The making of this chapter has been interesting. Back in 2008 when I originally posted this story, I wrote most of the fourth chapter but then I went through some personal things and totally forgot I had written it. So I rewrote it, but then had computer problems and thought I'd lost it again. So I wrote it a third time and then had more personal stuff to deal with and years passed. Then a few weeks ago, the day after my birthday, someone reviewed this story and I got an email notification. It reminded me and I looked through my old documents and found all three chapters I'd originally written years ago. It made me so happy that people are still reading this story years later so I decided to go back through everything I'd written, fix my own grammar, and post it.

Hopefully, the narrator bouncing around from first person (Katara) to first person (Zuko) to third person omniscient wasn't too confusing—it's just what came out naturally. If something is unclear or you see a grammatical error, don't hesitate to point it out. And since I originally wrote three chapters worth of material, all I have to do is finish editing and the next chapter is actually coming soon.

"Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren't ignoring it. You're healing; the fresh air can get to it. It's honest. You aren't hiding who you are. You aren't rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who'll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds."

— Warsan Shire

Katara was torn, caught up in thought. Zuko was getting worse. Destiny did not seem to be favoring her lately.

When she'd gone in to heal him earlier she'd noticed how exhausted he looked. She'd tried to tend to him but found she couldn't bring herself to wake him. His recovering body was consuming energy much faster than he could regain it, and even though he'd eaten the bowl of fruit she left beside him at some point, she knew it was nowhere near enough.

Plants grew all around the temple. She hadn't even seen half of the halls and rooms, and had already seen many she couldn't identify. Teo had told her a bit about them before he'd left. It seemed the Air Nomads could grow a plant to cure any ailment. If she had been paying better attention or was from this area, she might have been able to use one of them to help Zuko, but she hadn't and she wasn't.

His recovery was faltering. Of course it had only been a few days, but he should be getting better, and he was only getting worse. His temperature now seemed to be constantly elevated, and not from anger. From what she could tell, if he continued the way he was headed, after a few days he would risk becoming very seriously ill. She needed to rehydrate him and actually examine him so she could know the full extent of his injury. She had realized she very much did not want to do this. She didn't feel bad. She didn't. But she didn't want to see the wounds she'd inflicted either, whether it had been an accident or not.

Elsewhere, a father and daughter spoke in the company of a few others. Their relationship was not exactly ordinary, but this was a weighty conversation even for them. They were two of the most powerful people in the world, and that reality and stress had begun to weigh on the younger of the two, even if she had not yet noticed or acknowledged it.

The Fire Lord was going to abdicate his position of authority, but certainly not to step away from the seat of power. While she filled his shoes as he had always meant her to, he would carve out a new position for himself—one that was as absurd as it was menacing, one that was being created in anticipation of a kind of sweeping destruction few knew about and fewer had truly been able to wrap their minds around. It would be the dawn of a new age, and it was coming soon.

There were two people in the current bedchambers of the once-Prince-then-exiled-Prince-now-fugitive-from-his-nation-and-probationary-member-of-the-resistance-group-trying-to-bring-his-father-down. A sliver of a beam of sunlight trickled out from behind a cloud and through the open window. Sunlight cascaded through the window where it hit a patch of rock on the floor and reflected so the ground seemed to shimmer. The exposed wall was solid and very thick, although not for any kind of defensive purposes, but rather to give the building sustenance for a long life above the massive valley below.

On the ground outside the window, wood lay strewn about, fractured and splintered, from where it had just been smashed away from a window. The girl looking out at her new vista let the heavy torch, which had only moments ago served as her weapon of demolition, hang lifeless from her hand, the weight of it too much to hold raised if no longer necessary. The girl's silhouette stood glowing against the brilliant new morning light, with wide hips and long, slender limbs. She was naturally darker than the Crown Prince of course, but beyond that it was unclear now whether the permanent tan of her skin was just a result of birth or also from the near continuous contact with the sun for years. Her muscles were tight and clearly capable, but she slumped ever so slightly now, indicating a tiredness that had set into her bones.

Nearby, in the room's central bed, is the young man, bandaged and bruised, who had been sleeping before the sound of smashing boards had brought him back to consciousness.

