No AU again! Maybe I'm getting the hang of it. It's just so much fun to come up with AUs...

Since the prompt is scars, there are some pretty obvious topics, but I wanted to try a different approach. Sometimes you've got to surprise your readers!

I do not own Avatar The Last Airbender.

Day 15: Scars

"Why do you always sneak some food off your own plate?" Zuko asks Katara, as she is about to eat one dumpling from said plate.

It's afternoon and lunch was over three hours ago. Katara is in the Fire Lord's private garden, since she thought Zuko would still take some time to go through the mayor of Yu Dao's reports.

She shrugs. "I like eating throughout the day. It's how we did it in the South Pole." Lie! Lie!

Zuko looks sceptical. "But last time I was there, you ate two times a day. And you were the only one sneaking food."

Katara laughs and shakes her head. "Oh, that was for the otter penguins!" Maybe she forced that enthusiasm in her voice a bit too much.

His raised eyebrow affirms that. "There are no otter penguins here, and you just wanted to eat that gyoza yourself," he points out, as if he were the observant guy. That doesn't seem to fit him, but sometimes he can be very observant. "And I noticed how it smells of food in your room. Are you squirreling for the winter? Because things even grow here in winter."

Because of the upper curve of his lips she can tell that he's joking. He doesn't really believe that she's squirreling food away. Of course he wouldn't. He never had to get through a winter at the South Pole, when all the food had to be rationed, and sometimes you went without any food for days.

And although Katara knows he's joking, she cannot help the caught-with-her-hand-in-the-cookie-jar-look on her face.

Zuko immediately catches onto that, which confuses her, since he's normally pretty bad at reading facial expressions. He narrows his eyes. "Or are you?"

Katara still doesn't answer, and just looks away. She doesn't feel ashamed of it. At least, that's what she's telling herself.

It's not about preparing for winter, what she did for the first fourteen years of her life, but about the fear to go without food again. There might be no cruel winter in the Fire Nation, but a tsunami could destroy the agricultural islands, a hurricane could ruin the harvest, an illness could spread through the soil, or a drought could happen.

These people here don't know how lucky they are, that they never had to fear being without food. But that luck can't hold on forever.

"Katara," says Zuko softly. "We have enough food. You don't have to worry."

She swallows and keeps staring ahead. He doesn't understand. He never starved.

"While I was marked a traitor, getting by was also very difficult for me, and I didn't have anything to eat for several days. I understand your fear to a slight degree."

"Zuko, I've seen babies as thin as their skeletons, and them, toddlers and children dying of hunger winter by winter," she rasps out.

"That won't happen here. If we suffered from anything which would make us starve, the Earth Kingdom would help." He then sits down next to her, his arms touching hers.

She turns her head to look at him. He smiles reassuringly. When Zuko is not pessimistic about something, it usually means that it cannot be awful in any way.

So maybe she should believe him and stop living in fear. Every child's death she witnessed, every summer praying that her family would make it through alive, she had just become more afraid. That fear had scarred her soul and her carefreeness.

It won't be easy to overcome this, but for now, she hands the dumpling to Zuko.