I hope you enjoy it! Please let me know what you think of the progression and characterization.

. . .

The pain is the first thing Katara notices upon waking. It's a sharp and stabbing pain that doesn't quite fit in with her last memory of being slung over someone's shoulders. She moves slightly and agony washes over her. That agony is familiar. That man, Chang, he was the one who grabbed her when the fire started. He took her to the lowest level of the ship and - she shudders at the memory. Everything is fuzzy towards the end, it just comes in flashes of fire and the smell of blood. The water bender tries to sit herself up with her hands only to find that her palms have been bandaged along with far too much of the rest of her body.

"Katara, you're awake!" Zuko actually looks relieved, she notes that, oddly enough, he's using her name.

"Can I help you?" She would have come across as cold like she had planned if she hadn't shifted her leg as she spoke. She hisses and quickly straightens her legs again. She tries to ignore the pain as she slowly moves. She ignores that he helped her. She ignores that he probably found her with tears and blood and snot covering her. She ignores that she is hurt. She ignores everything that she wishes had never happened. She ignores the stupid prince and his stupid quest for the Avatar. She can't ignore that he tentatively touches her foot.

"I'm so sorry for what happened. I never" his voice cracks, "I didn't know that he would…" he words trail off dejectedly.

"You couldn't have known." For some reason she comforts him right then. Perhaps it's whatever painkiller they gave her but right now when she wants so badly to hurt someone, to hurt the man responsible for her pain, she can't find the energy to want to hurt the boy in front of her with tears bristling at the corners of his eyes. "What happened to him, the man who did this?"

"He's not going to bother you again, ever. He's off the ship as soon as we reach port and he's being kept far far away from you! He can't even move, he won't come near you, I promise."

"Why should I trust you? What makes your promise any good?" She snaps. The only way to stay safe is if he's dead. No, she shakes herself away from that though. Don't go there.

Zuko's forehead creases, "I-I-What?"

"Just let me sleep." She closes her eyes, ignoring him as he sputters.

When she wakes up he's still there. She's too tired to even be angry. "How long will I be in here?"

He starts, "You're awake!"

"No, I'm sleep talking. How long will I be in here?"

"Well, you lost a lot of blood." The sight of it pooled on the ground flashes to mind. "You've already been out for almost a full day. You should have regained your blood, but a lot of the cuts are deeper than they look and aren't healing well."

"What you're saying is that you don't know."

"Sorry." he shrugs, "There's nothing I can do."

"Aren't you the Prince, can't you wave a crown and suddenly the world has to bend to your will?"

"The world doesn't -" he realizes as she rolls her eyes that she's teasing him, taunting him, something. The painkillers must be really good. "How are you feeling?"

She tries to move her arm and is greeted with sharp pain. "I'll be better when I can move."

"What can I do to help?"

Katara just stares. The egotistical, megalomaniac, annoying, arrogant, rude, selfish, prince of the Fire Nation asked her what he could do to help. She must be going crazy. She must be.

"Katara? Hello?" She looks at him blankly for a moment before closing her eyes and answering only with a snore.

Zuko still can't believe what happened. He studies her face, calm now that she's asleep but he can still see her strung up, completely unable to fight back. He can still smell blood and feel the crunch of bones underneath his feet. Chang's face was bruised and broken by the time he was done with it. The man left that room alive but only barely. The nightmares have had Zuko jumping from his bed armed with fire. In his dreams Chang and his father form a sick mix of torture and one moment Katara is the one being tortured and the next Zuko is the one being kicked until he can't breathe, until he can't think, his scar burning again. That's when he jumps out of bed, searching the shadows for someone, anyone.

When Katara next wakes there's a bowl of water beside her and a note from Iroh telling her that the practice will most likely make her feel better. She focuses on the water and feels it expand her senses but collapses onto the bed crying, wishing her senses would just go numb. Her soul aches and no amount of practice will solve that.

