A/N: Sorry it's been so long! This chapter is a little shorter, and not my favorite, but at least we're moving along. I wrote half of this chapter about a month ago and got stuck and finally came back and finished it. But here we are, a little more zutara-esque, but we still have ways to go. Let me know what you think, I'll try to update quicker!

Zuko turns to me, "Why are you with him?" He demands.

Here we go.

I place my hand against Zuko's chest, trying to calm him, apparently much to Ainslin's irritation, he doesn't even attempt to hide his scowl.

"He's helping me, Zuko." I say, attempting to de-escalate the situation. "We were on our way to break you out of the tower."

"I don't believe that for a second." Zuko growls, "He was probably just leading you there so that they could trap you with me."

I hadn't thought of that. What is wrong with my brain lately? Zuko makes a good point, I haven't really questioned Ainslin as much as I should.

"Is that true?" I say, turning to Ainslin. "We're you just tricking me so you could lock me back up?"

A hurt expression crosses his face, and I immediately feel bad for questioning him, he truly has done nothing but help me since I met him.

"Katara, no…" Ainslin says, stepping towards me, he reaches his hands out in an attempt to grab my own. "You know I wouldn't do that to you…You know how I feel about you."

"Back up!" Zuko warns, holding his hand up to keep Ainslin at a distance, he moves in front of me, placing himself between me and the other firebender.

"I don't know how you think you feel about Katara." He begins. "But you don't get to talk to her like that, or continue whatever kind of manipulation you having going here. She has experienced severe head trauma at the hands of your father and his cronies, and she's not in the right headspace to be trusting strangers right now, on top of that, she has no clue who you actually are, but I do." Zuko pauses, a look of disgust crossing his face. "I know exactly who you are, so you better keep your hands away from Katara, or I'll rip them off."

"Zuko, it's fine." I say, "He's been taking care of me, and my memory is getting better, you don't have to protect me, I can make my own decisions."

"Taking care you how?" Zuko demands, clearly ignoring the rest of my sentence.

"By providing her with some clean and halfway decent clothing to wear, for starters." Ainslin says dryly, "Which was more than you could have provided, I didn't see her wearing your shirt, unless you just liked gawking at her breasts, which wouldn't surprise…"

Ainslin doesn't finish his sentence before Zuko's fist connects with his jaw, sending him down to the ground with a thud.

"I'm so fucking tired of hearing you sick bastards talk about Katara!" Zuko shouts. "I swear to Agni, if I hear one more man make a lewd comment about her I will end his life on the spot!"

I instinctively cross my arms over my chest, I know that I'm covered now, but up until this point I've been mostly preoccupied with survival and modesty wasn't as pressing of a concern, but thinking back over the last couple days, I feel a wave of nausea remembering all the men who have seen and touched my body - without my consent. Even Zuko has seen my breasts on more than a couple occasions at the this point, and it's not so much concerning, but I still don't know how to feel about it. .

"You know," Ainslin say, sitting up and rubbing his jaw. "I didn't realize you were such a jealous type, I would have played this a little differently had I known you were so possessive of Katara."

Zuko's strong, I've seen his strength – marveled at his strength on so many occasions, seen him take down men twice his size. Even the guards here, with two and three holding him at once, have struggled to keep him down. But for some reason, the thought of him fighting Ainslin makes me nervous, Ainslin is big, and he took a punch from Zuko much better than anyone else I've seen.

"You don't want to do this, Ainslin." Zuko says, his voice low and warning. "You don't want to fight me."

Ainslin stands and faces Zuko, his jaw already turning blue. "You're right, I don't want to fight you, but I will fight you if it comes to that." Ainslin looks at me then, an unreadable expression on his face. "Katara, isn't yours. She's her own person, and she's decided to put her trust in me, and I will do everything in my power to live up to that trust. And I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable knowing that she has slept in my bed, and wears my clothes, and that I was the one to take care of her when you couldn't, but that's just reality."

Oh no.

Zuko lunges then, knocking Ainslin backwards, and they both tumble over the trunk of a fallen tree, disappearing into the brush and darkness with loud grunts.

"She's not your girlfriend!" Ainslin's shouts, popping out of the brush, sending a fireball in what I'm assuming is Zuko's direction.

Zuko emerges, deflecting the fire and sending out a blast of his own. "She's not yours either!"

"Not yet, but you don't get to make that decision!"

Oh my Agni, they are idiots. Truly.

I sigh and pull the water out of the fallen tree in front of me, causing it to burst and splinter with a startling crack, then without hesitation, I crash the water into the two men in front of me, knocking them from their feet, dousing their fires, and leaving them drenched and on their butts on the forest floor.

"Listen here, assholes!" I shout, staring down at the two sets of bewildered amber eyes in front of me. "I'm not dating either of you, and at this moment in time I'm glad I'm not, because you're acting like a couple of ten years olds instead of grown men. I don't know what the history is between the two of you, and I don't want to know! It has nothing to do with me, so leave me out of it! Right now we need to focus on taking down Ainslin's father and getting the hell out of this godforsaken place!"

