A/N: Some mixed response to the last chapter, which I kind of anticipated. It was a pretty hard chapter to write, thus why I pushed back the chapter due date several times.

"It won't happen again."

"It was a mistake."

"An accident."

"I should go."

"Stay."

Night after night happens the same way. They move together in a dance of denial and desire when she can't stay away from his room or his touch. Zuko makes up excuses to be allowed to visit Katara's quarters, and Toph's lack of questioning leads him to believe that she either doesn't care what they're doing or is well aware of it. They don't stay together long, just long enough to fulfill the other before the regret washes over them again.

Washed over her.

Katara finds herself steeped in remorse after the thrill of each climax fades and leaves her desperately clasping at the man she'd formally been sickened by. She remembers glaring at him and counting all of the things she'd hated. His eyes, so unnaturally colored. His scar, twisting his left eye into a permanent glare and betraying how angry he always was. His ridiculous hair, shaved everywhere but the crown of his head and tied into a high ponytail. His attitude, pompous and aggressive, speaking like he was simultaneously desperate and too good to talk to you all at once. She'd easily been able to make a complete list of the things she despised about him from the inside out.

Yet now she couldn't feel any malice towards him if she tried. His eyes entranced her, flecks of gold and brown dancing in their depths when the light hit them just the right way. His scar's origin was a mystery to her, he never wanted to talk about it, but she often found herself running her fingers delicately along its edges to feel his cheekbone and the ridge of his brow beneath it. His hair was thick, dark and wild, encasing her hands when she entangled her fingers in it and gripped it tight in the throes of passion. His attitude had been nothing but a front, the pompous, bitter disposition replaced with a genuine and surprisingly kind soul.

"What are you thinking about?" Zuko asks in the dead silence that bloats the air.

"Nothing." She murmurs into his chest, listening to his heartbeat in one ear.

"If you're going to lie to me, at least try to make it convincing." He growls out tiredly, his voice low enough that she feels it in the cheek pressed to his skin.

"You don't want to hear what I'm thinking." She answers, intently studying a pale pink scar that travels the length of his pectoral to the bottom of his ribs. So many unexplained marks on the skin she'd always thought would be flawless, evidence of a pampered life.

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." Zuko responds and she huffs, perturbed. He was so good with words sometimes.

"I was thinking about how much I hated you." She feels his breath hitch, his heart changing its pace in just the slightest amount. His hand finds the bare expanse of her back, running down from between her shoulders to the small of her back.

"And?"

"And I was thinking about how I don't hate you anymore." Katara finally dares to look up at his face, finding him staring at her ceiling instead of anywhere near her. His thumb slowly rubs small circles into her skin.

"That makes one of us." He says wryly, and she can tell it's meant as a dark joke, but she still swats his shoulder lightly in disapproval.

"Stop." She orders, pushing herself up onto her elbows and leaning in to press a gentle kiss to his lips, "Self pity doesn't look good on you." He smiles against her lips, tangling his fingers in her mussed hair and pulling her closer.

"Really? But I've got so much practice with it." Their kisses are lazy, dazed, but deeply intimate in their frightening familiarity.

"Time wasted, I guess." She climbs over him, bracing her knees on either side of his hips, "Because it really looks bad on you. Maybe try gardening." He laughs against her mouth, shifting to kiss down to the curve of her jaw and lazily moving himself against her. Their muscles are still heavy with the afterglow of their shared climaxes, the movement of both their lips and bodies sluggish.

"Keeping things alive isn't really in my nature." Again, it's meant as a macabre joke, but it makes her pause and pull away from him.

"Zuko." She chides, their intimate position feeling claustrophobic.

"That was…bad, wasn't it?" Zuko asks, hands leaving her hair and settling on her shoulders.

"That's not something to joke about." She says solemnly, sliding off of him and stretching to grab at her bindings.

"I really should stop trying to make those." He grumps, pinching the bridge of his nose in vexation, "Sorry." She nods at his apology, leaving her acceptance vague, and begins wrapping the binding around her chest.

"You should go, anyway. It's late." He looks like he wants to argue, but a new voice interrupts from the distant hallway.

"Please. I have to sleep too, you know." Toph grumbles, "Can't wait up all night for you lovebirds." Neither of them can see her, but they both know her patience has waned if not disappeared, and Zuko is quick in recovering his clothing.

"Goodnight, Katara." The distance between them might as well be a chasm.

"Goodnight."

The day Aang bests him in a firebending brawl; Zuko is hiding hickeys along the pale skin of his neck with a mixture of fine, opaque dust and water. He's far from at his best, his reactions slowed by fatigue and his mind preoccupied with the waterbender watching them from the sidelines. He feels hyperaware of the pattern of her nails displayed on the skin of his bare back, his focus leaving his opponent in favor of Katara's gaze. Their eyes lock just long enough for Aang to land a solid, flaming kick to his stomach that sends Zuko skidding across the rough stone.

