Katara poked her head in. "Are you awake?"

Ignore her. Maybe she'll go away.

Yeah, that'll happen. Let's just get this over with.

"Of course I'm awake," he said sulkily.

At Katara's and Aang's insistence, the villagers had grudgingly put him up in a small barn on the outskirts of town. A few young men were loitering nearby, possibly expecting trouble from the angsty Fire Nation soldier, but none of them was willing to take care of him, so it had fallen on Katara. She'd been grousing about it all day, because she'd wanted to talk more with the fascinating Aunt Wu.

She walked in and stopped short as soon as she saw he'd got up and was pacing around irritably. "I told you to get some rest."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine."

"Yes I am."

"We've been over this."

"What would you know about it," he said.

"You keep throwing up and collapsing, I have two brain cells to rub together, and everyone so blessed knows that people who keep throwing up and collapsing should lie down. What would you know about it?"

Ooh, she's good. How do we respond to that without calling ourselves an idiot?

Here's the plan: I'll think of the perfect one-liner, and let you know right after she leaves.

"I was thinking," she went on, "that the villagers might be nicer to you if you weren't obviously Fire Nation. You could pass as Earth Kingdom, and they might look after you, let you walk around, talk to Aunt Wu –"

Sounds ghastly. We should see if we can find a proper Fire Nation uniform somewhere.

"I don't need some stupid fortune-teller," Zuko said irritably. "I already know my destiny."

"– so," she continued, her patience rapidly dwindling, "it would be helpful if you could stop shaving your head and take your hair out of that ponytail."

He fixed her with a glare. "This is a firebender's topknot, not a ponytail, and a shaved head is a mark of my – why am I telling you this, there's no way you would ever understand."

"I understand that a blind twelve-year-old would pick you as Fire Nation, and that it's incredibly selfish of you to say just because you don't like any of these people, I can't make friends with them either because now they all think I'm a Fire Nation sympathiser."

"That must be so hard for you," he said.

"Oh get over yourself, Princeling. The world would have one fewer idiot either if you swallowed your pride and your stupidity and admitted that you're still badly hurt and need someone looking after you, or if you passed out in the water trough and drowned because no-one was watching."

She's got a point.

Don't let her make a power play, you fool! Counterattack!

"Well no-one's making you take out your hair loopies," he said petulantly.

She folded her arms. "First of all, they have a name, and second of all, they're not going to get me killed. If they were? I'd think about wearing my hair down. Because I'm not an idiot."

"They might," he said. "When I was tracking you, do you know how many people recognised the hair loopies and gave me directions?"

"If you expect me to believe that my hair attracts more attention than Aang's tattoos, Aang's telling literally everyone he meets that he's the Avatar, and Aang's ten ton flying bison we ride everywhere on, then maybe I ought to remind you about the part where I'm not an idiot."

"Sure, tell the man who tracked you halfway across the world how tracking works."

"I'm not having this conversation," Katara declared, nose in the air. "Enjoy the smell of horse pig dung." And she flounced out.

"Maybe I will!" he shouted after her.

Yeah, leave the repartee to us. Speaking of which: "I know enough not to take medical advice from someone whose first choice of doctor thought you cured pneumonia with frozen frogs, and whose second choice was a lemur."

Aang was lounging against the side of the barn. "Oh, hey," he said indifferently. "Katara. Didn't see you there."

"Not now, Aang," she said, not breaking stride or giving him more than the briefest of glances. "I need to talk to Aunt Wu about him. With any luck, she'll tell me he's going to come down with laryngitis. If that idiot is going to keep causing problems just because he's too …" She trailed off, muttering angrily.

He watched her go, and his face fell. He thought for a minute, then perked up and went into to the barn.

"Hey, Zuko."

Zuko sighed quietly.

This is going to be one of those days.

Every day is one of those days.

Just fireball him and be done with it.

We made a deal. A deal is a promise, and we always keep our promises.

We had a concussion. That doesn't count.

Oh, but promising to find the Avatar when our head was on fire, that does?

"Can I ask you something?" Aang asked, interrupting the inner dialogue. Zuko frowned, hoping he would go away, but Aang chose not to take the hint. "Have you ever had a girlfriend before?"

He'd never known many girls closely, not his own age. Other than his sister, there were only really Mai and Ty Lee. He'd had a bit of a crush on Ty Lee, as had every boy who spent more than a minute around her, and Mai had had one on him; but none of them had confessed before he'd been exiled, and they'd surely forgotten him by now. He'd known a few maids, back in the Fire Nation, but not well, and maids didn't really count as friends, girl- or otherwise. There hadn't been any women on his ship. The smaller ships were usually gender-segregated; tradition according to the men, something vague about hygiene and/or privacy according to the women. Now there was Katara, but she was more of a girlenemy.

"Yes," he said aloud. Mai probably counted as a girlfriend: she'd kissed him on the cheek once.

