The young firebender kneels beside his uncle and pours tea from a small cup across the old man's lips. The tea steams in the evening cold, and a little excess runs in two trickles into Iroh's graying beard. Zuko's shaking hand sets down the cup, but he goes on kneeling. Iroh has yet to stir in the three days we've been watching him. His nephew has yet to leave his side.

I grind up soft rice between my molars. "He wants me to watch this uncle die? Fine, maybe I will."

Aang cracks some leechi nuts and vacuums up a handful. We recline against Appa's tail and watch Zuko tend to his uncle from a safe distance. The two times I offered to help change the old man's bandages, I almost got a faceful of fire. Burn me once, he's a fool for pushing away a healer. Burn me twice, I'm a fool for trying. The logical half of me says two times is enough.

"He won't ask for help, but he needs it," Aang says. "Otherwise he'd leave, but he doesn't. And he let you heal his uncle the first night."

I pick a leechi nut off his palm and rest it on the tip of my tongue. My teeth crack it open and the sharp flavor slides backwards along my taste buds. I don't swallow and let it sit at the back of my throat to mingle with the bitter taste of watching Zuko struggle to peel off a bandage at the edge of camp.

"I'm not trying again," I say with a straight face.

Aang pokes a finger at the dirt, but he's hiding a smile. My lie didn't convince either of us. He rolls a few more leechi nuts into my cupped hands. "I'm going to go see what Toph and Sokka are up to. They've been gone since lunch," he says.

"I'll come with you." Anything's better than sitting twenty feet away from an injured man I'm not allowed to come near.

Aang rests a hand on my shoulder. "You can make dinner while I'm gone. Those two are going to be starving when we get back, and I won't say no to some soup."

The aftermath silence flooding between us lets me know what Aang actually intends me to do.

"Fine. Dinner. But that's all I'm doing," I insist. "And start a fire before you go, please." Aang twirls two sticks together in a small pile of wood at the center of camp and flits off with that little smile, the one that says he's caught me lying again.

There's a bag loaded up with supplies propped up by the wood pile. I dig through it to see what we have to work with. Technically, I didn't need to ask Aang to start the fire this time. That firebender, he's sitting maybe ten steps from me and could easily have come over to help me. But, helping? Please. That's not Zuko. This is Zuko: reaching into some bag he's dragging around and pulling out a few tea leaves. He drops them into an empty tea cup and glares at the water skin on my back as if the force of his pride could waterbend over enough to fill the cup for his uncle.

I stare hard into the clutter of twigs and branches and the little licks of fire starting up inside. Let him find his own water if he doesn't want my kindly offered help.

There is the soft crunch of shoes against dirt behind me. I turn and see Zuko heading off across camp, towards the little creek that gathers in a swollen pool of water some five minutes from here. My breath on the sparks helps them grow into a proper fire, and I set a pot of water on to boil. I think of how Zuko will scoop up water from the creek and warm it up with the tea leaves, then come back to pour the liquid against over his uncle's unwilling mouth.

And in doing so he leaves me, Katara, alone in the camp with Iroh.

I leap to my feet as if someone had just dumped boiling hot lava on me, or threatened Aang. The water skin is already open, already pouring water into my open palms by the time I reach Iroh's side. I unwrap the loose bandages Zuko clumsily tried to change. Infection, green and puss-filled, webs across the old man's shoulder. I press my hands down, letting the healing water flow across the wound.

Fire cuts across my arm. I roll out of reach of Zuko's fist and its orb of fire. I screen my face with a veil of water, but he doesn't come at me again. The flames in his hand cool to nothing as he sits by his uncle's side.

"You burned me," I accuse, slapping down the healing touch of water on my arm.

Zuko doesn't look up. "Leave."

"That wound's infected. He could die if you don't let me help him!"

"Leave," he says again, his voice a notch lower. Tea leaves soak in the cup he's warming on his palm.

