A/N: A supposed to be short but ended up not so short story about Loss and Love. Of course it is Zutara. I wrote this in the a time frame of 24 hours, and their probably won't be another part unless you guys really really want one.

Disclaimer: I do not own ATLA.

Part One: Katara

Katara's father had been declared MIA for an entire week now, Sokka had left her the day before that to enroll in a university an hour and a half drive away, and Katara was left to her own devices in an entirely too empty household manned by a withering Gran Gran.

Everyone in her high school somehow managed to know about her father and all she received when she went were lingering looks and apologetic smiles. After a week of suffering through and eating lunch outside under the spring blooming trees she made the prompt decision to remain home from her public education to await any sort of news on her father.

Gran Gran had Pakku to talk with and Sokka had Suki, where did this leave Katara? Who did this leave her with? Of course Aang and Toph would come visit her after school, but she'd never felt able to voice her problems to them no matter how many times they'd asked her to. They stopped coming after a couple days of Katara greeting them at the door, but then leaving it at that. After a week of sulking about and doing the work that Ty Lee had brought to her Pakku insisted that she go back the next day. She spent her last hours of peace thinking about her father.

Katara knew he'd felt a keen sense of duty when he enlisted in the US Army and was immediately deployed to Iraq, she knew this because she felt that same keen sense deep in her all the time. As she lay on the floor in the echoing silence of her dusty home she felt unfulfilled and overall useless.

She was drowning herself in her father's favorite dress shirt (it was his favorite because it was her mother's favorite and now it was Katara's as well) when there was a rapt knock on the door.

She pulled herself off the floor after a few seconds and walked to the entry way, her feet dragging and heart filling with a mixture of hope and dread. Gran Gran and Pakku had left an hour ago to make the much needed trip to the grocery store.

Katara carefully opened the door and nearly cried out as she saw who was standing there.

A soldier.

Not her father.

Her hand flew over her mouth as she saw the car customary to the army waiting in front of her old brick mailbox. She could feel the soldiers eyes searching her appearance and swallowed back the embarrassment she felt. She must have looked half-crazed in her father's shirt covering her shorts, and three days unbrushed hair.

"Miss Kuruk? I am sorry to inform.." Katara's eyes filled with tears as she only vaguely listened to him talk. It wasn't until the stale air around her began closing in that she slipped past the soldier and puked into her Gran Gran's bushes.

When Pakku and Gran Gran returned from the grocery store minutes later they found Katara on her knees in front of the soldier with an iron grip on the poor man's sleeve and all the neighbors on their lawns trying to look like they weren't staring.

Pakku had to carefully pull Katara away from the man and into the house away from the prying eyes of the neighbors and pitying tilt of the old soldier's mouth.

A few days later she was sitting in her back yard after the funeral as old friends and distant family filtered in and out of the house with flowers and casseroles. Sokka and Gran Gran were good with dealing with the guests, but Katara had taken the silent route.

Only once did someone crack open the door to see her.

"Katara, someone wants to talk to you." Hours ago she'd taken off her mother's necklace, and pushed it against her palm. It slipped out of her finger's then and clattered between her shaking knees to the soft grass below her. Their was a dark imprint in the middle of her hand where the carving had been.

"Okay." His large hand landed on her shoulder and she could feel the slight tremble in his fingers; he'd idolized their father.

"I will tell him you're not feeling up to talking to anyone." Then his hand was gone and the door closed and she was left alone again in the obnoxiously sunny weather.

"It's going to be okay," she whispered to herself.

She stayed out there until the sun had set and the buzz of the house had gone silent. She hadn't cried since the day the soldier came. Somehow she felt all dried up.

The first day she went back to school she'd been gone for nearly three weeks, and as expected the stares and whispers had amplified. Most of her teachers were giving her free A's, and she had somehow managed to avoid the school counselor almost all day.

But the counselor was waiting by the front of the school for her when the last bell rang. Katara tried to ignore the looks the surrounding students gave her as the nice old lady pulled Katara to the side to tell her about this great support group she'd talked to her Gran Gran about. She threatened to pull her aside again tomorrow if she didn't at least give it a try.

Which is where Katara found herself now.

