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Chapter 21 – Realization

KATARA

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La. My head ached.

I sat beneath a leechee tree beside a river. Bark dug into the burning muscles between my shoulder blades as I sank against the rough trunk. The deep haze of night had begun losing to the sharp grayness of pre-dawn as I replayed the previous night's battle in my head. I couldn't remember how many soldiers I'd fought, only that they had kept coming, one after another, until Zuko had appeared at my side, soot streaked and drawing an inferno to himself. And then, in the ebb of battle, when I hadn't even been thinking...

The image of Jet's crumpled body still flashed in my mind every time I closed my eyes. Everything had happened so fast. Everything was so messed up.

I had barely been able to walk after that. My legs had moved, but I couldn't be bothered to pick a path and Zuko had dragged me along behind him. I hadn't known where we were going, and I hadn't cared. The image of Jet folding over the stream of water I had unleashed on him had bled over everything else. How badly had I hurt him? Was he even still alive?

Zuko had hauled me through the woods on a relentless course until we had found this clearing by the river. Even from here, I could still see smoke drifting on the horizon, making the morning seem darker and colder than it should have been. No one pursued us, though. We had defeated most of the Fire Nation soldiers, and everyone else had to be busy with their own troubles. So, in this clearing, Zuko had finally felt safe enough to sleep.

I took a deep breath, rubbed the night's nastiness from my eyes, and looked for the only companion I had left.

Zuko sat at the river's edge, one arm wrapped around a knee, throwing small stones into the water with his free hand. His green robes were tattered—scorched around the sleeves and muddied at the hem. The longer strands of his dark hair fell forward as he lowered his head, and they blended with the ash that smeared his cheeks, casting his expression in unreadable shadows.

Just staring at him made my own skin feel gritty. I probably look just as bad and felt ten times worse. We had left everything behind. Kazan's pack, the provisions I had been collecting from the caravan—all of it was lost now. The only things I still carried were my waterskin and the coin pouch Kazan had given us. At least Zuko had his swords. As I sat contemplating our bleak future, my stomach cramped, letting me know that breakfast had better be an immediate part of it. If we were going to be in any shape to forage, though, we would need to clean ourselves first.

"Get up," I said, pushing myself away from the tree as I stood.

"Why?"

I started rolling my sleeves to my elbows. "I'm going to get us washed."

With a scowl, he turned away again. "I can take care of that myself."

"Just… give me your robe." If we were fortunate enough to run across a trader or benevolent travelers, our war-torn filth would probably scare off anyone who might sell us provisions or give us a ride.

He hung his head for a moment while I assume he weighed the mediocrity of doing his own laundry. In a long, sighing way, he said, "Fine," and stood to loosen his sash. After he slipped his robe off his shoulders and down his arms, he wadded it into a ball and threw it at me. When he reached for his pants, I turned away until I heard the light splash of the river meeting his torso. I was far too tired to be as brazen as I had been in Kazan's barn.

Threading my way down the bank, through the tall grasses and reeds plants, I found his pants floating in the shallows and dragged them toward me. As I whipped water back and forth across black stains and crusty reddish-brown ones, I glanced toward Zuko and noticed the swaths of purple crisscrossing his back.

"You're pretty banged up."

He tried to look down over his shoulder and then shrugged. "Last night wasn't a banquet."

I pursed my lips and looked away from him, shoving his pants back into the water. I rarely let anyone get close enough to fight hand-to-hand—it definitely wasn't my strong suit—but I knew how effective Zuko could be even when he couldn't bend or do sword work in close quarters. Still, I guess it was inevitable that someone would get in a good hit at some point.

He dunked his head into the river, disappearing for a few moments before popping up again and slinging his shaggy head around. As he closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair, steam rose from his head, making the strands poof out in all directions.

"Nice look."

"I can do yours."

"No, thanks."

"You don't trust my bending?"

I'd had a lot of opportunity to witness Zuko's bending. We'd fought both against each other and alongside, and except for his battle with Zhao, I'd never seen him misstep. He was hot headed and prone to tantrums, but I knew, all other things aside, I could trust my life to his bending.

I rested a hand on my hip and shook my head. "I don't trust you with my hair."

He just frowned at me, ran his hands through his own strands to smooth them back down and then bent forward to wash his legs. As he dipped down into the water, his side twisted into view. Another ribbon of blue knotted its way up his ribs and disappeared beneath his arm.

I strained toward him through the river's current, trailing my fingers through the water. By the time I reached for him, my hand pulsed with the blue glow of healing, but he grabbed my wrist, pulling my hand away before I could touch his skin.

"It's fine."

"Suit yourself, then," I said and shook off his grip.

I was just as dirty as he was, so when he turned around again, I took off my robe and unwound my wrappings. I threw them as close to the shore as I could, bending a small wave to wash them up the final foot. Hunched down in the water, I was covered to the shoulders as I watched him. He was looking down the river. No, not at the river, I decided, at the horizon—at the rising sun and the pinpricks of receding stars.

"It's getting late in the season," he said. "We still have a good distance to cover before we meet with Uncle. We shouldn't have spent so much time with the caravan."