"Are you alright?" Aang asks before Zuko pushes himself up onto his elbows. He can already feel the scrapes along his arm and side starting to throb, but he pays them no mind as he nods off the Avatar's concerns.

"I'm fine. You did what I taught you." He gets to his feet, picking aggravating pebbles out of his skin, "You've finally stopped being so conservative with your firebending." Now that he's reassured that he hadn't done Zuko any real harm, the excitement seems to hit him in full force. A grin so big that it's almost implausible forms on the boy's face, and he rushes over to Zuko on a burst of wind that kicks up even more dust into the air.

"Thanks, Zuko!" Aang says, clapping a hand on his back in appreciation. Zuko tries to control the hiss of pain that escapes his lips when the edge of the airbender's thumb strikes where Katara's nail had dug in particularly roughly.

"You're no master yet." Zuko huffs aloofly, shrugging his hand off and stepping away from him, "We still have a long way to go." He can feel everyone's eyes on him, his shift in behavior so obvious to nearly anyone who had paid him any shred of attention before things had become so hopelessly complicated with Katara. He can only be thankful that Sokka is absent to verbally point it out.

"But it's a start." At times, Zuko was baffled by the young Avatar's blind optimism, but it was when he looked into his eyes and really pulled apart their depths that he realized what a transparent veil it was for his doubts. For someone so physically young, he understood the things that were resting on him and took every responsibility seriously, even if his demeanor was anything but serious. His act was entirely different than the one Zuko performed, but it hid an equally disturbed mind. The uninvited thought that perhaps Katara had a certain type buries itself in his mind, and he feels the now familiar flash of jealousy flare to life in his gut.

"Sure." Zuko finally responds cuttingly, "We should take a break." His tone surprises Aang, but he lets it go when Zuko turns to leave them. He can't go far without their watch, settling by a leaking fountain near the edge of the training ground and flushing out his scrapes with the cool water. He can hear them talk amongst themselves—congratulations on his firebending progress, discussions of lunch options, mundane things that make Zuko's attention wane—and busies himself by staring into his reflection in the pool beneath him. The mixture of pale dust from the stones of the temple has started to wear away and the deep purple of the bruises patterning his neck stand out in high contrast.

"You should let me heal you." Katara says, settling on her knees beside him. She doesn't wait for his answer, already gathering a stream of water into a tight ball between her fingers.

"You should consider not being so rough in the first place." He quips back, watching the growing ball start to glow with the now familiar power of her chi. It wasn't entirely fair to put the blame entirely on her, clearly able to see his own marks on her skin underneath the edges of her tunic, but this sort of banter had started to become the norm for them.

"You should consider not being so aggravating in the first place." They were trying to settle into something that looked natural to the others around them, one part aggression and one part struggling camaraderie, but there was still something magnetic between them, "And I was talking about your new scrapes, not the…" She clears her throat but doesn't continue speaking, hovering her hands over the trails of her nails from the night before.

Her hands connect with his back and once again, their chi mingles in a now familiar way. A tremor racks through her otherwise steady hands, and as he hunches over the lip of the fountain, he finds himself gripping her knee gently. A few beads of water seep from her grip as his fingers spread out and his hand slides to her mid-thigh. He knows there's a tender spot there.

"Ouch." Aang says softly, kneeling beside Katara and startling the both of them. Zuko removes his hand from her, clenching his fists in his lap, "I didn't mean to hurt you that bad."

"You've all done worse to me before." The Prince can't help but be on edge, wondering if Aang will notice the distinct scrapes of her nails that stood out against the cuts of the rough pebbles. Even if he did pick out the differences, he wonders if that would be a bad thing. She'd never truly answered him on the matter of her and Aang, and he finally considers if her reluctance was due to regret towards sleeping with him or if she was actually cheating on Aang.

If she was cheating on the Avatar, all powerful master of all elements and bridge to the spirit world, with him, the shamed Prince of a tyrannical nation. The thought makes him swallow dryly.

"I was never trying to hurt you." Aang disputes, and Zuko is so far hunched over the fountain that the edge of it presses into his stomach roughly and worries the slightly singed skin there.

"Thanks." It's all he can come up with in response, and he's aware that it doesn't entirely make sense. In his attempt to be nonchalant, he's coming off as far more suspicious.

"Sorry, Aang, but I really need to focus. Some of these are deep." Katara interjects, and Aang nods in understanding. He goes silent and backs away from them. Zuko wants to thank her, but his throat still feels tight after his realization, "What are you doing?" She hisses, more of the water sliding down his back and soaking into the waistband of his pants, sending a shiver through him.

