Disclaimer: I do not own anything except the Plot.

A/N: It's FINALLY FINALLY here after many days of waiting. I am sorry for the delay; I'm in Norway for my grandfather's funeral (it's over now but we're still here and staying with family) Thank you for waiting for this update, wonderful people.

Backwards

The wind whips her in the face as the ship courses through the water. Saltwater stings her lips, and she inhales. It's different for her, this time. Katara is heading towards the towering Earth Kingdom. She's plotting in it head. Omashu, then to Ba Sing Se.

Katara tugs the water from its shimmering basin. It comes as easily as breathing, now. It's like something is tugging at her core. There is an unspoken secret that Waterbenders don't reveal, and that is this.

Water sings to them. Or at least Katara.

From the day Katara wailed her first, pulled to her mother's breast, she heard the water beneath the Southern Water Tribe singing, welcoming their last into her first.

This is another thing that Katara has never told anyone. They say that one can't remember their birth. It's impossible. But I'll tell you this. Katara remembers the ten minutes after birth, the feeling of lightness and love consuming her. Somewhere buried inside her little newborn soul Katara heard singing. A lullaby by Sedna herself. Katara remembers the look of her mother's face, dark hair plastered to her face, smiling a promise to never let her daughter go.

When Katara was four years old, she became something special. Sucking her thumb, she heard it again. Seated on a crate of her Papa's new ice wine, kicking her tiny feet against the wood, her eyes widened in a rush. "Mama!" she suddenly yelled, spurting from her position on the rough surface. She sprinted to where the older woman was pushing dust out of the house. "Mama! Mama!"

Kya sent a look to her mother-in-law before turning to her daughter.

Katara stopped in her tracks, breathing in and out, before pointing at the ice. "The ground is singing!" she yelled.

Kya had smiled; a nonbender. "I suppose Sedna is happy today."

"I'm not lying!" Katara squealed. "The water is singing to me. Can't you hear it too?"

By then her grin had dropped, and she was looking at her grandmother curiously, head tipped as if she couldn't even ponder it. Kya frowned at her mother-in-law. "Can you say any of the words?"

"She says all I need to do is pull," Katara muttered. Then she had turned to the laundry water. "She's telling me little motions I need to do."

She outstretched her arms suddenly, feeling as though something was connecting inside her teensy frame. And she pulled as hard as she could. As if living, the water in the bucket went livid, trying to leave it. And then Katara yanked, and a strand of silvery water was shimmering in the air.

Kya's face had paled, and then she pulled her daughter to her chest, fear a shadow at the back of her hopeful mind.

Katara thinks of this now, Sedna smiling from beneath. Her heart aches when she pictures her mother, ever young, forever drifting beneath the ice. The young waterbender always imagined Sedna when this happened. She was under the ice as well, unable to claw her way out, but happy with her sealife animals. Is my mother your friend there? Is she happy?

There's a noise behind her as Katara lets the ribbon return to it's inky home. She turns around to find her old friend standing there awkwardly. "Zuko," Katara smiles, the rails of the ship pressing into her back. Her eyelashes brush her dusky cheeks, and her lips turn upwards.

"This is the sister to the ship I chased you on," he mutters, an awkward chuckle leaving his lips.

Katara raises an eyebrow. Then she tips her head back, a momentary laugh sounding from her throat.

When she faces Zuko again, her spirit seems higher. "Waterbending," she smiles, "That's what I've needed."

The firebender looks at her with happiness, relief, and something a little bit different in his eyes. "Do you know where Mai apparently is now?" he says suddenly. "I received word."

"Do tell."

"She joined up with Jun."

"The bounty hunter who thought you and I were a couple?"

"Yeah."

Katara let a long whistle pass her lips. "That would be a terrifying opponent. Knives and paralysis. Sokka and I'd be nothing back then."

"Do you think I would even ask about sending her after you then? She unnerved me enough on her own. I know Mai. She's deadly!"

Katara and Zuko share a laugh that is hollow and full. They have a lot of hollow years to make up for.