Katara turned and walked, somewhat gingerly, to his side, dropping the torch carelessly back to the floor when she reached the bed.

"I opened your window," she informed him.

"I see that. Why?" he murmured quietly, testing his voice, as if disuse might have stripped him of his ability to utilize his vocal cords.

"You were getting a little warm," she answered in an ironically chilly tone, "and I thought a nice breeze would help a bit."

Katara leaned forward, brushing her fingers against his forehead, and frowned slightly after a moment. There was little empathy to be seen in her eyes as she did this, or it may have been construed as a loving act.

She leaned in closer then, eyes distant. For a moment, her hands flickered out to meet his chest, fingers splayed out, touch gentle, the warmth of her palm pressed into his breastbone, listening to his heart pushing blood through his veins. Then the touch was gone and she straightened up, arms hanging the slightest bit too heavily at her sides to be comfortable. An expression of thought in which he could almost see her wondering, working things out, slipped away.

"I think before I put on new bandages today you should take a bath, okay?" Her words came out bored and tired, as though she had said them a hundred times before. Her voice was generally used to soothe, coax, ease, and lighten and the edge came off as such.

He admitted no preference and she nodded—a simple exchange, but he noted that it didn't result in a fight.

She sat down next to him on the bed. "But first, you'll need this."

"What is it?"

"They're cactus splinters from the garden. Honestly, South Pole nettles make more practical needles but these will do."

He just looked at her.

"Oh I'm sorry, you can't handle a few stitches?" She knew the words sounded biting, but that's exactly how she intended them to sound.

"Just do it."

She wound a piece of string through the needle and saw him flinch just the slightest bit when it cut through his skin. She wished this part would hurt him more, but despite her feelings toward Zuko, she was not actually willing to compromise her healing skills, and the stitches were small and quick. She bent in and placed her mouth where her hands had just been. The feeling of her lips on his skin was a shock and his attention was momentarily riveted to her. The pressure was uncomfortable, but much less painful than the stitches themselves had been moments before. It seemed a rather personal thing to do without warning but before he could find something to say her mouth was gone.

"Done." She had snapped the thread with her teeth.

"You know warning may have been nice."

"You're a big boy, I'm sure you can handle it." Looking at him though, she knew that one had been a little rude. It was, after all, his body she was stitching up. "But next time I'll warn you," she conceded. "I'll take the stitches out tomorrow."

He watched her putting the needles away. "You know I'm just trying to earn your trust, I want you to trust me."

She didn't want to be having this conversation. "You can't."

"I can't if you never give me a chance. I'm trying to convince you I'm different now."

"You aren't succeeding," she said without looking up.

He shot her a look. "What is it with you? Everyone else seems to trust me now."

"Oh, everyone trusts you now? If you remember, I was the first one to trust you, back in Ba Sing Se."

"So then what? There has to be some way to prove you can trust me and make it up to you."

"You really want to know? Hm maybe you could reconquer Ba Sing Se in the name of the Earth King, or I know—you could bring my mother back."

"Okay that's not even a little fair. Despite everything you think of me, you know I had nothing to do with your mother."

She finally looked up at him, just breathing in the silence. When her response came, her voice had lost all of its sting. "No, I know. I didn't mean that." It was as close to a sorry as he was going to get and he took it. "Here, come on."

Katara stood up and leaned forward to wrap her arms around Zuko's torso. He was momentarily caught off guard by the apparent hug, but then understood and leaned into her, accepting help in standing. When he was on his feet, vertigo hit him, his weight shifted, and the arms still wrapped around him were the only thing keeping him up.

She released him a few moments later when he had regained himself and asked if he could walk by himself. He noted the effort she must have applied so her tone wasn't patronizing. There was evident tension, and he would have no more making up until she apologized at least for their fight the day before, but he could wait. There had been tension between them already anyway.

They walked very slowly to the end of the hall, him using the wall to stay upright. When they stepped into the sun, they both paused. She put one arm around his back and he hesitated before putting his arm over her shoulder and continuing. Katara led him out to the edge of the precipice and down a short flight of steps carved out of the rock that seemed to her to have been built in a temple for Airbenders equipped with gliders more out of principle than for practical use.

