A/N: Hi all, this was originally going to be a cute little collection of Zutara one-shots. Then it kind of started running away from me, and now it's turned itself into a multi-chapter fic which is going to extend way past the end of the series. I'm trying to keep up with posting a chapter every week, but the first six are all already done so here they are!

Disclaimer: None of the characters in this fic are my own creations, they belong to Bryke/Nickelodeon. I've also used some dialogue from the show at multiple points - basically if you recognise it, it's not mine.

We're starting off with a continuation of the Ember Island Players episode (everyone's favourite).

[For those of you who read this fic in its first iteration, the Southern Raiders chapter hasn't been deleted - I've just shuffled the order a tad, so it'll be coming up next!]

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'Ember Island gives everyone a clean slate,

Ember Island reveals the true you'

Zuko has been trying to sleep for what feels like hours. Spirits, maybe it has been hours. The soft breathing of the rest of the gang whispers through the room, punctuated every so often by one of Sokka's snores.

He huffs lightly and stares at the ceiling a few moments longer, then abruptly picks himself up off the floor and slips out of the house.

The bay is quiet and calm, waves rolling in over the sand and then pulling back out towards the blackness of the sea. He stands in the stillness, watching the few scraps of cloud that are in the sky make their way past the moon, and he feels... what, melancholy?

Before he has the chance to explore that, something snags in the corner of his eye, the glow of the moon highlighting movement over on one of the large rocks that fringe the beach. He tenses momentarily, mind going immediately to his sister, but then his vision sharpens on the movements and, even in silhouette, he recognises the flow of Katara's waterbending forms.

Relaxing, he makes his way in her direction; he sees her spot him as he crosses the sand, and he lights a small flame in his palm so that she can see his face. She goes back to bending, limbs moving slowly, smoothly through the motions, shoulders rolling back as she turns multiple streams of water through the air. He can see why his uncle found inspiration in waterbending – bending fire centres on breathing, after all, and the push and pull of Katara's movements seem to mimic his own breaths as he reaches the base of the rock.

Things had been better since they'd travelled together across the Fire Nation; with her forgiveness, their interaction had eased from being laden with suspicion and blame to something lighter.

'I didn't think anyone else was awake,' he states, pulling himself up onto the sandstone.

She smiles, the moonlight catching on the side of her face as she tilts her head in his direction, eyes still held serenely on the sea.

'Waterbender,' she says briefly. Then, after a few moments more of twisting the streams around her hands, she continues. 'Sometimes when it's a clear night and the moon is strong I get... I don't know, restless? Like if I'm not bending then I'm missing out on something.' A breath of a laugh. 'It sounds silly saying it out loud.'

'It doesn't. I know what you mean. I get the same when the sun's coming up.'

Her eyes slip from the silver-streaked horizon to land on him, hands still intuitively working the water as a smirk curls the corners of her mouth.

'You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun.'

There's a laugh in her voice that Zuko has started to recognise as being light-hearted rather than mocking. He cringes all the same, dropping to sit with his elbows propped against his knees.

'Oh, man. Not my best moment.'

'I don't know, you've definitely got a flare for the dramatic. I can't think why they didn't include that line in the script today.'

He stays silent at this, and her movements slow to a stop, the water she'd been playing with flowing back down into the sea with a flick of her fingers. He can feel her eyes moving over him slowly, but keeps his sights firmly on the view, determinedly neutral.

'Why are you still up, then?'

The casual tone in her voice is too forced to be genuine, even as she turns back away from him; it's clear she's already guessed the answer to her question. Now she's trying to walk the fine line between probing and prying, something that is still undefined in their newly-found companionship.

If he shuts down now, she'll accept it. They'll agree, wordlessly, that this is their limit, that they don't talk about this kind of thing with each other. They'll agree that the understanding they'd felt during their journey to find Yon Rha had been a one-off, not to be imitated in the confines of their day-to-day lives.

'That show today. I... I don't really feel like sleeping.'