Katara parts her lips, inhaling a gust of oxygen. Don't think of Aang, don't think of Aang.

"I didn't love him, you know."

"Who?" Zuko looks at her, eyebrows raised.

"Aang. I didn't love him."

"Why did you marry him, then?"

Katara shrugs. "I couldn't turn him down. Do you know how that would destroy me to see his face if I rejected him?"

"I suppose I understand. Not really, though." He crosses his arms and a familiar scowl drifts onto his features. "I did love Mai. Just not enough."

"I was practically Aang's mother. That's what it felt like. But he saw me as a girl to love. So I had to. It was duty." Her nose crinkles. "The world thought we were meant to be, so we were."

Katara finds that she is closer to Zuko than a few minutes prior. She doesn't want to, but she turns back to the water.

Zuko finds that he, or Katara, have moved closer. Her eyes are so familiar to him. But the Katara in his dreams doesn't lift a candle to the one who stands before him. It's painful, almost. That shade of blue makes him think of oceans, of failure, of lightning heading towards her.

She turns away from him, and his body itches to touch her. He can't explain it. It's like when he was younger, and he wanted to hug his father. But he couldn't then and he can't now. But he is no stranger to denied dreams.

It was you. It was always you.

His voice is hoarse when he says the next words. "I'm sorry."

The silence fills in the words. That's something we have in common.

Katara turns back to him, a dry smile on her lips. Her eyes gleam in a way that they shouldn't. "You were like his father. And Toph's."

"Both of us were like their parents," Zuko sighs. "You and I. Zuko and Katara."

The latter of the two nods her agreement. "But they didn't see that. Most of the time, at least. Toph understood. That was why I acted motherly. I hated that at the time. But now I understand."

"Does broken trust fit into the criteria for a father?" he finds himself hissing.

"A good father."

Zuko nods. "Thank you."

A laboured sigh leaves Katara's body. "On the other hand, I see you still haven't grown your hair out." Now her eyes are gleaming in another way. Not the right way but better.

Zuko snorts. "No. I kind of… cut it off before I left on my journey."

"Finding your honour anytime soon?" Humour is a grateful accompaniment to Katara's voice now.

"Not yet, but hopefully."

"Anyway, let me do it next time- it looks horrible!"

"Thanks, Katara," the response is dry.

The girl in question giggles. Then her smile is sad again and Zuko is forced to remember that Katara has never been a girl- or else it was stunted. Girlhood was lost somewhere in the mess of lost mothers and war, and she'll never get it back.

"Let's continue the nostalgia inside."

"And then you said I'll save you from the pirates and you tied me to a tree."

The Fire Lord sitting across from Katara blushes at the scratched-up memories.

"Though I guess it makes sense that a prince such as yourself would have kinky ideas."

"Katara."

Said girl cracks up, throwing her head backwards and a belly laugh erupts from her frame. The laugh makes him smile, and then Zuko is laughing as well.

"When we were on Ember Island you found a stash of alcohol and didn't know it was alcohol. I'll have you remember that you complimented me on my training body, and said some things you don't want to remember."

"My headache was payback for saying that," Katara mutters.

"Sure, sure."

Katara decides that this is the place to embarrass the Fire Lord. He has an entire nation of people to run- any place is the place to embarrass him. "Remember your hair back then?"

"Doesn't that make you like my current hair?"

"Nope."

Katara stands up suddenly, walking around the table to Zuko's side. She grabs a chair on that side and turns it to face Zuko. Seating herself again, she places her feet on Zuko's lap.

There's suddenly a dash of red on the lord's cheeks. He coughs, but doesn't ask her to move her feet. She winks at him and he is suddenly spluttering as though a sea prawn is stuck in his throat.

"Remember when you sent Sparky Sparky Boom Man after us?"

"Wait- what?"

"Or Combustion Man, whatever you want to call him."

Zuko blushes brighter, if it's possible. He combs his fingers through his hair, wincing. "Yeah. I was kind of scared, since Azula had technically gotten me home, and I suspected you'd used the healing water on Aang."

"Doesn't matter; I forgive you."

This does nothing to soothe her previous words' effect.