The pair reached the next opening in the cliff and started toward a large fountain, sunk knee-deep into the floor, with a small flow of water at its center making its way naturally through the earth. There had been a fountain just like it closer to their rooms but it had been all but destroyed by Combustion Man, so they had shifted their rooms closer to this one.

She stepped into the water with him and then slowly backed out. Katara pulled a small bit of cloth wrapped around soap from Sokka's bag and handed it to him, then turned and dropped herself several feet away with her back to him. She rested her head against the ledge of the fountain, eyes closed, soaking in the sunlight. He didn't move much—she could tell from the lack of splashing sounds—but some bathing is better than none for his overall health and probably for his mind too. They were teenagers fighting in a war; they needed some of these normalities on a regular basis to stay relatively sane.

A young girl kneeled on the ground with her hand pressed against the earth, fingers splayed. In a semicircle around her, expressions ranged from anxious to curious to practically already asleep.

"There's nothing around as far as I can feel," she said finally. "Just woods."

"Great," Sokka chimed in. "We'll stay here for a few hours then and you guys can catch up on some rest."

"On the other side of those hills there are some towns my father told me about," Haru added. "They were all abandoned before the Fire Nation could destroy them.

Aang walked back into the clearing with a huge pile of some grassy-looking plant and added it to the veritable mountain of food in front of Appa.

"You should be good with that, buddy," he said before curling up beside the furry creature.

To his credit, the bison ate nearly the entire heap before his need to sleep overtook him. Several members of their party were passed out nearby while Sokka settled in to keep watch.

She was somewhere she didn't recognize, somewhere she'd never been. A desert maybe, someplace barren.

"Katara"

She turned to see Aang. The smile that started to form on her face dropped away completely when she saw his expression. His grey eyes were wide and he looked like he was in shock. She registered that he was younger too, more like the boy they had found in an iceberg. She recognized the expression, it was the one she had seen at the Southern Air Temple months ago.

"Katara, what have you done?" His eyes were distant, looking beyond her, and she turned back to see what he meant.

They were standing in some kind of field in a forest, but all around them the ground was littered with debris. It looked like a fire had torn this part of the woods apart. She looked around at the trees on the ground, but when she knelt down to take a closer look at one, she nearly screamed. The mound was a body, Sokka's body. She fell to her knees and shook him but he wouldn't wake up. She looked up frantically but Aang was gone. It was just her among trees, among bodies; the forest was still burned but she could now see bodies were mixed in among the branches all around her. Emotion was swelling inside her, starting to overwhelm, when she recognized another. She half crawled, half stumbled towards Toph's foot sticking out from under someone else. When she pushed the someone else free she saw Zuko's dead body protectively curled around the earthbender's.

She didn't know how they're dead or how the destruction happened, but she knew it was her fault. In the way of dream logic she simply knew she had caused all of this. She was breaking, crying, screaming, she didn't even know. She was shaking so hard that she felt like she was being pulled out of her own body.

"Katara." It isn't Aang this time, the voice is echoing in her head.

"Katara!" It's her mother's voice.

"Katara!"

Heart beat. Breathe in. Heart beat. Breathe out. Heart beat... It's morning now. Get up.

I opened my eyes and frowned at the swirling, blurry shapes in front of me. I closed my eyes again.

Where am I? Focus.

I opened my eyes again. I was looking at the ground. No, that's the ceiling. I groaned loudly and rolled onto my stomach. Hard. Flat. I was laying on the ground.

What the hell?

I pressed my palms into the floor and pushed myself up to sitting, then I leaned against the door frame of Zuko's room to steady myself, and inched my body to standing. When I was fully up I took a few steps away from the door, and the walls slurred together and spun.

"Ugh!"

I fell against the wall again. You're fine. Stop being a wuss, Katara. This time when I stood up, I glared at the walls, challenging them to spin. When they didn't, I walked smoothly into the kitchen and leaned on the counter, letting it support all my weight. I knew my dream had been about my fear of hurting Zuko, and through him everyone else, but I was determined to put it out of my mind. It was also not lost on me that this was the second time I'd slept on the floor outside his door, I tapped my nails against the counter. It's so quiet. I should go heal Zuko, or at least see if he's awake. I can make it, he's just a few feet away. Where did I put my water pouch? I thought about that one for a moment before I remembered. On Zuko's floor. That didn't matter. I could just bend some water from the stream, and then get the pouch in a moment.

