the first few steps in the direction of the smell.

    “Let me guess,” he drawled, but his voice was too tense to have any humor in it, “you want to go check it out?”

Chapter Text

Part 1

    She’d had him. She’d had his sleeve clenched between the fingers of her left hand. Her right had stayed firm on her katana, fighting off the horde that had so quickly descended upon them. She’d had him and then she’d felt the tug, felt the fabric slip, the rough linen dragging across her calloused hand and flowing out of her grasp like water. He’d screamed—

    Suki tightened her arms around her knees and buried her head, rubbing her forehead against the coarse weave of her pants as if she could scrub her mind clean of the memory. 

    Aang, Sokka, Katara... all lost. 

    She knew she should leave her dark alcove, should be out looking to see if Katara was still alive, but a timorous snake whispering in the back of her mind, begging to stay safe, kept her rooted to the floor of the cobweb draped closet where she had awoken from a fugue state.

    She couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there, only that when she’d heard Sokka scream the world had gone black. Something had woken her, she was sure, but she wasn’t prepared to face the world, to see how long she’d been hiding, to confront Aang and Sokka’s bodies amongst the throng of undead that would be waiting for her if she left. She imagined moving to stand, but her guilt weighed down on her so mightily that she could not force herself from her spot. 

    She briefly considered starving to death in the closet in order to avoid the reality that she’d been right there, and unable to do anything to save the people she loved; and that she was alone, utterly and completely alone, for the first time in her entire life. 

    Pain seared in her forehead and she hissed, shooting her head up and clapping her hand over the warm spot where she had rubbed the skin raw. She hadn’t even realized she was still rubbing her head on her pants. 

    The pain had been the only thing to cut through the numbness that had wrapped itself around her in condolence to her loss, so she jabbed a fingernail into the fresh skin exposed by her rug burn and a sob escaped her like a dry heave. 

    She could move again. 

    Her legs wobbled when she finally got them under her again and she leaned into the cool wall of the dark closet to hold herself up. The tessen holstered at her side dug into her waist, and she pressed into the feeling, grimacing.

    She felt a rush of energy, and began groping the wall, searching for the door.

    She kicked something, unable to see where she was going, and it skittered across the floor. The sharp twang of metal hitting metal shocked her and she excitedly realized it was her katana. She had not lost it, though she had almost forgotten about it entirely. 

    She ventured away from the wall, sweeping the floor gently with her foot to try to find the sword again. She nudged something, and bent down, feeling the fabric wrapped hilt once she made contact. She closed her eyes as she unbent and held her katana aloft victoriously. The blade scraped the wall in front of her and she reached out, feeling the smooth finished wood of a door.

    The metal of the handle was cool and round, and she grasped it, holding tight and pressing her ear to the door. She listened for the telltale moaning of the undead but was only met with silence. 

    Suki slowly opened the door, peeking her head out once it was cracked enough.

    The harsh sun of midday bounced off the fine dust that had pushed into the home through the broken picture window in the living room. It floated on the stagnant air and swirled around her as her heavy breathing interrupted its path toward settling to the ground. 

    She poked her hand out, catching some of the grit in her palm. She examined it for a moment, rubbing it between her fingers and bringing it closer to her face for inspection, before dropping her hand and stepping out of the closet. 

    It was entirely too much dust. She looked around, and found that only the furniture exposed to the broken window was coated in the stuff, and then followed the flow of it out to the town.

    The air outside was slightly hazy, and when she managed to get to the front door to step out onto the street, she could feel the dust coating her mouth.  

    She spit, and pulled her shirt to hang off of the tip of her nose to protect her breathing.

    A light breeze floated down the street, picking up the white dust and sending it back into the air. She watched intently, unsure what to make of the silvery covering that had settled over the town.

    She felt a swell of panic as she wondered how long she had been in that room, but reassured herself, you can only survive without water for three days, Suki, it can’t have been more than that . Instead of feeling soothed, she just transitioned to feeling a panicky urgency to find water. 

    She stumbled along the dusty road back to the paved main road of the small village and was greeted by five ornately dressed infected women, their white face paint creasing horrifically over their mottled, graying skin. They came for her, leaving gouges in the dust on the road as they shuffled across it, snarling. The long sleeves of their bloody silk robes left their own trails as they reached for her, stumbling. 

    She gave them the mercy of a swift second death, taking their heads off and watching remorsefully as their once perfectly coiffed hair spilled out of its clips when their heads hit the ground. 

    She squatted next to one of them, cupping her cheek and staring into her dead eyes before dipping her hand into the squelching stump of her neck, and covering her hand in the thick, black blood that trickled out. She stared at her hand as she stood, and then smeared it down her cheeks and over her shirt. She went to each corpse, methodically covering herself in their blood as scent camouflage. 

    Suki stood from the last one, and her eyes swept up the street. Her heart stalled, sputtered, seized. 

    From the street across from her, leading back to the road they had all started from, there were two sets of footprints.

    Katara and Zuko , her heart sang, and she started after them.

    Suki wasn’t sure how far she was behind them. She’d followed them from the village into the woods, but she’d been walking most of the day without so much as a sign she was gaining on them. Night had begun to fall, the leaves above her stealing most of the light and obscuring their tracks even more than the forest had been before. She wanted to run, wanted to chase after them at full speed, but it would have been too easy to lose their path.

