I first wrote this piece two (?) years ago, but since I've been getting into the habit of editing and rewriting some of my fics, I thought I'd give this one a shot as well.

You could say this exists in a sort of altered canon, wherein the Avatar hasn't reappeared yet and Katara is acting as a sort of Robin Hood figure within the Fire Nation and beyond.

But anyway, please read and review!

[i]

He feels her fingers slip past his collarbone at midnight. The girl has a dagger held to his throat—or, it can't be called a dagger, really. A short, sharply carved blade of ice presses gently but solidly to the thin layer of skin covering his veins. Zuko makes an attempt to stay still under his attacker's watch, but her breath warms his face, and he shivers at the contrast.

"Make one move," she murmurs, "and this slits your throat."

He breathes, "I can tell," hands slipping out from under his covers on the last word.

Zuko throws one, two fire punches, watches keenly as the girl twists to pierce him with startlingly blue eyes. Her body immediately arches back, hands vaulting off the floor into back flip after back flip as he scrambles out of bed and draws violent trails of fire in her wake. He expects the instinctive slash of water that she eventually hurls at him, but not the burning cut that it slices through his cheek.

The room is simultaneously painted in glass- and fire-colors as they dance about its perimeter. Zuko squares his jaw and squints hard into the night, fire lighting a path for his eyes to follow as the girl hurls stripe upon stripe of water daggers. He has to admit that she's good with her feet, never hesitating to vault off the floor or a wall if time and momentum allow it.

Zuko almost deigns to offer her a compliment, but she shuts him up quickly with an eerily aimed dagger.

It's long before he finally backs her into a corner, but he does, her fingers mere inches from touching the wall's surface. The girl makes one final lunge before he can grab hold of her, but his hands move in a practiced path and latch onto her shoulders. He's on the verge of shooting her a smirk as he does it, and then their feet unexpectedly collide somewhere in the middle, and all Zuko knows is down, down, down.

Her nose on his scar is a quiet but urging whisper, sending sparks down his skin as he lifts himself up.

The curtain-leaked moonlight illuminates her entire face, and Zuko stares breathlessly at the red stripes of paint that curl over the girl's cheeks. Her shirt is pressed to the cloth that shields his skin, lips poised under the hair that hangs about his face. The look in her eyes is both wild and afraid, has a voice that seethes, let me go, let me go, let me go.

Zuko moves up and off of her body, stands awkwardly off to the side as she surveys him with a quick look. "Get out of my way," she hisses, once she's up on her feet, though the command isn't necessary. He spares her one look before turning the other way and returning to his bed. He can't be bothered to pay her any more attention.

But then again, he realizes upon her departure—

—neither can she.

[ii]

"Here to attack me again?" Zuko opens one eye and stares out from under the covers, tracing the girl's shadow.

"That was never my intention," she answers, but he highly doubts the words.

His visitor perches in the window, one hand wrapped around the pane while the other rests on the sill. Her face is still painted red with curls, but only a single plait runs past her shoulder tonight.

When she fixes him with as intimidating a stare as before, Zuko finds himself compelled to take a stand. "Then what was?" he prods.

The girl's eyes narrow. "There are people out there who starve because of you."

"Because of me," he counters, "or because of the system?"

"Don't you care about them?"

"I do."

"Then why haven't you—"

"I can't."

She shrinks her lips into a line.

The current standing of the crown prince is known well throughout the Fire Nation, but it fails to make up for the apathy that already courses throughout much of the citizenry.

And for bandits like the one before him, sentiments are nothing short of the sharpest kind of bitter. These are the people who see the devastation around them and act out of anger for it—he can't blame them any more than he blames himself.

Zuko watches silently as the girl abandons her perch. Her feet don't make so much as a whisper against the floor, and though he stands almost an entire foot taller than her, there is something that forces him to look down when she finally stands before him.

The hatred laced in her eyes is unquestionable. He wonders if this is how anyone outside of the palace walls would look at him: with no understanding or sympathy left to spare in their souls.

"Just give me your money," she whispers, eyes hard and voice soft.

A thousand yuan is all he has in his pocket.

[iii]

Zuko isn't surprised when she continues to return.

His ears are no longer strangers to the crackling press of her fingers against the window pane. To open his eyes is to know that she's there; to land on his feet is to promise her a full purse.

"How much do you need?" he asks her tonight, fingers fumbling for metal while she leans against the far wall.

The girl—or "painted lady", as he coaxed out of her recently—offers a blunt "three thousand". Her skin glints in the moonlight with paper thin scars that criss-cross in every imaginable direction down the length of her torso.

He's never deigned to ask so much as a friend about their blood map, but hers poses more curiosity than most. Maybe their lack of connection makes asking a possibility.

