Tied for first place in Live Journal's katara / zuko community's recent "Insta!Fic Challenge." January 2008. Thanks go out to nokomarie, dreaming trees, leian & Licentia Poetica for their helpful editing. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy! Concrit always welcome.

With every day the heat grew worse and like the constant, climbing sun their bickering grew more intolerable.

For the life of him, Zuko couldn't understand why Aang went on about Katara's "compassion" and "kindness." Actually, that wasn't an entirely fair assessment. Zuko still remembered the formidable opponent who had offered on different occasions to heal his uncle, and his scar. That was the girl he had expected to encounter again at the Western Air Temple. But since he'd joined the Avatar, her interactions with him had ranged from death threats to shrewishness. She was sarcastic and short-tempered, and now the waterbender had spent the better part of three days squabbling with Toph.

Even as he approached their lunch spot, Zuko could overhear Aang pleading with her and knew that he was once again the topic of conversation and she was yet again arguing with someone else.

"Maybe if you look for things that you have in common—"

"Zuko and I have NOTHING in common," Katara answered defensively.

From next to the cooking pot, Sokka cleared his throat and Katara looked up. She stared at Zuko, her mouth falling open in a slight o.

Zuko's eyes narrowed. He knew the better thing to do would be to ignore her comments and pretend he hadn't heard. But he had been training the Avatar for almost a month now, he was exhausted and taxed as the rest of them, worried they were running out of time, and more than anything at that moment he was sick and fed up with her suspicions and bad temper.

"No, I don't think that we do," he announced, clearly and coldly. He walked to the other side of the circle and sat down next to Toph.

Katara's eyes shifted downward and her cheeks flushed pink, with anger or shame, he didn't know or care. An uncomfortable stillness settled over the group. Aang bit his lip. Zuko studiously ignored eye contact, staring past him.

He still felt most comfortable in the company of the blind Earth Bender. Maybe because, unlike the Avatar, she didn't bend over backward to try to make him feel like his presence there was completely normal.

"Katara really has it in for you," she commented, after the initial silence had passed and the others resumed their conversations.

"Why do you pick fights with her?" he asked, feeling tired and peevish. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off a headache.

"Because it's a good distraction, sometimes." She sounded vaguely ashamed of herself. "And because it's easy to get under Sweetness's skin," she continued, with more gusto. "You two do have that in common."

"So why don't you pick fights with me?"

"Because Katara's already doing that. And because it annoys her that I don't fight with you," Toph grinned.

Despite his best efforts, the headache began to win.

He opened his eyes and watched Katara bend water into the rice pot that Haru had lifted above the kindling, then kneel to scrape the group's spark rocks together. She had not asked Zuko to start the fire once since he had joined them.

He did notice that she seemed self-conscious and uncomfortable as she worked. Aang also watched her closely.

"Why don't we do something to lighten the mood?" the airbender finally said, popping into the air and drifting down to rest comfortably cross-legged.

"What did you have in mind?" asked Teo.

"We could tell jokes!"

The gang looked in unison to Sokka.

"My sense of humor is a very delicate instrument," Sokka protested, throwing up his hands. "You can't force it."

"Zuko, why don't you tell us some Fire Nation jokes?" Aang asked, smiling at him.

"I don't really know any jokes," Zuko mumbled, embarrassed somehow by the admission and irritated by the embarrassment.

"I don't know any jokes either, but there was a poem Jet used to recite that always made the other Freedom Fighters laugh," volunteered the Duke. He scratched his head. "But I could never figure out why."

"Why don't you share it?" suggested Toph.

The Duke cleared his throat and stood up:

"There once was a girl from Omashu,

Who wore nothing beneath her—

"I think that's enough," Katara interrupted, her cheeks pink.

"But I didn't even get to the part that made people laugh!" he objected.

"I'll tell a joke," she said firmly.

"Oh, no," moaned Toph.

Sokka held up his hand. "Katara," he smirked, "maybe you should allow me—"

"I can tell a joke, Sokka." Her elbows jutted out as she rested her fists on her hips.

"Fine. Tell one." Sokka put his own hands on his hips and grinned knowingly.

Katara's smile wavered. Her eyes darted around around the camp and across their group, finally settling on Appa munching hay behind them.

"Why is Appa so big?"

There was a long, pregnant pause.

"Because if he was small, he wouldn't be Appa!" She threw out her arms and grinned widely in the silence.

Zuko snorted, closed his eyes and laughed.

The others stared blankly at him, and her.

"You thought that was funny?" asked Toph incredulously.

He smiled and turned to her.

"Of course it's funny. Don't you get it? Appa wouldn't be Appa unless he was big! Can you imagine him small?" Caught up in the moment he chuckled again only to catch himself as he remembered the identity of the joke-teller.

"So?" he said roughly, with sudden, unconvincing disinterest. "I thought it was funny." He stabbed his chopsticks into his rice bowl.

Hope, relief, and vague suspicion colored Katara's face.

"Well," said Sokka from across the fire. "I guess we found one thing that you two have in common. Neither one of you have a sense of funny."

Zuko scowled and Katara glared at her brother, and for some reason that was utterly inexplicable to Zuko everyone else started laughing at THAT.

But as he silently ate his meal, ignoring the cheerful chatter around him, he couldn't help but take note that Katara had not shot him a dirty look once, and twice he had seen her, from the corner of his eye, peering at him with something like curiosity.

Fin.