Here again with many thanks for all the reviews :) I'm glad that some of you risked familial embarrassment and mental institutionalization because you loved my story so much, and I hope that no one's been committed yet (you know who you are!) Hope you like this chapter :)

Chapter Twenty-One

Healed and Hurt

By the time she woke up the next morning, Katara's body had already become stiff and unresponsive. Opening her eyes and groaning at the splitting headache that accompanied the light, she sat up and started pulling her boots on. The shelter she and Blue had thrown together was meager, but she and Lani had been dry and warm underneath it. She stood up, feeling her joints pop and release, and she found that her shoulder was burned so bad that fragments of her robe were seared into the wound. The slice on her leg stung, but she knew it was already on the mend and that she wouldn't have to spend any extra energy on it.

The smell of roasting meat had her turning towards the campfire where Lani sat with Blue. The man was flipping a knife between his fingers, making the dusky metal shimmer in the sunlight. The child was copying him with a small twig, her face scrunched up in concentration. They looked for all the world like a father and daughter, especially when she accidentally flicked the stick into his forehead, and his shoulders shook with silent laughter as he ruffled her hair. To think that just a few hours ago, they'd escaped from a bloodbath and he was already making her giggle like a normal little girl- it made her head spin.

Literally- her vision blurred, and the warrior sighed, going to sit on a log and stare into the flames. Two roasted birds sat on a rock, and Lani proudly showed her the new slingshot Blue had whittled for her that she'd used to take them down. Katara ate slowly, hyperaware of the small warm body next to her and the weight of the debt she owed Blue. She didn't know why he'd followed her, or why he didn't tell her, but she knew Lani wouldn't be sitting her- she wouldn't be sitting here- without him.

When she remembered the last thing she said to him in the tunnels, her final proclamation of love, she blushed and swallowed her bite of food, losing her appetite for the rest of the bird. She handed it to Lani, who began to pick the meat off the bones silently, nestled against her side. "We're going to have to get back to Caldera, soon. I left Aang there with a healer, but I don't think he'll have healed enough to go to Sokka like I asked him to," she said.

"Is he okay?" Lani asked in a small voice, and Katara nodded tightly as she wondered what they would go home to. Were there still bodies in her apartment? What would the authorities do about it, and most importantly, what was she going to do about it? Lord Tenji. The name sent hatred snaking through her lungs like hot smoke, and she let her breath out between clenched teeth.

"Aang is fine. Honey, did they hurt you? Are you okay?" Lani shrugged, pushing her hair back from her face.

"I'm okay. They made me sleep most of the time with this nasty medicine that burned my throat. They said a lot of scary things about what they were going to do, but I also heard them fighting. They were scared because they knew you'd get them," she said matter-of-factly. "They knew you'd find me and- and- that you would hurt them… if they hurt me." She trailed off, and Katara knew she'd never forget what she'd seen in the cave. Dead bodies could still hurt you if you let them.

"But I bet they never expected Blue, did they?" Lani asked with a smile, and Katara glanced over at the man sitting and staring into the flames. "He writes me notes 'cause he can't talk, and he took me to a stream before you woke up so I could wash. He looked away and everything, don't worry," she added at Katara's raised eyebrows, then plowed on, "and then he gave me my slingshot and showed me how to use it. He didn't even laugh at me when I hit myself in the ankle, and even though I didn't cry he still kissed it better."

Katara gave a startled bark of laughter. "How did he do that?" she asked, and Lani giggled.

"I told him that was what you usually did when I got hurt, and he bumped his mask against my ankle and then went like this." Lani bent over and tapped Katara's shin with her forehead, then looked up at her, and with her face in a cute imitation of Blue's leer, she tilted her head to the side and turned her thumb up, as if she was asking if she'd done a good job. Katara laughed at her perfect representation of his solid, silent movements, and scooped her up, ignoring the ache in her muscles. Lani palmed the side of her neck, then whispered in her ear.

"I think Blue likes you, 'cause when he thought we were both sleeping, even though I was really awake because I was kind of cold and hungry, but anyways- I squinted so he couldn't see my eyes were open, and he was sitting next to you looking down at you for a long time. Then he put his forehead on your forehead and held your head there. One of the ladies at the orphanage did that to a boy who got really sick, except she was crying and he died a couple days later." Lani got quiet for a moment, then looked up into her eyes. "So I think he likes you, and I think you like him back."

