The Avatar's team sat gathered in a semi-circle facing Appa half-an-hour later, the air heavy with the reality of their situation as they watched Katara mend his wounds.

Toph was gone, suffering through Spirits-knew-what at the hands of Azula. Appa, now their only means of transport thanks to the balloon being stolen, was injured. The Fire Nation knew exactly where they were.

Things were looking worse by the second.

Plus, there was the not-so-minor issue of Zuko being back. And while Katara was relieved to see him alive and well and holding no grudge, she couldn't say the same for the others. Especially not Jet, whose gaze had barely left the scarred boy, hands curled into fists and body tensed with distrust. If he had been getting over his prejudice before the incident with Toph's feet, then his anger had to have tripled now. And Katara didn't doubt their breaking up had something to do with it.

The thought had barely crossed her mind when the boy in question glanced over, catching her staring. Quickly, she turned her attention back to Appa. There were more important things to worry about than ex-boyfriends.

"We need to get moving," Zuko declared suddenly, breaking the silence (though certainly not the tension). Burns and bruises and cuts were still scattered all over his body, but he had yet to complain or request medical attention. Katara made a mental note to tend to him as soon as Appa was fixed up.

Shooting a glare at him, Jet snapped, "And why should we listen to you? Why are you still here, anyway? You led her straight to us!"

"It wasn't my intention to –"

"Well, you did."

"Guys," Aang said, the usual spirit drained from his voice and face. He looked and sounded every bit as old as the hundred and twelve years he had claim to. "Please, don't fight. Not right now."

"Don't fight?" Jet asked, eyes wide and mouth forming a snarl. Jabbing a finger toward Zuko, who sat on the opposite end of the semi-circle, he said, "If it weren't for him, we –"

"I'd be dead," Aang cut in, tone final.

His words weighed heavy in the air as they all remembered the terrifying sight of lightning charging toward their friend – their only hope. Katara couldn't help glancing over at Zuko, looking broken and weak, wondering how such immeasurable force could be turned away so easily.

"If you don't mind me saying," Iroh began, looking between the three males from where he sat beside Zuko, "I believe my nephew is right."

Jet crossed his arms, muttering, "Of course you would."

If the comment was heard, Iroh did a good job of ignoring it. "Now that Azula knows where we are, my brother can use all the resources at his disposal to destroy this safe haven and us with it. If we are to have any hope of surviving until the Comet arrives, then we must find somewhere far away. And soon."

"Look, Jet; I don't like agreeing with Zuko anymore than you do," Sokka said, "but he's right. We need to move and figure out a plan to get Toph back."

"Okay, so he's right about leaving the temple. But that doesn't mean we should trust him. He burned Toph's feet, and he got her captured."

"Those were both accidents," Zuko said. It may have been her imagination, but Katara thought she detected a slight a tremor in his voice.

"How can we be sure of that? One accident is one thing, but two?" Jet's gaze narrowed. "We had no problems here for almost two months, and suddenly Azula knows where to find us."

"Because she's Azula."

Katara looked up so fast she almost got whip-lash. Mai was speaking out. Mai had hardly even spoken for weeks, and now she was arguing against Jet?

It seemed to come as a bit of a shock to everyone, judging by the silence that fell over the group. Mai paused for a beat, as if to give a moment for the surprise to settle, then continued in her even, raspy tone, "It doesn't matter that she followed Zuko here. She would've found us anyway. Azula's a hunter. Once she starts, she'll never stop."

"But – " Jet said, clearly having no intention of agreeing.

"I have an idea," Iroh cut in, palms rested on the knees of his crossed legs, smiling in a display of his legendary patience. "Why don't we settle this matter with a nice, quiet vote, hm?"

Slouching back, Jet scowled but made no further argument.

"Excellent! Now, everyone in favour of letting Zuko rejoin Team Avatar – "

"See?" Sokka beamed. "Catchy name!"

"– raise your hand."

