Chapter 2

"Katara, what were you doing? You should've been paying attention to the pot!" Sokka shouted at his sister. "Well sorry if I got sidetracked!" she shouted back hotly. "What sidetracked you? We're in the middle of nowhere!" Sokka yelled. Katara's guard fell and she just looked away from her brother. "What was it?" he asked. "I thought I saw Zuko in the fire," Katara muttered. "You were daydreaming about Zuko?" Sokka asked, infuriated. "No!" his sister shouted, regaining her temper, "I was just hallucinating!" "Whatever, just clean out the pot and get breakfast started," Sokka said before walking off. Enraged, Kara gathered a thin sliver of water from her flask and whipped it out, hitting Sokka sharply in the back of the head. He cried out in pain and Katara smirked before cleaning out the pot and restarting the meal, this time, not getting distracted by mirages.

"You're doing great Aang," a young voice smiled. It was Toph, watching Aang practice his earth bending. The young Avatar, though having only been earth bending for a short while, had grown out in muscle from the lifting of heavy rocks. He was filling out in his clothes, but he was still lanky and light on his feet as an air bending master should be. "Thanks Toph," the Avatar smiled at his friend before continuing to bend.

Toph let her eyelids droop and she felt Aang's vibrations. She admitted only to herself that she did in fact have feelings for him. No one else knew this but herself because she could always hide it behind her tough exterior. Her eyelids opened when she felt vibrations coming straight at her, and fast. She moved quickly into a defensive stance and blew the large boulder that Aang had thrown at her into a million little pieces before it could knock her off her feet. "Nice try Aang, but you can't get me!" Toph laughed. The Avatar laughed with her before saying, "I think I'm going to practice some of my water bending." "You do that, Twinkle Toes," Toph sighed. She felt him walk off and then went to practice her own bending.

Katara was staring at the water in the steam she was bending. Although she was trying to concentrate on only the water, Zuko's face kept appearing in her mind, the exact same way it had earlier. It bothered her. Why was she thinking about him so much? He had been tracking her and her friends for the past year, and now, even though he was reduced to being a refuge, he was still out to get Aang. Nobody had told her that, but she knew it; she knew that Zuko would do anything to get his hands on the Avatar. But Katara would stop at nothing to cease the fire bender's quest.

Zuko stared up at the sky from his window, his uncle asleep in the bed only a yard away from him. The moon was full, lighting up the sky, making the stars around it look dim. He sighed; Iroh had told him about what he'd seen at the Spirit Oasis with Zhoa, Tui, and Princess Yue. 'You were lucky,' Zuko thought, staring hard at the moon, 'You got to escape, to leave this world and all of its horrors while the rest of us are still here, still suffering, still in pain.' A gentle breeze blew at the teenager's hair and he looked at his uncle before looking around; most of the lights in the area were out. He slowly left the apartment and went down to the fountain in the middle of a small town square. Zuko stared into the waters hard. He had a strange longing to see those eyes he'd seen earlier, but it seemed to more he tried to see them, the less they seemed to come.

That night, Zuko never saw those eyes. Only his own reflection…