Katara smiled gently, then tickled Lani's sides until her laughter pealed over the entire campsite. "I think you're nosy, and I think you think too much!" Lani rolled away and went to hide behind Blue, and Katara realized that noise carried further than she'd thought. Had he heard Lani's whisper? She wasn't sure. He was gazing in her direction, but when Lani tapped his shoulder, he immediately turned away. She swallowed and stood up, wincing in pain.

"Where's the stream? I have to go heal myself- and if you need me to heal anything, you should come too." Blue stood up, so much taller than her that she had to tilt her head back to look up into his masked face. He untucked the hem of his shirt and lifted it up to reveal a burn right along the narrow slope of his hip. He didn't lift his shirt very far, but Lani was already fixated on the scars on his lower back, her mouth open. She looked over at Katara, then blushed and set her eyes on the ground.

"I can fix that," she offered, and Blue nodded, grabbing a scroll of paper and his charcoal before walking into the forest. Katara followed after him, telling Lani to stay close to the fire and to run if she saw anyone. Feeling only slightly paranoid, she pushed aside a branch and caught a glimpse of blue through the trees that quickly disappeared. She went that direction and caught up with him just as they came to the bank of the stream. It was perfect for bending, with a steady flow and a small pool a couple hundred feet down the river.

Already, Blue was walking towards that pool and looking back over his shoulder to make sure she was following. She watched his back, the ripple of muscles under his shoulder blades, the fluid movement of his swinging arms, his impeccable balance. Then, her eyes slid lower, and she briefly admired his ass before she caught herself. Katara felt heat rise in her cheeks, and shut her eyes for a moment, firmly telling herself to stop. You will not look at his butt. You will not lose control of yourself. You will go back to Lani and take her to Caldera, and you will figure it out from-

"Oof." She ran into something hard and her eyes shot open to stare at Blue's strong chest. She glanced up, and his head was bent, looking down at her. Somehow, the mask seemed different- softer, less fearsome. Maybe it was just the way he was standing, his fingers coming up to trace her face, his other arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her, tucking her into his hold as if she belonged there.

Maybe I do, she thought idly, and rested her head on his shoulder, staying away from the cold border of the mask and letting herself be cradled just as she'd held Lani earlier. He was so warm, so solid against her body. She felt every resolve to continue on with her mission weaken, and started to pull away. The movement triggered something in her mind, and Katara stopped moving, remembering back through the years.

She'd been eleven when her father went on a scouting tour with twenty men in the South Pole, and had just had her twelfth birthday when he came back with only fourteen. The whole village had seen the boats come in, and she'd waited anxiously with Sokka to see their father. The other men had run to their families, swinging their children up in their arms, kissing their wives, crying without any shame because a warrior's homecoming was beautiful to them.

But there were six families who had waited in vain. She remembered looking up at the elderly woman standing with Gran Gran who had pressed her shaking fingers to her lips and pulled a young girl into her grasp. The girl had struggled, crying for her father and trying to see into the hull of the boat, before finally she'd collapsed and watched the other families reunite with hollow eyes. Katara had looked up at Sokka, who'd been so stiff and silent all day that he could've been ice.

"Don't worry. He'll come out," he'd said forcefully, and Katara had just looked at the small bunch of people standing lonely and sad, at the children who'd missed their fathers so much, and would continue to miss them for the rest of their lives. When Hakoda had finally emerged from the boat, she had watched Sokka run to him and waited, frozen, for him to approach. Her father had looked deep into her eyes and told her she looked older than he thought possible, and had scooped her into a crushing hug.

For one moment, she'd let him hold her. Then, she'd thought of all the children who wouldn't ever be held by their fathers again, and shame had filled her so completely that there hadn't been room for anything else. She'd pushed away from Hakoda, firmly convinced she didn't deserve to feel so relieved and so happy that it wasn't her own dad in one of the boxes they'd started unloading from the boats. What made her different, luckier than the boy who had walked beside a wooden coffin, his nose running and his head turned down? She'd been sick with the guilt, but had never told anyone why.

Now, she wondered if she didn't deserve that happiness, that content feeling of being safe and sound. She'd lost, too- lost her mother, her love, most likely parts of her future that she'd never be able to attain. What was so wrong about being comforted?

Katara sighed and leaned back into Blue's embrace, and they stayed like that for a long moment. When he pulled back, he wiped a tear from her cheek that she hadn't noticed, and then turned and walked into the shallow water. He walked until he was up to his thighs, then untucked his shirt again and let the black fabric billow away from his body in the wind. She waded in next to him, carefully rolling up his shirt and tucking it in place. She knew instinctively that he was wary about how much skin she saw, and avoided his chest and back, concentrating solely on the burn across his hip.

