A/N: I'm so overwhelmed that so many of you have a taken a shine to this one. Thanks ever so much for all your kind words of the first chapter. I know I left you on a cliffhanger, so I wanted to make sure you didn't hang too long. I hope you love this chapter just as much. Much love! xx-Kitten.

Brightest Nights and Darkest Days

By Kittenshift17

CHAPTER TWO

She grappled with him across the floor, rolling and cursing when she hit her elbow at a bad angle. He tried to pin her but Katara bucked him off her before he could, flipping them furiously and pinning his wrists to the floor to prevent him from fire bending at her. She found herself straddling him, Zuko laid on his back on the dusty floor beneath her. She'd dropped her tea cup when he'd lunged at her, spilling her tea on the floor. And she was annoyed about it.

He didn't move beneath her, stilling just as suddenly as he'd attacked and Katara glared at him.

"What did you do that for…?" she snarled before uttering a shriek of surprise when he flipped them both until she was pinned beneath him, her legs now bent at an uncomfortable angle. He'd clearly waited for her to lower her guard just a bit before turning on her once more and Katara snarled at him in fury when she found herself thoroughly pinned beneath him this time, unable to budge at all.

Tendrils of fear whispered through her when she tried to fight him off her and couldn't. Due to the way she'd straddled him, he was now lying between her spread legs, her hips cradling his. He pinned her hands either side of her face and he trapped her bent knees against her ribs, pinning them there with his arms.

"What use are you to me if you can't even protect yourself from me?" he asked coldly. He glared into her face, his cold expression never changing. He simply looked angry and determined.

Katara heard the little whimper that left her as she scanned his face for some hint that he actually meant to hurt her. The warmth emitting from him didn't at all help her suddenly racing heart and Katara realised with a jolt that she'd stopped fighting.

"I've protected myself from you plenty of times," she argued.

"You've lost to me in a fight plenty of times," he corrected. Katara narrowed her eyes as she thought of the only time they'd actually battled one-on-one – at the North Pole. When he had bested her.

"You made me spill my tea," she accused. She was annoyed with him when she couldn't offer much rebuttal to his assertion. They often outwitted his plans for capturing them as a group, but in a hand-to-hand fight she knew he was stronger than her. She also knew that fighting him anymore now would just be a waste of energy.

"That's all you have to say?" he demanded. Katara could tell he was shocked she wasn't trying to buck him off of her or demanding to be released. The truth was that as unnerving as it was to be staring into his scarred, angry face and as unsettled as she was by the feel of his essence brushing against her and the way his body pressed against hers, she didn't really want him to move.

He was so warm and she was still shivering with cold in the freezing room.

"What were you hoping for?" she asked rather than answering his question.

He narrowed his eyes at her, clearly confused by her lack of anger and lack of indignation over being held down so intimately. Honestly, Katara was too busy soaking up his warmth to care about insisting he move or anything else. The cold had been draining her energy and she'd been running around all day – travelling between towns and trying to locate her friends. She was tired and she wouldn't mind just closing her eyes and going to sleep. It was only early, but Katara hadn't slept well since she'd lost her friends.

Being a fugitive, not to mention a young woman travelling alone, had made her wary and she woke at the slightest sounds. It wasn't as though she had enough money to stop at hotels along the way, so mostly – like Zuko – she'd been sleeping in abandoned buildings where she could be out of the snow. Zuko might have spent almost all of the journey since the North Pole chasing her and hunting her – moving as her enemy – but at least he was familiar in a world full of strangers.

"Aren't you going to demand that I get off you?" he asked. He seemed slightly confused by her answers.

"Would my demanding it make you do it?" she wanted to know, answering his questions with questions.

"No," he replied, smirking coldly.

"Then why would I waste my breath?" she asked. "You'll get off me when you're ready. Or you won't. Either way until you do, you're warm and I'm cold."

"Oh, so you're not trembling in fear of me?" he sneered. Katara rolled her eyes.

