A light spluttered, rose, then fell. It cast shadows on Katara's eyelids, chasing away the weak sleep she had just begun to claim. She rolled over, her conscience begging for the light to leave her alone.
Light? There wasn't supposed to be light!
She bolted upright, fearing for the worst. The forest on fire? Zuko flaming Haru in his sleep?
A cold pair of challenging eyes met hers across the fire pit. Zuko had started the fire that she and Haru had begged him not to light. He narrowed his eyes, daring her to argue with him.
"What do you think you're doing?" She growled, fumbling to release herself from her sleeping bag's grip.
"I'm warming myself. What's it to you?" He sat back against a tree, his gaze still fixed on her. He knew perfectly well that his casualness would drive her to insanity.
She pushed herself up, and the fire flickered higher, just to spite her. She bit her lip. No water. Haru was asleep; no dirt. She considered trying to stamp it out, but that would probably just lead to severe pain on her part.
"That's it." She growled, grabbing up her water pouch. "I'm going to the river, and when I come back, that fire had better be gone!"
Zuko watched her storm out of camp and into the darkness with a widening grin. He had won that small battle. He liked winning, and he didn't do it often.
xxx
Katara was beside herself with fury.
"What does Aang see in him, anyway? He's just a jerk!" Katara fumed.
The river sparkled beneath the moon, easing just a slight bit of her fury. She stepped into it, letting the water run around her and soothe her buzzing soul.
"You want to fight so bad?" Zuko said behind her.
She jumped and landed on her backside in the water. "You!" She gasped.
"It's night. We're in a river, and I'll bet I can still beat you." Zuko said quietly and stepped into the river a few feet from his fallen enemy.
He startled her. Katara wasn't too fond of being surprised, least of all from Zuko, and here he was, the moon casting a shine on his black hair, water droplets splashing on his exposed chest. For a brief moment, she got that floating sensation in her stomach, a feeling she hadn't felt since she'd met Jet.
The feeling past quickly and was replaced by the same boiling rage.
She rose to her feet, narrowing her eyes. "I've trusted Aang since I met him. He's a kid, sure, but he has everyone's best intentions at heart. He would never do anything that could hurt anyone else. But in this case he was wrong. I don't care what you told him, but whatever it was must've been a lie."
"He asked to help me, not the other way around." Zuko spat. He started to circle her. He wanted her by the shore, so he could push her away out of the water gradually.
"You don't deserve our help."
"What help have you provided?" Zuko chided.
Katara curled her hands into fists and swung a wall of water into Zuko's side, almost knocking him off of his feet.
xxx
"So then the platypus bear jumped the fence and we all had to chase after him!" Ty Lee exclaimed.
"Couldn't you do something a little more useful than telling stories?" Mai snapped.
"It is useful! Look, I lulled the men to sleep." She pointed to a pile of slumped fire benders emitting quiet snores.
Mai tried once again to jump up the wall and grab the little bit of root that hung out, taunting her. She failed and dropped back into the pit.
Ty Lee twirled a stray piece of hand in her fingers. "Why don't you just rest for awhile?"
"I want to get out of here." Mai growled. A forbidden yawn pushed its way from her throat and she turned away to hide it. "I don't want to rot in this hole."
Ty Lee shrugged. "Okay, then can I tell you about the time the ringmaster fell out of a tree trying to rescue an escaped flying boar?"
Mai groaned.
xxx
Zuko jetted a fireball at Katara. She blocked it and threw an ice spear at him. He dodged. This tiresome game dragged on for more than a quarter of an hour. Zuko's arms began to ache, and she began to feel light-headed. Both of them refused not to see this fight through, however.
"What's the matter, Zuko? No avatar around to give you reason to fight?" Katara mocked.
"I'm doing just fine, besides I wouldn't want to go too hard on you. Seeing such a pretty face cry would just break Haru's heart." Zuko snarled.
She attempted to encase him ice, hoping that would slow him down, but he melted free before she even had a chance to take a breath.
