It is a short dash through the woods before she catches the spirit, delirious and bleeding as she is. If it had not been for the blood in her eyes that requires wiping away more than once, then the chase would have been even shorter. As it is, she catches him quite unawares as he navigates a rocky stream and overgrown roots and brings him crashing to the pebbly soil with the tapered point of her knee pressed indelicately into the small of his back. His apparent lack of a struggle puts him in her good graces; for she assumes that he is calculated and efficient and merely biding his time to form a plan of escape, or how else would he have fought that band of pirates alone?

(She considers sulkily the element of surprise, and it's usefulness in battle tactics.)

The dual swords strapped to his back give her some pause for thought as she pats down the length of his torso to check for concealed weaponry (she can say for certain now that the spirit is a he, from the muscle structure she can feel beneath her palms, and the brusque way he protests against her administrations, wriggling a little under her weight) but conclusions are not to be jumped to, she'd learned that much in Caldera, so she merely flips him, digging her fingers purposefully hard into the sinew of his collarbone.

He winces, and then shudders as if someone had blown cold air down the back of his collar. She leans away from him, on her haunches like some hulking komodo dog, and watches him carefully. She almost wishes that he would protest, draw one of his swords, or both, and leap towards her so that she could fend him off expertly, barely breaking a sweat. (It does not do to admit that such a fight would simply be licking her wounded pride.)

"You did not allow me to thank you properly, back there," she says, something like amusement licking up the sharp blade edges of her voice, "may I know the name of my otherworldly saviour?"

In response he is silent, merely dragging himself a little further backwards and propping himself up on his elbows, before coming to sit properly upright and leaning forwards to swipe the blood from her cheek – or at least, she had assumed that is what he had planned to do, and so she stops him before he can get close. Sour faced, she wraps her small fingers around the bones of his wrist and presses it backwards until he yelps and it is with that she can draw her conclusion.

In another life she might have smiled, here with him, cocky and sweet all at once.

Today she remains steadfast and stoic, following him backwards – their bodies almost flush together – to press his wrist into the dirt beside his head. All at once he becomes absolutely still. She thinks she can hear the tick of his pulse along with the quickening beat of it against her palm.

"You are not much of a conversationalist," if it were not for the acute line of her mouth, or the blood dripping down her cheeks, she might have even been teasing. Without warning, she has his mask off before he can even begin to struggle against her and there he is, her exiled prince, blinking and scarred in the sunlight. He stares up at her and she down at him for one long second, before he wrenches his wrist free of her hand and pushes her off of him. She goes with deference; her chin tucked slightly closer to her chest than it had been before.

The air in the forest seems much thicker than it had previously, as he pulls himself upright again and begins brushing down his pant legs with an accusatory glare plastered on to the hard curve of his face. She leans back and looks up at him, blinking a little too fast and having to occasionally put a hand down to the ground to steady herself.

"You should sit down," he says from somewhere up above her, where the birds seem to be chirping overly loudly in the trees, vultures circling, perhaps, for carrion. Not unkind, but certainly not sweetly, he adds: "before you fall down," the words half a slur between his ragged breath.

"I have to go back and get my pack," she says, wondering why he is squinting down at her with such an odd expression on his face, "I need to tend to this wound on my head," it almost looks concerned, his frown.

The trees are spinning; the vultures faster than they had been before, dipping lower, talons clawing at the air just inches above her, and the princes face is fuzzy around the edges. She cannot tell if he is smiling or frowning or laughing or maybe he's crying, those big, sad, red-rimmed eyes she remembers so well. She thinks that she might be laughing, but she is not certain. The sky is a peculiar shade of red. When it rains it rains blood, big fat globules of it that stick to her skin and sizzle it off, fat in a frying pan. The vultures scream and it sounds like don't hurt her, hurt me, and the fire is all around now, bouncing off the metal walls sharp as arrowheads. This time the screams caught in her ears sound as if they are her own.

She wakes up to the crackle of burning wood, her back damp from sleeping on the ground without a bedroll and aching all over. The pain in her hairline is white hot and distracting and it takes her a little longer than usual to survey her surroundings. He's collected her pack, started the fire, and he's roasting something over it now, concentrating with a furrow between his eyes and she takes a moment to watch him. It has been two years and three months since she had last seen him. Then he had been straight-backed and proud and clothed in armour or finery and seeing him like this – with short, fuzzy hair in an old ragged tunic similar to her own, slumped over the fire – is not exactly a shock, but it is something close.

"What are you doing here?" he starts at the sound of her voice, suddenly straight shouldered again, as she turns a little on her side to face him.

"Looking for the Avatar," he is short with her, turning the unscarred side of his face away so that all she can see is the light playing over the marbled skin on his cheekbone.

"Where is your uncle?"

"I don't know. What are you doing here?"

"Finding myself," she is dry; he grimaces, recognising the lie when he hears it.

"Of course. You are destined for the cultural oasis of Ba Sing Se, I presume?"

"You presume correctly, sir," she plays along, still lying on her side next to the fire.

There is a long pause where only the cracking of logs on the fire and their heavy, uneven breathing can be heard starkly against the otherwise quiet of the forest.

"Why didn't you answer my letters?" it is short and sharp and she almost flinches away from it, still staring at his face no matter how hard he tries to avoid her eyes. A long time passes before she answers, the words soft and half-sighed.

"It would not have been proper."

"I see," he prods at the flames with a stick like a bludgeon that he'd had lying beside him, "I am no longer fitting company for the likes of Katara of Caldera City."

She almost aches to tell him how she had almost written him back; how Yori had found the first letter pressed between the pages of one of her favourite books; how every one after that had been burned at breakfast as she watched. How she would have written him back, if such a scandalous thing had been allowed. Instead, she steels herself. Space for feeling is space for weakness, and she could not have soft spots, not now.

"–exactly."

As the silence between them grows longer and deeper and vastly more uncomfortable, she is struck by how changed he is from the boy she'd known in Caldera city, until he laughs and it is long and low and dry. She sits up, half-cringing, and runs her fingers along the knives strapped to the insides of her thighs for comfort.

"You never really were," he stiffens, the sinews in his neck standing out, visibly taut, "assassins do not keep company with royalty," and the way his shoulders soften then makes something behind her ribs clench. Sitting upright sets her vision spinning again, though this time is a little the worse for the darkness and he is inching closer with narrowed eyes and now it is her turn to stiffen, all of her muscles bunched tight together.

"Let me look at that cut on your head," he says, so soft that if she were less astute she might not have picked up on it, concentrating so very hard on his hands as she is, as they come to settle on the point of her chin. Very gently he turns her face towards him, kneeling in front of her as if in reverence.

She makes sure not to wince, as he dabs at the wound with the alcohol that Yori had stowed in her pack. It would not be fitting.

So this is horrendously delayed and really short and kind of filler-y (I've just gotta get back in to the swing of things, I guess) and I can't really apologise enough for being such a terrible author ;~; BUT exciting things are coming soon! Let me know what you think :)