16

The nearest refuge I could think of lay in the ruins of Taku, an old city wrecked by the Fire Nation near the start of the war. It was an hours' walk in normal conditions, but with Zuko in tow, I worried that I couldn't make it. And I didn't trust that we were out of the clear either. Hui had always enjoyed messing with me in our youth. During our practices. At the contrived dinners between him, me, and our father. How could I know he wasn't faking me out, that as soon as we stopped moving, as soon as I rested, they wouldn't all come swarming in.

I had too many questions to cleave; I had to stay focused.

I carried Zuko, still unconscious, to the hollowed tree where I had stashed my bag—never bring your provisions to a fight. "No sense losing all your food and water in a fast escape," Grandmaster Tao would remind us often.

Zuko's clothes were sopping wet, as was his hair. I didn't have much in the way of extra clothing, but I found an oversized tunic in my bag and replaced his soaked shirt with the dry. I felt the skin of his arm and he was warming against the summer air, which was something. I felt his pulse and it was only mildly quickened. He was out of the danger zone, it seemed, and I decided it was better to find proper coverage than risk a night in the woods.

Before I set off again, I tried waking him. Did everything but slap him. Nothing.

I heaved Zuko onto my back and proceeded at a snail's pace. Worked against the quiver in my thighs and screaming of my ankles. It was nearing midnight, and the forest was thick with the chiming of locusts. Sycamores hung high above us. If Zuko had been awake, I might've reminded him of the summer we spent, in his first year as Fire Lord, in a forest like this one. The thin, shale bark falling all around us. Collecting on the ground and drifting along a creek. How he told me that when he was little he used to call them Iroh trees because they, like his uncle, were balding.

That summer, we were visiting Earth Kingdom villages in need of reconstruction. Offering our help where it was needed. Avatar Aang and his friend and earthbending master, Toph, accompanied us. It was a good summer. Before Zuko was overwhelmed. Before his defectors grew in number. As we strolled the forest one evening, he collected the shards of fallen bark and stacked them on my head, their bodies so light I didn't feel them. The Forest Queen he called me, when we returned to the avatar and Toph and they all broke out in laughter.

We were good friends then. I'd have given anything to return to that place. That feeling.

As the first light of dawn kissed the horizon, we arrived at the broken stone buildings of Taku. I had reached that point of exhaustion where you're no longer hurting or trembling or feeling, really, anything. Zuko was still out of it, his breath warming my shoulder.

I dragged us to the open face of a house halfway up the hillside. In a back room, most of its walls in-tact, I laid Zuko on a half-dissolved mattress, swept my blanket over him, and gathered refuse to make a small fire.

When he was properly warmed and his vitals still improving, I knelt at a low opening in the wall. Kept watch. Seconds later, taken over by fatigue, I passed into a deep sleep.

For what felt like days, I dreamt a murky, mist-glazed world where I was pursued, or pursuing, a shadow in the dark. An unnamed monster.

When I awoke, the sun was low on the western horizon. I had sweat through my clothes and my hair clung to my face. A burning drummed in my temple and all down my legs. Slowly I rose, feeling suddenly anxious about the possibility that Zuko might have woken. When I turned, I found the fire long burned out and the mattress beside it empty. Muscles still stiff, I shuffled to the open wall, heart racing, head banging.

Panicking, I searched the ruined house. I was alone. I paced the walkway overlooking the city below. I was alone. I ran back to the room. Rummaged through my things, searched for any clue of where he might have gone. My stomach turned. My ears rang. I got up and stumbled toward the open rooms, feeling my body preparing to wretch.

But, as I raced into that space, instead of an empty room, I collided with a figure, tall and black-haired.

Zuko took my shoulders, braced me from a fall. He led me back into the inner room, sat me on the mattress, and kneeled beside me. After his state the night before, I didn't expect him to be so alert, so mobile.

I tried look at him, but he took my chin in his hand and turned my face to the side.

"There is an herbalist at the peak of this city," he said, his voice low. "This should help with the swelling," and he pulled out a small bundle, fingered a thick, stinking salve and rubbed it against my banged-up temple.

"I'll be alright," I said, my own voice coming out an unrecognizable tremor.

"It looks serious." He turned my face to meet his and inspected my eyes. "Have you been seeing lights? Nauseous?" I felt sensation easing back into my body. His fingers were warm.

I wanted to say something. Anything. But my brain couldn't find the right words. His hand was on my temple again, mopping up what I now saw was my own blood with his old, damp shirt. Language failed me, and so I folded my hand over his, released the breath I had been holding, and began to cry.

Like a switch, he came back to me. Face softened. He looked me in the eyes and braced my shoulders. He took me into a long hug, and like returning to your bed after a long, long time away, my body relaxed. The salve numbed my pain, sent a tingle up and down my limbs. I could've stayed there for hours, relishing the feeling of his collar bone against my cheek, the beat of his heart on mine.

And then he pulled away. And I saw all the years I had missed in his face. And I felt all the insignificance of what had driven us apart. The fact that our friendship had never ended, only suffered the weight of the world. Now, everything lay before us.

He said what a fool he had been. That he was sorry. He was so sorry.

And I said the same and thought, to myself, that maybe he was the best friend I had ever had. That maybe I should never have pursued him. I should have held tight to our friendship rather than seeking more. That I could be happy now, as I could never be before, dwelling in that platonic realm.

And then he kissed me.