Zuko had had his fair share of close encounters with death. Nearly drowning in the sea as a boy, the Agni Kai against his father, the pirates Zhao had hired to try to kill him, nearly freezing to death in the North Pole—the list went on. But perhaps his closest brush with death was his trek with Katara through the unforgiving Earth Kingdom desert.

With no food and very little water and only a vague idea of where this village was supposed to be, Zuko knew that it was only a matter of time before heat exhaustion and dehydration set in. Two days passed as they traveled over dusty hills, feeling the sun's rays beating down on them with a burning intensity, their mouths parched and their stomachs rumbling. Even Dusty was beginning to suffer.

As they camped on the second night, staring listlessly into the fire as their stomachs growled and headaches pulsed in their skulls, Zuko grew irate.

"We can't go on like this," he said harshly. "There has to be something we can forage, or something."

He thought about his uncle's brush with the deadly white jade plant, but at this point he was so hungry that he didn't care. Being poisoned by a plant and dying a quick death sounded a lot better than slowly starving to death. But Zuko didn't want to die at all. Unfortunately, his head was pounding too hard to try to come up with a rational plan.

Katara looked around at the sparse shrubs and wilted tufts of grass. "There isn't much out here, and even if there was, I couldn't tell you what's edible and what isn't."

Zuko glared at her. "How do you guys even survive? Or do people just give you free shit everywhere you go, since you travel with the Avatar?"

He didn't mistake the blush that rose in her cheeks. "Sometimes. Other times, we work to earn money or food or shelter. But my brother can hunt, and Aang is good at foraging. So we don't really go without."

Her hand pressed against her stomach. Zuko wondered if she was thinking about the state that she'd been in when he'd found her. She'd looked awful, like she was on the brink of death. Zuko didn't want her to look like that again. But if they didn't find that village, if they didn't find something, Zuko worried that they would both end up like that. They might both very well die out here.

"We'll find the village," Zuko said with more confidence than he felt, dampening down his frustration. He leaned over and grabbed the water skin before he pushed it at her. "You should drink some more. Try to stave off the dehydration."

Katara shook her head. "No, we need to conserve it. And we'll need it more tomorrow when it's hot. We should get some sleep."

She settled down against Dusty's side facing him, shutting her eyes. Zuko studied her for a moment before he laid down with his back against the ostrich horse's side. He stared up at the inky sky above, his eyes automatically tracing the familiar constellations. Soon, he drifted off to sleep.

He's staring down a long, dark hallway. Through the murk of shadows, he sees a beautiful woman with her hair in a topknot. Her soft honey eyes seem to look right through him. Her lips turn up in a soft, sad smile. She pulls a hood over her head as she turns and walks away.

The woman fades into the shadows, leaving Zuko with a deep sense of foreboding. Something is wrong.

Zuko woke up suddenly, pulled from sleep by a sharp cramping in his stomach. He curled in on himself as he waited for the pain to pass, grimacing. Finally, the hunger pang let up. He looked over and saw Katara still sleeping soundly beside him. A curl had come free from her frazzled braid, and it fluttered with each exhale. He noticed that she was snoring softly.

He glanced down at the dying fire. His mother. He'd dreamed about his mother. Zuko replayed the dream over and over in his mind. It wasn't the first time he'd had that dream. In fact, it had come to him so often that now he couldn't quite remember if it had always been a dream, or if it had started off as a memory.

Zuko had been eleven years old when his mother had disappeared. It was then that everything had truly gone to shit. His grandfather had died the same night Ursa left, and even as a child, Zuko had been able to draw conclusions about what had happened, although no one else said anything about it.

In fact, with all of the commotion with Fire Lord Azulon's death, coming just a few short months after Prince Lu Ten's death, and Iroh's forfeiture of the siege against Ba Sing Se, no one said much about Princess Ursa at all. And Zuko had been too afraid to really investigate it. He regretted that now.

He'd confronted his father, just once, the morning he'd woken up and found his mother gone. He had found Ozai at the turtleduck pond, dressed in white, the color of mourning in the Fire Nation. His father hadn't even turned to look at him.

"Where is she?" Zuko demanded to know, an edge of panic in his voice.

But Ozai only continued to stare down at the turtleduck pond as if he hadn't even heard him. Zuko wondered if Ozai felt any pain at all at his wife's sudden disappearance.

"Zuko?"

