Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any related characters. This was written out of enjoyment of the series, and no profit is being made.

Ships: Ty Lee/Zuko. You can interpret it as friendship or romance, I don't mind. (Friendship) Mai/Ty Lee, Mentions of Ty Lee/Iroh
Warnings: Mentions of scaring.

I Know You

She had been as old as the Avatar is now.

"Ty Lee!"

She had been twelve when it happened.

"TY LEE!"

She blinked up at the portrait of Sozin, so huge, so fearsome. For some reason it always struck her with cold fear.

She wrenched her eyes off of the serious, bearded face and turned towards Mai's thirteen-year-old voice. Immediately, she knew something was wrong.

Mai never cried for one thing. She never looked so frantic and scared as she did now. Cold fear clenched in Ty Lee's stomach, then disappeared. "A calm head is your most important tool," Ms. Hui's voice, a teacher from the Fire Academy, whispered in her head.

"Mai? What's going on?"

"It's Zuko!" Her friend exclaimed as she comes to a halt in front of her. "He...he's..." She wiped her cheek only for more tears to stream down it.

Ty Lee put her hand on her friend's shoulder. She didn't shrug it off for once. "Where is he Mai? What happened?"

"He got hurt, badly." Mai gulped for air. (Ty Lee nodded.) "Can...can you help the nurses?"

She blinked at her disbelievingly. "Mai, we've only studied auras so far in Healing Class. I don't know anything else," she whispered.

"Please, Ty Lee! He needs all the help he can get, and they won't let me in, and...if you go...I'll feel better."

Ty Lee took her hand off her friend's shoulder, eyebrows creased deeply. "Where is he?"

Mai took a shaky breath and turned the way she came. "In the infirmary. Follow me."

They took off running. Mai lead her towards the sound of worried voices. Just outside the infirmary, the hall was packed to bursting with nurses and concerned generals, craning to get a look inside of pleading to be let in.

Mai looked at the crowd hopelessly, wondering how they would ever manage to get inside. Ty Lee, meanwhile, slipped her hand into her friend's. She plunged into the sea of legs and hips, and clung to Mai's hand tightly.

She found the person she was looking for near the doorway. "General Iroh!" She pulled on the sleeve of his robe. He looked down, and she saw in his eyes that he was just as afraid as Mai was. She gulped. (All her rocks seemed to be washing away.)

Mai stood next to her, squeezing her hand so tightly she thought she'd never be able to use it again. "General Iroh, sir, could you get me into the room?" she asked, flexing her fingers to retain some feeling.

He blinked, surprised. "I don't know, Ty Lee. The people are very busy and..."

"But she's studying medicine, sir!" Mai spoke up, her voice shaking. "She can help, can't she? Can't they let her try?"

Ty Lee glanced at her friend, who was trying desperately to look unafraid of the crowd, of the man before her, of everything. She took a deep breath. An injury so deep it makes Mai afraid? And not even her injury, Zuko's. She looked back up into General Iroh's face.

"Alright," he whispered. One nurse, a young one came striding out of the room, looking frantic. He caught her arm and whispered something into her ear. She blinked at him in surprise and then looked at Ty Lee, who squeezed Mai's hand anxiously.

The nurse nodded abruptly and seized her by the shoulder. She was wrenched out of Mai's grip, and she tried to look back for her, but before she knew it, she had been forced into a chair next to a bed. She looked up at the nurse questioningly.

"Just...just stay with him okay?" She gave as vague orders, and left the room again.

She looked at the patient on the bed, and with a gasp, tried to figure out where Zuko was. This couldn't be Zuko.

It couldn't, it couldn't, it couldn't.

His face...

The cold that had been coiling in her stomach the whole time surged through her. She started shaking so badly that she felt she need to grab onto something to steady herself, which just so happened to be his hand. She worried for a second that even that would melt the skin off it and make it red and bloody and torn open like his face.

She tried to remember her lessons about bedside manner the Healing teacher had briefly gone over in class. The nurses kept moving around him and they stayed next to the bed to apply medication but none stopped to talk to him; that was her job. But she could only cling to his hand and gape for some string of comforting words that never came.

