A/N: Just a fluff-tacular chapter here. No real plot. I officially LOVE Hahn. If you've ever wanted to write a smug asshole, choose Hahn brandCopyright Asshole. Ice cold arctic fox-wolves, and without all the nasty terrorist insinuations of similar products (see: Jet brand Assholes). Also, once again, a thousand thanks to AnnaAza, for spell-checking this chapter.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Avatar. I do, however, own the plot line of this increasingly convoluted fanfiction.

Healing Lightning

Chapter V: An Awakening, of Sorts

It had been two days since Zuko had first woken up from his coma. Katara had stayed by his side as much as possible. She didn't know why, but she felt... something, some tenuous thread that seemed to connect her with the injured Firebender. She realised that it had always been present, a faint hint of something else, but it was stronger when he was physically here. Brushing his hair away from his face with a gentle touch, she smiled as he stirred and leaned into her hand. Hearing her own stomach rumble, she got up and nodded to Hanzu and Maraka, who were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room. Ducking slightly as she walked through the door, she couldn't help but wonder at the source of the extreme animosity in between the two older benders.

Waiting until Katara had left the room and was well out of earshot, Hanzu finally opened his mouth. "Still a tad bitter, I can see."

"Shut your trap, firebender. This is your fault!"

"My fault? How in the world do you figure that this is my fault? I wasn't even in the palace when the Prince had his accident."

"I'm not talking about the Prince, and you damn well know that."

"Look, if this is about us..."

"There is no us, Hanzu. You made that abundantly clear back in the Fire Nation." Throwing up her hands in defeat, she glared at him anew. "Get out. I can't concentrate with you in here, so just... leave."

With his frown marginally growing, the armoured firebender walked from the medical bay, reaching inside his pocket for the small scroll that Fire Lord Iroh had slipped into his baggage. He hadn't had a chance to read it yet, but he had an ominously bad feeling about the contents of the scroll. He stopped abruptly as he realised that he had reached the chambers that Arnook had granted him. Setting the scroll on its end, he sat on his pelt-covered slab of ice that served as his bed and looked at the scroll. I wonder what it could say... is it secret Fire Nation documents? A secret medicine that the Prince must take? A final will? Deciding to sleep on it, he slowly started removing his armour and setting it on the wooden stand that he had brought from the Fire Nation. Once he had stripped down to a light shirt and pants, he grabbed a panther-wolf fur at his bedside and dragged it on top of him so he could sleep for an hour or two.

- - - oOo - - -

"So... where have you been, hmmm?"

Turning around, Katara saw her least favourite person in the pole. "Hello, Hahn. Can't find any other girls to torment?"

"None as beautiful as you, Katara." With an exaggerated wink, Hahn quickly stepped up beside her and captured her arm in his own. "We both know that you find me devastatingly attractive."

Pushing him away, Katara managed to free her arm. "Leave me alone Hahn, I'm very busy."

"What are you doing, anyways? I haven't seen you for days. Rumour has it that you've been sitting night and day by the bedside of Yugoda's newest long-term male patient. Surely you haven't been cheating on me, have you?"

"For your information, Hahn, Zuko is a very dear and old friend. And you're NOT my boyfriend."

"Wait...Zuko as in the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation?"

Realising that she had said too much, Katara cringed. Sorry, Zuko. Staring down imperiously at him, she gave Hahn the infamous Katara stare. "Yes, Hahn, that Zuko. Do you have an issue with that?"

"Actually, I do. How can you care about the Fire Nation scum? They're the reason that the world is such a mess. And you've picked the worst of them. He's of Sozin's blood. Do you even know what that means?"

"You don't know him, Hahn. After all, if I judged people based on who their family was, I'd actually like you. You weren't there when he taught Aang Firebending. You weren't there when he helped us overthrow his own father. You weren't there when he..." saved my life. By unsaid consent, neither she nor Zuko had told anyone about what had happened that day. All that they had told people was that Zuko had intercepted the lightning badly and that she had finished off Azula. Nobody knew that he had saved her.

But that was who Zuko was. Aang would have blown her out of the way, or raised a wall of stone to take the blast. But Zuko... Zuko would put her life before his own, regardless of how much the world needed him. Wait... why am I comparing Zuko and Aang? Aang's my boyfriend, and Zuko is... what? What can I possibly classify him as?