    She flinched, to her right there was a cacophony of breaking branches and rustling leaves, and while she hoped it was some animal, she knew better. She couldn’t stop though, not until she had no other choice, she couldn’t risk losing any more light. She hurried her steps, following the broken branches and sliced bushes as best she could.

    When she heard the groan from behind her she knew she had to stop. She turned, her bloody, dulling, katana going up instinctually, but not fast enough. 

When he had been alive the man must have been a fearsome warrior but his Earth Kingdom Army uniform now hung off of his skeletal frame. Yet, he was still almost a foot taller than her, and her blade had only sunk into his chest. 

    He lunged, shoving her katana through his rib cage. She tried to back up her but her foot hit a root, tripping her. She fell, hitting another root with her head, and lay stunned for a millisecond before the undead soldier began tugging at her leg, pulling her toward his gnashing teeth. 

    She ripped her leg back. Her foot slid out of her boot and she was thrown back by her own momentum. She scrambled away, ducking behind a large oak tree. 

    She took her tessen from her belt, deftly opening the metal tipped fans, and stepping into practiced formation. She felt the familiar hollow ache for the women who had stood by her just like this what seemed like a lifetime ago. The undead burst past the tree, barreling forward and she hesitated. If he kept running she could go back to the path. She might still be able to find their trail if she went back now. 

    He stopped, sniffing, and slowly turned. 

    He ran for her. 

    She waited, holding out until the last second, and then stepped away just in time for him to run headlong into the tree. Unhurt, but dazed, the creature stepped back, and when he came for her again she was ready. 

    She kept stepping back though, dodging his lunges, and by the time she had severed his brainstem it was pitch black, and she had no idea where she was anymore. 

    More branches cracked, coming from all around her, and she swallowed, reaching for a tree she could climb.

    A sudden burst of harsh bright light blinded her, and she threw her hand up to protect her eyes. 

    “See you did a real good job of taking care of our friend there,” the accented voice of someone from the Fire Nation drawled, “bet you could be a big help for us, whatcha say, little lady?” 

    A chorus of snickers erupted from around her and she dropped her arm to try to see them but the light was too bright. She flashed her eyes down to her sword still sticking out of the corpse on the ground, and then scanned the dark outer edge of the flight’s glow, counting how many pairs of feet she could see, trying to prepare herself to be attacked. 

    “I said,” the man took a step forward, his light lifting to shine down on her, blackening everything as she shut her eyes in defense, “whatcha think?” 

    He grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her bicep.

    Suki twisted her arm to release herself from his grasp, and threw a punch blindly into his chest. Pain shot from her knuckles to her elbow as she slammed into his ribs. He grunted and stepped back, dropping his flashlight to the ground with a heavy thud. 

    She launched herself forward, following his groan, and sent the sharp edge of her tessen into his stomach, stabbing him shallowly through his shirt and then slashing her second across his neck. He gurgled and whined wheezily. She dropped down, grabbing the flashlight.

    A bullet came screaming into the night, and she hit the ground, throwing the flashlight away from the muzzle shot. She crawled through the dirt, seeking out the armed assailant, but something grabbed her leg. 

    The men fell on her, punching her in her head and stomach, and tying her arms behind her back. She went to scream, opening her mouth so wide the sides tore, but it had been so long since she’d spoken, and her throat was so dry, that nothing came out.

    She awoke thrashing around to protect herself from the beating that had already rendered her unconscious, and then lay quietly in the near dark, reacquainting herself to the feeling of being in a moving vehicle. The last one she had been on had been the boat that ushered her away from her life on Kyoshi. 

    The truck was something completely different.

    The sun shone through the rents in the canvas cover and, once her queasy stomach settled, allowed her to see the gray benches on either side of where she lay on the ground. Behind the tears she could see the blur of green as they left behind the trees and her stomach turned. She scowled and ripped her eyes away. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been out, how far they’d traveled, or where they were headed. She could imagine why they had grabbed her, but she needed to know where she was so she could get back. Even if the chances of finding Katara’s trail again were slim, and the chances of her still being at the end of it were slimmer, she had to try.

    She clenched her stomach and sat up without using her bound arms. She swiveled to see behind her, and calmed when there was no window connecting her part of the truck to theirs.

    They were stupid to leave me here alone , she thought, smiling grimly and starting to formulate a plan.

    She backed herself against the bench, the sharp edge digging into her shoulder blades as she braced against it to push up from the ground.

    Suki grunted in pain as she lifted herself and then sat on the grooved metal seat, breathing heavily through her nose. She swallowed hard and shimmied to the edge of the bench, turning her body so that she could place the binding at her wrists to the jagged corner. She began slowly sawing through the ropes, trying unsuccessfully to avoid cutting her palms on the metal on her down stroke.

    Every second that had passed while she remained captive was an icy breath on her neck and by the time she had freed her abused wrists, the specter of her distance with Katara bound her to her seat in silence. She sucked at the welling blood on her palm, her mind a blank page waiting for a plan that would not come. 

    She only stirred when she felt herself sliding on the bench, pulled from her reverie by the lurch in her stomach as the truck began to come to a stop. The light was nearly lost, and her body ached from hunger, injury, and the need to relieve herself.