Three hands – Iroh's, Ty Lee's, and Mai's – lifted with certainty. Then, hesitant, Katara lifted hers, followed shortly by Aang. Katara couldn't help noticing how cow-owl wide Zuko's eyes got when he saw her vote in his favour, gaze darting between her and Aang as though expecting Sozin's Comet to rain down on their heads right that instant.

Thankfully, none of them met their fiery end in the three second pause following their vote.

"Five, then," Iroh said, smiling. "Now, just for formalities sake, those who are opposed to – "

Jet's hand shot into the air as he sent Zuko a look that could very well kill.

Nodding, Iroh's smile broadened. "Very well, then. Five for, one against."

"What?" Jet demanded, eyes almost bulging from the sockets as his gaze snapped toward Sokka. "I thought you would back me up on this!"

"Sorry," Sokka said, hands held up as he shrugged," but, I'm on the fence for this one. Not that it would make much of a difference."

"And why the hell are you on the fence?"

"The guy took a bolt of lightning," he said, offering another shrug.

"Then it's settled," Aang declared with a firm nod. To Zuko, he said, "Welcome aboard. Again."

The former prince was already jumping to his feet, ignoring his injuries as he beamed and bowed, saying, "Thank-you! Thank-you so much – I promise I won't let you down again!"

"Yeah, yeah," Sokka said, waving his hand dismissively. "Pipe down, Sparky. I still got my eye on you."

". . . Sparky?" Zuko raised his lone eyebrow (actually, it might have been both).

"Yeah! I figure while Toph's gone, someone will have to make up for all the lost sarcasm and name calling. And I figure: who better to do it than me!"

Rolling her eyes as she got to her feet, Katara grabbed Zuko by the crook of his uninjured arm and began dragging him toward the corridor. "You should know better than to listen to my brother by now."

"Hey!" Sokka called after her, arms crossing and expression shifting into a sullen pout. "What about all my master plans? You always listen to them!"

Katara just continued to steer Zuko down the hall, hissing a reminder for him to "just ignore him".

Then they were out of earshot and alone save for the crab-rats that skittered past their feet. Shifting uncomfortably in her grip, Zuko alternated between staring straight ahead and sending her sidelong glances, expression somewhere between nervous and curious and carefully blank.

"So, uh . . ." he started, then mock coughed to clear his throat. "Wh-what, um . . . Where are you taking me?"

"To my room," Katara answered easily, relinquishing his arm and struggling not to let her nerves show. It was one of the few moments she was around him and didn't feel anger or fear or some mix of both, and she wasn't sure how to handle that or the fact that this was how things would be for the foreseeable future.

"Oh." He inched away so that there as more than a breath of space between them, but not before Katara felt a flash of heat from him at the mention of her bedroom. Sending her one of his glances, he asked, "Uh, why?"

"So I can patch you up." In her peripheral, she noticed him visibly relax. "And so we can . . . talk."

The tension returned. "About what?"

They paused, now standing in front of Katara's bedroom door. The heavy wood stared back at them, waiting for someone to reach out and swing it open, while both of them waited for the opposite person to do just that. Heat continued radiating from Zuko despite the added distance between them, mixing with the cool, stale air of the temple corridor.

Finally, Katara pulled the door open, saying, "Toph."

"Oh."

The two responses were single worded – monosyllabic – yet they both carried massive weigh.

"Look," Zuko said as he followed her across the threshold and into the room, suddenly very interested in talking, "I'm sorry. About everything – what I did to you and Aang, burning Toph's feet, leading Azula here, getting Toph ca–"

"It's not your fault."

He abruptly cut off, blinking at her as she settled onto her bed and uncorked her waterskin, watching as the liquid swirled out of the opening at her fingers' beckoning. "What?"

"I don't blame you," she repeated, now twisting the water onto one hand and patting the mattress with the other in offer for him to sit. He did, hesitantly, still eyeing her with a mix of bewilderment and carefully restrained hope. And perhaps a little fear. "Well, for the first bit I do, but that other stuff . . . Those weren't things you could predict or control."