I dipped my fingers into the pool of water from the basin collecting runoff fixed to the wall, swirling the cool water around. I bent a small stream away from the tap, then walked out into the hallway. The water pooled a few inches above my hand in the air as I walked slowly towards his door, but when I had gotten halfway there, I faltered and the water fell, splashing across the floor. I sighed and knelt to bend it up out of the floor before standing up again. This time I concentrated even harder on keeping it suspended there. Being this weak was a bitch. I knocked quietly on his door and waited.

When he didn't say anything, I spoke through the door, "Zuko, can I come in? I need to heal you."

"It's open."

I pushed the door open and shut it behind me.

The weirdest thing was, seeing him laying in bed the way he was, it seemed almost difficult to remember to be mad at him. Of course, it would be easier once he got to yelling at me again.

He watched me as I picked my pouch up of the floor and bent the water into it, then sat on the bed. He didn't say anything.

I met his gaze and just looked at him. It was funny how two people who were so different could spend so much time together, sitting so close and just silently hating each other.

I wanted to say something to break the silence, and, although I felt a bit guilty for feeling this way, I wanted to be cold and bitchy to him. I opened my mouth to shoot off some snarky comment, but at the last moment, I changed my mind.

Instead I said, "Talk to me."

He raised one eyebrow at me, but didn't say anything. I glared at him, and purposely didn't reach to heal him. He was going to talk first, whether he liked it or not.

Finally he said, in a tone that sounded very much like a growl, "I've got a question."

"Fine. Shoot."

I was focused on the knife in my hand, and on cutting his stitches out carefully, one at a time.

"How come you slept on the floor last night?"

I paused, then gave a shrug and continued. "Oh, you know. Just wanted to protect you from danger."

"Seriously."

"I don't know. I just fell asleep there," I snapped.

"Because you were hanging out outside my door, and you got so comfortable."

I blushed. Me weakness was embarrassing, even if only to me. I reigned my defensive tone back in from where it was headed; there were plenty of justifiable reasons to be snippy with him, but even I knew this wasn't one of them. "I was going to heal you, but I fell asleep."

"On the floor?"

"Can we not talk about this?"

"Whatever."

We sat in silence for a minute before something occurred to me.

"How…" I began.

He looked at me expectantly.

"Uh, never mind." I shook my head. I didn't really care all that much, especially because it had to do with him.

"How what?"

"How nothing," I said. "Forget it."

"No."

I paused in healing him again at that. There was no denying the challenge in his voice. It seemed like he was always doing that, always challenging me.

"I. Said. Forget it." My voice had dropped again to a level very close to a hiss.

"Talk to me," he said simply.

I glared at him. He was quoting me, repeating something I'd said not a minute earlier, and it was annoying. Even I knew that it was unfair to ask the same of him and then not listen myself. Some water from the pouch flowed around my hand and, again, a pain shot up my wrist which I tried to ignore without wincing, before touching the tips of my fingers to his rib. I took a deep breath, which my ribs protested to, and then shrugged again.

"I was just gonna ask how you knew where I slept last night is all, you can't really see the outside of the door from in here."

He shrugged too.

"I couldn't sleep again, so I got up to walk around the room a little. In the end it hurt too much, so I didn't make it far, but I noticed the shadow coming under the door."

I nodded, and then pushed the water back into his chest. He wheezed for a moment when the water hit his lungs, before his breathing returned to normal.

After a moment I commented absently, "This feels a little better than yesterday."

He watched me for a few seconds, and then leaned his head back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. We sat in silence and I closed my eyes as well. It was quite an odd feeling, but I suppose any time after a fight is odd. It seemed the two of us constantly existed in the spaces between fights. This was definitely a little unexpected though. After yesterday, I had prepared myself to be screamed at again and do my own share of screaming. It seemed he was full of surprises these days.

"Katara?" he said after a minute, without moving.

"Mmhmm."

"Why are you here?"

I shrugged but didn't open my eyes. "Because Toph wants me to be, and she asked me to."