"What did you just call me?" Katara gasped.
He stumbled backward for a moment; she had just hit his forehead with a stream of water.
"Pretty face?" He asked, clutching his stinging forehead with one hand and propelling a fireball at Katara.
She wrinkled her nose. "Don't call me that again."
"Who's gonna stop me?" Zuko took a few steps closer to her and held his hand high to strike her.
She grabbed his wrist and held up her other hand to make another water whip, but he latched onto her wrist. Katara froze his hand she was grasping to keep him from flaming her so close, and he scorched her wrist, hoping the pain of her burning skin would make her pull away. She gritted her teeth, unwilling to give up so quickly.
"Let go!" She screamed.
"You first!"
"You… jerk!"
"You fool!"
"You just can't admit that a girl beat you three times."
"Three times? No, that would make two, or can't you do the math?"
"Three times! Once at the oasis, once on the ice in front of that cave, and it's about to become three!"
"That second one wasn't a fight!"
"Was… too." She squeezed her eyes shut to keep a rein on her tears that welling up because of the searing pain of his hand.
Zuko caught the pain in her features.
"I'll let you go, if you promise not to tell anyone about this." He reasoned.
"Like it matters!"
"Do you promise?"
"Yes!"
He released her wrist and she collapsed, cradling her injured arm. He stood over her, watching her writhe in pain.
Pain I caused, he thought.
"Here," he said gently, trying to take her arm.
She pulled away and retreated to a log on the shore.
"I'm trying to help!" Zuko said and followed her to the shore.
She sank onto the log and pulled her arm out to inspect it. "You've helped enough already." She said accusingly.
He grimaced at the sight of her burn. He knelt in front of her.
"I'll wrap it." He offered.
She shook her head. "You don't have to."
"But I-."
She wrapped her hand in water, creating a glove from it. She pressed it upon her wrist. Zuko watched with morbid fascination as the wound disappeared and her tan skin remained unmarked.
"How did you do that?" He gasped, pulling up her sleeve to further examine her work.
"I'm a healer." She said simply.
"Incredible…" he muttered, his gaze fluttering from her arm to the stern look she was piercing him with.
"That was dumb." She said.
"What? That?" he gestured to the river.
"Yes." She stood and stooped to the water to fill her canteen. "That was the single most stupid thing I've ever done."
"Why? I thought it was fulfilling."
"But you like to fight, so that makes sense."
"You don't?"
"I fight because I have to, and there I didn't have to. I let my anger take over."
"Oh." Zuko frowned. "I've done that a lot lately." He added softly.
"That was just so… stupid." She cried. She spun around. "You won't tell anyone about this, will you?"
"I made you promise not to."
"But you didn't promise. Do you?" She stepped closer and stared up at him challengingly.
"Yes." He answered. "But I don't exactly regret it, just the part where you… When I hurt you, that's all."
"Well…let's just agree not to do it again, okay?" Katara offered.
He nodded and together they walked back to camp.
xxx
"I hope you like bread crusts and dried prunes!" Haru exclaimed, holding out his offerings to a waking Katara.
She mumbled something about not wanting any earth crud. Haru set down his food and shook her shoulder.
"Come on, it's dawn already! We should set off before the day gets too hot."
"Doesn't look like she's getting up," Zuko noticed. "Why don't you kiss her? It seems to work in fairy tales."
"I don't think-."
Katara bolted upright. "I'm up. I'm up."
"Do you want some breakfast?"
"Let's eat on the way." She said, hurriedly stuffing her bedroll into a manageable wad.
The boys followed her lead and quickly packed up the few things they had strung about the site.
"You look really tired, Katara." Haru said as they began to set off down the road.
"I didn't sleep very well."
"Worried?"
"Yeah… Just worried."
. Her gaze flickered slightly to Zuko, and he quickly looked away.
xxx
"You'll love the ship, avatar." Azula said happily.