Katara's voice now broke him out of his stupor. He looked down and saw that she had woken up, even though if his inner fire was any indication, dawn was still a few hours away. Her brow was furrowed, and she'd pushed herself up on one arm to look at him.

Zuko turned his eyes back up to the night sky. "Go back to sleep, Katara."

He heard her shift. From the corner of his eye, he saw that she had turned to rest her back against Dusty's side. Her hands were crossed over her stomach as she looked up at the stars.

"I can't. My stomach hurts too bad," she said.

Zuko leaned forward and grabbed the water skin. "Drink, then. It'll help curb the hunger."

Katara looked at it for a moment as she worried her bottom lip between her teeth. Zuko could almost see what she was thinking: that they needed to conserve it, that they didn't know when or if they would be able to get more. But her hunger and thirst won out, and she reluctantly took the water pouch. Her fingers brushed over his, soft and cool. She took a small sip before she held it out to him, but Zuko just shook his head.

"You should take a drink too," she told him gently. "I know you have to be pretty hungry too."

His stomach twisted with his hunger pain, but Zuko just shook his head. "No, I'm okay. Try to get some more sleep, okay?"

Katara studied him for a moment. Then she let out a sigh before she nodded. Katara set the pouch down before she curled up on her side again, closing her eyes. Zuko was still awake when she drifted back to sleep.

Hot, sweat, hunger, thirst. That was all Zuko could think about as he and Katara rode through the desert the next day. Each of them were too tired, hot, and hungry to talk much. Zuko had given her his hat to wear to help keep the sun off of her, and he could feel it burning his skin. His scar was prickling with pain from the sun's direct rays, but he pushed through it.

As mid-morning passed, they came to a steep ravine. Feeling hope surge in his chest, he brought Dusty to the edge, hoping to find water at the bottom. But it was dry, with cracked mud at the bottom indicating that a stream had once run through it, but no longer.

He guided Dusty over the rickety rope bridge that crossed the ravine, wincing with each creak of the boards and rope. Katara clung to him with her arms in a death-grip around his waist, clearly afraid. Thankfully, they made it across without harm.

Soon after, Zuko caught the smell of smoke. Beneath it, he could smell cooking meat. His stomach rumbled loudly, and he guided Dusty in the direction that the aroma was coming from. He could sense Katara's excitement as well as she sat up straighter behind him.

"Do you think people are nearby?" Her voice was a dry rasp in his ear.

"Smells like it," Zuko said. He pulled Dusty up short at the base of a small hill. "I want you two to stay here."

He dismounted from the ostrich horse and made sure that his dao swords were secure on his waist. Katara frowned at him.

"I should come with you," Katara told him.

Zuko shook his head. "No. We have no idea who these people are, and you don't have any water to bend with. If I run into trouble, I can handle it better if I don't need to watch out for you."

"I can take care of myself!"

"If you had water, sure," Zuko bit back. "Just sit tight."

Zuko scaled the hill quietly. He felt lightheaded, and he blinked the sensation away. They needed food, and soon. He reached the top of the hill and discovered that it was a sheer drop down into a small valley. He saw the campfire first, with a piece of meat spit-roasting over it. His mouth actually watered at the sight.

He saw a man tending to the fire. Zuko's hand went to the hilt of his swords. The man was older, thinner, and Zuko knew that he could take him. But then he saw the woman sitting in the shade of a scraggly tree, and the round swell of her belly. Although his own stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself, Zuko clambered back down the hill.

Katara looked up at him hopefully. "Are there people?"

Zuko didn't look at her as he gestured for her to scoot forward on the saddle. Once she did, he pulled himself up behind her and grabbed the reins before he got Dusty moving again.

"Bad people," Zuko lied to her. "And too many of them for me to take on. We need to keep going."

Katara glanced back at him as if she wanted to argue, but then she seemed to change her mind. They kept riding, even as their stomachs cramped and sweat poured down their faces, expelling water that they couldn't afford to lose. Zuko felt exhaustion pulling at him, and his eyes started to droop.

His mother, with her soft, sad smile, pulled her hood up before she was swallowed up by the shadows.

"Zuko, look! I think it's the village!"

Katara's voice sounded far away, as if he was underwater. But somehow, he mustered up the strength to lift his head. Sure enough, there was a small village coming up on the horizon.

"Thank Agni," he muttered around his parched tongue.

He snapped Dusty's reins, and the ostrich horse picked up her pace.