"So you want to reconcile because-"

The word reconcile sounded like poison to me.

I opened my eyes and cut him off, still knitting his bones as I did, "No. I have no interest in reconciling. Honestly, I don't really care about you. No offense. I just want Sokka and the others to come back, and the only way they're coming back is if I fix you up and heal you, so that's what I'm doing."

He raised an eyebrow and sat for a moment, apparently thinking about that.

"But…" he said slowly. "You want us to be on speaking terms, right?"

"Mmhmm. That was another term of the agreement."

"Okay, then I've got another question for you," he said still in the slow, pensive tone of voice.

He picked up his head and opened his eyes.

"Fine. What?"

"So it's kind of a given that if we're on speaking terms, the Avat- Aang, and everyone else will be happy, right?"

"Basically."

"Would you be happy too, or do you hate me that much?" He seemed to be joking.

I frowned, but didn't open my eyes. Why was he joking around? I didn't respond.

"You hate me a lot, don't you?" Now he was dead serious.

I pulled away from his chest, because my water had run out, and I sat there looking at him, thinking.

"I guess you could say that."

"You guess?"

"You know, I'm not sure I like this new, nosy, up-front you very much. Although I guess anything's an improvement... So, yes… I suppose I do hate you a lot."

He didn't say anything, so I looked down and pretended to be very involved in bending some water out of the pouch and making a new healing glove, although I didn't need to do too much acting as this task really was more challenging than it had been in a while. Eventually, I glanced up at him and he had his head leaned back once more with his eyes closed.

"Katara, do you think I've changed?"

I ran my free hand through my hair and shifted to sit in a more comfortable position on the bed.

"Do you want me to say what you want to hear or tell you the truth?"

The corner of his mouth turned up slightly. "The truth of course."

"Hmm… honesty… that's a new concept." Once again, before the words left my mouth I knew they were too bitter.

The little smile disappeared.

"Humor me, Katara."

I sighed. "Alright then. Honestly Zuko, I think… I mean, I know you've changed. I may be a lot of things, but I'm not completely stupid. I can see that you're different. But really, despite the changes, I just think you are one of those people who will never stop trying to lie to manipulate the people around you, no matter how forgiving those people may be. Never stop trying to manipulate your surroundings to gain an edge."

"So… you're saying I haven't changed."

"No, I'm not saying that… I just…" I said, stopping for a moment again as his face blurred into the pillow. "Zuko, you still haven't convinced me to buy your bullshit… You can act reformed, but you're still just the same… using, and manipulating … you're just behind different battle lines now. … I'm not buying it…"

I slurred the last few words together and he frowned at me.

"Katara, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm fine." I slurred.

"Katara…"

"I'm fine…"

Get it together you wimp! What is wrong with you?

I cleared my throat.

"So…"

Too shaky.

"So."

That's better.

I looked back up at him and he was shaking his head at me.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Hey, I was just honest with you," I reminded him.

"I know, that's what scares me."

"Oh, really? And why is that?" She sat back, waiting.

"I get what you said about battle lines and I understand that. I mean, I don't agree with it, but I get it. But what you said about being grown up and seeing the truth…" I shook my head again. "It just shows how mixed up you are."

"I'm mixed up? I'm sorry, but I do seem to recall that you're the one struggling to figure out what is right and what is wrong. I've known from the beginning. I've understood from the beginning."

"Well good for you that you've had your path laid out in front of you. You didn't have to think or choose, you just had to go along with it."

"I didn't have to choose? Seriously? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to leave the only place I had ever known to go off and teach Aang? It wasn't exactly 'What am I going to wear today?' It was a little harder than that."

"Well, I just assumed it was easy for you. Because you can see the truth, so you shouldn't have had any trouble deciding what was the right thing to do," I spat.

"You're acting like a child, Zuko."

"I'm a child? You have no idea what you're talking about! You think you're so much better than me just because you've always known what to do."

"Shut up."

"No, you shut up. And just once actually listen."

I pushed away from the pillow towards her, and she put up her hands as if she expected me to hit her. I grabbed on to her wrists and stared at her wide eyes.