If she was being completely honest, the truth was that Zuko did scare her a little. He was so angry, so volatile and so ruthless that he unnerved her. She also didn't particularly trust him but she did think that he wasn't going to hurt her unless he had to. From what she'd seen, despite his ruthlessness, Prince Zuko had to work at being a heartless monster. He had to make an effort to be so uncaring and cold. He wouldn't just hurt her for the sake of it. At least, she really hoped he wouldn't.

"I already told you that I'm not scared of you," she rolled her eyes. "I'm just cold."

Narrowing his eyes at her even more, Zuko looked like he didn't know what to make of her. He obviously wasn't used to dealing with a water bender. Katara might've been known for her moments when she lost her temper about something, but like the element she wielded, she was good at going with the flow when it suited her. And if going with the flow with Zuko meant stumping him with her less than furious attitude over being bested and her denial of her fear that suited Katara just fine.

Frowning at her in annoyance, Zuko released her wrists before getting off her. He didn't offer to help her to her feet before he walked back across the room to where he'd left his cup and she narrowed her eyes at him when he used his bending to re-heat his tea. He did the same to the pot and Katara used her bending to pour herself a fresh cup of tea as she moved back to where she'd been sitting, this time digging out the sleeping bag she'd stolen and spreading it out.

She was still shivering as she climbed into in, grateful for the added protection against the cold. She could feel Zuko watching her as she fussed about, settling into her sleeping bag more fully, for the time being only using it to cover her legs and wrap around her waist while she was still sitting up to finish her meal and drink her tea. Katara knew it was still somewhat light outside, but in the windowless room it was dark enough that she could sleep. Even with Zuko's lamp still burning.

She didn't dare to look at him when she settled herself more comfortably, still sipping her tea. She looked at her own hands, watching the tea in her cup as wisps of steam curled from it in the cold room. The sound of his footsteps drew her attention and Katara frowned when she saw him going to the door.

The idea made her uncomfortable. She didn't at all approve of the notion of being trapped alone in the confined room with him. Especially with the door closed. She knew they wouldn't suffocate – there were cracks around the door that allowed plenty of air through. She also knew that having it closed would better heat the space and keep the chilled wind out. But the idea of being so confined with Prince Zuko made Katara nervous.

Like a sleeping dragon, he could turn on her, spewing fire over her at any time. There was also the added tension that she suspected came from the way his essence and hers seemed to call out to each other. She didn't understand that at all. She'd never heard of it happening with anyone else. Sokka was a non-bender and her brother, so she'd never felt her chi wrap around him. And Aang was the Avatar. Even when she hugged him, she never noticed anything like what had happened when she'd been trapped in Zuko's embrace and kissing his lips.

She hadn't spent any time with any other fire-benders either, so she didn't know if it was something unique to fire benders or if it was just Zuko. It unnerved her. Mostly because it felt amazing. She didn't think she'd ever been so warm. The feel of his essence cloaking hers was nothing she could really described. She'd been burned before and it didn't really feel like that… she supposed it did, only without the pain of a burn. It felt more like sinking into a hot bathtub full of water or like that mild tickling sensation of heat just before a burn.

And the fact that it was so cold amid the wild snowstorms ravaging the land meant that the amount of heat he gave off was addictive.

Katara bit her lip on her protests as he closed the door, sealing the two of them inside with only the small, solitary lamp he carried as a light source. The diminutive lamp cast wild shadows on the walls and across his face as he stalked back across the room to where he'd set up his palette for the night. The confined space – no more than two meters squared worth of room – felt stifling as he stood for a moment. Katara watched with trepidation as he pulled his travelling cloak off himself and laid it next to his palette before he climbed inside his own sleeping bag.

How he could even think about removing layers evaded her, though she knew she ought to as well. If she went to sleep now with her parka still on, she would shiver through the whole day tomorrow without being wrapped in the warmth of her sleeping bag. She knew it, but she was so cold that she was loathe to do it. Biting her lip, Katara drained her tea cup and set it aside before she copied him, wriggling around until she could remove her parka. She laid it over her rucksack and squirmed about until she was stretched out on her stomach, wrapped completely in her sleeping bag and reaching for the parka, which she folded up to use as a pillow.