Katara next wakes up as her bandages are being changed. The salve they apply burns and she quickly covers the most painful part with her hand, not caring about the pain of moving so fast. She wills it to stop hurting. The salve soaks into her skin with a slight glow. The doctor looks at her astonished but Katara has already passed out again.

Zuko and Iroh are sitting next to her bed waiting for her to wake up. Their discussion of how long it will take to get to the next port is what she wakes up to. "Ah Miss Katara, good! The doctor said he wanted to see you and that if things go as he expects you might be able to leave today."

"What is he expecting?"

"You apparently have an extraordinary talent for healing. He wants to see if you can do it again."

"What?"

At that moment the doctor bustles in all business and clipboards. "You're awake. How are you feeling?"

She rolls her eyes at the man. "How do you think I feel huh? Let's see, I got tied to a tree overnight, I've had manacles chaffing my wrists since then, a psychopath abducted me and used me as his personal pin cushion. I can't move without feeling like my skin is ripping apart. So yeah, I feel great!"

"Young lady, that wasn't necessary," The doctor sniffs.

"Oh but it was, you see the asshole that made all of this possible is sitting right beside me at the moment like he thinks we're friends or something."

"Hey! I'm just trying to make sure you're not permanently hurt." Zuko shouts, the doctor's shushing being ignored.

"Like you care! Everything that happened is your fault! All you want is to catch your precious Avatar and take him home to Daddy."

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"Both of you!" The doctor yells. "I have work to do and I need you two to stop bickering for one second so I can focus!" They fall silent surprisingly enough. "Good, now Katara, last time you were awake and I put salve on you, you did some kind of bending that not only pushed it into your skin but it also stopped the bleeding underneath. I want to see if you can do that again."

"I'll try." There's a new form of water bending that she has a natural talent for! Healing would be so nice, especially since she can't move and can hardly breath without wanting to cry or scream or both.

"This will hurt." She doesn't say anything in reply as the man unwinds bandages on her forearm. "Are you ready?" She nods and bites her lip, ready for the searing pain. When it comes, she acts on instinct. Without noticing the stabbing on her other wounds, she places her other hand over the salve. She wills it into the cut and feels the raw flesh and some muscle underneath it. It's no easy task to stitch the muscle back together but the damage there was minimal. The salve soaks into her skin completely before she gets the chance to heal the skin. Her blue eyes are closed against the pain so she doesn't see the beautiful ethereal glow that comes from under her hands and the look of wonder on the three Fire Nation faces.

"That was amazing," Zuko whispers and unconsciously touches him own scar.

. . .

"I don't see what's taking them so long! That ship obviously can't go much farther, it needs to be repaired!"

"Calm down Sokka, we got them in the middle of nowhere." Aang doesn't like to use the word bombed even if that is exactly what they did. "There are little islands around here but the closest real port is still a day away at the speed they're traveling."

Sokka groans. He's finally talking to the little Avatar again but that still doesn't mean that he likes the level headedness all the time. "They need to get there faster! Why don't we go fly Appa to the port and wait for them?"

"Okay, that's a really good idea." He doesn't want to admit that he's scared and guilty. If he'd never found Katara then he'd never have gotten her kidnapped. The boy conveniently forgets that Katara is the one who found him and the one who chose to go with him.

. . .

"There's no way I'm going to sleep in the same room as you!"

"You don't really have much of a choice."

"Fuck you."

Zuko takes a minute to breath and count slowly to ten trying to calm down and not retort angrily to this girl that despises him. Once he can speak normally he turns to the water bender. "It is safer for you in here." He doesn't mention that it's safer for his sanity also. He was scared when she had disappeared, thinking his chances of catching the Avatar went with her. He was petrified when he saw where she really was. He wants her where he can keep an eye on her. He wants to make sure that no one else hurts her. "Here's the salve the doctor wants you to have and he'll check on you every day. Your clothes are being brought from Uncle's room, too." Her blue dress had been burnt and she had been brought one of her Fire Nation dresses in the infirmary. With the help of the doctor she had dressed and then limped along with Genereal Iroh. Now she stands in the middle of Zuko's room, eyeing it suspiciously. There are no windows and the door has multiple locks. If he decides that she's staying in here there's not much she can do in her current situation. She swipes the salve and hobbles towards the bathroom. Without asking, much to Zuko's dismay, Katara shuts the door and water begins running from what sounds to be the bathtub. He prays that she doesn't choose to bend but let's her be. The guilt of her condition eating him alive.

