Katara woke up when the sun crested the horizon. She was still exhausted and hungry, but at least she was warm and comfortable—wait, what?

She threw herself into a sitting position, quickly registering the bedroll, the fire that had been reduced to embers, and—the prince of the Fire Nation sitting ten paces away with his back to her. The previous day crashed over her, and Katara let out a small groan. She'd forgotten about being separated from her friends and running into Zuko, and the agreement they had come to.

Hearing her waking up, Zuko looked back at her. She realized that he had small flames in the palms of his hands. What is he doing? Meditating? But then he doused his fires and stood up, crossing back over to their makeshift camp.

"Do you even sleep?" Katara asked him around a yawn.

"Duh. I'm not a vampire." He knelt down and rifled through one of his packs before he tossed a bruised apple at her. "Firebenders rise with the sun."

"Right." She glanced at the horizon. "But the sun's barely up."

"Well, sleeping on the hard ground helps too." He pulled an apple out for himself before he sat down and bit into it. "We'll eat and be on our way."

"Sounds good to me."

They ate their meager breakfast, and then Katara helped him pack up their camp. He climbed onto the ostrich horse's saddle, and Katara pulled herself up behind him. She hesitated for a moment before she tentatively put her hands on his waist. Before she could overthink it, he snapped the reins, and the ostrich horse set off at a steady plod towards the road.

"Does he have a name?" Katara asked after they had ridden in silence for a while.

"Who?"

"Your ostrich horse."

"She," Zuko corrected her. "And yeah. Her name is Dusty."

Katara snorted out a laugh. "Dusty? Did you name her?"

She saw his unmarked ear turn red. "I did. Is there something wrong with her name?"

"It's just...Dusty? Really?" She couldn't hold in her giggles now. "You couldn't have come up with something better than that?"

He glanced back at her over his shoulder, his eye narrowed into a scowl. "What? She was dusty when I got her. It fits."

"If you say so." Katara stroked the animal's feathers. "You poor thing. You're much more than your silly name."

Zuko twisted his torso to look at her better now. "If you're going to be condescending, you're welcome to walk."

"Relax. I'm just teasing," Katara muttered. "I forgot you had the sense of humor of a sea slug."

"As if you know me well enough to know if I have a sense of humor or not," Zuko bit out.

Katara rolled her eyes. "Well, given that you go around with a royal stick up your ass—"

"You must really feel like walking," Zuko snipped.

"Hmph."

Katara decided not to push him any further for a while. She turned her gaze out over the dry, dusty plains instead. This part of the Earth Kingdom was rather boring to look at, nothing but dull, low mounds that barely counted as hills with barely a tree to break up the monotony. Endless blue sky stretched overhead with the sun creeping higher, promising to be another hot day.

After a while, the boredom started to seep in, and Katara found herself humming under her breath, just simply nursery rhymes her mother used to sing when she and Sokka were young.

"Would you stop that?" Zuko snapped.

Katara glared at the back of his neck. "Oh, I'm sorry. Is humming no longer allowed too?"

Zuko growled in frustration. "You have got to be the most annoying girl I've ever met!"

"And have you met many girls, Prince Zuko?"

"Enough to know you're the most infuriating of the lot of them!"

"Well, the same can be said of you and all boys I've met," Katara retorted.

"Whatever."

"Yeah, whatever!"

They fell back into silence. Katara stewed furiously, wondering why she had ever agreed to this.

Desperate times, she thought to herself.

Zuko was not sulking. Nope, definitely not. Princes did not sulk. But did commoners sulk? Zuko thought so, and since he was basically just a peasant these days, maybe he was sulking.

They'd barely been traveling for an hour, and already Katara was driving him nuts. Zuko had no idea how he was going to make it through the next week. She was so annoying. Always talking or humming or sighing, soft, breathy noises that stirred the hair at the nape of his neck and sent gooseflesh across his skin—

She was annoying. Definitely annoying.

Zuko had never given much thought to any of the Avatar's companions. They were all merely obstacles who thwarted him at every turn. The kid with the boomerang, not so much, but Katara? Definitely. She'd bested him at the North Pole, and she'd been a thorn in his side even before then, but now she was the equivalent of ten thorns, digging into each side of his waist.

He couldn't ignore the feeling of her behind him, either. He could feel the warmth of her thighs pressing on either side of him, and the weight of her hands on his waist. He couldn't ignore the fact that he was sixteen, and that she was a girl (an annoying, aggravating, but pretty girl). The next week was going to be torturous.

When the sun reached its peak in the sky, they stopped for lunch in the shade of a tree along the side of the road. Zuko produced more apples along with a handful of lychee nuts. They drank conservatively from his waterskin.

"We better make for the nearby village," Zuko said as he took the water back from her. "This was the last of the food."

"Seriously?" Katara gawked at him. Then she looked around. "How close is the village?"

Zuko looked up at the sky. "We should be there before sundown. I passed it on my way north."

"Good. That's good." She pressed her hand to her stomach. "Going hungry is not fun."

Zuko looked down at his own stomach. He'd never gone hungry until he and his uncle became wanted criminals. He'd never known what it was like to struggle like that. Even though he had been banished, Uncle Iroh still had his own coffers to draw from. There was always gold when he needed it.

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

They climbed back on Dusty shortly after that and started to ride again. The sun was hot overhead, and there was barely a breeze to stir the stiff air. He could feel the sweat dripping down his spine, causing his shirt to stick to his skin. He was a firebender, and they naturally ran hot, but even he could feel Katara's body heat behind him. Very distracting, indeed.

As the sun sank towards the western horizon, and the sky turned red and orange, the small farming village finally came into view. Zuko breathed a quiet sigh of relief, grateful for the opportunity to get off of the ostrich horse, and put some space between him and Katara for a while.

With that in mind, he snapped the reins, and Dusty picked up the pace.