Zuko kept a steady gaze on her as she pressed the water-coated hand to his unscarred but badly scraped cheek. The wound, along with the dozens of others marring him, now made him look an odd mix of vulnerable and intimidating. The angry hue of his scar certainly stood out more, highlighted by all the other imperfections.

"Not that I'm complaining, but . . . don't you, you know, kinda despise me?"

"And that's why I wanted to talk," she sighed, letting her gaze drop. "After you left, Toph was pretty . . . upset. And we got to talking, and she ended up telling me some things." Her gaze shifted back to his face, slowly. "About you."

He drew a breath, and Katara could feel the tensing of his jaw as recognition dawned. Exhaling heavily, he turned his face away (or tried – it was hard to with her hand pressed against his cheek). It didn't go unnoticed which side he wanted to hide. "So, you –?"

"Yeah," she answered quietly, trying not to let her gaze drift to his left eye. And failing. "I know."

Letting out a sound between and growl and sigh, he muttered, "She promised not to tell."

"I didn't exactly give her much choice."

There was a pause, then the tiniest of smiles crept across his lips. "You are pretty stubborn. I should know."

Then the stillness was back, quiet except for the swish of water as Katara moved from Zuko's face to his forearm, pushing up his sleeve with one hand and using the other to make the severed skin stitch back together. Thinking back on her grudgeful behaviour (particularly the time she had attacked him purely out of frustration), she couldn't help feeling a tiny wave of guilt as she realized how unnecessary a lot it was. All Zuko had done since arriving at the temple was try to help them, yet every time he did something especially nice, she responded with anger or violence (or often times both).

"I'm sorry," she blurted, then promptly clamped her mouth shut. This wasn't quite how she had envisioned their conversation going – though, nothing ever seemed to go as expected around Zuko.

He looked up from her hand on his arm (healing still, and probably always would, intrigued him) to her face, doing his usual surprised-blinking routine. "For what?"

"Just . . . everything. Well, some things." She stared determinedly at his arm, willing her cheeks not to redden (they did anyway). "A lot of things."

"What things?"

"The way I've acted around you for the past . . . ever. Since you started living in the temple with us, at least. You've been nothing but nice since then, and all I could do was be completely temperamental with you. I was worse than Jet."

Letting out a bark of laughter, Zuko grinned broadly, saying, "No one is worse than Jet."

"I was still awful to you."

"You had every right to be," he said, expression turning serious again in a blink. "I was awful to you for months. I was awful to everyone – so if anyone should be apologizing right now, it'd be me."

"You've apologized more than enough," she said quietly, palm sliding down arm and closer to his wrist, staring at the hand it was connected to and remembering how he had turned Azula's lightning away from Aang. The image, blue and flashing from light to dark as Zuko slid through seemingly familiar motions, was burned into her mind forever.

"How did you do it?" she asked. Then, realizing he wasn't following her train of thought, added, "That thing with Azula's lightning. That was incredible – and you don't even have a scratch."

"It's a technique my uncle created. Why? Does it look familiar?" He was giving her a look, like he knew some sort of secret and – was that a smirk she detected?

"Yes," she said, resisting the urge to cross her arms. "Should I?"

"Well, uncle Iroh created the technique by studying waterbending, so –"

"Seriously?" she asked, eyes growing wide and water slipping between her fingers in the moment of shock. It splashed onto the bed, soaking through the thin sheets, and Katara scrambled to bend it back together, all the while saying, "I mean, really? You can interchange bending styles like that? Oh, and, uh, turn; I need to start on your back."

"It surprised me at first, too," Zuko said, obediently repositioning himself so he was staring at the door instead of Katara. Pausing to pull his shirt over his head, he tossed the garment to the floor and waited for Katara's soothing water to spread across the badly bruised and scraped flesh before continuing, "But obviously it's possible. Still, of all the elements to use together . . ."