"What?" He responds without turning his head to look at her.

"You're acting really suspicious! You think they won't notice?" Nearly all of the water is gone now, her hands simply resting on his back. He tries not to think of how nice the touch feels on his hypersensitive healed skin.

"You never really answered my question about you and Aang." Zuko states instead of responding, tilting his head to face her. He's thankful for the impassiveness of his scar to hide his feelings from her.

"It's not your business, I told you that before!" Katara answers angrily, her hands pressing more firmly into his back before she removes them completely, holding them at her sides angrily.

"You've made it my business." He counters.

"No, I haven't."

"You did when you got involved with me." Her harsh exhale is audible, the residual water and sweat on his skin shivering.

"You think I'm cheating on him with you?" He nods, keeping his eyes forward, "I'm not. I wouldn't." There's relief in his posture, his shoulders going slightly slack; yet something still nags at him.

"Of course you aren't." He sighs, "Of course not."

"What is that supposed to mean?" She asks, arms crossing in annoyance. A rancorous smile pulls at his lips and he shakes his head.

"If you were, it'd give me a reason to stop this." Her hands return to his back, gathering the water there as she reforms it around her hands. When she speaks, it's practically said into his shoulder.

"There are plenty of reasons to stop this." He shivers, and it has nothing to do with the water, "Aang just isn't one of them."

Hakoda is an intimidating man. He's physically large, somewhere around the size of Zuko's own father, if a bit leaner, and the permanent bags under his eyes show the stresses of his life. Zuko can vaguely see some of the man's features in his children, but the connections are tenuous at best in his daughter. She must look more like her mother than the stone-faced nonbender before him.

"So he's your prisoner, then?" The ropes have returned to Zuko's wrists for the first time since the marketplace, and the irritating grains of the bindings are just as annoying as he remembered then.

"Yep." Sokka announces, and Zuko is sure he's speaking even more boisterously than normal, "Caught him myself." Zuko has to clench his teeth at that, unable to completely silence the aggravated grunt in the back of his throat.

"I surrendered myself to them. I wanted to help." Hakoda seems skeptical, scanning Zuko so intensely that it makes him feel particularly vulnerable. He subtly shifts his shoulders inward.

"That's quite the change of heart for the son of the Fire Lord to have." Zuko had gone through this so many times before, he sounds bored when he speaks.

"Let's just say the Fire Lord wasn't the best father in the history of fathers. I wasn't guilty when I betrayed him." He'd never been conflicted on whether he'd made the right choice then, it was only the rest of his life that kept a storm raging in the back of his mind.

"I see." They lock eyes, and Zuko can only take note of the fact that his irises are just a shade lighter than Katara's, "Yet they still find it necessary to keep you tied up?" Zuko doesn't want to admit what a show these ties are. They couldn't truly bind him, and he felt everyone here knew that, but it was as if they were putting on a show for their father. They wanted to display something to him, their competency or their ability, and keeping a skilled firebender captive was surely doing that.

"It's a precaution." Sokka interrupts, "You know how unpredictable firebenders can be." There's a spark somewhere in Hakoda's gaze as Sokka speaks.

"I'm very aware." He clasps Sokka on the shoulder, nodding his approval, "Good job, son." His words cause the young tribesman to practically preen, his shoulders pushing back and chest jutting out. Sokka is already going on about his conquest over the 'cunning enemy,' and Zuko effectively tunes him out.

"I think I'd like to speak with him alone, though." Hakoda says. That effectively recaptures Zuko's attention, and he stands from the edge of his bed quickly. Sokka seems as confused as Zuko is, looking between the two doubtfully.

"Uh…yeah, sure. Just come get me and Katara when you're done." Hakoda nods to show his understanding before his son leaves the room, the hush that follows being very nearly deafening.

"Prince Zuko, is it?" Zuko clenches and unclenches his fists, not entirely sure if he should be expecting a fight. This man puts him on edge, and he can't be certain why, but he doesn't like it.

"Just Zuko is fine."

"I'm not going to fight you. You can relax." Trust isn't something Zuko freely gives out, so his shoulders stay tense.

"Judging by your prison scrubs, I can guess you haven't had the best experience with my nation." Zuko argues, "If you wanted to fight me, I'd understand." Hakoda gives him a smile he could almost call patronizing.

"Obviously, but petty fighting won't solve anything when we've apparently got a much bigger common enemy." Zuko's nightmare flashes behind his lids when he blinks, "Besides, I'm sure you've got your own biases against my tribe as well. Let's just call it even." The firebender cringes subtly, recalling the things his tutors had told him about the Southern Water Tribe. They were portrayed as nothing more than dimwitted savages, ugly rumors of cannibalism in the harsh arctic winters being a favorite myth about them in the Fire Nation.

