My Birthday present from one of my friends was a prompt, a bi-weekly Never-Ending Story. She gave me a word and a fandom, and I returned the favor.

Witness the product of my labors.An actual Zutara.

Le GASP!

But I was hoping there would be a genre called 'confusion,' because that's about where this is.

Summary: Love is never ending? That means we are going to be falling for a very long time.

Falling

It wasn't a question of wanting to. Definitely not — if she had her choice, the feeling would have been squished the moment it became recognizable. If she had her choice, it would never have come in the first place.

It was Katara's experience that, in most matters of the heart, wanting to wasn't even an option. It happened. You could follow where it lead, or you could live in denial of it, but a part of it was always there, old and new, young and old, right and wrong.

This was wrong, because even if she could somewhat maybe trust Zuko with Aang, with Sokka, with Toph, with everyone she ever cared about, and maybe even trust him with her back, her head knew she couldn't trust him with her heart.

But her heart never got the memo. It was hurt, yes, but so was he.

I don't spy, I watch, but in the course of doing one or another, in the course of dissecting Zuko's every action, it was simply hard to miss. The biggest one was literally a smack across the face.

She didn't mean to, she didn't want to, she had only meant to protect Aang, but she was watching Zuko.

As she watched, she began to think. Maybe he was sincere, maybe he had changed, maybe he had been just as confused and hurt as he sounded all those weeks ago in Ba Sing Se.

Maybe hating him just used up too much energy. Maybe that was where all these deviant thoughts came from, because love and delirium did seem to spring from the same source and for Katara worked just as well.

Love was a thing uncontrollable, and the state of coming into it was right to be called 'falling.' Katara had fallen for Jet before, and how had that worked out? She would be forever thankful for what he did for Aang, but she remembered what he did before.

How much of his change had been because of the Dai Lee brainwashing? He had given his life for Aang, but would he have given his life for his cause before?

She didn't have any of the answers.

Enter Zuko; I've changed, I've changed, I've changed. But had he? Nowadays he seemed in a perpetual state of confusion at having to actually interact with other people (imagine that!), and as Katara watched, she could see that the hurt was still there.

So.

Shoes don't stretch.

Men don't change.

Two undeniable truths of the universe.

There was logic and there was company policy, there was good judgement and there were matters of the heart.

And there was the 'L' word, that usually had that 'F' word in front of it.

Falling.

Disorientation, then impact. That was about where Katara was right now.

She wasn't sure she liked it.

You can play the tape of the evil maniacal laughter now.

Of course, in typical AStormIsBrewing fashion, nothing really happens, but you have gotta love the deep, frustrating, internal monologues!! It's what I do, and what makes me such a bad action writer.

I like to make my characters stop and think.

Because thinking's cool.

But others of you are going to say, But that's not really Zutara, and to you I say, Tough luck.

From what little I know of love, it's grossly overrated.

Yeah, it's nice, but . . . well, what most of the world has today, is that really love?

Ok, next prompt for you is for Harry Potter, Snape's POV after Lily marries James: "It's just me and old plan B," from Keith Anderson's 'Plan B.'

Don't forget to review!