"If you … like a girl, how do you … you know … get her to like you back?"

Buy her something pink and shiny. Ty Lee loved the … the thing we bought her that one time.

What was that, again?

Blasted if I can remember, but it was pink and shiny and she loved it, briefly.

"Is this Katara?" Zuko asked.

Buy her something blue and shiny? Or maybe some officer's insignia, so she can boss people around better.

Don't go giving him ideas that will make your life any more of a waking nightmare than it already is.

"What?!" Aang exclaimed unconvincingly. "No! Don't be silly! Why would you think it was Katara!"

"Because there's exactly one girl in our group," Zuko said, "and she's at least pretty, for a peasant."

"Don't call her that," Aang snapped. "You promised to be nice."

Zuko rolled his eyes. "Because she's pretty and perfect, then," he said, "and she has a white swimsuit."

"What's so special about a white swimsuit?" Aang asked.

This, this right here, this is your karmic punishment for not capturing him earlier.

Shut up already about capturing him, you're a worse nag than Katara. Let's just get through this.

"If it's not Katara, who is it?" Zuko asked.

"Uh. A girl from the village."

Good grief. He's a worse liar than we are.

No, he's not.

"Mm-hmm. You should ask Sokka. I assume he knows her better than I do, and she probably doesn't hate him."

"Yeah, I tried him first, and he said to ignore her, so I did, but she ignored me back even harder. I don't think she even noticed I was ignoring her." He thought about this. "Does that mean she likes me too? Or do girls have different rules from boys?"

Are you really willing to put up with this sort of thing for an entire year?

I spent two and a half years with Uncle going on about tea and pai sho six hours a day. Don't underestimate my mental fortitude.

"You could always just ask her," he said.

"Okay, but what if she says no?"

"Then we'll move on in the morning and you'll never see her again," Zuko said impatiently. "Problem solved."

Aang hesitated.

Yep, it's Katara.

"If you don't want to be rejected, just wait until you hit puberty. Girls prefer boys who are taller than them and have deeper voices."

"Like this?" Aang said in a gravelly voice, discarding the other three quarters of what Zuko had said.

"… Exactly like that," Zuko said, with his most sincere smile.

"Are you okay?" Aang asked. "You look like you're in pain. Should I get you some medicine?"

We need more smiling practice.

We really do.

"It's nothing. Try it again?"

"Hey, there, girl."

"Perfect," Zuko said. "Now go say it to her."

"Are you sure? It feels stupid."

"She'll love it, whoever she is."

"Are you sure?"

"Go talk to her. Now! Before you start second-guessing yourself! Girls hate second-guessers!"

Aang left, but Zuko got no respite, because moments later, Sokka pushed in.

"Zuko, I need your help," he said without preamble. "Aunt Wu claims to be a fortune-teller, but she's obviously a total fraud, and I want to prove it."

"So you're asking me."

"You're literally the only person other than me who hasn't gone crazy. Aang and Katara will believe in anything, they've gone funny and giggly and it's something about who they marry – Air Nomads don't even marry, their temples were gender-segregated, but they go deaf whenever I say that – and the entire village is eating out of Aunt Wu's hand. You haven't seen it, Zuko, but it's a madhouse out there. This – this depraved cult of circular logic and – and concentrated stupid –"

"Breathe," Zuko said. "I'd love to help, but Katara has me on strict bed rest."

"That's fine. I just need help brainstorming things Aunt Wu couldn't possibly have known about."

You know, if we were to set the village on fire, there's no way she could have –

No.

"I'm guessing she didn't predict an airbender, a waterbender, and a firebender would walk into town," Zuko said. "And you."

Zuko's heart skipped a beat: if Uncle were here, he would have turned that into the start of a joke. A stupid and probably dirty one that Zuko would have rolled his eyes at, but he missed it anyway.

"She said ages ago that they'd meet 'interesting strangers' 'later in the year'," Sokka groused, drawing the air quotes. "Obviously it's so vague it'll always be true, there are plenty of travellers around here, but try telling them that."

"Do you know anything coming up that she wouldn't know about, that you can ask specific questions about?"

Sokka thought for a moment, then brightened. "The comet!" he exclaimed. "That's perfect!"

"I was thinking the eclipse," Zuko said, "but you're right, a fortune-teller would probably know that, if she knows astrology and astronomy."

"There's an eclipse coming?" Sokka asked.

Zuko blinked.

~You made a mis~taaake

What, no. How can anyone have good enough astronomy to know about Sozin's Comet but not know about the eclipse? He's from a civilisation that worships the moon, how could he not know? They're seafarers, how could they possibly navigate?

Maybe they can't? It'd explain why we could never predict where they'd go next. Maybe only adults learn that; why would a kid need to navigate?

Look. Until we figure out the answer, maybe try not leaking vital military secrets to the enemy, hmm?

"Zuko?" Sokka asked, snapping his fingers in front of Zuko's face.

