Disclaimer: I don´t own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any of the characters and never will...

History

It was as if time stood still. Katara and her masked recuer still hadn´t broken their gaze, still standing outside next to the ball room. He hadn´t let her hand go, but Katara didn´t mind. It felt nice to feel his warm hand holding her smaller one. But there was still a question that had to be asked.

"Who are you?"

She didn´t know if she would get an answer, he hadn´t spoken one word while fighting Jet. But all she could do was waiting. She could feel him gazing at her and felt like he would see right through her in her soul. Her stomach tightened and it was as if hundreds butterflies flew around there.

Katara quietly scolded herself. She couldn´t be attracted to a guy who hadn´t spoken a single word to her, whom she never heard speaking a single word for that matter, and whose face she was unable to see. She just couldn´t!

"Does it matter?" Katara´s thoughts were pulled back to reality. His voice was deep and calm, like velvet, but his words startled her.
"Of course it matters! Who do you think am I?" He just laughed. Despite her upcoming anger she noticed how beautiful it sounded.

"Well, since you´re from Ba Sing Se High, I would say you are a little spoiled and conceited girl that only cares about her good reputation, making the lives other miserable and loves the attention everyone is giving her. I have to say, though, that Jet gave you a little too much attention, more than even you could handle.
So, I think that is exactly who you are. Am I right?"

To say that Katara was angry would be an understatement. She was pissed. How dared this arrogant prick comparing her to all the students she hated so much? She was not one of them and never would be.

In the back of her mind she noticed that he knew Jet´s name and went also to Ba Sing Se High, but she was too enraged to care.
Screw this protected feeling he radiated. He was no better than all the others.

Taking a deep breath to calm herself and to not directly scream at him, she looked him straight in the eyes. "So you´re implying that you are better than that? You are also on Ba Sing Se High so don´t give me that shit. I know that most of the students are total assholes and you are just as arrogant as them. But maybe you haven´t understood what I was trying to say. I am not one of them and never will be! So don´t you dare comparing me to them."

In her rage she had taken a step closer to him. They were standing chest to chest, only separated by a few inches, but Katara didn´t notice.
To her dismay he only chuckled. But she was suprised that it didn´t sound malicious like she was used to, but soft and almost...caring?
"You have just the temper I always thought you would have"

What? "You don´t know me! You just proved that a minute ago!" His chuckling ceased. "I have only said that to make you angry.
I do know you, Katara."

Automatically her hand flew to her face, but the mask was still there. How did he know it was her? And why did he still talk to her? Everyone hated her.
She didn´t know what to think anymore. Should she be angry, creeped out or even flattered? "How do you know?"

The spirit shook his head. "You can learn so much by just looking. I have seen you everyday for the past years. I know how you move, how you talk. And I would recognize your blue eyes everywhere."

Ok, now she was creeped out. That guy was crazy, but she had to admitt that she was flattered, just a little bit.

"As bewildered as I am, you still haven´t answered my question. Who are you? And since you know who I am you know that it matters to me."

Startled she noticed that she didn´t just want to know his name. She wanted to know what he did for fun, what he hated, who his friends, his family were, with other words she wanted to know what person he was, she wanted to know who he really was.

It took him a little while before he answered. "You know that that is a big question, don´t you? You´re not just asking for my name, you are asking for me."

Katara dind´t know what to answer. He had read her so easily, as if he could see everything within her.

"Maybe I am, maybe I´m not. I don´t know what to think anymore." She answered truthfully. His presence felt overhelming. "All I want is to ditch this stupid masquerade."

Again she felt his stare, reading and judging. Then he turned around, leaving a stunned Katara behind.

"Aren´t you coming?" He had turned around and looked at her. "What?"
She could tell that he was sighing. "You said that you wanted to ditch this stupid masquerade. So we are ditching, are you coming, or not?"

Katara only thought one minute about it. It didn´t matter that she didn´t know his name or who he was. She felt safe with him and that was exactly what she wanted to know. So she ran after him.

They were walking for about half an hour. Katara didn´t know where they were headed and they didn´t meet anyone.
"Aren´t you telling me your name?"
She thought it was a good starting point for getting to know him. He seemed to though differently.

"No."

He hadn´t looked at her, but she could tell that he was smirking behind the mask. "What? Why?" He gazed at her. "You don´t need to know someone´s name to know who he is. Important are the things he has done in his life, the things he is planning to do. The name isn´t important. You wanted to know me, right? So why starting with my name?"

Again she was stunned by him. She had never heard any student of Ba Sing Se High, or anyone for that matter, speak that wisely. And she had to say, he was right. She wanted to know him, but it would be nice to know who he was at her school.

"Well, will you tell me your history then?"

They stopped and Katara noticed that they were at a beautiful park with a playground in the middle of it. The moonlight was shining on it, making everthing gleaming.

They sat on the swings, two spirits at night. He still hadn´t answered her and she was scared that he never would.

"I was born very ill, the doctors at the hospital said that I probaly wouldn´t make it."

His unexpected words made her look at him. He just shook his head when he noticed her wanting to say something and continued.