"We're going to your ship?" Sokka gasped, pausing his tiresome struggling against a soldier's grip. "Why the ship? Don't you have to get Zuko, too?"
"Is that too much out of your 'escape plan' for you?" Azula asked mockingly. "Zuko will come to me. I don't need to find him."
"What about your, ah, friends?"
"Mai and Ty Lee will find their way back eventually. I've got it all figured out; you needn't worry your spike-haired head about it."
"Spike-haired? It's not spike-."
She flicked her wrist and the soldier clamped his entire arm around Sokka's mouth.
"You talk too much, whatever you are." She said, her voice losing all its false good-nature.
The party then veered off the road and plunged into the wilderness.
"Only a league or so more, then you can all rest in your cozy cells." Azula said bitterly and cast a malevolent smile in Sokka's direction. It faded when she glimpsed his naked left hand. "Wait. You had two gloves yesterday."
The procession stopped. Aang's chest tightened in panic, as did Sokka's.
Azula slipped out from her curtained seat and glared down at Sokka. "Whatever you're trying to pull, it won't work."
Sokka drew himself up, staring back at her with what he hoped was courage and not foolishness. "You're wrong."
"We'll see, won't we? Once we're in the Fire Nation I'll have no further use for you. Maybe I'll use you as target practice; my lightening has been a little off lately."
Aang made a noise and squirmed on top of the man's shoulders.
Azula laughed and stepped back into her shelter, her spirits high.
xxx
"Let's think of a worse-case scenario." Katara said.
She had taken the lead, walking briskly in her state of panic. Zuko and Haru watched her numbly. She'd done nothing but chitter nervously since they'd left camp, and their hunger only worsened their moods.
"Worse-case scenario…" Zuko yawned. "They're all dead."
Katara swirled around. "Dead? Why would they be dead? Aang can't die! She'd be an idiot to kill him!"
"Fine. Worse-case scenario: Aang is captured, your brother is dead, and so is Uncle."
Her march quickened. "You're wrong."
Zuko scoffed, "Well, you didn't ask for sugar and honey! You said you wanted-."
"I know what I wanted! Let's talk best-case scenario."
"They're all having lunch!" Haru said brightly. "And their planning a surprise party for us!"
"You do realize we're walking straight into a trap, don't you?" Zuko drawled.
"What do you want us to do? Wait it out? It's not a drought; we can do something about it." Katara snapped.
"We need to be prepared." Zuko retorted. "So let's start planning for the worse-case scenario. If we can salvage Aang, then… then that's…"
"Not enough." Haru finished softly.
"It's okay." Katara said hopefully, "They're fine, and we're on our way."
"Azula is not an easy obstacle." Zuko noted. "If she's waiting for us, and we don't have the element of surprise, then we might as well hand ourselves over."
"You want us to give up?" Katara gasped. She'd never known him to let go of anything without fighting to his last breath.
"No! I'm saying we need a plan. The three of us can definitely not top Azula, even if she is alone, which she won't be."
"If we cut Aang and Sokka free then they can help, too." Haru said.
"We'll never make it at this rate, let's run!" Katara said and broke into an erratic pace.
Zuko glanced at Haru. "I wonder how long this will last," he muttered.
xxx
"You don't think Azula will leave us here, do you?" Ty Lee asked.
She finally had run out of positive energy, and she too was slumped at the bottom of the pit, despondent.
"Yes." Mai answered sharply. "We're no more important to her than them," she jerked her head to the soldiers, still sleeping.
"I wish I was still back at the circus… We had an act like this pit, once. We pretended to be miners and we'd fallen down an abandoned shaft and we had to acrobat ourselves out. The crowd loved it."
"You got out of it?" Mai gasped.
"Yeah… And it was deeper than this too."
The two of them froze, each realizing at the same time what an idiot Ty Lee was.
"Why didn't you think of this sooner?" Mai whined, standing up to aid her as best as she could.
Ty Lee stepped back as far away from Mai as she could. "I don't know," she admitted. "It never occurred to me. I thought maybe someone would come along and help us out."