Hahn noticed that her eyes had lost some of their typical focus and she had a faint blush on her cheeks. "When he what? Katara?"

Snapping back to attention, her blush instantly doubled. "Sorry, Hahn. When he... Spirits, what can I say... saved my father from a Fire Nation prison."

Hahn looked at her with a flat look on his face. "So? So he broke someone out of jail. Do you have any idea how many people that his family put in there? Do you know how many people didn't even make it to the prisons?" His face suddenly grew ice-cold. "My older brother among them."

Shocked, Katara raised a hand to her mouth. "Hahn... I didn't know..."

"It's not something that I like to talk about. He was a Waterbender on the Wall when the Fire Nation attacked three years ago. He was killed by a trebuchet the second day of fighting. I hear that he died instantly."

Leaning towards Hahn, she embraced him. "It's okay, Hahn... we've all lost someone. You, me, Aang, Zuko..."

Pushing her to arm's length while keeping his hands on her arms; he looked her dead in the eyes, glacial blue matching against oceanic depths. "What."

Blushing again, she fiddled with a stray lock of hair. "It's not really something that's well known, but... Zuko's mom disappeared when he was ten. No one knows where she left. No one even knows if she's alive."

"She probably left because he was a monster, just like the rest of th-"

Pushing his arms away from her, Katara brought her hand back and slapped him across the face. "How dare you. How dare you. He has done more to ensure peace than you ever will. He's been working hard to ensure peace while you've been sitting pretty over here, living off your family. You didn't even participate in the war!" Spinning around, she threw up her hands and stalked off towards the palace. When Hahn called to her to wait up, she abruptly spun around and sunk him hip deep into the ground, eyes blazing. Turning her nose up at him, she resumed her walk back to the palace.

- - - oOo - - -

Zuko was walking.

He couldn't tell exactly where he was walking, but he was positive that it wasn't the familiar halls of the Palace. It looked exactly the same – there was that painting that Iroh had commissioned last year of Ran and Shao encircling him (where Iroh found a painter for it, he would never know), but everything was in varying shades of black, grey and white. There was a prevalent grey mist lurking around every corner and he kept walking the same corridors again and again and again.

He had stalked the halls, and the only traces of color that he had found had been in the Central Courtyard, the scene of his Agni Kai against Azula. There, in the courtyard, were two colors. A small pool of red, where he had fallen after taking the lightning bolt for Katara, and surrounding it were tiny spots of blue. It had taken Zuko a few minutes to figure out what they were – he realised that they must have been Katara's tears.

He paused once more in the courtyard. It was nice, seeing the two colors together. They were, after all, his two favourite colors. Crouching down, he ran his fingers along the two inter-mingled colors. The two colors started glowing and Zuko tried to back away, but his fingers were somehow stuck to the stone floor of the courtyard. Suddenly, his vision seemed to zoom into the glow and he found himself lying on some soft material, while his face was cold. Opening his eyes, he caught what must have been twin windows into the ocean. Drawing in a ragged breath, he managed to croak out the name of the only person he had ever seen whose eyes looked like that.

"Katara..."

With a content smile in his eyes, he drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I'm with her, I'm safe now...

- - - oOo - - -

Hanzu finally couldn't stand it any longer. After his nap, he had sat up and stared at the scroll for hours. Getting up, he stomped over to the scroll, steaming ever so slightly, and broke the seal. Rolling it open, his eyes scanned the contents. Clenching his hands in anger, he muttered under his breath. "Thanks, Iroh. That would have been useful a week and a half ago." He walked off out of the room, grabbing his armour and weapons, and called for a nearby guard.

"You! Guard! Come duel with me – I'm in need of practice."

As he walked down the corridor, the scroll fluttered off the table and unrolled onto the floor. On the paper, written in Iroh's beautiful flowing script, it said:

-Hanzu

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

From the desk of Fire Lord Regent Iroh

- - - oOo - - -

A/N: Now, I don't ordinarily pimp fics, but every now and then you get a truly fantastic story that you have to share with everybody. It's called "Better Left Unsaid", and it's by Lady Azar de Tamaren. Read it. I'm serious. You won't be disappointed.

Unless you hate Iroh/Zuko.