"I have more, if you want." He slips the gold and silver pieces into her hands, flinches when it looks like one may slip and shatter the silence. Her skin is split open at the seams of each knuckle, stretching back like jagged thorns when she curls her fingers.

Zuko clears his throat. "Bandages, too," he murmurs.

She considers the offer for a moment, dropping each coin with her thumb past the collar of her shirt. When the last piece—silver—disappears behind the black fabric, she turns to face the window.

"I didn't ask for your kindness."

Zuko's jaw tics. He watches in silence as her feet lift up onto the sill. The night is colored a shade darker than her clothes, and it might as well swallow her whole when she pushes off.

"Really," he echoes, but the girl doesn't spare him so much as another breath. Her figure disappears promptly from the sill, and Zuko is left to stare after dust stirring in the moonlight. He forces a quiet laugh.

"I thought that was what you were taking."

[iv]

She comes the following week with bandages wrapped around her palms and through her fingers. Zuko is reminded him of street fighters who meet up at lamp lit corners, of fists slammed into rib cages and of beer-influenced slurs.

He smiles at the thought of her landing an uppercut to some worthless drunkard's jaw, but a withering look is enough to mellow out the sentiment.

"Do you have the money," she asks, "or should I leave?"

Zuko jolts in his bed, surprised more by her insinuation of leaving than by her voice breaking the silence. Her shadow falls across the floor like blackened water, and he takes a moment to drink her in before replying with a question of his own: "Would you, if I didn't have it? Leave, I mean."

He's met with utter silence. The girl raises her eyebrows, lists her head as if in thought. The wait of a few seconds feels more like that of hours, and he struggles to swallow down the lump in his throat.

Why the opinion of a bandit even matters is unclear; Zuko only knows that loneliness is harder to bear sometimes than an unfriendly face. He doesn't want to know empty nights ever again.

"I would trust you," she answers finally. Zuko flinches.

The words are strange coming off of her lips. He likes and dislikes the uncertain sound, but the feeling tampers to the latter when she adds, "Something I'd be better off not doing."

It only makes things worse that she doesn't retract the statement.

"Why's that?" he retorts, more insulted than he thought he'd be. A look passes over the bandit's face, and she drops from the sill and onto the wood floor.

Every step that brings her closer is a word that he regrets uttering. Zuko is once again compelled to look down to meet her gaze, the breath hitching in his throat when her eyes finally pierce his. He stiffens as her hand brushes his pocket and elicits a jangle.

"Because you're a dragon," she whispers; his skin sears with the weight of her breath.

"And dragons lie."

[v]

Where she disappears to every night is a mystery.

At first, Zuko envisions her walking down the street, dropping gold and silver pieces into the open fingers of beggars as they appear along the asphalt. But then he realizes that if this were truly the scenario, the money she demanded of him wouldn't vary so specifically from one night to the next.

His mind ventures back to the drawing board.

"I'd like to come with you," his lips say one night, making the decision to ask for his brain.

As expected, her answer isn't immediate. She busies herself with storing coins and surveying bandages, likely trying not to give thought to the request. The three meters of silence that stir between them are hard to shrink, her clear-cut back and his uncertain fingers pulling the space farther apart.

"Come where?" she replies, turning to him with what he hopes might be interest.

"To wherever you go after this." Zuko throws his hands to the room in an abstract gesture.

A faint smile tugs at her lips, and she follows his fingers with her eyes, runs her gaze over wall hangings and a lone portrait of his mother. The feeling of uncertainty that once bottomed out his stomach is replaced by several little butterflies, each of which brings up a hair on his skin.

"You'd call the guards on me the moment we touched down," she says, piercing him with her icy blues. The skepticism in her voice is more conspicuous than ever, but he takes it. He supposes she has a right to harbor suspicion outside of this room.

—but suspicion and hatred are two different things. The smile that lingers on her lips has a number of thoughts running wildly through his head, so much of it centered on harmless possibility.

It takes a moment for Zuko to collect himself, but he counters stubbornly, "I wouldn't."

"Is that a promise?" she shoots back, though he's surprised she says it at all. It's a well established fact that she thinks it unwise to trust him, but here she stands anyway, deigning to let down her guard because. . . because—what?

"Promise," he answers, not keen on finding out(, at least not for now).

A short silence passes, but eventually she jerks her head with a sharp nod. The smile she once wore splits to something sharp and wide. "One step out of line, and I slit your throat, remember?"

Zuko laughs. "I remember," he says, only to hear her snort. When he follows her to the sill, the smile is still there, sharp and wide but comforting nonetheless. He plants his hands on the wood and takes in a deep breath, exchanges one look with her before finally pushing off.

The night is a navy blanket stitched with stars upon stars, but all he can see is the girl one foot away, her eyes alight with adrenaline and purpose. "Stay," he whispers, eyes closed in a prayer.

Please, please stay.

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