Once they left that last tiny village, Aang and Hay Lin were inseparable. It was impossible to speak to one without the other overhearing, and Katara wanted to tell Aang that Zuko might be shadowing them but didn't want to upset the Guardians. No one saw a ship following them, so everyone assumed they were safe. Katara didn't know how Zuko was following them unnoticed, and felt like she was betraying Aang by only being half-worried and not telling him.
In a few days, though, they were out of supplies again because of Sokka's infinite stomach and had to stop in the next port town they saw. The Waterbender's stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing Zuko again, pushing all thoughts of warning Aang out of her mind. Not surprisingly, Aang and Hay Lin wandered off by themselves, and Katara was almost certain that they wouldn't get any shopping done. So far, no one in their little group but her knew, and since she had stumbled upon them by accident, she felt it wasn't her right to say anything.
Sokka grabbed her arm, reminding her why she was really there.
"Come on!" he whined. "We need food! You can hear my stomach growling." Begrudgingly, Katara went with him, knowing he'd probably get suspicious if she wandered off by herself again. She'd just have to find some way of sneaking off to find Zuko.
The rest of the Guardians, however, were left with no guide that was from this world and had to settle for wandering without money.
"Will?" Taranee asked tentatively. "Do you have any idea about getting home?"
"No," she replied. "We've all been too busy keeping that obsessed prince from capturing Aang."
"He might be obsessed with more than the Avatar," Cornelia interjected, remembering Katara's pitiful face when she was rescued.
"What else do you think he wants?" Taranee asked sarcastically. "Us dead?"
"You're telling me no one else noticed this?" Cornelia asked, shocked, holding onto Caleb's arm. "Katara's been very quiet, almost depressed, since we've rescued her! And what was she doing in the prince's room anyway?"
"She has been," Irma mumbled. "She's been distant since then. She even wandered off by herself in the last village, no one could find her."
"Exactly," Cornelia confirmed.
"Poor Katara," Will sympathized, imagining how hard it must be for Katara to love someone she was supposed to hate, even possibly kill.
"But she's not by herself today, Sokka made her shop with him," Taranee pointed out.
"At least she can't mope about her prince, then," Caleb joked, making all of the Guardians glare. They heard a sound then, very welcome to their ears, seeing as they were completely lost.
"Katara! No!" They ran towards the Sokka's voice, worried that the Fire prince was back for them-or her, but when they reached the market, it was only Sokka begging Katara to buy all the fruit she held in her hand.
"Sokka! We don't have enough money for all of that!" she replied, stealing one back from him and turning it around. "Besides," she added, "It's bruised, look at that spot."
"But it's food," he retorted, handing over money to the vendor and grabbing the peach to eat.
"Sokka!" Katara grumbled, taking away his privilege to hold the money. "I'm going to do the shopping from now on. Go guide the Guardians, they need you way more than your stomach does." The Guardians' faces dropped as they realized Katara was wandering off by herself once more.
"Hey, Katara, I'll come with you and help you carry some food," Will offered.
"No, no, that's fine, I can carry it all myself," Katara assured her, running off.
"Are you sure?" Will yelled after her. Katara, barely turning, nodded her head. She was elated that she had finally managed to elude the rest of the group and was about to see Zuko again in a matter of minutes. A hand dashed out from an alley, and Katara gasped, afraid for a moment that it was the pirates again.
"Don't worry, Katara," someone whispered in her ear. "It's Zuko." But she couldn't reply, his lips had already collided with hers and she was lost. Her tongue broke through his barrier, meshing with his. She pulled away sadly when she needed a breath, and looked into his beautiful champagne eyes.
"We need somewhere more private this time," she whispered. Zuko looked surprised for a second, wondering whether she meant what he though she did before Katara continued.
"I don't want my brother or the Guardians to find us." Or Aang, she added silently. Almost as if he sensed her thinking about the Avatar, he growled and took her into his arms, ignoring her request. In a few minutes, the private room slipped completely from her mind.
The Guardians and Sokka were having a less enjoyable time, however. Once the Water tribe boy finished his bruised fruit, and found that he had no money, all he did was grumble about his empty stomach and how unfair Katara was to him.