"Fine, don't let me help. And when that infection gets out of control, you'll know it's your fault he's hurt—"

"Leave!" Zuko snarls, swinging his arm to divide us with an arc of fire. Our eyes catch and there's nothing reassuring in the spark of gold in his gaze, a reflection of the fire burning up his heart and logic.

I do. I don't even look back as I march across the camp and kneel by the still-burning cooking fire. Freezing some water into an ice knife, I cut up carrots and drop in rice for the soup Aang asked for. Steam glides off the smooth stew surface as I stir the whole thing around with my bending. Inside my belly are gleaming pearls of hate for that cocky firebender whose honor will end him. Someone who would rather let his uncle slowly die than ask for help from the Avatar's friends.

But if he is too proud to ask for help, if he won't let me heal his uncle and has already decided this, why does he stay at all?

"Heeey," my brother drawls from the edge of camp. He saunters over in usual fashion, stretching out on the other side of the pot and peeking in. "Meat stew, right?"

"And what's Aang going to eat, huh?"

"Eh. Dry rice, the dew of life. Toph and I make the best hunting team. We caught us some saber-tooth moose lion. Mind if I cut some up?"

"Not for the stew. But I can cook it separately afterwards."

"Think hothead over there can flash-cook it?" Sokka asks, poking a finger at the simmering lump that is Zuko.

"He'll flash-cook you. He almost did me."

"You two had a good chat?"

"He's such a sweet guy," I say, swirling the stew so roughly that a glob of rice splashes out of the pot. Sokka and I watch it burn up in the embers of the cooking fire. "Where are Aang and Toph?" I ask.

"Toph said something about starting up training. Says they'll be back when the grub's done. Grub. Ha, that's a great word. Gruuub."

Grub, grub, gruuub fills the silence that's otherwise only broken by the swirl of the stew and Zuko's angry breathing off somewhere behind us. When I peek over my shoulder, he's washing his uncle's wound with some water from the river. I hope he's smart enough to heat it first, unless he wants infection on top of infection.

"Hey, Sugar Queen. What's for dinner?"

Toph plops down next to Sokka. Aang straggles over a moment later, toppling over backwards in a cloud of dust. "Soup, please," he mumbles.

"Did you get started on earthbending?" I ask the little heap of Aang beside me.

"Please," Toph says, snorting. "We got started on Twinkletoes running away from some pebbles I tossed."

Aang flaps his arms. "She rolled a boulder at my head and told me to stop it!"

I pass around bowls of stew. "Maybe you should start a little more . . . gently."

Toph's response is dipping her face right in the bowl and sucking up a mouthful. My brother's equally polite manners have him slurping right out of the bowl, too.

"Are you going to bring some to Zuko?" Aang asks.

I poke at my food and don't say anything. If the mighty Zuko wants some, he can come here and take it himself. Aang's eyes don't leave me as I bite through a carrot. My tongue touches rice but it tastes the sadness filling up the airbender's heart. I think he's grieving for me because I can't see something that's apparently so obvious.

"I don't think he's used to kindness," Aang says.

A breeze moves across the clearing. By now it's late, and the perfect circle of the moon shines down through the dark waters of the night. I turn halfway around and study the two bodies out there at the edge of camp, trying to figure what thoughts might be in Zuko's head. I take a breath to steady myself and push it down inside my lungs, trapping it there for courage. Then I get up with two filled bowls. I don't come too close because I want to keep my arms, thank you. But I set down the steaming bowls close enough that Zuko could reach out and grab them. I step back and stand there, the clean moonlight falling across my face.

A pause follows, one that should be filled with gratitude. But even while I cross back to the fire and sit around laughing with my friends, even after we have all curled up on Appa's tail with a blanket covering us in the cold, even as I lay with my knees tucked to my chin—the only thing Zuko will send me is hate. It is the oldest and most absolute kind of hate there is, the kind that sends shivers through the whole earth. It is the hate that rewards unbidden kindness, the hate that is reserved for an enemy when you stare her in the face and know she is right but can't say so—because to admit it would be to suffer some kind of loss in her eyes, and this is the one thing worse than death.