That day was the day Ty Lee decided she'd drop the medicine course as quickly as she could. She could never be a nurse now.

(Those few weeks in the course had managed to make her passionate about auras, however.)

Eventually she started singing. It was really just to calm herself down at first. Then a nurse paused and looked up at her. (She only saw it out of the corner of her eye.)

It had only lasted a second, that glance. But Ty Lee swore that nurse had looked a little less nervous for that second, even if it had been replaced with simple curiosity.

It was something, wasn't it? She sang louder.

"Leaves from the vine,
Falling so slow,
Like fragile, tiny shells,
Drifting in the foam.
Little soldier boy,
Come marching home.
Brave soldier boy,
Comes marching home."

x

She found out later (from General Iroh) that it had taken five hours for the nurses to bandage the wound.

She had sung that song for five hours straight. It hadn't felt like five hours. It had felt like a whole night. Zuko had disappeared into it, and she had followed him. Maybe now dawn was coming, but it seemed like there would never be a hopeful dawn again.

Five hours of rocking back and forth on a hard chair clinging to a Prince's hand she could barely call a friend. Singing. She didn't know how she even managed to look up when Mai was finally allowed in.

Mai managed two seconds without tears springing into her eyes. She pulled up a chair and sat beside her.

Ty Lee sighed once tiredly, then everything came crumbling down inside her. Mai was supposed to be the strong one, older than both her and Azula by a year. She was mysterious and dark and pretty and Mai. She was supposed to come in here and tell her everything was alright.

But she had came in even more broken looking than before.

She clung to Zuko's hand like a lifeline.

"Mai...you found out how this happened didn't you?"

She flinched.

"You know," Ty Lee stated. She thought she saw a blunt brown light floating around her friend. Brown, she recalled from the aura colour chart, knowledge. "Please, Mai. Tell me."

Mai took a breath and told the awful truth.

Ty Lee stared in disbelief. "No. That can't be what happened."

Mai stared at the wall, determined not to look down at the teenager in the bed.

"You're lying, Mai! You're playing a trick on me! Azula told you to... Why would his own dad do this to him?!" She was shouting before she could stop herself.

"Well, it's the truth! I would never lie!" Mai shouted back.

The sat there at the side of the bed, glaring at each other with tears in their eyes. "Especially not to you," she whispered. Ty Lee was squeezing Zuko's hand so tightly she shook.

Part of her wanted to slap Mai across the face, let out all that confusion and anger and sorrow. She hugged her instead, letting go of the Prince's hand for the first time in five hours.

"How could this happen?" She sobbed into Mai shoulder. "How could... how could he do that? His mom left years ago and now this? What now?"

Mai hesitantly returned the hug. "You're just worked up because you've been in here for hours..."

"What now?" she asked again.

The older girl turned her head so she couldn't see Zuko beyond Ty Lee's shoulder. A tear rolled down her cheek. "He'll be banished."

x

That night, before they closed up the infirmary, Ty Lee stood beside his bed. She picked up his limp hand with both of hers and held it. "Good bye, Prince Zuko."

She glanced around swiftly. Nobody.

She turned back to the face covered with bandages and took a deep breath.

"Leaves from the vine,
Falling so slow,
Like fragile, tiny shells,
Drifting in the foam.
Little soldier boy,
Come marching home.
Brave soldier boy,
Comes marching home."

She hesitated. She noted how tiny her hands were compared to his. The girl hurried over to the doorway. She stole one last glance (hoping it would last until she saw him again), and closed the door behind her.

x

"What're you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"But...it's a painting of your family."

"You think I care?"

"I think you do."

"You don't know me, so why don't you just mind your own business?" He turns to the sea, the one thing that saw his scared face for two years. (Not her. Not Mai. Only the sea.)

She sighs, and she wonders if her hands are still so tiny compared to his. She wants to block his chi and scream at him to be more grateful to the girl who sat by his bed for five hours. But...

Her cool head is her most important tool. The lotus strategy takes patience but it is worth the wait, says General Iroh.

So she looks into the fire and says, "I know you."

(More than you'll ever know.)

AN. I'm too lazy to write anything interesting. Do you think the title "Five Hours" is better? It just sort of hit me while I was editing this.