He is so tired of pushing people away. And it's more than just that, too; it's her. He feels as though something has connected them ever since they found themselves trapped together in Ba Sing Se, some gossamer thread which had taken root when he first held up the mirror so that she could see herself in him, and she first offered to heal for him what had already been destroyed.

'I can understand why.' She's not pretending to be nonchalant anymore. Her silhouette is motionless against the white glow of the moon.

'Yeah. Seeing every bad mistake I've ever made being played out... It brought back a lot of regrets, things that I'd thought I was starting to make up for. And then watching my father defeat us made me think, maybe I'll never really be able to atone for my part in all this. Maybe everything I'm trying to do now is too little too late.'

Katara is silent for a moment, his words hovering in the air between them, and Zuko feels his breath falter, because what she's probably thinking is that he's right, and he doesn't know if he can take someone confirming those fears for him.

'Maybe it is.' Catch. 'But I don't think so.' Release. He crumples, just slightly.

'Why shouldn't you? I helped him. I did exactly what he wanted me to at almost every turn – I hunted the Avatar, I hurt innocent people, and I sat at his right hand and listened as he and his war council talked about doing awful things without saying a word.'

His shoulders are tight, neck almost sore.

When he lifts his head, she's there, sinking down to sit cross-legged so that he's side-on to her, still trying to give him some small sense of personal space even as she scrutinises him. Her voice is firm when she speaks, edging on forceful, and her eyes are simultaneously dark and shining as she keeps her stare fixed on his face.

'You're not like him, you know.' And he starts and looks around at her, because of course that's what he's afraid of. Something in him twists, the way it always seems to do when someone gives him more than he thinks he deserves.

'How do you know that?' he challenges, his voice suddenly rising. He pushes up off the ground, standing in front of her. 'It's not like I haven't tried to do the right thing before! But every time I do it's like the universe just pushes right back and tells me that I can't, so why even bother trying? What if I can't escape who I really am? My father marked me when I was thirteen and I've been trying to get away from it ever since, but-

'Sit down, Zuko.'

Her words are spoken quietly, but they're tight. Undeniable.

He sits, the heat still high in him. She eyes him with an open sadness, looking shaken behind the shine of the moonlight on her face.

The silence stretches out for a few moments, long enough that Zuko starts to feel jumpy under her gaze.

'I didn't know.'

'What do you mean?' he counters, more than a little sharply.

'I didn't know that it was him who did it to you.' Her face sets, and her voice turns fierce, fierce in his defence. 'You're not like your father. Do you think you'd be here if you were? Do you think you'd be this torn up over it? Do you really think that he ever would've hurt you the way that he did if you were anything like him?'

The fabric of her stolen Fire Nation skirt drags along the rough ground as she moves herself across so that she's sitting right in front of him, knees only a couple of inches away from his, her body tilted forwards into his own space.

'I know you've done things that you regret, Zuko, but that isn't the sum of your parts. You're saying that maybe you can't escape who you really are, but you've got it the wrong way around – I think you're finally learning who you really are.'

She leans back, still not looking away from him.

'You know, you were always talking about needing to get your honour back from your father. But it was never his to grant you.'

Any fight left in him deflates as he releases the breath that he hadn't realised he was holding. Even though he's been here, with the gang, for a good few weeks now, he's still not quite used to being believed in. It feels... nice.

'Yeah, I know that.' Then he corrects himself. 'I did know that. Sometimes it can be hard to keep hold of.'

'Mmh.'

Neither of them speaks for a while after that, then Katara blows out a hard breath and her voice opens up the silence again.

'Wow. All that from one play.'

They both laugh, a welcome release from the intensity of the last few minutes. He lets his chuckle ebb away, smile left caught on his face.

'Thanks, Katara.'

The laughter is still in her voice when she replies.

'Hey, any time. Apparently, corny inspirational speeches are what I'm known for.'

They're lying on the stone, smiling at the stars as they remind each other of the play's strangest edits on their lives.

'Puppet Momo.'

'Puppet Earth King.'

'Toph's sonic powers.'

Katara breaks into a fresh stream of laughter at that one, the sound overflowing from her and out into the night air.

