Chapter Three:

The intense throbbing at his temple increased as Zuko forced himself into a sitting position and opened his eyes. As his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, his ears picked up a call for help. The voice was familiar, and Zuko recognized it as the girl he had argued with. Katara … Her name is Katara … The memories flooded back to him, and he took a moment to reminisce of what they had accomplished together. He was reliving the point where he taught the avatar when a fragile cry jostled him out of his thoughts, and belatedly, Zuko realized that she was still calling for help.

Slowly he stood up and brushed off the dust covering his clothes as he waited for the world to stop spinning. Carefully, he began to maneuver his way around the rubble towards her voice, ignoring his protesting headache. A short while later, Zuko found the water ambassador trapped most precariously under a large column, among other pieces of architecture. The quiet chuckle fell from his lip at her disgruntled expression, no doubt from being unable to free herself.

He called out her name quietly, and despite her appearance her voice was filled with relief, "Finally, Sokka. It's not funny. Now get me out of here."

The small smile on his face instantly turned at Katara's mistake. Gold eyes narrowed imperceptibly in annoyance that she could mistake he, the crown prince of the Fire Nation with her fool of a brother. However, Zuko immediately remembered how the boy had taken on both Mai and Ty Lee with the assistance of the Kyoshi warrior, albeit being poisoned and unconscious before the fight was over. Ultimately deciding that perhaps Sokka could be useful, Zuko returned to the situation at hand.

After a moment of thought, he realized the choices to free the blood bender had been narrowed down to two actions. He could either move the column off of Katara, or move Katara from underneath the column. Seeing that the column was quite large, and observing that moving it would probably only trap Katara further, Zuko began the tedious task of removing the rubble surrounding the column and trapped water bender. Having finally cleared a large enough space, he reached in.

Preoccupied with her own thoughts, Katara yelped when her arm was suddenly pulled backwards. She was then dragged out from underneath the pillar and unceremoniously dragged across floor. Sitting up and dusting her clothes off, the infuriated woman turned around quickly, wincing as the blood returned to her limbs. When she felt a hand grasping her arm, Katara opened her mouth to yell at Sokka to be more careful, only to realize that her brother had gold eyes –

When their eyes met, Zuko froze. Neither of them noticed their proximity or the fact that he still held her arm in his hand as gold depths stared into wide blue orbs, the same brilliant eyes that had looked upon him so caringly in the catacombs so long ago. And those eyes 

belonged to a person just as kind, the first person after his uncle willing to try and understand him.

That was the first time, he remembered, that she had attracted him. He had felt something stir deep within him seeing her listen to him, tend to him. And that something had burned at the possessiveness the air bender had shown that day. But in the end, she had accepted him, the brown-haired water bender's spirit had changed him, and he was drawn even closer to her.

While Zuko's thoughts drifted, Katara had been staring intently at his face. She had watched his face move from its frozen state to sad, to angry, to content, and for a moment, something else flashed in his eyes, but it was gone before she could decipher it.

At this time, she also realized that his hold on her arm had not loosened during his period of daydream, and swiftly shook his hand off. At the movement, Zuko jumped, and promptly hit his head on an overhanging piece of rubble. His eyes moved wildly before closing as he focused on massaging his head. The extra pain from his encounter with the rock had done nothing to improve his headache.

"Zuko?" He looked up.

"Where are we?"

A/N: YAY! im back! i have finally been inspired to write more... -- im quiet lazy and school doesn't help much... but there were some important discoveries during this time... including watching new avatar episodes... THOSE NEED TO AIR! ok... phew.. now that that's over, lets get on to the important news:

I finally cut down on the converstations.. i think i had 2 many before... anyways.. i wanna thank my new BETA: Romanceismydoom for all her support and dedication and congratulate her for being able to be my BETA! jk.. but THANK U ROMANCEISMYDOOOM!

ps. if i don't put up something for more than a week, feel free to send me a message from my profile!

until next time, Petalsofmydreams