Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry!!!!!!!!!! I love you all to death. I don't deserve such wonderful, wonderful readers as you guys!

That said.

Chapter 11.

Katara-

I guess I can understand the awkwardness between us now. I mean, I get it. I'm Fire Nation, you're Water Tribe, my people killed your people for no apparent reason beside world domination. My father is the cause of all your troubles. I am, technically, the spawn of the devil himself. And then I go kissing you, without your permission?

Never mind that you kissed me back. That's no excuse. The only thing that shows is that you must have liked it, a little bit, subconsciously. But I know enough about people to know that there are no guarantees that you like me.

So, Katara, what I'm saying is, I get it if things are a little strange with you and I.

What I don't understand is why you won't even look at me now.

You kissed me back.

Then, you looked at me with a smile.

But then, something in your face changed. You must have realized something. You pulled back and ran away.

I suppose I could have followed you, but rejection…it's enough to freeze a person's every desire to move; to breathe. Every time. Especially the unexpected kind.

I suppose it shouldn't have been unexpected, if not to all the reasons mentioned above to explain my understanding of the awkwardness, then for the fact that, well…

I've never kissed a girl before. My mother aside. So I'll admit it, because I'm comfortable enough with myself as a man to say this. I'm probably a bad kisser. I can live with that.

What I can't live with is the fact that you will not meet my eyes. You won't even look at my face. You just stare past my shoulder.

If you hate me, at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye and telling me so, Katara. Because I can't take this. You're going to kill me, slowly and painfully, with your indifference.

So please. Look at me.

Yours,

Zuko.

He glanced over at the object of his musings to find her, not surprisingly, looking away from him.

It must take some effort to not look at a person for that much time. It had to.

Zuko wasn't asking for her to declare her undying love. He wasn't asking her to apologize, even, for her coldness. All he wanted was for her to tell him what in Agni's name was going on. There was no sense, no rhyme or reason to this…this madness. This coldness. This cruelty.

For cruelty it was. If she wanted him to die, she could have sent a chunk of ice into his heart and had the same effect, just faster than this slow torment. Every day, he stared at her, begging with his mind for her to just glance up, just for a moment. Just one look.

And it had only been three days. Three days! What if this went on forever? What would happen to him then? Forever…felt like it would kill him.

And it wasn't just Katara's scorn either. It was everybody's. Everybody seemed to assume that he had done something horrible to upset Katara so much. Aang especially. He was downright murderous. Zuko didn't think that such a small, seemingly happy-go-lucky kid could get so livid.

Agni forbid that it could possibly be that Zuko didn't do anything, and that Katara was simply being moody, unreasonable, and completely irrational!

The others would kill him if he said that aloud. He felt guilty for even thinking it. For although it may have been partly true that Katara was being irrational, it was also true that he was being irrational. For what rational man would fall in love with a girl of an enemy kingdom, then decide to act upon it with no knowledge of her feelings towards him, and then have the gall to be surprised when she rejected him?

Zuko recalled a rather awkward conversation with Sokka from two days before.

"What did you do to my sister?!"

"I-I…nothing. I didn't hurt her."

"Didn't hurt her! Then why is she walking around like somebody just killed her kitten?"

"The hell if I know!" he had burst out angrily. Sokka had grown deathly quiet.

"Don't you dare blame Katara for this," he warned. "You may not understand why she's doing what she's doing, you may not think you did anything wrong, but this is not. Her. Fault."

Zuko understood that Sokka was right. It wasn't her fault. It wasn't his fault either. Nobody was to blame. They were both just…awkward, and unsure of themselves.

He just didn't think he could keep tiptoeing around her for much longer without exploding or something.

He had agonized over how to end his letter. For a while, he thought the "yours," at the end added a choking finality to the letter, and similarly, to his fate. But the more he thought about it, the less he regretted it. Because he realized, now, that yes. It did add a certain finality. But a comforting kind.

Because he wanted to be Katara's. He wanted it more than anything, except, maybe than for Katara to be his.

"Zuko! I need to practice!" a more-than-a-little irritated Aang called from a little ways off.

Well, Zuko thought. At least his aggression is helping his firebending. But as he stared at his singed arm hairs, he wondered if that was really a good thing.

There you have it. Relatively short…but I really really wanted Niki's afterlife, which she now owes to me. yay!!!!!!!

So review, please.