"Where's Katara, anyway?" he whined, holding his stomach. "She's had plenty of time to buy food, what always takes her so long?"
"She's moping," Irma replied before she could stop herself.
"What?"
"I-I was joking," she lied, noticing the glares of the other Guardians. Right, her brother wouldn't exactly condone a relationship with the Fire Prince. Sokka still looked suspicious, but he didn't say anything more on the subject. In a dark alley, they saw a flash of blue, and Katara ran out.
"What are you guys doing here?" she asked, blushing.
"Katara? What were you doing in an alley? And why are your clothes all rumpled WERE YOU SELLING YOUR WARES?" Sokka asked, craning his neck to look behind her as the Guardians shot each other knowing glances. "And more importantly, why do you have no food?"
"What the? Sokka, you don't trust me at all, do you? I was…trying to find you so that we could all shop together. It's probably not safe to walk around alone if you're in a group with the Avatar," she lied. "Let's go, it's getting late and we still need supplies." Zuko hid in the shadows, watching them leave and counting heads. Two were missing; Aang was separated and vulnerable. That other Airbender would not be much of a challenge. She had no discipline, just like that elusive Avatar. The prince of the Fire Nation caught up with the two Airbenders in a semi-private knoll, and they most certainly weren't getting any shopping done; they were otherwise engaged. He burst through the cover of the bushes, fists glowing, and the young couple broke apart, fear mirrored in each other's eyes.
"Zuko! How'd you get here?" Aang yelled, worried for Hay Lin. Zuko only snarled and charged in, fire blooming from his hands. Hay Lin, rising on her wings, countered it with a breath and his force intensified, the flames growing larger. Hay Lin and Aang flew up, one after the other, to go warn the others.
Zuko growled again, slapping himself for forgetting that they could fly-and they would, straight to the village to warn their friends. Thanks to Katara, though, that delicious little water tribe peasant, he knew exactly where they were and headed back to the village.
But they weren't there. Apparently, the Avatar and his Airbender friend got the word out faster than he could walk. No matter, he'd just follow them. That flying bison couldn't have gotten too far, and Zuko ran for his ship.
He caught up with them only a mile or two from port, and from his deck, he could see their terrified faces, along with the other-world benders. He may have messed up the last time-okay, last few times, but he would capture the Avatar, and Katara. Without a thought about the plight of their furry beast, he ordered his men to man the catapults.
Appa dodged them with practiced ease, and flew above the cloud line for cover, leaving the group very much relieved.
"That was too close," Aang sighed heavily, scooting closer to Hay Lin.
"How did Zuko sneak up on us like that?" Katara asked, trying to act as confused and scared as possible.
"I don't know," Will answered her, "but we can't let it happen again." They all nodded in consent, and the Guardians got back to the difficult task of finding a way home. Irma took the thankless job of asking the most obvious question.
"Have you tried opening a portal? Even if it opens to Meridian, we could probably still get home." All the Guardians glared at her, answering her question without any words exchanged. From the back, Katara's voiced piped up, almost hesitantly.
"Well…maybe you were brought here for a reason," she mused. "Here to help us escape Zuko the one time he actually caught us."
"What, Katara, a previous Avatar sent the Guardians here to help? Come on, have some common sense!" Sokka scorned.
"Sounds reasonable enough to me," Cornelia piped up. "But we shouldn't leave yet, not until we've properly defeated the prince." The other Guardians nodded, seeing the sense in the Earth Guardian's plan. Irma ducked beneath the clouds to check on the progress of Zuko's ship, and came back grim-faced.
"He's still there. He'd stopped throwing fireballs until I appeared, but now he knows just about where we are," she reported. Almost as if her words had alerted him to their presence, a fireball burst through a cloud, only inches away from Appa. Aang, suddenly decided, dropped off of the furry bison, and Hay Lin, eager to help the one she loved, followed him.
