KAIDA MESSES UP

"I've been sleepwalking, been wandering all night,

Trying to take what's lost and broke and make it right,

I've been sleepwalking, too close to the fire."

A-B-S-T-R-A-C-T-I-O-N

It was three weeks later that it happened.

Everything was going perfectly. My lessons with Sora were doing wonders for my shadowbending. Honestly, I could hardly believe the difference it was making just practicing with him every day. Zuko and Xoe still came by each time to watch our lessons and, although I still got this odd bitter taste in my mouth when I saw them laughing together, the real miracle was that we were all getting along. I hadn't fought with Zuko in three weeks. That alone was a dangerous game I was playing. I should have known that the universe was far too at peace for it to just stay that way. Something had to go wrong, and spirits did it go wrong.

It happened early one morning. Iroh was off somewhere having a deep philosophical discussion with RB Bouta about lord-knows-what, and Sora and Xoe had some kind of library date – I shuddered at the notion – planned, which meant no lesson that day, so I had decided to see if Zuko wanted to spar for a bit.

"What about your friend?" He inquired, not bothering to remove his eyes from the book he was reading; a different book, I noticed, from the one he had been almost finished with yesterday. I had found out not long ago that Xoe Kumaru was the one feeding his bizarre interest in reading. Which was fine. I didn't really care that much. I just thought it was strange since he never wanted to read before he met her.

"He and Xoe are on a date," I replied pointedly, hoping the word 'date' would bother him. I never expected him to immediately shift his gaze over to me, eyes hopeful, and snap the novel closed without hesitation. He didn't even stop to think before he was standing and walking out the door. I blinked, perplexed.

I had expected the thought of his Xoe being on a date to unsettle him at least. He had to like her. They were together practically every day. How could he not, anyway? I mean, she was smart and talented and she had a pretty agreeable personality and I suspected she knew how to sew things and her hair probably smelled like apples and –

"Are you coming?"

I snapped from my scrutiny, frowning at Zuko. He was waiting for me in the doorway. His hair was getting longer, I noticed distractedly.

He made a face, like he was about to change his mind, but I came to my senses quickly enough and crossed the room, pulling him out behind me before he could do anything of the sort. We never practiced together, anymore, after all. It was high time I was able to slap him around a bit. I dare say I missed it.

I grinned when we reached the back yard, stretching my arms up above my head and taking in the cool atmosphere of the city. Our warmup consisted of strictly hand-to-hand combat. Zuko had improved unbelievably since I had first met him over a year ago, but he was out of practice from our lack of training lately. I had him on the ground in minutes our first go around. He scowled up at me from the earth, his mouth doing that puckering thing that it did when he was annoyed.

Cute, I thought before I had time to realize what I was even thinking. I cringed, turning my eyes away from his scarred face as I pulled him up.

"You're rusty," I muttered, glancing sideways.

"Yeah," he answered thoughtfully. "Let's go again."

We sparred like that for another ten minutes before I suggested we throw our bending into the mix. Zuko complained vaguely that his firebending was limited in the City of Light, but it didn't take much taunting on my part to convince him to do what I wanted. I knew very well that he couldn't firebend like he wanted to down there, but that shouldn't stop us from training. Some distant part of my mind noted that our practice session would last longer that way, anyway.

I grinned to myself as I watched a crimson flame spring to life in Zuko's palm. I hadn't seen him firebend in almost two months. Something about the sight made me oddly happy. I couldn't pinpoint why, exactly, but I supposed I didn't need a reason. Zuko squinted comically.

"What are you smiling at?" He sounded wary, as if my smile was a bad omen of sorts.

"You," I replied, without missing a beat.

Zuko's eyes widened and I used the moment of surprise to spin a band of light around my body. Sora had begun teaching me this little trick. Well, it was more like a very complicated technique, but I was using it more as a trick in that moment. It had taken some time to get the hang of, and even more time just to understand the concept, but once I had it down it was extremely useful in combat, which was a lot to say about a shadowbending move. Not much use in fighting, shadowbending.