There was a lull in the conversation, allowing Katara a moment to focus wholly on his wounds. The skin on his back was a raw and angry shade of red, sensitive to touch if the way he kept twitching and wincing was any indication. She worked the glowing water into his injuries with care, and couldn't help noticing there was something strange about the moment – stranger than watching skin stitch itself back together, even.

It was calm. Content.

The tension that had filled the air as though it had a physical presence every time they were together was gone, or at the very least eased to the point of being unnoticeable.

Which made it even harder for Katara to know what to do with herself. With no anger or fear or tension between them, they were both left bare and exposed, no emotional barriers left to measure the distance between them. There was nothing left to remind her she was sitting on the same bed as Zuko, the (former) prince of the Fire Nation, and if she hadn't been able to see him – didn't know his voice so well – she might have thought she was beside Aang or Sokka or Jet or anyone else whose presence was safe and familiar.

It was bizarre.

"So," Zuko said, pulling her from her thoughts. His head was bowed slightly, indicating he was probably staring at his hands folded in his lap. "What kind of stuff did Toph tell you, exactly?"

There was a very different pause, and tension (but not like she was accustomed to, not the building pressure of a bomb) trickled in to fill the space between them.

Katara swallowed, mouth suddenly feeling very dry. "She didn't go into a lot of detail, but . . . I know about the Agni Kai."

His back muscles tightened. "Right," he said tersely, clearly expecting more.

"And how your father compares you to Azula."

". . . Okay."

"And how you've spent the last three years of your life trying to make everything normal again," she finished softly, watching as the last of his bruised and broken skin healed over, no scars or scabs in sight. She kept her hands and her water right where they were, however, unsure what else to do. Certainly not tell him to turn around so she could patch up his legs, because that meant they would have to face each other again, and would be all too awkward for her tastes.

So instead she stared at his unmarred back, waiting for him to say something – anything – in response.

"When I was a kid . . ." he started, low tone rumbling through him to Katara's fingertips. Pausing, Zuko lifted his head to stare at the door, and even without seeing his face Katara got the impression he was focused on something else entirely. "I don't even remember it, but . . . When I was kid – when mom was still around – things were great. Or always okay, at least. Uncle . . . He tried to tell me stories about when I was younger, to help me remember. It didn't really work, but . . . Somehow I just know everything he told me is right, that . . ."

He trailed off, head bowing again, leaving Katara to wait for an ending that wouldn't come. After a moment of still silence, she gently prodded, "That . . . what?"

"That we were a family once."

Watching his shoulders rise and fall as he let out a quiet sigh, she waited, knowing there was more to his story. It felt like hours (but was probably only a minute) before he spoke again.

"While we were in the palace, I started . . ." He hesitated, as if expecting some dire consequence for what he was about to admit, then ploughed forward. "I started getting my memories of Azula back. Old memories, from when we were really little. I remember . . . We used to always go down to Ember Island, and we'd spend hours just playing down on the beach."

Another pause, and Katara felt him take a shuddering breath, only to realize her hand had slid up from his back to rest reassuringly on his shoulder. All her water had absorbed into his skin.

"I used to actually be able to teach her stuff. You know, be a big brother. Then she started learning to walk, and talk, and she developed firebending so fast . . . Eventually it seemed like I was the little kid and needed her to teach me everything."

"And now she's captured Toph," Katara said, letting the weight of this sink in for them both. If her conversations with the other girl were anything to go by, Zuko had been like the big brother Toph never had. And now the crazy sister he probably never wanted had her, and they could only wonder.

"What are we going to do?" Zuko murmured, so quiet she thought maybe he was only talking to himself. He drew another shuddering breath, and Katara heard it catch in his throat.

"I don't know," she said, equally quiet.

Then she leaned forward, wrapping both arms loosely around his neck and resting her head against his shoulder, his warmth and unsteady breathing reverberating through her. He lifted on hand to lace his fingers through hers, and they just sat, wordless.

Author's Notes: So. Long. o.o

I hope you guys enjoy it!

Disclaimer: "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and all of its characters are property of Nickelodeon, which I am in no way associated with.