"I understand better, now," the waterbender says, her voice softening.

Zuko lifts his gaze to meet hers. "I needed to go home."

Katara nods, a soft smile lingering on her lips.

"But it wasn't home. It was like- like a distorted form. They treated me like a hero because I had killed the Avatar. But I wasn't a hero. As you'd understand."

"You became a hero though."

Zuko shrugs. "You could think of it like that."

"No. We were. We became heroes the minute I chained your sister."

"You brought me back to life."

"You mean healed you."

"No. You brought me back to life. In Ba Sing Se. And Caldella. I died, Katara."

"You died."

"Yes."

Katara lifts her feet again, removing them from his lap. "I'm sorry, Zuko. I really am."

"Why?" Zuko leans forward, taking her hand in his.

Katara finds herself mapping his features; comparing before and after.

Same hair, same eyes, same colour, same scar. A fond smile works its way onto Katara's features. Familiar. It's so familiar.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

Katara startles back into reality, blinking four times before she answers. "What? Sorry, just…imagining."

The firebender nods softly.

Suddenly Katara's face lights up. "I know where to go." She grasps the Fire Lord's pale hand in her own and yanks him after her.

Zuko follows the waterbender with confusion. But he trusts her. How could he not?

She drags him around to a metal ladder that leads to the roof of the cabin. "What are you doing?" he mutters as she grabs hold of the third rung. She responds with a shrug, and takes a few more steps before she hoists him onto the roof. Zuko watches her crawl to the edge on her knees, the metal banging slightly against her knees.

"Zuko, don't take too long." She sits down on the edge of the roof, letting her legs dangle over the side.

Sighing, Zuko follows her, and he follows her gaze to where the sun sits; a flaming ball of red-hot energy. Katara leans against him, her head nestling in the crook of his neck. The feeling of her cool, damp cheek against his boiling hot one sends chills down his back.

The Fire Lord closes his eyes for a moment, and suddenly they're on Ember Island again, legs dangling over the pier at midnight, insomniac with the Comet only days away, and Katara's breath fanning against his throat. They're in that position now.

As if she could torture him more, she raises a leg and drapes it over his. "Open your eyes," she mutters, and he obeys, letting the sunset seep into the gold of his irises.

He wonders, slightly, what prompted a girl from the ocean to bathe in the sunlight.

Zuko finds that he could almost kiss her, but no, she has only been divorced from Aang for a few weeks, he's been in her company for even less. Still, her frosty breath and the sheer comfort of her being there makes it pretty hard.

Suddenly there is the quiet noise of coughing coming from the girl's throat, and her hand is pressed against her lips. She pulls it away with red splattering the chestnut of her skin. "I'm fine," she mutters. "I'm going to live through this. Remember?"

"I remember," Zuko sighs, and suddenly he is wistful; sixteen again, staring out over the oceans of the future.

Katara pulls some water from the skin at her side and washes the blood from her hand. "Do you ever forget the war is over? I do."

Zuko glances left, to where the expanse of blue is so stifling it's almost equivalent to Katara's eyes. "No."

"You don't have to lie to me, Zuko." Now she's looking at him with the same calm of when he was about to see his uncle again.

"Children are never meant to save the world." How twisted it was that the world's only hope was a twelve-year-old boy.

"He's lucky he got Ozai and not Azula."

"I think my father's body had been failing for a few years."

"Abusing that much power has to have some side effects from the gods."

"True."

Zuko wraps his arms around the waterbender, pressing his nose to the top of her head, breathing her in. "I wonder if- if things had been different, would we have got together?"

Katara shrugs, leaning her head back against his chest. "It's a bit too late for that, isn't it?"

Katara is comfortable in the warmth of the Fire Lord. His heat is all around her, comfortable and welcoming. For a moment her mind jumps back to when he was a Banished prince, the wounds of his father still fresh against the skin of his hatred; the scar three years old. Back then the heat had been angry and deadly, ghosting over the shell of her ear.