Katara laid on the far side of the lamp, and she turned her face to look past it to where Zuko now lay in his own sleeping bag. He lay on his back with one arm folded behind his head and his eyes were closed. She lay on his left-hand side and Katara felt her fingers begin to itch as she stared at the sight of the angry red scar that covered his left cheek, his left eye and slashed across his forehead all the way back to mangle his left ear as well. Part of her itched with the need to try to heal the old wound. Another part recalled the silky feel of the blemish beneath her fingers when she'd been kissing him and hiding the mark.

She blinked when he suddenly opened his eye to glare at her, catching her staring and making Katara blush. Despite feeling awkward about being caught, she didn't look away from him. She suspected that would just make him angry, thinking she was staring at his scar and judging or pitying him. He glared at her for a moment longer before he jerked his arm from beneath his head and flicked his wrist, sucking the fire from the lamp between them. Katara watched with just the tiniest bit of awe as he let the flame dance over his long fingers before he seemed to suck the fire right back into himself and cast the room into darkness.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~O~

The darkness was worse, Zuko decided as he lay tense and on edge in the blackened room with Katara two feet away from him. The tension was thick and stifling in the small, dark room and he despised it. This was her fault. If she'd never been following him, he'd never have ended up having to spend the night with her.

If he were to be completely honest, the sight of her had actually made him feel better. He'd noticed the young woman tailing him almost immediately when she'd begun following him three days ago. For a time he'd thought it coincidence; that she was just a traveller moving in the same direction as him. He'd grown steadily more convinced that wasn't the case, however, when she seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

The fact that his stalker had turned out to be the Avatar's girlfriend was actually a relief. A relief and an annoyance and a balm all in one. He didn't do very well being alone for long periods of time and he'd been alone for weeks as he tried to locate his uncle. The fact was that he was a stranger in an unfamiliar and hostile land where the Fire Nation loathed him for being the wanted, disgraced and exiled son of the Fire Lord and the rest of the world feared or loathed him for being the Prince of the Fire Nation.

He didn't like to think about the fact that he'd shared food and tea with Katara with as much ease as he might've with his uncle. He especially didn't like to think about the way it had felt when he'd suddenly found himself with her arms and legs wrapped tightly around him, her warm breath by his ear and then her lips on his. Even when he'd had no clue who she was as she clung to him and kissed him, Zuko had felt something inside him roar to life – wakening and wrapping around her possessively. He'd never felt anything like it before in all his life. He knew it had been their chi brushing together and it had entirely unnerved him.

He didn't like how it had felt like she was a soothing drink of cool water after a long, hard day of training or walking. He didn't like the way her lips had felt against his or the way her tongue had been like silk against his own. Damn it all to the fieriest pits of hell, she was the enemy! He'd hunted her across the world. He wasn't supposed to be pleased to see her and his essence wasn't supposed to call out to her like it was.

As he laid there in the darkened room, he could literally feel the tremors and shivers running through her. She was clearly freezing. The irony that she was from the South Pole and yet was still cold was no lost on him, but it did call into sharp focus his own problem. The few rays of sunshine that had peeked through the snow clouds had warmed and revived him somewhat, but he knew he was weakening. Fire benders could tolerate the cold better than most, but it sapped away his strength. And the lack of sunlight depleted his ability to fire bend.

Unlike the other elements, fire had to be created. It was the reason fire benders were the most powerful. The other three nations did their bending by manipulating elements already at their disposal. Air and Earth Benders had their element right at their fingertips all the time. Water benders had it slightly harder and most – like Katara – carried a canteen to use to bend when they needed it. Though Zuko also knew that water benders could call on the water in all living things to bend if they wished.

If she wanted to, Katara could rip the life-giving water from the grass and the trees to use if she so chose. But not fire benders. Fire benders had to work harder, had to be stronger and had to have more endurance than the other benders because they had to create their own element. Every time he used fire bending, he had to call upon his own essence – his own strength – to create the element he wielded with deadly precision.