Zuko waved him off. "Uncle mentioned there would be one later this year," he said casually, "but it wouldn't work anyway, I don't remember the date."

Sokka squinted at him, then shrugged. "Well, it'd be nice to have something sooner, so I could be here to rub it in her face when it happens, but I guess it'll do. Thanks, Zuko!" And he ran off.

Zuko got ten minutes of blissful alone time before Katara came storming back in.

"Zuko, what did you tell Aang?!"

He looked up from his meditation. Her face was frozen in a rictus of fury.

"No idea what you're talking about," he said.

She rolled her entire body; he pruriently followed the motion for a moment, and then the water from a horse pig trough rose into a wave and slammed him into a haystack. It seeped into the dirt floor, leaving him in a mud puddle. He spluttered and struggled to get his feet under him.

"I can't believe even you would be so irresponsible as to give an impressionable boy like him your dumb Fire Nation romantic non-advice," she yelled, "but it stops now, understand?"

"I don't –"

The wave swept his feet out again and dunked his face in the mud.

"Understand?"

"Yes, Mom," he said.

She dunked him again and stormed back out, slamming the door as she went.

Worth it.

Yeah.

Katara found Aang waiting for her outside, looking incredibly awkward.

"I hate that guy so much!" she shouted. "He's like – like an onion of horribleness!"

"He made you cry?" Aang asked, distressed.

"No he did not make me cry. As if I'd give him the satisfaction. It's just, every time you peel off one horrible layer, there's an even worse one underneath! How can you stand him!"

"I –"

"And he has the nerve to try to make me feel bad about it! I only feel bad about the thought that we're stuck with him until summer!"

Aang shut his mouth: she evidently didn't need him for a talking role.

"I thought he couldn't get any worse than the time he set Kyoshi Village on fire, but then I went and tried to have a conversation with him, and boy did I ever learn how naive I was!"

"I can still hear you," Zuko called from inside the barn.

"And is that okay with you, Princeling?" she asked sweetly.

Aang motioned for her to walk with him, away from the barn and out of Zuko's shouted response.

"If he's that much of a problem, we can leave him," he said at length, keeping his voice low. "We'll find a Fire Nation colony to take him in, then sneak off."

"," said Katara. "He'll just start trying to capture you again, won't he? And he's going to take us to the Fire Nation. How else are we going to get past their patrols?"

"We'll figure something out. And I don't think he's in any condition to keep chasing us. There's the concussion, and he doesn't have his ship any more."

Katara read his expression. "You don't want to," she said.

"Well, no, of course not," Aang said. "I mean, I understand where you're coming from. He can be, um, difficult. But I don't want to break my word after I played the Avatar card; and maybe he couldn't catch us, but I'm sure he'd think up some way to make problems for us. And … well, you kind of have to believe in destiny if you're the Avatar. I was destined to survive the attack on the Air Nomads by being inside that iceberg. I was destined to meet you and Sokka. And I don't think it was just a coincidence that Zuko happened to be only a few miles away when you found me. I think he's a part of my destiny too. I want to try to make sure he becomes a good part."

"I believe in destiny too," Katara said, "so I asked Aunt Wu about him. She said that misfortune would follow him wherever he went. I haven't seen anything to make me think he can be a good part of anyone's destiny."

Aang considered this.

"I'd take that risk," he said, "if I were the only one it'd affect. But I'm not, you're involved too, and so is Sokka. You're already part of my destiny, a part I like, and I'm not going to throw that away just because Zuko might maybe become good in the future. I tried to get the two of you to get along, and I'm really proud that you made the effort, but if it's just not going to happen, well, I'd rather lose him than you. So you're right, I don't want to leave him. But if you ask me to, I will."

Katara sighed. "There's no way I can say yes to that," she said. "It wouldn't be fair to mess everything up for you just because he's a royal pain to me. I'll … no, I won't make any more concessions to him, but I won't let him get to me. And I'll try to keep the griping down as much as possible. If I absolutely have to, I'll stick my head underwater and scream into that."

Aang grinned at her. "Thanks, Katara. It means a lot to me."

She pulled him into a hug.


AN: I tried to find out the real name of hair loopies, but I failed. I found sites saying that it's a genuine Inuit hairstyle, but none that gave a proper name. They can't actually be called hair loopies, can they?

I told myself to write more in-character, that Katara was never quite this sassy and Zuko's firebending was almost exclusively the non-verbal sort, but my hands wouldn't listen. To be fair, with Aang playing peacemaker, their canonical conflict resolution strategy (ie trying to kill each other) isn't viable, so snarking is about the best they can get away with.

I'm not a fan of the "And now, to tear into the canonical ships that I don't like" arc so popular in fanfic, across every fandom. It's so tawdry: if you think other ships are unnatural, then if you just write what comes naturally, they won't come up and won't need to be torn into. But, Aang did have a crush on Katara, so it'd be just as jarring not to include it at all.

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