'And of course she was thrilled by that casting choice. I don't know why I thought it might make her understand how the rest of us were all feeling.'

A breeze blows lightly across the bay, lifting strands of her hair up off her shoulder and letting them fall across the gap between them.

'Is it weird that I'm both impressed by how much they knew, and disturbed by how badly they got things wrong?'

A reply comes to his lips and he holds it there for a moment, gauging his position with her. When he does speak, he slips a smirk into his voice.

'Funny.'

'What?'

'Nothing, I just thought you liked things that were so bad.'

She twists to look sideways at him, scandalised.

'Oh, that is so unfair. You know I can't throw anything from that show back at you!'

It feels like a victory, not because she's stuck for a response, but because the jibe landed where it was meant to, taken as something easy and good-humoured rather than a push too far into private ground.

Then the smile fades off Katara's face, and he feels like a jerk for bringing up a part of her story that ended in hurt. Jerk-bender.

His voice softens.

'I didn't know that you knew him.'

'Jet? I didn't know you did.'

'We were friends, for a while, I think.'

'Mmh,' she hums, her fingers running absent-mindedly through the ends of her hair. He finds it oddly hypnotising. 'We were... something else. Sort of. It was strange, seeing him in Ba Sing Se.'

'I'm sorry about what happened. It seemed like you cared about him.'

She looks at him.

'Yeah... Yeah, I did.' Then, perhaps feeling the need to level the playing field again: 'How about you? That girl with the throwing knives? Mai?'

He feels guilt tighten his jaw.

'Yeah.'

A beat passes; he knows what the next question is, and how dangerous it could be.

'What about Aang?'

She stiffens next to him.

'What about Aang?' she asks tightly, the cut in her voice suddenly becoming defensive.

'I just... They seemed to really want to make it look as though you didn't think of him... like that. I don't think he was happy about it.'

She lets out a short, harsh breath, turning her face away from him to look resolutely across the bay, and a few drops of water are pulled from the air around her to weave at speed back and forth between her fingers.

'I don't know. It's... it's complicated.'

Her head lifts as if she's about to stand, then drops back onto the stone with a defeated heaviness; she drives the heels of her hands into the sockets of her eyes.

'I feel like an awful person. He's got all this pressure on him, and I know that he wants... But I just don't know.'

He waits, knowing that she has more to say.

'I know I care about him, a lot. Sometimes it's like yeah, maybe that's... maybe that could be something, and then other times it's like there's no...'

She tails off, eyes coming back to meet his as she stalls, searching for the right word.

'Spark?'

She winces slightly and nods, drawing in a deep breath before speaking.

'Right.' A pause, and her forehead furrows. 'But maybe that's just because of all the other stuff that's going on. It's difficult; when everything's so... intense... it's hard to know what you really feel.'

'It is.'

'And I don't want to hurt him.'

'I think he knows that.'

She's been holding his stare up to this point, but now she looks away, gaze turning in the direction of the sea, seeking out the comfort of the incoming tide.

The air feels thick and uncomfortable, and Zuko searches for something else to say. When no other subject comes to mind, he opts for a more head-on approach.

'Is this weird? Talking about this?'

Katara snorts a laugh and the tension dissolves.

'Probably. At this time of night, who knows?' Sitting up, she looks down at him where he lies, the reassurance of looking out to the sea no longer needed. 'Zuko?'

He props himself up on his elbows.

'Yeah?'

'I'm glad that we're talking. Not specifically about this, I mean, but... You know, I'm glad that we...' She tails off, and a warmth rises in him that has nothing to do with the first rays of sunlight that are showing over the horizon. He smiles, small but genuine.

'I know. Me too.'

This time, the silence is much easier.

She shifts so that they're sat side by side, shoulders touching.

The stars start to fade out as the sun continues to rise.

'You'd think they could've at least gotten your scar on the correct side.'

'Right?'

A/N: I just love exploring the different facets of how they interact. I've tried to capture a run of different vibes for them here, as well as getting a bit deeper into the ways in which they're opening up to each other as they become more familiar.

Let me know what you think! I love feedback and constructive criticism is always appreciated.