The idea of it was that, if I could manipulate the light in front of me in just the right way, then I could refract my image, similar to how water refracted what was beneath it. In doing that, I could make myself appear bigger, smaller, in a completely different place . . . you name it. My fundamental grasp of the technique was proven when Zuko spun an attack into the air beside me and then stared at the empty space in confusion.

It also didn't escape my notice the way he stopped his flames short instead of going full out. I was plenty quick enough not to get burned, but Zuko was still holding back for my sake. I didn't know whether to be irritated or warmed by it.

My refractive wall collapsed, shattering the illusion as I gasped quietly. That had been particularly exhausting. It was such a difficult move that I was only able to hold it for about twenty seconds at a time. That exertion combined with the physical combat was enough to make me collapse on a bad day. I bent over, resting my hands on my knees. Zuko blinked incredulously.

"How did you do that?" I righted myself out so I could answer him properly. His chest was rising and falling softly, now.

"It's called refraction. Cool, right?" I beamed up at him. "Sora thinks that in about a month I should be able to hold it for a solid minute."

That darkened his expression.

"Kaida, we can't stay here forever," he noted carefully, glancing at me through his dark bangs with guarded eyes. I huffed at his sudden shift in demeanor, curling my fingers in slight agitation. Why would he break up our nice, cooperative atmosphere to bring that up? Probably because he knew I didn't want to dwell on it, yet.

"I don't need you to tell me that, Zuko," I answered shortly.

I could hear the walls going up, and I knew he could hear it too. This subject matter had been left untouched for almost a month, now. I was perfectly content where I was, so why did we need to bother changing anything? The City of Light was everything we needed in that moment. Why leave? It was safe. It was fascinating. It was new. We had both made friends, there. Everything was fine. Why did he have to bring this up?

"We have to find the avatar."

Ah, that.

My mind flew to the most immediate excuse I could think of, which wasn't a very strong case for me, unfortunately. I went with it nonetheless, as if it could somehow prove more important than the potential savior of humanity.

"What's the hurry?" I demanded, arms snaking across my chest. "We don't even know if the avatar is alive or not." Zuko was quick to counter my argument, almost as if he had planned this out beforehand. That only irked me further.

"I heard people talking," he confided, stepping closer toward me. "Back in the Earth Kingdom, in a few of our port stops, I heard rumors that the avatar had returned." His voice sounded almost pleading. He wanted me to leave with him, I realized. More than that, he was doing his best to convince me that it wasn't a stupid idea.

"Rumors aren't always true," I shot back, quick to diffuse his argument. The prince's face turned stubborn, and I knew I had just started a real fight.

"There's no way that completely different people from completely different cities both –"

"Well, so what?" I cut in sharply. "So what if he is alive? What are you going to do then, huh? Find him? Kill him? Do a Northern Tribe Water dance for him?"

Zuko turned scarlet in what I could only imagine was anger. I knew that I should stop, but something inside me was just itching to fight him for real. It was completely insane, and I knew in every fiber that it was wrong and that I was wrong, but no force on earth could stop me, now. One of us was going down, this morning, and I wasn't about to let it be me. Not today.

"I – I don't know yet, but –"

"See?" I laughed harshly, cutting him off yet again. "That settles it. You don't even have a plan, Zuko. Besides, I'm still learning how to shadowbend." I thought that would be the end of it, but it turned out that Zuko had a bit more scrap in him than I had bargained for. He took another step closer, but this time it was out of hostility and his incessant need to be taller than me, like he thought it might give him the upper hand.

"I don't see anything wrong with your shadowbending the way it is, now," he pressed, finally raising his voice at me. That should have been almost a compliment, but instead it only infuriated me even further. "There was nothing wrong with it before. You managed just fine before we found this place."

"You've had a teacher your whole life. Of course you wouldn't understand," I bristled. Stupid fire brat. "You know what, Zuko? You do whatever you want, but I'm staying right here."

"Fine!" he exclaimed, leaning in. "I don't need to be here, anyway. You can just stay behind and screw around with Sora, for all I care."