She pulled a bubble of water from the stream and took a breath, unleashing the best emotions inside her, turning them into something that soothes and heals. The energy made the water glow, and she lightly traced the perimeter of the jagged burn, working her way into the center. She had to pass over it a few times to encourage the new skin to set and knit together, but when she was finished, she was smiling.

"You heal fast, don't you? This might scar, but not badly. I've worked with a lot of burns, and even though this one was bad, it healed pretty evenly. See?" she said, and swept her finger across the shiny pink skin. He twitched, but didn't move away, and her breath caught as she skimmed along the delicate edge of his hipbone and the soft skin which covered it. Blue didn't move. She let her fingers slide up, beneath the hem of his shirt, and she noted the hardness of his muscles, the strange, vulnerable hollows between his ribs. She moved behind him, the water swirling around her robe, lifting it and settling it back down over her baggy pants, and still, Blue was motionless.

"Is this alright?" she asked quietly, half hoping he wouldn't hear her over the burble of the stream. Instead, he nodded, sighing, his muscles relaxing beneath her touch. She explored the scars on his back, tracing the crisscrossed pattern, feeling the ridges pull at her dragging touch, hesitant to pull his shirt up but instead moving her hands beneath the fabric. She stepped closer, pushing aside the water with a sweep of her hand, swirling it around them. Katara concentrated, and immediately the flow thinned and spiraled around them.

She knew Blue was watching, and she couldn't help thinking that he'd never seen this form before- he was sure to be paying attention. And it felt good to make these movements again, creating something so beautiful, so unfit for her lonesome life, that she hadn't dared to think about since the day she found out Zuko was dead. She wove the strands of water together around them, brushing his skin with the backs of her hands as she swept her arms in circles. Then, with one final movement, the strands froze, the water they were standing in stilled, and Katara let her arms fall. Blue looked up at the crystalline web, and from her position facing his back, Katara found a sliver of pale ivory skin between the edge of the mask and his collarbone.

She wrapped her arms around him, hands resting on his ribcage, and rose up on her tiptoes to draw her nose across the flesh. Blue froze, and in that instant she kissed his neck softly, sweetly. She was so focused on the smooth expanse of skin beneath her lips that she almost missed it.

Blue's head fell back a fraction of an inch more, his shoulders relaxed, and a small, content moan rumbled at the back of his throat, so quiet, but so loud in the silence that followed. She was pressed against his back, she felt him tense, and then he lunged away from her, shattering their enclosure, ripped from her arms by his flight. A cry wrenched from her lips, and she stumbled after him, her eyes zeroed in on his erratic flight. He fell to his knees at the base of a tree, and she ran to him, a million questions on her tongue, and waves of memories barraging her.

He sensed her coming, and his hands went up, halting her, the movement so fierce that he might as well have screamed at her to stop. Then, with deliberate steps backwards and his chest heaving, Blue vanished into the trees and was gone. She knew better than to follow, doubted that she could anyway. He was much faster than her, she was still injured, and her legs felt too weak to even take a step.

Katara sank numbly to her knees and sat heavily, staring at the place he'd disappeared. "You're a liar, Blue," she whispered hoarsely, wishing that the wind could carry her voice to him. The trees waved in the breeze, quiet and harsh in the background of her thoughts.

When she stood, her legs were asleep and tingled painfully. She waded back into the water, healed what she could as she regained feeling, and left the pool, trekking quickly back to Lani and the campsite.

Lani looked up at her and smiled. "Are you and Blue all better now?" she asked, and Katara felt a knot rise in her throat as she considered the double entendre.

"Yeah," she said, deciding to focus on her biggest priority, "but Blue had to go do something, and I'm not sure when he'll be back." Lani frowned, her eyebrows furrowed, and Katara knew that the child wasn't oblivious to the way her voice broke over his name. She tried to press the knot down, swallow the hurt, but there was something so overwhelming about this last disappointment that for several moments, the waterbender couldn't speak. She fought for control, silent and unmoving. Every emotion was countered by logic, but neither won.

Lani slipped her small, warm hand into her own, and scooted closer to her. "Then we'll wait for him to come back," she concluded, but the end of the sentence went up, as if it was a question. Katara nodded tightly, squeezing the child's hand.

"We'll wait."

Review!