"But somehow I survived, but with a cost. As a child I was always weaker and more fragile than everyone else my age. My younger sister wasn´t. She was a prodgidy. Always the best at everything. And that´s why my father adored her, and hated me. He beat me, insulted me, saying that I was too weak to be allowed to live. He said that my sister was born lucky. I was lucky to be born."

Katara sat rigid. Never before had she heard of such a monster. She could only imagine how hard it was to grew up like that. But the masked man wasn´t finished. It seemed as if he never told anyone before and was relieved to finally have it off his chest.

"My mother protected me as best as she could. But there is only so much you can do against my father and one day she was just gone." He looked up to the stars before continuing. "I was eight at the time. My father didn´t talk and my sister didn´t care. She was becoming the person my father always wanted: cold and uncaring, only fixated on her career."

"I´m sorry." She didn´t know what else to say. She decided to do the same thing he was doing. Opening up and trusting the other. "I have lost my mother, too." She noticed his head snapping in her direction, but she didn´t pay it any attention. All she wanted was to tell him her story she had never told anyone before.

"We went christmas shopping. Just me and her. I remembered that I got a wooden boomerang for my brother and was proud of it. I couldn´t wait to see his happy face. We were already late, but I begged my mother to buy me pomegranate. She did, but because of that we missed the last bus. Because of that we had to walk, not having enough money left to take a taxi."

She felt the sob, before it was heard. She stiffened when she felt his hand on her shoulder, silently telling her that she didn´t have to continue, but she shook her head. She wanted to finally tell someone.

"They were three men. Standing in front of us out of nowhere. We had been walking for an hour and just a street away from home. All I can remember is them laughing and then a shot. A scream, before I saw her jumping in front of me...and sinking to the floor.

Before they could kill me, they ran away. Afraid of getting caught by the sirens that had suddenly appeared."

"She had died because of me. She would still be alive, if I hadn´t begged her for that stupid pomegranate. She would still be alive, if she hadn´t jumped in front of me. It´s all my fault."

Katara´s voice broke. She couldn´t help but feel ashamed of herself. Two times crying in one night. When the hell did she became this weak? But she forget all her thoughts when she felt the man in the blue mask embrace her.

"Katara, stop! It´s not your fault she died. It was her choice to protect you. And do you know why she did it? Because she loved you, still loves you, more than anything. And you could have never known that something like that would happen when you begged for that pomegranate. So stop blaming yourself. Please. Can´t you see that it is tearing you apart?"

He was pleading. She was crying.

Later she would thought what a strange pair they were, but in that moment all she cared was that ht believed that it wasn´t her fault, that he believed in her.

So she finished her her story.

"The police told my father and brother that mom was shot by muggers, but they never asked me how it happened. The didn´t want to open those wounds. I don´t even know why I am telling you these things I have never told anyone before."

She went quiet in his arms. She had said what she needed to, exhausted by those words.

He stroked circles soothingly on her back, while she rested her head on his shoulder. The protected feeling had she didn´t intended to let him nor this feeling go away. His voice broke her out of her drowsiness. He still had one last thing to tell.

"My sickness went away when I grew older and I tried everything to make my father finally see me, but he knew just as much as I that I would never be the person he wanted me to be. I would never become this cold, would never hurt someone just to help myself and my wealth.

I was thirteen when I overheard that he wanted to burn down the part of his company who didn´t make as much money as before. Just to get the money from the insurance. He didn´t care that he would murder dozen of his workers. Workers that looked up at him. He didn´t care at all."

Katara felt something wet on her head and noticed that it was his tears that had found a way from under his mask. She just hold him tighter, not saying a word. Knowing that he had to continue on his own, like she had to a minute ago.

"I gatecrashed in the meeting, telling him that he couldn´t do that. That he couldn´t sacrifice human lives like that. He just laughed. In this moment I realized that I had done the most foolish thing I could do. I was just thirteen, I could´nt beat him.

There were torches next to the doors of the meetingroom. When I realized what he was planning to do it was already to late. He had already taken one of the torches and hit me on the left side of my face with it..." He paused. His words were slowly sinking in. Left side? No, no that couldn´t be. There was no way.

"...and scarred his own son for life."

He had let her go and was directly looking at her now, but she didn´t dare to face him. He was calm, she felt it, he knew exactly what he had said, knew exactly that she would now know who he really was. But she didn´t want to admitt it, didn´t want to believe.

There was only one way to find out the truth. They had shared their pasts, their histories, he knew who she was under the mask and now it was time for him to let her see under his.

He did nothing to stop her when she raised her hands to gently lay them on both sides of his mask. He did nothing to stop her when she undid the clasp and he did nothing to stop her when she slowly put the mask of his face.

Katara felt her hands trembling when she lifted the blue mask. In a moment she would see if she was right, if he really was who she thought he was. In just one moment.

Altough she wasn´t suprised she flinched when she saw his face for the first time this night. The scar was unaltered over his left eye, but his gaze was soft, his golden eyes looking directly in her blue ones.

"Zuko."

A/N:

So that´s the second part of Nobody could have foreseen :D
I still have no idea what to do for chapter three, but I will see. Sadly I remembered Sunday that it´s Zutara Week, so nearly all I´m doing is writing. I´m sorry that I won´t have time for The Path of the White Lotus because of that.
I promise I will continue with it as soon as Zutara Week is over.