And every time he did, it left him a little weaker. The sun tended to revitalise him, but it had been so scarce for weeks now that he was running low on reserves. He might be warm enough to get by – but he could use something to boost his power back up. And without access to the sun, the only other way to do so was to not have to entirely warm his own body for a little while.

The trouble was, Zuko didn't like to be touched. In fact, he hated it. Not to mention that he didn't really know anyone well enough to want to touch them for any purpose other than to hurt them. Kissing Katara was the closest he'd come to any form of non-combative contact with another human being in a very long time. Iroh might at times clap him on the shoulder or guide him through a new set of bending moves, but that tended to be the extent of his contact with other people.

The idea of touching Katara again repulsed and intrigued him in equal measure. And it was making the strained energy between them all the tenser. He could practically feel that tension pushing against his skin like a thick and stifling humidity. The chill in the room was sapping his strength despite his higher-than-average body temperature and Katara's teeth had begun to chatter with cold.

Closing his eyes, Zuko tried to ignore the urge to end the tension and put a stop to her shivering. He didn't want to lay another finger on her. Not really. He was just cold and tired and she was familiar. At least, as familiar as one's enemy could be amid a town full of hostile strangers. He was loathe to admit that she most likely had saved his life when she'd ambushed him and kissed him in the street. He'd been so tired and so cold that the feel of the sun had called to him with too much fervour for him to deny.

When his hood had fallen back, revealing his scar and thus his identity, Zuko had barely noticed. The fact was he was dangerously low on reserves of warmth and pretty soon he was going to lose his ability to bend effectively. Oh, he would still be able to create fire – he could do that with his dying breath – but the effects manifesting it had on his body would begin to show. Even boiling the water for the tea he'd shared with her had sapped his energy.

He hadn't even wanted a cup of tea. He'd just spent too long with Uncle Iroh and so had made tea out of habit more than need or even any want to consume the liquid. Zuko listened in the tense silence of the room as Katara began to shift about, trying to get warm and trying to get comfortable. Zuko knew the feeling. Now that he was sitting still, even inside his sleeping bag, he could feel the insidious creep of the cold ghosting over his body and sapping more of his strength.

He should have stolen some coins and paid for a hotel room. He'd thought about it. He just hadn't wanted to bother. Searching for his uncle was proving as difficult as searching for the Avatar had been when he'd first been exiled. There was not even a whisper of a clue that his uncle had passed through any of the towns Zuko was travelling through. He'd taken to asking after the Avatar too, just to try and get a reading on where he might be. Logically it made sense to Zuko that Iroh would head for Aang, thinking Zuko would be doing the same.

In fact, it might prove advantageous to have Katara tagging along with him. Her brother and the Avatar would undoubtedly be searching for her too. He'd seen how ridiculously loyal they all were to each other too many times to doubt that fact. Besides, even a tentative enemy was better company than his own.

Zuko didn't know how long he laid there in the dark and the cold of the room, the tense silence between them easing just a bit as she slipped towards slumber. Her breathing kept beginning to even out before it would hitch again in the dark – whether out of fear of him, fear of something else or just the terrible cold, Zuko didn't know. He was sure that the moon was high and the night deep when he finally lost patience with her incessantly chattering teeth.

Rolling onto his side, Zuko moved the lamp he carried with him out of the way between their two bedrolls – not even needing light to see it and move it.

"Hey!" Katara hissed. She went tense, immediately going on the offensive when he grabbed hold of the edge of her sleeping bag and dragged her, inside it, across the small space separating the two of them.

"Zuko? What are you doing?" she demanded, lowering her voice a bit when she recalled it was him. He could hear her suspicion and her annoyance – with just the slightest hint of fear in her tone. It suddenly occurred to him that she was even younger than his eighteen years and that she'd been travelling as a young woman, alone, for three weeks. She was probably fearful he was going to force himself on her.

No wonder she kept waking every few minutes. She was paranoid she'd be grabbed and taken advantage of.