Ouch. He had just thrown that line out there into the open, not so much as thinking about his own words, but that particular one had cut deep. Sure he got on my nerves and all, but to hear Zuko basically tell me that he didn't need me . . . he was supposed to be my best friend or something like that. That's what he was, right? I had never really thought about it, but he fit every definition of the word.

Suddenly, I realized something.

"Why do you keep making Sora a part of this argument?" I demanded. It was one thing for him to attack me for all this, but Sora hadn't even done anything wrong, yet he got a lot of unwarranted animosity from the firebender.

"He's been a part of the argument since we met him," Zuko replied sullenly.

"What are you talking about?" I cried, hands flying to my hair. "How can you be so bitter?"

"Maybe I wouldn't be if you two were easier to deal with."

Oh, that did it. I had no problem telling him how difficult he was being, right now. All I had wanted to do was train with him in peace. I should have known that the instant we were alone together we would be at each other's throats again, just like before. It was far too much to hope for one peaceful moment with Zuko, and now that I had finally let my guard down, everything was detonating in front of my eyes.

"Oh, I'm difficult to deal with?" I shouted, forgetting altogether the fact that we were in public, in a very quiet area, and there was no way that nearby residents couldn't hear us. "You've got a lot of nerve saying that to me, your highness!"

"You are," the prince affirmed severely. "You and Sora have done nothing productive, together, since we got here."

"Sora has been nothing but nice to you," I spat, getting up in his face as much as I could when he towered over me the way he did. "And he's teaching me how to shadowbend!"

"He's hardly said a word to me," Zuko protested, completely ignoring the fact that I had a point about the shadowbending. "It's you he can't stop bothering." I ground my teeth together, appalled that he would even suggest something like that.

"Who said he was bothering me?" I demanded furiously. "I happen to like Sora a lot!"

"Yeah, I get it," Zuko muttered darkly, leaning slightly away from my hostile form. "Everybody loves Sora."

"What's wrong with you?" I cried, exasperated. "You're the only one in this entire city who has a problem with him. He's nice, Zuko." He looked away, finally, staring at the ground somewhere off to the left of me. That only made me crazier, though, because now I couldn't see his eyes; couldn't guess what he was thinking or feeling.

"I guess I just have trouble seeing the side of him that's not annoying," the prince mumbled. I was floored.

"You don't know him well enough to decide that," I asserted hotly, marching up so close to him that I was practically stepping on his toes and his body heat was washing over me in tidal waves, temperature escalated from the fire in our argument.

"I've been around him enough," he replied in disdain, narrowing his ember eyes.

"Why do you hate him so much?" I finally demanded, stomping my foot, though I knew it made me look just like a petulant child. "Why can't you like him, Zuko?" A shadow fell on the prince's face. We were going around in circles.

"I just can't."

No. No, that wasn't good enough. If he was going to answer me, he was going to answer me right. I wouldn't stand for this nonsense any more. It didn't make any sense. If Zuko couldn't give me a good reason for why he was singling out my innocent friend in all this, then what was the point of all this arguing with him? No, he was going to give me this answer, and he was going to give it to me now.

"Zuko, I swear, if you don't tell me right now how you can hate someone who is so nice to you –"

"Because I'm in love with you, that's why!"

Sometimes, reality hits you so hard that all the broken pieces of your life slam together, and, suddenly, everything makes sense. It hurts like nothing you've ever felt, but, if nothing else, you finally realize what's been right in front of your nose this whole time. Zuko may have not landed a single hit on me during practice, that day, but there was no way I was walking away from this fight intact. This would do far more damage than any punch I had ever suffered.

The fact itself wasn't the worst part, though. The absolute worst part of it all was that I couldn't do anything but stare at Zuko and watch as his expression cracked and crumbled in front of my eyes, and then – even worse – watch as he turned and left, and all the while I was frozen to the earth in shock and pain and, worst of all, unchecked guilt.

And, as I watched him leave, I could only come to one tragic conclusion: I had messed up.

A-B-S-T-R-A-C-T-I-O-N

A/N: I did the thing.