"You- you- I'm- what- WHY?" The words, sputtered and violent, contain the slightest tinge of fear, and Zuko thinks for a moment that he would be amused, if he could find the capacity to be amused.
"You have something that I want," and Katara has a disturbing, discomfiting sense of déja vu. This is them, Katara and Zuko, on the most basic level, the back-and-forth. Bargaining. Give-and-take. Compromise, even.
Well, not so much compromise. Each of them is far too stubborn for that, as she well knows.
"Whatever it is- NEVER!!!!!" Still incoherent, Zuko notes, a little critical of the melodramatic declarations. Not to mention the punctuation he is certain would be necessary to accurately convey the sentiment. The melodrama isn't the worst, he thinks, nor is the punctuation- no, it's the damn familiarity of the situation. They've been here before, and he can't imagine this will go any better than it did the first time.
"Don't you even want to know?" Katara wants to giggle, but this is serious; rather more so than she had first thought, actually. Yes, it was serious when he tied her to a tree and offered up her mother's necklace (for a fairly hefty price), but they are two very different people now, with a very different relationship. Everything is different now. Katara is well aware of the slippery slope onto which she has stepped.
The firebender not two feet away is quite aware as well.
"No! Well-" Zuko finds the indecision infuriating, and he wants to snarl, but there is enough excessive emotion already, and he thinks (rightly) that Katara would not appreciate him adding to it. What Katara would and would not appreciate is not precisely at the top of his list of concerns at the moment, but the more malleable she is the quicker this will be. (This goes for him as well, but Zuko is not a man often described as malleable and hasn't got the self-respect to expect such flexibility of himself anyway.)
"My honour!" This time Katara cannot help but giggle. She continues, waving a hand around wildly. "I must capture the Avatar to-"
"Do you really think this is funny?" Zuko glares at her (his eyes are so narrow she wonders how he can see) and Katara merely grins gleefully.
"Yes, I do, Zuko," she tells him cheerfully, as she leans in close to him. "But you know, it's not just my honour."
"What, is this some incredibly uncreative revenge?" he growls, straining a little against the shackles cuffing his wrists behind the tree, and, in doing so, nearly pressing his torso against hers. Katara tuts, a hand stroking his arm; there is a flash of heat that goes straight to Zuko's loins and he suddenly finds himself very, very interested in her next words.
"Well, yes. But also I wanted to rub your nose in the realization that, unlike last time, I have better hair than you." Zuko decides he must be dreaming, because as....off as this was to begin with, it has gotten even worse. Off-er, perhaps. Then Katara turns- a lock of her hair brushes his neck and he catches her scent and he curses being young and hot-blooded and hormone-ridden- and walks away, and Zuko couldn't be more confused.
"Are you just- leaving?!" His shouting is barely more coherent than it had been earlier, and he is no less scornful of himself.
"Yep!" He hears her laugh brightly as he watches her (swaying, sensual, sexy) form retreat into the shadows, and Zuko wishes it was a dream, because waking up from a dream would at least leave his hands free.