He didn't answer her question as he hauled her closer. He was going to force himself on her, just not in the way she feared. He had no desire to deflower the fierce water tribe princess – he just wanted to borrow her body heat for a while.

"Zuko!" she hissed when he curled back the coverings of his sleeping bag before peeling hers open.

"I can warm you," was all he offered as an explanation. Unwilling to admit that he needed her heat as much as she needed his.

Katara squawked in surprised when Zuko dragged her right out of her bedroll and into his own, slotting her into the narrow space next to him.

"I don't want you to warm me," she was protesting. "I don't want you to touch me."

"And I don't want to listen to your teeth chatter all night as you shiver. Now, be quiet," he growled in response, annoyed by her disgusted tone. He hauled her sleeping bag over the two of them, flattening it out so it covered them both inside his.

When it was done, he seized her shoulders and nudged her with his knee until she was lying on her side with her back to him.

"Stop it, Zuko!" she snapped, struggling slightly.

"Oh, for crying out loud, Katara, I'm not trying to assault you. I'm try to keep us both warm enough that we don't die during the night!" Zuko snapped, losing his temper with her when she kept squirming as he tried to hold her still and so take full advantage of her warmth.

"By manhandling me in the dark and dragging me into your bedroll?" she demanded.

"Aren't you from the South Pole?" he demanded. He flicked his hair out of his eyes to glare at her. "Shouldn't you be used to the idea of sharing body heat?"

"Not with someone who's tried to kill me!" she retorted.

"Well, if you don't shut your mouth and hold still, I'm going to try again," he growled in annoyance. She elbowed him in the ribs in response. Zuko thought seriously about setting her on fire but before he could, he suddenly felt the brush of her essence against his.

She seemed to feel it too because she stopped struggling in his grip and laid still – if completely tense – beside him in the dark. Taking advantage of her stillness, Zuko looped his arm over her hip and she squirmed again when he began to burrow his hand under the layers of shirts she wore.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, her voice slightly breathless. Zuko wondered if it was out of fear or if his touch made her nervous. He didn't bother answering her when he finally managed to locate her skin beneath the many layers she wore.

Snaking his bare forearm up the front of her shirt, he pressed his warm skin against hers and he knew he didn't imagine it when a little morsel of sound escaped her at the warmth of his skin against hers. He knew because he'd most effectively quashed his own sound of pleasure at the feel of the warmth. She tensed when he slipped his hand a little higher, encountering the bindings she wore beneath her clothes to hold her feminine wiles in place.

Zuko made sure not to delve his hand under those, though he did shuffle until his wrist rested between the twin mounds adorning her chest and his palm was flat against her sternum. He snaked the other arm beneath her neck, bending it back until his hand was under his own head and his bicep was cushioning her cold cheek. He also spooned himself right up against her back, tangling his outer ankle between both of hers.

"This must be some horrid nightmare," she said when he finally stopped moving. Zuko could feel her rubbing her cool cheek against the warmth of his bare bicep muscle as though trying to absorb as much of his heat as she could. Ordinarily he might've minded the idea of her taking his body heat but almost immediately she began emitting much more of her own and he was taking full advantage of it.

The heat was glorious and it seeped into his skin like much needed relief. Slowly, despite their dislike for one another, Zuko felt her relax in his hold, the tension easing out of her muscles and leaving her soft and pliant in his arms. The feel of her feminine form so intimately pressed against him set him of edge but Zuko closed his eyes and did his best to block it out.

His unfamiliarity with being touched by anyone – let alone being pressed so closely against someone – wasn't enough to override the heat and the effect of having her pressed so close in the otherwise cold room. The fact that her chi was brushing tentatively against his own as a balm to the raging inferno beginning to stream back into him from her warmth was soothing to his fried nerve endings and Zuko let his eyes slowly close.

"Goodnight, Zuko," she whispered sleepily when he was almost asleep. Zuko didn't bother to answer her verbally. Instead he burrowed the tip of his nose through her hair until it pressed against the back of her neck and he fell asleep with the water bender in his arms.