"You're so stubborn and caught up in how things were, and that's childish. You may have been through some hard stuff. But that doesn't make you any better than me. You have no idea the things I've seen and done. You could never understand the things I've had to deal with. The demons I've faced."

She flinched slightly, and she was right to.

The demons I've faced.

No. I won't do it.

The boy dropped to his knees and looked up.

"You will."

"No."

The man was walking towards the young boy. His face was hidden in shadow from the fire along the walls, but anyone could see his anger.

The boy stayed down. Tears leaked from his eyes and curled down his perfect face, until they pooled and dripped from his jaw onto the floor. The fires on the walls grew larger and hotter as he sat there.

Don't be angry father.

"Fight."

"No. Please father."

"Stop it!" I shook her wrists. "Every time you do this, you bait me into the past. I'm not that person anymore. I'm not going back to that."

She just sat there unblinking, watching my eyes, until her gaze ran to the side, down the side of my face to my jaw, then to her hands in my grasp.

I let go of her and fell back against the pillow. More than anything, I wanted to look away from her, but I couldn't. Her face was frozen with an almost mesmerizing expression. She sat perfectly still. Then, eventually, looked at me and sighed.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" Not what I was expecting.

She blinked at me like it was completely obvious and I was missing it. Only Katara could manage to look both caring and condescending at the same time.

"I can't save you from these umm… pirates... or demons. Whichever." The corners of her lips pulled up just slightly in an almost-smile at the bad joke. But I got the point, I remembered.

"Oh, ya, right. I'm sorry too... about that, with the tree... and the necklace."

My eyes fell to her neck.

"But you got it back."

"Ya."

She rested a few fingers on the blue necklace against her collarbone.

"I actually had to get a new one when we went undercover in the Fire nation, so now I have two. But, you know, only one from my mother, so..."

"Mmhm... so undercover, huh?"

"Ya."

I opened my mouth to talk again, but she cut me off. "Um, Zuko, maybe another time."

I nodded and she picked up her water pouch and started walking towards the door. When she was about half way through it, I said, "Wait."

It wasn't loud, but she stopped with her hand on the door anyway.

"I really mean it. I'm sorry."

She turned and glanced at me over her shoulder, and for a second I thought I saw a real change. Then she knit her brows together in a frown, her eyes focused on the wall behind me. She moved; it almost looked like she was swaying on the spot, but she just turned and swept herself out of the room before I could figure it out. Well that was strange.

I trembled as I leaned against the doorframe. My head was pounding and spinning at the same time, and I felt like I was about to faint or throw up. Evidently, healing Zuko was more consuming than anyone had realized. Either that or I was just getting sick, on top of being hurt. I couldn't do it. Not for much longer anyway. I couldn't keep healing him the way I was.

My vision blurred for a moment again and I pressed my eyelids shut. I started away from the wall, and headed down the hall. I tossed my water pouch through the doorway and onto the kitchen counter as I walked by. When I stepped outside, I was nearly blinded by how bright everything was. Maybe it was the heat that was doing it, maybe it was my diminished health, or maybe it was the individual laying in bed inside. I had my money on all three. I ran fingers through my hair and they found something sticky. Yes, something had to change, or rather, I had to change it. What I needed to do was shed a little fresh light on the subject. I could start by cleaning up.

I must have been gone longer than I meant to when I went to bathe because by the time I headed back the sun had moved nearly half way across the sky and my stomach was growling. To be fair, we actually did have food. Besides what I could potentially gather or catch there was still a large container of rice, and there may be other ingredients I could cook with. I didn't remember but I hadn't checked since before the others had left because I had no way to cook anything.

Outside Zuko's room I paused to breathe deeply for a minute before stepping in. Be polite, maybe you can talk about this food issue like rational adults.

Steeling myself was unnecessary, because Zuko was out like a light. But that didn't matter, because lit—in a sconce fastened to the wall—was the torch I had dropped earlier. That meant I could make us something substantial. I was both grateful for it and grateful I hadn't had to ask him to do it as if it were a favor, which would have required me to tell him I needed him for something which left a bad taste in my mouth even imagining it.

And there you have it. After 8 years (holy crap) here's Chapter 4. Please review with comment or criticism, I appreciate both.