After a few minutes with neither of them resurfacing, Sokka began to worry. He pulled Appa into Zuko's line of fire, unknowingly bringing another reason for the prince to win into the battle: his sister. Sokka needn't have worried, though, Aang and Hay Lin were holding off Zuko well enough on their own. But Sokka encouraged Katara to join the fight, seeing as she was a Waterbender, and they were over the ocean and everything.
Zuko, his fists burning with his rage, lit another fireball. One of his crew released the catapult, and it flew through the air towards Appa. Working together quickly, Irma and Katara moved a tsunami of water towards the comet-like object, extinguishing it with a loud hiss. The prince glared at his Waterbender, but she looked away, not wanting to distract herself during the battle.
In the meantime, Cornelia finally found herself some Earth to bend. In a slow, steady stream of black, like a swarm of locusts, the ship's source of fuel steadily plopped into the ocean. When every last piece was gone, the trio and the Guardians fled, although they knew their safety wouldn't last for long. Zuko could easily turn his ship around with what he was burning at the moment and refuel at the port they had just escaped from.
And he did. It took him a whole day to catch up with the Avatar, but he made it. Nothing could stop him from restoring his honor now, the Avatar was too close. Zuko knew he'd said this before to himself, especially the time he'd almost managed to capture the bratty little kid-but this time it felt different, like he'd actually succeed for once.
As was their wont, none of them noticed Zuko until he fired upon them. Literally. The tip of Zuko's first shot singed the bison's tail slightly, and his feelings of an assured victory increased. There wasn't any cloud cover today for them to hide behind, and only an expanse of dizzyingly shiny ocean water in every direction. The prince smirked. They couldn't get out of this, not even with those extra benders and the Earthbender's pathetic boyfriend.
Oh, they fought back at first. But once they realized that Zuko was not going to give up for anything, their offensive attacks started to weaken. He could tell, even from a distance, that Katara wasn't trying at all, and maybe-and Zuko's heart fluttered in an unprincely manner for a peasant, of all things- just maybe she wanted to be back with him. Could he really go so far as to hope that? He paused to think it over, shrugged, and pushed the thought out of his mind, well aware of how it was distracting him from the battle that was taking place.
Another hit on Appa, and the flying bison was down. Aang landed him on Zuko's ship for safety, defending the wounded animal ferociously. Out of nowhere, it seemed, a contrastingly purple…window? opened in the sky. All thoughts of battle fled. Hay Lin's grandmother's head poked through, motioning the Guardians to go back to Earth, where they belonged. One by one the Guardians flew up to the portal, Taranee and Hay Lin holding Caleb and Blunk.
"Grandma, how did you get here?" Hay Lin eagerly asked her grandmother.
"It doesn't matter. You were sent here to accomplish a task-" the Guardians all took a sharp intake of breath as they realized that Katara had been right, and Hay Lin's grandmother kept going as if she hadn't been interrupted. "and you have completed it. You are of greater assistance in Meridian now."
"But we have to help them defeat Zuko!" Will cried out.
"You are needed in Meridian more," Hay Lin's grandmother said. As if he had just woken up, Zuko started attacking even more viciously. The Avatar trio was hopelessly outnumbered without the Guardians, though they tried to console themselves that they had escaped him many times before like this.
But the next time the Guardians looked down, Sokka and Aang were in chains, and Katara held firmly at the wrists by Prince Zuko.
"But we have to help them!" Will argued, despairing at the fate of their new friends. "The fate of this world depends on the Avatar!"
"I know," Hay Lin's grandmother replied. The Guardians, with sinking hearts, looked back at Zuko's ship. Aang and Sokka had already disappeared belowdeck, presumably to the brig, yet Katara was still visible, held by the Fire Nation prince. Without any regards to the Guardians hovering in the air above them (for his soldiers were already guarding the other two), Zuko leaned in and hungrily kissed Katara.
"I knew it!" Cornelia yelled. The prince didn't even notice, or if he did, he didn't care. Katara was already kissing him back.
"That," Hay Lin's grandmother nodded towards the couple, "is what I've been trying to tell you. Your assistance here has brought them together. That's why a portal into their world opened. When love blooms between the only two opposite elements, it will extinguish the war."
A/N: Did you like the ending? Sorry it took me forever to update!