He's so different from the man who's here now, the one who is kind and whose embrace is gentle. The waterbender thinks that, even back then, he would never have hurt her. Hell, he had been rough in his pursuit of Aang; he'd even tied her to a tree, but never had he hurt her.

Now his chest is like a pillow against her cheek, rising and falling like waves. She glances up and finds that there's a type of fond smile on his porcelain face. It makes something odd rise inside her; a type of heat in her body, something that could be called love but that is too darn ancient to be love.

And Katara knows that, even if it were love, she would never be able to recognise it.

I want to kiss you. The thought creeps on the edges of her mind, a fog crawling onto a shore, but she pushes it away roughly.

Katara feels his arms wrap around her body, pulling her even closer. His nose is pressed against the back of her skull, hot breath fanning over her mocha skin. The familiarity of this stirs up comfortable memories of a fourteen-year-old with a world in her eyes.

Back then, waterbender had pressed against firebender on the shore of Ember Island, their pasts playing on replay across their eyelids. It was as though they were saving them, in case they didn't see them long enough when their life dwindled away.

And then there are the things that everyone cares to forget. Alcohol made for accidents. But sometimes the worst accidents of all were the ones that didn't feel wrong.

Katara pictures this now, enveloped in the embrace of someone entirely flaming.

There's a dream that Katara used to have:

-A boy, unmarred face turned to face her. He smiled and extended a death-white hand, extensions curling. His dark hair was mussed around his face like he had just gotten out of bed. Then she realised that his skin was not white, but a bright orange. His face was licked with flames, tendrils snaking and consuming the tender flesh. Left behind was, is, will be, nothing but cinders. -

Katara thinks of this now and wonders if that is Zuko, a boy engulfed in livid flames. She had thought he was the proof of her Prince's death. Her hope of the Southern Water Tribe's replenishment crushed. It was her way of coping. Not exactly an innocent way of coping, but since when was Katara innocent?

Katara sighs, clinching her eyes shut. At least he's here. Zuko is her best friend.

For a minute, Katara has the almost unquenchable urge to surround herself in her mother, to let a maternal warmth surround her and reassure her-maybe lying, but mothers are supposed to lie- that everything will be okay, Katara. No, you might not be happy now, but everyone will be okay in the end and that's what matters.

Katara finds herself reaching for the cold; what she remembers her mother's skin to be like, but instead she finds the boiling hot of Zuko's skin. It reminds her why only waterbenders can bear the naked skin of a firebender. And thinking this thought leads to thinking about what they did on Ember Island, and that's where thinking stops.

Katara sucks in a breath at the feel of Zuko's cheek. It doesn't burn her-the permanent coldness of her skin doesn't allow for that. Perhaps Katara wishes that it would burn her. Because then she'd allow the tears to flow for something other than eleven-year-old hurt. But then she knows that Zuko would not stop apologising and the guilt would be too much.

He's not the one she needs to touch, but he's the one who's here.

There's no need for words between them. Zuko seems to squeeze a little tighter, Katara seems to relax a little more.

"In another world I wonder if I would be kissing you right now." The words come unthought-of from Katara's lips.

Zuko jerks. "I wonder," he mutters, and though the words are meant to be funny, there's something strange mixed in.

That's how it always is with them. Humour mixed with elements that Katara isn't quite sure of. Sometimes it's sadness, sometimes anger, sometimes the warm feeling that fills her at the thought of him.

Actually, it's always the first two. There's always either sadness or anger. Such is the life of children of war.

Katara fits snugly against him. Her body is thin, yes; worse from the sickness, but it's nice. His arms are around her, and she seems mournful. Her hand reaches up, searching for someone that isn't him. Then her almond fingers brush his cheek and they freeze at the contrasting temperatures.

I'm sorry I'm not your mother. Perhaps she can pretend he is. He knew she can't, but he is better at lying now. He tips his chin into her palm.

She's enough to freeze. But thank god for regulating temperatures, because his warmth balances her. Her hand is only moderate against his cheek. They're the only other people that they don't have to bend their temperatures for.

Katara sighs, a frosty exhale coming from her body. Grief runs through the air.