"You're right." Ainslin says, standing and attempting to slush the water from his clothes, quite unsuccessfully. "I was acting completely dishonorable, I apologize. I hope we can start over."

"Yeah, yeah." I say, not particularly interested in what either of them have to say. "We need a new game plan."

"I guess we can head back to my station…" Ainslin begins.

"No." Zuko cuts him off, "We'll stay here and make a camp for the night. We're not putting anymore distance between us and your father."

We made camp about 300 feet from the puddle that I left on the ground, Zuko started a fire, caught some rabbits, skinned and gutted them, and I've been cooking them while Ainslin forages around for branches long enough to make a shelter from.

"We don't need a shelter." Zuko groans for the third time, we can just sleep on the ground, daylight isn't that far away."

"What if it rains?"

"I don't know about you, but I'm still fucking drenched from Katara." Zuko says bitterly, "I don't think a little rain is gonna make that much of a difference."

"You deserved it," I say to Zuko, low enough that Ainslin can't hear.

"I know I did, I'm sorry." He responds.

"Well, when Katara and I are sleeping cozily in the shelter I build for us, you aren't allowed in" Ainslin shouts, attempting to kick over a young tree.

I roll my eyes and give Zuko a withering look, he chuckles at this. "I know that you can make your own decisions, I'm sorry for not giving you enough credit." He says, scratching the back of his head, "I really was acting like a jealous asshole."

"You were." I say, "But I know you meant well, and I appreciate you trying to protect my honor." The last part comes out in a giggle.

"Hey, that's a cruel joke." Zuko responds, then cracks a smile of his own. "I would have given you my shirt, if I had one, you know."

"I know you would have."

"It wasn't cause I wanted to look at your breasts…Well not that I…didn't…but, you know what I mean…" Zuko drops his face into his hands, but not before I catch a glimpse of the deep blush rising in his cheeks.

"I know, Zuko." I say, and then. "You're the only one that I didn't mind seeing them."

I don't know why I said that… But I suppose it's true.

Zuko's head pops up from his hands, and his eyes widen – his classic look of surprise. He opens his mouth to respond, but is interrupted by Ainslin

"Seeing what?" The firebender asks, walking into the light of the campfire, a dozen branches of varying sizes stacked in his arms.

"Oh nothing." I respond nonchalantly. "Dinner is ready."

To Ainslin's credit, he got a decent little shelter built, though it was drastically lopsided. And much to his dismay, I decided to sleep under the stars beside Zuko, instead.

"We used to sleep like this all the time." Zuko had said, lying down on his side, facing me, his head not a foot away from mine. "You know, back when we saved the world."

Ainslin had mumbled something about a pretentious jerk, but if Zuko heard him, he chose to ignore it.

I bent the remaining water from Zuko's hair and pants before we fell asleep, putting a finger to my lips, signaling to not tell Ainslin. Zuko just grinned and closed his eyes, drifting off to sleep.

Morning came quickly, and with it a renewed sense of dread. We needed to make a plan now, a real one, and I needed Zuko and Ainslin to work together long enough to execute it efficiently.

I should have known that it would be too much to ask for. We spent hours pouring over ideas, Zuko would never agree to any of Ainslin's plans, always finding an excuse to call it a trap. And Ainslin wouldn't agree to Zuko's, just because it was Zuko's, and any plan I came up with was out of the question, because I have head trauma and can't be counted on, apparently.

I'm beginning to think they're gaslighting me just so one of them can be in charge.

"Okay," I say standing up, and brushing off my pants. Zuko had drawn a solid, detailed map in the dirt of the known layout of this, apparent fortress that we are trapped in, and the boys are currently grumbling over what direction we need to head."I've seen all I need to see," I continue, heading towards the direction Zuko had come the night before. "I'm going to the tower."

"Wait!" Zuko says, jumping to his feet – though still favoring his unhurt leg, I notice. "You can't just go alone? We have to have a plan."

I look up at him, my frustration growing with each passing moment.

"I agree, we need a plan, but apparently you two are either to stubborn or stupid or both to come up with one! And anything I say is immediately shot down, so why would I sit around and waste daylight waiting on you two to come up with something, when I can just go and take this man down myself."

I was bluffing, of course. I had no idea what this guy looked like, or where to find him, and not that I couldn't take him down, I was just throughly unprepared to do so. But we needed to get out of this place, and I knew that they wouldn't let me go alone.

"Okay, okay." Ainslin says, standing now as well. "Let's not be hasty, you can't go alone, but I can get you inside."

"No." Zuko cuts in, "She's not going anywhere with you."

"Ughh!" I shout, throwing my hands in the air and stomping away from them. "This is hopeless!"

I occurs to me, not without irritation, that I still don't know where the hell I am. This is getting ridiculous.

"We'll all go," Zuko says, catching up to me and walking beside me.

"And we'll just figure it out along the way." Ainslin continues, appearing on my other side.

"Good." I say, "At least we can all agree to that."