A/N: I bet you thought I was dead, didn't you! I might as well have been, though. I've been suffering from a major case of writer's block for the past year, but fear not! I have found my muse again, so I should have lots more for you all soon!

And yes, I know this is late. I had a lot going on during the actual week. Here it is. I can't even tell if it's good or not anymore, I've been staring at them for too long. They haven't been proof-read either, so if you spy an obvious error, let me know. Enjoy!

"Every face wears a mask." -Unknown

The chirping of the crickets was a perfect accompaniment for the dance of the fireflies through the long grass on the warm summer evening. Underneath the vibrant signs of life, a long-abandoned temple sheltered eight young warriors. Only one inhabitant had managed to elude sleep; a young man with golden eyes and a thick scar across one part of his face. He lay with his arms tucked under his head, thinking of blue.

The Blue Spirit. The title circled his head like an angry mosquito. He remembered the mask he had dropped in a lake, the identity he had stopped hiding behind. He thought of what he'd done with his second personality: stealing supplies for himself and his uncle, stealing the Avatar from Zhao, and then stealing the flying bison from his underground prison. He had only been able to use his secret identity to take from others.

Katara had always given. When she'd adopted the role of the Painted Lady, she had used it to give a better life to the people of a small, insignificant fishing village. She was a healer; a giver; a helper. Her actions were guided by a need to right wrongs. This small, gifted fighter from a crumbling village was working her hardest to make life easier for almost everyone she encountered. The girl who had suffered so much was still giving with every fiber of her being.

His mask had been a way to hide. To shelter his face of shame. But she had seen through it, through him, with her ocean eyes and open heart. A peasant he had once wanted to use as bait. He knew better now. She was a physical embodiment of her element: ever changing, ever the cause of change; unyielding one moment, capable of unbounded kindness the next; a killer and a giver of life.

The realization that he loved her dawned on him as peaceful and magnificent as a summer's sunrise.

The revelation that he knew next to nothing about her struck him like a bolt of lightning to the chest.

His mind scrambled to collect every fact he could recall about her. He knew her mother had been killed when she was very young, that she had learned water bending in the Northern tribe, that her brother was a fierce fighter and an idiot, and that she was the only one who thought she was an accomplished cook. But other than the obvious, she kept herself hidden. She hid behind a permanent mask, the same one a mother tries to keep in place to keep the attention focused on her children.

But she had never mothered him. She'd fought him, insulted him, frozen him in a chunk of ice, pushed him to the very edge of his patience, forced him to eat her less-than-stellar cooking, made him see his flaws, given him a chance to become good again, and offered to heal his emotional scars by taking away the physical one. None of that had been done with any sort of motherly affection, thought. Nor was it the "normal" sibling affection she displayed with Sokka, or that he felt with Toph. It was something... different. Something more.

His romantic experiences up to this had been... less that stellar, to say the least. Mai had been nice, but more like a dead weight hanging off his arm if he was being honest. Song and Jin had both been sweet, and very pretty, but they didn't have anything to keep him interested. He had puzzled them out in almost no time. They had all become a blur of pale skin and bland eyes.

But this water bender, this enemy he'd been raised to hate, was filling his thought and keeping his interest. If only he could chip away the wall she'd built between them since Ba Sing Se, show her that he had truly changed for the better, and that it was mostly thanks to her. Maybe if he could find out more about how her mother had died-

Soft footsteps sent gentle vibrations through the floor and to the rock slab Zuko slept on. Years of expecting an ambush caused his muscles to tense as the person paused in front of his door. He closed his eyes and evened out his breathing as the door slid open and shut again. Fabric swished against skin, and Zuko prepared to jump up grab the intruder.

"Zuko."

His heart froze.

"Zuko, you can stop pretending to be asleep."

Katara had seen past his act again. How could one person be so good at reading another?

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice coming out groggier than he'd expected.

"I-" Her voice cracked. "I miss her so much."

The young prince was sitting up in an instant pulling her onto the bed and into his arms, her head tucked under his chin. "I know," he soothed. "I know." Images of his own mother flashed before his eyes, of her warm eyes and gentle smile. He wondered if Katara's mother had shared her kind eyes with her daughter. His arms wound around her waist and pulled her across his body so she was laying with her back facing the wall and his body shielding hers from the view of the door. He hugged her close for several minutes as the sobs racked her body and her tears stained his pillow. Zuko was certain that she'd never given in to her feelings like this before, that once her mother had died she had locked her true feelings away and let herself become the pillar to support her family. He had had Uncle, once they fled the capitol city, but who had been there for her? Who had held her and patted her head and kissed her forehead and told her that she would be alright, that she needed to let everything out before it ate her up. Who had been her pillar? At last she managed to take a few shaky breaths. "I'm sorry," she whispered, rubbing at the tears tracks on her cheek. "I didn't mean to-"

"Shh," he ordered, using his thumb to wipe the last tear from her eye. "Don't apologize. I understand." And he honestly did. Even though Sokka had been older and probably had more memories of their mother, Zuko had a feeling that Katara had been closer to her. A slight smile tugged at her lips, her eyes locked on his. Her right hand came to rest of his mangled flesh, and as his lids closed the memory of that fateful day in the caves returned in a painful flash. "I'm sorry." He pressed his lids tighter together, praying that they would never open so he could avoid seeing the hurt in her eyes. "You don't want to look at this. I'll just-"

He tried to turn his head away, but she held it in place. "This scar does not define you, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation." Her voice was low but firm. "It is a part of you, but it is not who you are." She sat up, and pressed her lips to the center of his father's mark.

No one had ever, ever, dared to kiss that cheek. Mai hadn't even wanted to touch it, and when they had posed for portraits she was always standing to his right. But Katara, the broken healer he was holding in his arms, was able to look past his facial abnormality. "No one's ever touched it like that before, have they?" she asked, reading the thought off his face as if they were writing on a scroll.

"No." He cupped her face in his palms. "No one." He drew her close, resting his lips in the space between her eyebrows. "Nobody before you." He moved down to the tip of her nose. "And now, nobody after you." Here, he hesitated, afraid to move too quickly and lose her forever, like he almost had several times before. But just as he was about to dip down, she rose to meet him, her fingers holding his face firmly against her own. He moved one arm around her back, crushing her to him while their mouths remained locked.

Their kiss was not one of passion, of a hungry need driven by desire and lust. It was warm, and gentle, and spoke of feelings both had been trying to suppress for months now. No tongues were exploring, no hands were roving, and yet it was still so intimate, so raw, so powerful. It was the final surrender of two strong hearts, the stripping away of their armor and the remolding that occurs when two separate entities join as one. They finally parted, their foreheads touching, as sleep finally came to claim its final victims.