The next words seem to strike a chord, for Zuko feels his body stiffen. I've wondered far longer than right now.

He bites out the 'I wonder' but hates the notes that mix. You're not supposed to love her, Fire Lord Zuko.

Zuko's arms pull tighter around her, and his lips press against the back of her skull.

"It's okay to cry," he sighs.

"No, it's really not." Katara whispers, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Katara gave up herself in order to save the world; four years ago, when the illusion of youth was prevalent in her body.

Zuko nods in understanding. Suddenly, the constraints around Katara's throat must be too thick; thicker than usual, stifling her, for chocked sobs squeeze out of her body.

And they must be connected, because it's as though a noose has been tied around his neck, because he cries with her, salty tears dripping onto the top of her head. She trembles like a lost bird in his arms, trying to stifle her sobs with her palm, but ultimately fails.

Zuko lets it go. Here is this girl that's haunted his dreams for four years- he can't let her feel worthless. He knows that feeling too well. He won't let her feel it as well.

Although she probably does feel it. The pain of war ripped her apart as well.

Last one to see her mother alive. First one to see her dead.

Almost like Zuko. Last one to see his mother alive as well.

That had been what they bonded over. What sad excuses we are for young adults, thinks the Fire Lord.

"I'm sorry," Katara bites through her tears.

Zuko's meant to say 'There's nothing to be sorry for,' but Zuko has never been good at saying the right things; so instead he says. "So am I," and holds her even tighter.

The sun finally dips below the horizon, dimming the world significantly. Katara can feel the moon's almost-presence pulsing through her veins. Sighing, Katara glances up at Zuko. Without a word, Zuko nods and they both make their way back to the ladder.

Katara takes a few steps down, and then makes her way around to the cabin. Zuko follows her. "Do you know where your bedroom is?"

Katara hesitates. "I don't think so," she finally says.

As Zuko guides her, it's as though the heaviness of their previous conversation is gone. Only in the words though. The memories of sadness, however, will never leave.

Zuko arrives with her at her door, a large blue door; contrasting with the steel grey of the rest of the ship. "Did you paint it for me?" she asks, chuckling slightly.

"I didn't know you were coming beforehand! I just chose it for you."

She opens the door, and looks around. A bed is pushed into the corner, and a few dressers. The colours, though. Black and red.

Katara sees the glint in Zuko's eyes and knows. "This was your room, wasn't it?" she mutters.

Zuko sighs and nods. His hand moves to the back of his hair, and grabs part of it into a makeshift ponytail. He would laugh, maybe, if he were younger or freer. But he's not, so instead he just remembers.

But Katara reaches up, brown palm brushing over the pale of his right cheek. "Lot's of time has passed since then."

"Five years."

"Five years," Katara agrees.

Zuko's eyes meet hers, and Katara has forgotten how gold they were when they were younger. It hasn't darkened in the slightest in terms of colour, but they're older now, sadder.

Suddenly a searing pain rushes through Katara's gut and she yanks her handkerchief out of her pocket, blood splattering the white surface. Her face scrunches under the weight of her sadness, represented in the red of fire, of the very thing she was forced by Hama to control.

"Ouch," she whispers when it's done.

"It hurts you to cough?"

"More than you'll ever know," Katara mutters. She shakes her head minutely, and a few untrustworthy strands of dark hair fell into her eyes. Katara in the old world would brush it back, but this Katara didn't even seem to care.

She notices Zuko's eyes settling on the strand and his fingers twitch at his side as if he wants to brush it away. Instead, he steps forward, wrapping her in his arms yet again. His chin rests atop her head.

This Katara stiffens, almost, but then wraps her arms around him. She hates how much she's changed in four years. But this is comforting. This is right. Just like Ember Island was.

She sucks in a thick, musty breath and lets her eyes flutter closed. Zuko's hand pushes her stray strands back behind her ear. Then his hands vanish completely. "Sleep well," he says, and makes for the door.

"As if, but thank you," Katara whispers.

He leans towards her, almost as though he's going to kiss her forehead. But then he rethinks, and leaves her alone with her thoughts.