Standing outside the wooden door to an old musty church and listening to the whispers of voices she could catch coming through the thick cedar. The meeting had started five minutes ago, and every time Katara reached for the large brass handle of the door she imagined every person in the room turning and looking at her. People that were probably going through worse than her. People who wanted, needed, to be here. With one final squeeze of the pendant wrapped around her fingers she pulled open the creaky door just enough to slip in. Her knuckles twisted around the worn blue fabric of her mother's necklace as she thought about how many people she could imagine having it worse than she did. She hadn't been able to make herself fasten it back around her neck since the funeral.

One or two people turned and glanced at her, but the rest remained focused on the person who was talking. She kept her eyes to the ground as she went over to the make shift folding chairs that had been set up and sat down in the only empty one. The woman talking continued and after a few deep breaths Katara looked up and straight into the golden eyes of the person across from her in the circle. A person that she knew. He seemed to be accessing her from her position across from him, in the same dress shirt she'd worn for weeks and her old light pair of hole-y jeans. Her hair was loose around her and her feet were clad in her trustworthy blue converse.

It was Zuko. The most put-together kid in her entire high school. One year older than her and set to graduate at the end of May. He had a grim set to his mouth and unreadable emotion in his eyes.

It was only when the man next to her nudged her elbow that she snapped out of it enough to realize that the woman (that Katara could now safely assume conducted these groups) was talking to her. She looked over to the middle-aged lady who had bags under her eyes and wrinkles on her forehead yet an otherwise kind smile.

"You must be Katara. Your counselor told me you might make an appearance." She felt pink tint her cheeks as she looked down at her feet again.

"I'm sorry I was late."

"Oh that's okay. We were just beginning with some sharing. Would you like to start us off?" Katara's eyes widened at the prospect before she shook her head. She thought maybe if she started talking she wouldn't be able to stop.

"No thank you. I think I'll just listen this time." The woman nodded before someone else quickly volunteered to go first. Though Katara tried her hardest to pay attention she found her mind drifting as it most usually did, but this time the subject was Zuko. The boy everyone always assumed led the perfect life. She thought briefly on the large scar on his face, but immediately pushed that thought away. In middle school, when he came back from summer vacation with it he'd told everyone it was just a firework accident. No one had thought to ask for the entire story, but now she wanted to know.

A few times she'd look up from her hands to find him still staring steadily at her. At first she would stare back as if it to challenge him, but eventually she ended up having to turn away from his unwavering stoicism.

When the meeting ended she nearly ran out the door. She was moving a little too quickly though the gravel parking lot to her car when she tripped over a weed growing from the ground and landed on her knees in the small jutting stones. The necklace flew out of her fingers and a few feet away. She let out a gasp, and her eyes stung a little from the pain as she caught herself on her palms. Soon she felt a gentle hand on the nook of her elbow.

"Are you alright?" She'd never heard the raspy voice directed at her before. She eyed her necklace.

"I'm okay. It just stings a little." She squeaked as Zuko leaned forward in his crouch to inspect her bleeding knees through the holes in her jeans.

"I have a first-aid kit in my car. Don't move." Katara let out an exasperated sigh as he ran off to a car a few down and began digging around in the trunk. After a few seconds Katara sucked in her breath and crawled toward her mother's necklace. She reached for it and pressed the stone against her bloody palm before she heard the slam of Zuko's trunk and he was jogging back toward her.

"I'm really okay. It's not that bad." The first-aid kit slung around his neck in a red canvas bag jostled against his hip. The other people from the support group were walking past her with barely any second glances and getting in their cars. Most of the cars narrowly missed her from where she sat in the gravel and she began scooting back on her butt before she felt his hands slip around her waist and pull her up until she was standing up right on her feet. He led her to the bench right outside the church steps before gesturing for her to sit down.

"It could get infected." He crouched down on his knees in front of her and carefully grabbed the back of her knee. His other hand slipped into the bag and pulled out a bottle and smallish box. Katara's eyes began to water again as he poured rubbing alcohol on a swab of cotton and began dabbing at one of her bleeding knees. She thought on the gentleness of this gesture and the fragility at which he was holding the back of her knee and soon she was sobbing at the absurdity of it.

Even though it was just a scraped up knee he was taking care of, he was taking care of her, and the past few weeks Katara had begun to think that nobody would ever be there to bandage her scrapes and bruises like her mother and father had. There was only so much comfort Sokka and Gran Gran could bring to her.