On the other side of the door Katara tries to take off her dress. The problem is that it pulls up over her head and her arms can't manage that in their current situation. Realizing defeat after a few times of excruciating pain she simply waits for the tub to fill. She's never seen anything quite like it, but it's not that different from the hot springs she's been to. There's one down in the South Pole that bubbles up from deep beneath the ice. Oh how she misses the cold and the furs and - well she misses being a kid. She may not have had much of a childhood, she may have been treated like a woman and given just as much responsibility but at the end of the day she could still look to Gran Gran to fix things if they went to terribly wrong. Things are going terribly wrong here but there's no one to step in and with a hug and a kiss make it all better.

The tub is full and slight steam rises from it. She steps in fully clothed and bandaged since the dress refuses to come off. She submerges herself in her element only to cry out as the water pours into her cuts. It starts to glow. Katara's never watched her own healing and is stunned by it. The water seems to have a life of it's own only barely prompted by the bender, reacting stronger than the salve did as it worms into nooks and crannies that the knives made, stitching some muscles back together. Her element takes care of her. It doesn't heal all of the cuts, that will take more time, but the glowing recedes as Katara relaxes, finally not in large amounts of pain. The water level has receded by about six inches, the liquid having soaked into her skin. Carefully she unwraps the bandages on her arms. It's the first time she's actually seen the cuts that leave scarce amounts of skin untouched. Thin white lines from the shallow knife accompany deep angry red ones that run over her palms, up her arms, and disappear under more bandages. She trembles at the sight. That man butchered her and she was helpless to stop it! Never again will she be that helpless!

. . .

Katara emerges from the bathroom an hour later with fewer bandages on. Zuko stops to stare. The cuts are more healed than not but they almost seem to mimic the Avatar's arrows, running over her feet and under her dress to emerge on her arms and neck, twisting on her cheek. He doesn't register where bandages still cover the worst of it. Again Zuko is uncomfortably aware of his scar. She approaches him and doesn't stop until she's right in his face. She's uncomfortably being so close to anyone after what happened, but she still remembers through the haze watching him fight. She remembers seeing him take down that animal and while she may not like him, may not trust him, she is thankful to him and knows that there's a lot she can learn. "You're going to teach me bending. I'm not a Fire Bender, but I want to be able to take down any opponent."

The prince nods. It may be stupid to teach his enemy how to defeat him, but she deserves that much. After what happened, he would do anything for her, anything except stop chasing the Avatar and letting her go. "When do you want to start?"

"Right now."

"You're too hurt to be able to -"

"Don't you dare try to stop me Zuko! I'm going to learn this and you're going to teach me now."

He mutely nods and accepts her judgment. "Let's start with the basics." She can only stand for a few minutes before falling. So instead she watches, for an hour he walks her through the basics of fire bending and how he controls his element. It's different for her of course, but still she learns. She practices breathing and finding her element all around herself. Even that is too much for her right now, and before long she's asleep. He notices and begins to meditate, waiting for dinner time. This time food will be served in his room instead of Uncle's, he's not about to let her out of his sight.

Uncle wanders in as a server sets down the trays. "Mmm! That's a fish roast if ever I have smelled one."

"Shh!" Zuko's hush is louder than Iroh's words had been. "She's sleeping."

A lump in the corner of the room stirs but doesn't get up. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she just wore herself out. She took a bath and when she came out the cuts were mostly gone, it was amazing Uncle! I wonder if she can do that to old scars."

"Don't get your hopes up. She has raw talent, but she's still a beginner. Some healers can't do it even after years of study." Zuko's shoulders droop. Iroh shifts uncomfortably. "Here Nephew, have some tea. It will make you feel better." They drink in silence for a moment, relieved to have some sense of normalcy after the last few days. "By the way, we'll be at a port tomorrow afternoon. What are you going to do with her while we're there?"