"That sounds fair." Zuko does finally relax his tensed muscles fractionally, the lines in the older man's face seeming to have smoothed somewhat as well.

"I'm glad you agree." Hakoda suddenly grabs Zuko's hands and unties the knot, tugging the ropes loose, "And I don't think either of us should pretend these were doing any good." The Prince is shocked by his audaciousness, pulling his hands back and brushing the fibers left in his skin away.

"Why did you—"

"You have scars on your wrists, but they're too old for you to have been constantly bound until now. Sokka was just trying to impress me, but I don't think he needs to do it at your expense." He didn't know Hakoda in the slightest. He'd never spoken more than a few sentences to him, yet he could feel the unreserved kindness emanating from the man. It nearly breaks Zuko, and he realizes how desperately he'd missed the absence of just one person's scorn since he'd betrayed Iroh.

Zuko refuses to show weakness in front of a complete stranger, though, sniffing indignantly and forcing the heat prickling behind his eyes back down. He hopes he looks more stoic than he feels.

"Thank you." Zuko knows he shouldn't ask, he can feel himself flinch as he speaks, "But why are you being so trusting? I haven't done anything to deserve that, and you must have heard about the things I've done, and the things my people did—" He's getting himself worked up thinking about his past, but Hakoda thankfully puts a quick end to it with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"How much do you know about how things used to be before the war?" Zuko is caught off guard by the question, blinking. Before the war. It seemed like such a foreign statement to him, now that he truly thought about it. Ever since he was old enough to comprehend the world around him, his whole life had been the war. And it had been that way for his father, and his grandfather. The last Fire Prince to know a world without war had been Sozin, back when Avatar Roku had kept the world in balance.

"Nothing." He admits truthfully. His tutors had glossed over his great-grandfather's childhood entirely, focusing on the comet and the onset of the war. If it hadn't been for the hidden scrolls he'd discovered, he wouldn't know anything about Sozin's childhood at all.

"There are stories passed down in our tribe from the elders about it, and the traditions of the Chief's connection to the other nations is well documented." He still doesn't know where Hakoda is going with this, but he doesn't interrupt, "Before the war, the Fire Lord and the tribe leaders were very close, often being raised alongside one another. It was considered the ultimate display of balance to have the leaders of opposing elements be on good terms with one another." Zuko finds that hard to believe, unable to imagine a world where his father could befriend someone like Hakoda, but the idea makes sense. Yin and Yang. Opposite forces working together to create a balance.

"If it could work then, it might work again. And as Chieftain of the Southern Water Tribe, I should get on good terms with the next Fire Lord."

The next Fire Lord.

Just like he couldn't fathom a life before the war, he couldn't comprehend one after it. Assuming Aang could defeat his father, and he could somehow best his sister, he would be next in line for the throne. Even in Zuko's desperate fight to return to his home, he had never done it for his birthright as Crown Prince, but for his father's approval. Whether he regained his right to rule had been something that hadn't concerned him as long as he could please his father.

He'd known all along that becoming Fire Lord would be the result of all of this if it worked out well, but hearing it out loud sends a sharp bolt of panic through him. He would be the youngest crowned Fire Lord in recent history. Ozai hadn't ascended to the title until he was forty-two. Azulon hadn't until he was twenty and Sozin had been twenty-four.

Could he handle that kind of power?

Did he trust himself to?

"Zuko?" Hakoda asks, frowning. It slows his racing thoughts, and he realizes he's breathing harshly with panic.

"I'm fine." Zuko says defensively, "You're right. Thank you for your kindness. I'll try to live up to deserving it." He places his fist against his palm, bowing respectfully and hoping Hakoda will leave him with his thoughts. He doesn't, instead resting a hand on the boy's shoulder and frowning down at him in a way that reminds Zuko of his mother. She'd always been able to see straight through him.

"You've already shown you're a better man than your father by choosing our side. Remember that." He squeezes gently, and the panic starts to wither and die, "Power will only corrupt if you let it." Hakoda does leave him then, ascending the steps, and Zuko only wishes he could have the faith in himself that the Chief had in him.

A/N: I'm having a really unique problem. I'm getting so many reviews for this story (over 100!) but a huge portion of them are anonymous, and that's fine, but if you're going to comment anonymously, can you give yourself a unique name? It makes it easier for me to follow one person's thoughts on the story and reassures me it's not just one person reviewing over and over again.

Also, the Water Tribe politics are crazy. When researching Hakoda's position in the Southern Water Tribe, I realized he wasn't really an official "Chief" in the terms of having ruling power like the Northern Tribe leader or the Fire Lord has, but Hakoda kind of simplifies it for Zuko. It's got more punch than just saying "very important person." ~ Jiggle