Zuko, of course, knew that it wasn't her knees she was crying about when he looked up into her watery blue eyes and saw there what he'd felt nearly his entire life.

A deep longing to be taken care of.

He'd seen it when he went to the funeral with his uncle.

He'd seen it at school earlier today.

He'd seen it as soon as she came in through the church doors.

And he saw it now.

"Don't worry."

His warm fingers landed on her clenched palm and pulled apart her bloody fingers. He stared at the pendant in her palm before he pulled a water bottle from the bag and poured it over her hand. Her hand shook as he slowly pulled the necklace from her palm and tied it around his own wrist.

"Just for now."

When he finished by wrapping bandages around her palms and sticking large band-aids to her knees, she had finished her crying and was trying to take deep breaths.

"It's okay…" He seemed to fumble over his words for a few seconds, even blush a little, "to be sad. That's what my uncle always said to me."

His blush intensified as he pushed all his stuff in the bag and moved so he was sitting next to her on the bench. He untied her mother's necklace from his wrist, and then moved her hair to the side so he could tie it around her neck. The pendant felt comfortable as it fell to rest at the hollow of her neck. Katara sniffled.

"But he also says it's okay to be happy." Then he briefly squeezed her fingers with his own around her bandages and conveyed to her with his small gestures and small words what she'd needed to hear the past couple of weeks.

That he'd been through the same thing, and somehow she wasn't alone.

—

Part Two: Zuko

The first time Zuko really noticed her was in middle school.

It was the first day back from summer vacation and his face ached at the reminder his father had left him of his ultimate disappointment and hatred for Zuko. The left side of his face felt like it was burning again when he walked into school in his deep red short-sleeve button up and black shorts (he had to follow Uncle's dress for success policy now that he lived with him). He almost walked back out when he stepped into the first hallway and felt the stares of every fellow pre-teen land on his face, but then Jet walked up to him and clapped him on the back.

"Dude, what happened to your face?" He could see everyone pause what they were doing in order to hear his response and appease their curiosity. The lie was almost too easy.

"Oh, you know… Fourth of July accident." Then everyone turned back to what they were doing and Jet was nodding his head approvingly.

"Nice going, man."

Then he saw her standing across the hallway giving him a look he couldn't quite distinguish and he knew he was lost to her. Her hair was brown and curly and really, really big, and her eyes were so blue he couldn't look away. It was the first time in his life he'd looked at a girl and thought she was beautiful. She smiled at him then and he suddenly understood the butterflies saying. Except this didn't feel like fluttering wings it felt like his insides were turning against him and twisting in his gut. Zuko's fingers landed on the edge of his scar when she turned away. If a girl as pretty as she is can smile at him like that when he had this scar, maybe his father hadn't won.

Maybe Zuko didn't have to be a disappointment.

For the next two years of middle school Zuko's eyes and ears were drawn to her.

Her name was Katara.

Then he got to high school and spent a year without being able to seek her out in the hallways and watch her talk to the strange bald boy, or the short blind girl. Her brother was in the year above him, and sometimes Zuko would look at him and think of her. Her eyes and kind smile were so engraved in his mind and heart that he could look at anyone and see her, so he buried himself in his studies for distraction. He worked harder and harder, and soon he became the aggressively successful student. Sometimes he'd forget about her for a while and his thoughts would revolve back to his father or his mother. Or he would take the time to call Azula at her prestigious boarding school and listen to her talk about her unhappiness, and spend the rest of the day drowning himself in the work his uncle's teashop offered him or the information the textbooks gave him. That year Iroh sent him to his first support group meeting for dealing with loss.

Zuko although at first was adamant that he didn't have a problem, soon grew to love the level of comfort the support group offered.

Somehow it always came back to her face though. He'd only ever listened to her talk to other people and smile at other people, and it was never at him and it was never enough.

When she came up to the high school it got harder for him to push her away from his mind. She would pass him in the hall and give him a smile that only kind people offer to strangers; he was always too slow to smile back and she would disappear down the hallway before he could offer her even a tiny corner of semblance of his feelings towards her. Whatever those feelings were.