"I don't know. I'm thinking of having a fire bending lock installed though so she'll have to be out for that."

Iroh is surprised at that. "A bending lock, isn't that a bit extreme?"

The younger man's eyes harden. "I don't want anyone to get in here that shouldn't, and I don't want her to escape," he adds as almost an afterthought. They're silent for a minute, both looking into the candles for answers to unasked questions. "Will she be okay?"

The old general sighs, not wanting to think about it. "I'm afraid I don't have all of the answers. She might surprise us both."

"She asked me to teach her bending today."

"I'm surprised, Prince Zuko, she seems to dislike you for some odd reason." Said prince shoots him a dirty look and he just shrugs, chuckling.

. . .

It's near three in the morning and the room is an inferno. Screams pulls Zuko out of sleep, and he jumps up, ready to attack. No one's there. He breathes a sigh of relief, no one's there. A yelp draws his attention. In her frozen corner of the room Katara twitches and jerk fighting off her own demons. Her arm flails and water pulls out of the pipes in the bathroom. It attacks thin air. Zuko rushes over to her, easily avoiding the water whip, trying to shake her awake. "Katara! Wake up, it's only a dream!" She jumps, and screams, her eyes popping open in fear. Water smashes into him, knocking him down and away from her.

"Don't touch me! Don't ever touch me!" She shouts. Her hands shake and tears drip out. "Oh Goddess, oh Goddess." She collapses in on herself, going from fierce bender to scared little girl. "I'm sorry Zuko, it was just a nightmare."

"I know, I have plenty of my own." He lights the candles and does the only thing he can think of - put on a pot of tea. His Uncle would be proud. His own dreams still have him shaken and the screaming didn't help.

"What are yours?" It's more to help her focus on something else than out of an actual desire to know however she is morbidly curious.

"It's nothing."

"Tell me. Please."

He sighs, "It used to be nightmares about my scar. I could smell the flesh burning. I could see him looming over me and I wouldn't be able to stop it." He pours the tea and hands her a cup which she just holds for the moment. "It's like that day only worse." Once the words begin, they don't stop. "I keep screaming and screaming but he just keeps burning me over an over again. Nightmares like that all but stopped until the other day. Now they've just gotten worse. Sometimes he's burning me, sometimes I'm burning Chang only I don't stop. I keep burning him until there's nothing left except his eyes and they just stare at me. Sometimes I see you, the way he had you and you're screaming and crying as he begins chopping you up but sometimes," he chokes and grimaces, "Sometimes, I'm the one that's holding the blade or the one tied up. I can't move and I can't fight back. And if I'm the one hurting you I want to stop, I want to stop so badly because you're crying and I know it hurts but if I don't then I'll get burned again but I know it'll be worse than before. I'm not allowed to stop." To his dismay his voice cracks, revealing the emotion underneath.

Katara moves beside him, placing her hand over his and squeezing before he retracts his. "I keep seeing Chang and the look in his eyes. It was terrifying like there was nothing inside of him except wanting to hurt me. In my dreams I can't move, I'll be stuck under a rock or at the bottom of the ocean with the water pressing down on me but not listening to me at all. I can feel him cutting into me and I'll be there again. People will be looking at me and," she shudders and stares off into the flames, blinking away tears. She sips the tea in her hands and makes a face. "You don't do this often do you?"

"Is it that bad?"

She smiles lightly, "No, it's fine. It's fine," she chokes, though she doesn't take another sip.

"Katara?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm never going to let someone hurt you like that again. No one will ever touch you. Ever." His eyes burn into her, she has to look away.