She leapt at Mai, tossing herself upside down onto Mai's shoulders. Mai's knees buckled slightly from her friend's weight.
"Hurry…" Mai groaned.
In two short bounds, Ty Lee sprang against the opposite wall, then flipped herself onto the pit ledge.
"I'm up!" she squealed.
"But you forgot the rope!" Mai screamed, holding up the forgotten coil.
"Oh. Silly me. Can you toss it up?"
Mai chucked it.
It slid back down the wall.
"I thought you threw things." Ty Lee frowned, "Isn't that what you do?"
Mai gritted her teeth. "Arrows. Daggers. Not rope!"
xxx
Zuko knelt to the ground, inspecting the footprints lain before him.
"Someone was being dragged here," he pointed. "And these sets are heavier, as if they were carrying something."
"But where's Appa?" Katara cried.
"And the ostrich horse." Zuko added thoughtfully.
"Ostrich horse?" Haru asked. "What ostrich horse?"
"Uncle and I had one. If we could find either of them, maybe we could have a clue to where they were headed. If Azula was here, we would know by now. She's not one to wait too long."
"Let's split up." Katara said, and before either of her companions could protest, she sprinted away.
"Does she ever stop and think?" Zuko growled.
Haru shrugged and set off in another direction.
Zuko followed two sets of prints, each wearing Fire Nation boots. It wound off the road and into the surrounding forest. In the distance he heard the rattle of chains and a low groan. He doubled his pace, abandoning the trail and heading for the source of the sound.
"Katara! Haru! Come here! I think I've found-."
He stopped short.
The monster that faced him was unbelievably massive to be chained down to ground as he was. Zuko drew back, afraid the beast might lunge against his bonds and snap his neck out of pure spite.
"Appa!" Katara shrieked from behind him.
"Wait!" Zuko cried, holding his arm out to catch her. "What if it's hostile?"
"This is Appa! Not an animal!" She pushed around him and began tugging unsuccessfully at his chains.
Haru finally caught up and began to survey the situation. "Katara, I don't think that will work. We need to find the source of the chains…"
Zuko skimmed the ground looking for a common endpoint of the iron chain. A cream-colored splotch caught his attention, and he pointed to it. "A note!"
Katara scooped up the thick roll of parchment lying on top of the chain ends.
"'I, Princess Azula, daughter of Fire Lord Ozai, deem this beast to be property of the Fire Nation. Any person wishing to free the animal will answer Me.
"'If this proclamation is so happened to be found by Prince Zuko or any of his affiliates, I have this to say to him.
"'You may find me at the river port. I shall be waiting your return.
"'To all others, stay back from this beast. He is dangerous, and if that fact does not sway you, perhaps the threat of Me will.'
"She's so…" Katara began but couldn't find the right word to fit her description.
"Pompous." Zuko finished for her.
"She's worse than you were," Katara said absently gazing back to Appa.
Zuko didn't argue.
As the sun reached its peak in the sky, the three toiled over the bison's bonds. After an hour of pulling, pushing, and frustrated exclamations, the group was able to release Appa. Even Zuko had to admit that seeing such a creature of the sky freed made him feel a little better about himself.
Maybe there were other beasts within himself he could let go as well…
xxx
A/N
MUhahaaha! I'm in a furious frenzy! I WILL get this thing all written before vacation's over, because if I don't, it will take forever!
I appreciate the reviews! And I'm in four communities! Dang! That's cool. Thank you all very much. Y'all stoke my little writing flame!
I gotta get some opinions from you…
1.) Who thinks what of Toph? I personally am not very fond of her. She's mean, and she makes Aang frustrated. Aang's too adorable to be angry.
2.) WWZD? What will Zuko do? Now that he's broken down in tears (srry for the spoiler!), and by the way, I really wanted to hug him after that, what will he do? Will he open up a little more or will he just be angrier? I'm hoping he'll give up going after Aang.
And… yeah. Hope you are enjoying your summer.