He didn't figure out exactly what his feelings were until his junior year when Jet asked her to prom on a bet and she showed up looking more beautiful than anyone he'd ever seen. Zuko spent the entire night watching her slow dance with Jet from his position on the wall and feeling more and more like the failure his father had always thought him to be. Later when he was getting water at the punch table he saw Jet push her roughly against the wall and shove his hand up the hem of her dress. Of course she'd been one of the only girls at prom to wear a short dress, but she looked classier than all of them. Zuko was about to sulk back to his corner when he heard her protest to Jet.

"I said stop it, Jet."

"Oh come on, Tara." Zuko dropped his plastic cup and stepped over it as it clattered to the ground.

"Jet, stop!"

Zuko had his hands clenched in fists and was almost on Jet when she kneed him, hard, in the groin. She glared at him from her spot towering above him and yanked on the hem of her cream colored dress.

"Don't you dare try anything with me, ever again. Got that?" Then she was running out of the dark rented out ballroom and Zuko was left steaming over a groaning Jet. Before he could stop himself he was yanking his oldest friend up by the collar of his suit and slamming him against the wall. He could hear a few people around him mutter in shock before Zuko reeled back and punched him as hard as he could in the nose. Jet's body weight sagged towards the ground and Zuko let him drop as he stared at Jet's bloody nose.

"What the hell, man?" Zuko pulled down the sleeves of his jacket and took deep breaths to stop himself from hitting him again.

"No means fucking no, Jet." He left before any of the supervisors could kick him out.

When he was outside he saw Katara sitting on a bench crying to her brother about Jet.

That she'd told him no.

That he'd touched her anyway.

When Sokka ended his own senior prom by locking Katara in his car and going inside to "talk to Jet", Zuko had to hurry and leave before he could give into his urges to follow Sokka back in and "talk to Jet", as well.

A few minutes later when he showed up at his uncle's tea shop to help close with a severely bruised hand and more anger than he'd ever had for his father, Iroh had to explain to him that he was in love.

—

It was halfway through his senior year when the war became a more prominent topic of discussion.

Everyone in school knew when Katara's father was deployed to Iraq. Zuko made more of a point to find her in between classes and at lunch to see how she was doing. Of course, he never talked to her, but he could tell the bad days from the hopeful days. That's why he knew the exact day that something really bad was happening before anyone had to tell him.

Her father had gone MIA, and anyone could see Katara was falling apart. She stopped making an effort with her clothes and hair, and after a few days started wearing baggy shirts. He caught her staring into her locker and playing with her necklace everyday and soon enough people started looking and smiling sadly at her like her father was already dead. She ate lunch (only a couple bites) under the shaded apple tree outside and ignored the looks of all her prying classmates.

Then one day she didn't show up to school, and Zuko found himself walking to her neighborhood down the street (he'd been to one of Sokka's parties last summer in hopes of finally talking to her, but she wasn't there). He stood in front of the walkway to her front door for nearly ten minutes before he figured out he had no idea what to say to her.

The next day he stopped at the end of her street and watched from a distance as she screamed and screamed at a soldier.

He cried for her into his uncle's shoulder late that night and received a lesson on the reason he felt so much hurt for someone he'd never met.

"It's not for him it's for her."

When you love someone their pain is synonymous to yours.

—

A week later he was walking into her house, but for a reason he had never wanted to.

His uncle had stopped to offer his condolences to the family when Zuko found Sokka and asked for his sister. Her brother seemed almost too tired to be suspicious and gestured for Zuko to wait a moment.

A moment turned into five minutes before Sokka came back and patted him on the shoulder.

"Listen man, she's not feeling very well." Zuko nodded briefly before turning away. Iroh was talking to who Zuko assumed was Katara's grandmother and Zuko made a prompt decision.

"Sokka?" Her brother was still standing there and looking at him when he turned around. "Is she going to be okay?" Sokka's eyes glazed over and looked to the ground.

"She hasn't eaten anything in two days, and all she does is make sure everyone else is okay. But Katara is stronger than most people think." He paused for a second. "She'll be okay." If it were any other situation Sokka would be giving Zuko the proper interrogation, but it wasn't any other situation it was this situation and Sokka and Zuko both didn't have the energy for it.

"I hope so."

Zuko gave one last look around before leaving and waiting outside for his uncle.

—

When the door opened in the old musty church a week later and she walked in he saw something in her eyes.

For the first time in the five years he'd known her and the two years he'd loved her she finally needed him too.

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