"I never thanked you by the way. You saved my life, thank you." Zuko smiles tentatively, not sure whether he's doing it properly. It's been so long since there's been a reason to smile at anyone other than Uncle and the girl in his room, the girl he almost killed someone to protect, is most definitely not Uncle. She returns it, the late night, tea, and the fear she's still trying to get over making her a more tolerant person, at least right now. If he wasn't Fire Nation, if he wasn't using her to capture Aang, if he hadn't chased them around the world, he could maybe, possibly be a nice guy. The candles flicker and she moves her hand to his scar, hovering right beside it. "May I?" He doesn't give a verbal answer but closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. She's the first person after the doctor to touch it. Her thumb brushes over the ridges and her fingers explore the feel of it. "I always thought it was a training accident but from what you said of your dream, it wasn't. Who did this to you?"

His heart breaks, not wanting to tell her of his banishment and shame. "It doesn't matter." he moves away.

"Of course it does." Her eyes bore into his and again she touches his scar, not waiting for permission, and turns him to look at her. Her voice softens, "What happened?"

He sighs and hangs his head. "I spoke out of turn in my father's war chamber. A general was going to sacrifice a bunch of troops, a bunch of new recruits who had never seen battle. He was going to send them in to get slaughtered as a distraction. I spoke up against it and my father punished me. He took away my honor, I can't have it restored until I capture the Avatar. That's all there is to it."

She gasps, "Your father did this to you. I am so so sorry."

"I don't need your pity." He turns away and starts to leave.

Katara grabs his hand again. "It's not pity." She pulls him back down. "It's not pity, it's anger that anyone could do that to another human being especially their family and pain that you had to go through it. Let me help you." She pulls from the puddle that formed during her nightmare. The water is cool against his burning cheek. She can feel the muscles, feel the burnt flesh, and she wills the water to fix it. The glow illuminates the room.

"How is it! Were you able to fix it?" He's almost afraid to ask. The drop in her shoulders is all the answer he needs.

"I'm really sorry Zuko."

He breaks their handholding and pulls away. "I shouldn't have expected anything else from a peasant." With that he storms out of the room. Water thuds against the door behind him and the guards exchange a puzzled look which he ignores. He stands on the broken deck, next to the bodies of the eight men who were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. He shouldn't have expected her to actually help him. What was he thinking, getting his hopes up like that? It was stupid and he knows it. She's just a beginner anyway, and a peasant at that! He roars at the sky, fire jettisoning out of his mouth in a steady stream. How can he be so stupid! How could he tell her about his father? How could he have told her about his nightmares? What's wrong with him that he's not thinking clearly?

Katara doesn't finish her god awful tea but mutters about stupid princes. Just when she was coming to the conclusion that he might possibly be a halfway decent guy other than the whole Avatar bit, he becomes an ass again! Stupid fucking fire benders. She finishes her tea and goes back to bed after putting the water down the drain. She keeps the candles burning though, she doesn't want to see what's out there is the dark. She's scared, no she's terrified and all the brave words and actions are just a facade. She keeps thinking she sees Chang with his knives and his dead eyes lurking in corners of the room. Her palms are still sore, she had to hold her teacup with her fingertips. Mostly it's the shaking that gets to her, like she's always on the edge of panic. She takes a teacup and fills it, bending the water till she can finally fall asleep again. Nightmares haunt her and and Chang's sadistic grin follows her but she doesn't wake up.

Zuko doesn't go back to the room, instead opting to sneak into his Uncle's room and sleep on the floor there. Iroh wakes from his own dreams of war hours later to find his nephew sprawled out on the floor whimpering to himself.

. . .

It's almost noon before Katara wakes, after all she is Water Tribe. Before she started living on the road she would go to bed around midnight and wake late. Everything changed with the Fire Nation ship. There's no sunlight here but the candles are still flaring, apparently they have an unending supply of them. She starts to roll out of bed. Zuko didn't put on the manacles last night, she notes absently. He must feel guilty because they stopped her from fighting back. He deserves to feel guilty, this is all his fault isn't it? He's the one that kidnapped her. He's the one that's chasing the Avatar. He's the one that - he's the one that tried to save a bunch of troops from getting slaughtered. He's the one who got mutilated by his own father. It's easier to feel bad for him than it is to feel bad for herself. If she feels bad for herself then she has to admit that it really happened and that's not something she's ready to do.

She gets up, plasters a smile on her face and begins wrestling with her hair trying to tame it into it's regular do. Her hair pins were all destroyed by Chang's ripping so she tries something else. A long braid falls down her back, tied of with one of Zuko's leather hair straps. There's no mirror in the room or the adjoining bathroom. Even without looking at herself -she isn't sure she wants to anyway since she can still feel the raw skin on her face - Katara begins to heal herself. It's not as easy this time, she has to actually focus on it. All of the other times it was out of preservation or at least the uninhibited desire to stop hurting. This time she's not in constant pain and needs to think about what she's doing. She starts on her feet, the cuts may be shallow there but she'll need her feet the most. It takes a few minutes to get the feel just right but soon she can feel the skin growing back together, all that remains of those cuts are thin white lines that will fade with time. Next she works on her hands. He had sliced deeply into her palms, exposing bone it had scabbed over in the infirmary but mostly was helped by the healing session yesterday. Now she still has cuts but nowhere near as bad. Water floats in mid-air and she works it, the glow encompassing her hands and taking her breath away. She's more sensitive here than on her feet or at least the amount of heeling she has to do is larger.

Her face is next, she doesn't want to end up like Zuko with a big scar and so she makes sure that it gets proper treatment. The water is soothing to her cheek and she can hear a slight hum with it so close to her ears. It actually makes her happy, it's the first thing on the forsaken ship that makes her truly happy though it's ruined the moment she thinks about why the hum is there in the first place. The cut on her check is more shallow than anywhere else and so it heals the quickest. Within moments it's gone and her face is smooth again, only a fading white line left. There are plenty more cuts and plenty of places that need healing, but her stomach is calling and demanding to be fed.

She opens the door at the exact same moment as Iroh who's carrying a steaming plate of food. "It's so good to see that you're finally awake!"

"Yeah, I uh just woke up. Is that breakfast?" Her stomach grumbles loudly.

Iroh laughs, "If you want to call it that. It's almost noon." He sets it down and she begins to dig in. "I see you're coming along well. How are you feeling?"

"Erm - goog." She tries to speak while shoveling the food in.

"Uh huh," Iroh pauses for a moment unsure of whether or not to talk to her about what's on his mind. What she's been through would put anyone through hell but she seems to be fine. He would rather that she lets it all out naturally instead of bottling it up like his nephew does. Talking to her about it can wait until later, once they're back at sea instead of getting ready to dock. "We'll be disembarking in an hour. Prince Zuko wants me to escort you around town for awhile." She shrugs, that'll make it all the easier for her to escape. Her feet are healed and she can run.

The ship limps into harbor with steam chugging out of the engine and the deck still a mess. Part of the hull was dented and a large section of the deck will have to be replaced. Katara steps out onto the deck in modified shackles. They're far enough apart that she can bend some but not so much that attacking is easy. Zuko had them specially done after the incident earlier. The wreckage is a surprise to her, she'd been attacked and then shut up in various rooms. She had had no idea about what it was that started the fire. "What happened?"

Zuko walks up, "Your brother and the Avatar, that's what happened. They bombed us and killed eight good, innocent men."

Katara's eyes widen with horror. "There's no way my brother would -" but she knows that's a lie. She watched him club on a polar leopard cub that tried to attack her when they were little. She'd seen his aggression towards the Fire Nation. "Aang wouldn't allow that!" He wouldn't would he? She's not entirely sure of what the young Avatar is capable of.

"Well obviously he did." Zuko marches off. Messengers have been sent out to have all the repairmen and the locksmith come out to the boat so the prince oversees the moving of the bodies to the funeral pyre. Katara will be out with his uncle and a tripled guard - most of which are following at a discreet distance to capture the Avatar - until the locksmith has added the bending lock.

The full port city comes into view as the water bender steps off the ship. It sprawls out to the mountains and reeks of fish, but this is still her first real chance to escape.