"Not this again." We'd just been through a gauntlet of fire and pitchforks and betrayal. I did not have the patience to deal with his 'mission.' I just wanted a minute to regroup, to eat, to sleep, to… figure things out.

His eyebrow furrowed as he glanced my way, but then he quickly averted his gaze, eyes bulging slightly and his one refined cheek reddening. We'd kicked up enough silt from the river bottom to cloud the water, and it's not like I was standing only waist deep like he was. I blew out an exasperated breath, rippling the water in thin circles that spread weakly, dissipating to almost nothing by the time they reached him.

Zuko's bearing tended to assume a regal default when he was trying not to notice things—chin lifted, spine stiff, eyes focused off somewhere in the distance, as if he were standing on a balcony, lording over a military parade. As dawn crested the hills that hugged the river, the stretching light wrapped his body in a soft, rosy glow. It reminded me of the times I had watched him move through his kata on the deck of his ship. And then, like water carrying the soot from last night downstream, sudden realization washed over me.

I was naked in the river with Zuko.

The daughter of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe, ally of the Avatar, was bathing just feet from the dishonored prince of the Fire Nation. The situation should have ranked pretty highly on my list of personal atrocities. And yet...

What was Zuko to me, now? We weren't friends, but could we really be sworn enemies after all that had happened? I had saved his life and he mine. I knew things about Zuko, things that didn't match my image of the Fire Nation, things that would have convinced a more naïve me that he could never have been a part of that engine of violence and pain. And yet...

We were still clawing our way toward Iroh, still rushing headlong toward a confrontation with Aang. And every time I healed him, every time I followed him down some forest path in the general direction of his "destiny," or just... stopped fighting him, I was enabling it. What was I even doing? In that moment of confusion, my heart folded in on itself.

"What possessed me to pick you over Jet?"

I thought I had just mumbled it into the water, but Zuko lifted his head, good eye wide for a moment. I felt the surge of heat in the river, and I quickly shielded it with a layer of frost, lest we find ourselves suddenly bathing in a fish-and-river-reed stew. As quickly as his temper had erupted, though, the water cooled. He narrowed his gaze, and it slid off to the side as he frowned.

"What possessed me?" he asked, quietly. "Why did I pick you over Zhao? Why did I pick you over that solider on the bridge at Hanoki or the Firebenders at the caravan camp?"

I didn't think he was really asking me; I hadn't been asking him.

I sank down lower into the water, letting it cover my mouth and tickle the bottom edge of my nose, but then I lifted my chin and answered him anyway. "You were saving your own skin." That's the only thing that made any sense. "You didn't want Zhao to capture Aang before you could. You didn't want that solider in Hanoki to take you back to the Fire Nation. You couldn't let Azula's patrol catch you back at the camp." It made perfect sense... and it was the only reason I could accept, the only one I truly knew how to deal with.

He tilted his head and shook it a little. "I want to believe that's true."

And it hurt—it actually hurt to hear him say it. At the same time, though, it was almost devastating to think he might be lying. I knew what to do with a Zuko who was protecting himself. It would kill me to think I'd have to deal with a Zuko who still had other motives on top this evil mission he wouldn't give up.

"So do I," I answered.

I don't know how long we waded there. The passage of the silence was painful, and whenever he glanced my way, his gaze was even more piercing than usual. The moment felt drawn out longer than my heart could stand, so I finally looked downstream.

"I'm hungry. There has to be a village somewhere along this river. Turn around so I can get dressed."

I dried our clothes and put mine back on, and then I stayed pointedly turned away from the water until he had finished splashing his way out of the river and found his pants. After he dressed the rest of the way, we started down the bank together. With no packs to carry, we made quick time.

By noon, we were well away from the last place we'd seen the caravan. As we picked our way through scraggly undergrowth and bushy grasses, I worried about the refugees and their families. We hadn't waited around to make sure everyone was well. We'd defeated the patrol and moved on. I hoped they were okay.

As we marched through the wilderness, Zuko took the lead, again. Even though he was cutting through the brush as we walked and I found my footing more easily, resentment simmered just beneath the disinterested shrug I gave him whenever he cast a glance back at me. We stopped to rest without speaking, we managed to collect berries without ever crossing paths at the same bush, and I'd never had a quieter dinner.

Why had I picked him over Jet? If I hadn't done anything, if I'd just stood there, I wouldn't be a prisoner right now—and I still counted myself as a prisoner. I supposed I could run anytime I wanted, but I stood behind the promise I'd made Zuko in trade for his help at the mudslide in Kaicho. Still, if I'd just been distracted by even a second, Aang would never have been in danger from Zuko again.

That thought felt paradoxically traitorous. A soul-gnawing sensation settled in the pit of my stomach. I recognized it from the time I'd stood next to Zuko's bed, deciding whether he would live or die. I'd chosen him, then, too, and with no promise shackling me to his welfare. I wasn't sure the line between Zuko and me was all that straight and true anymore. There was Zuko the Enemy, but there were a lot of other versions of Zuko I hadn't expected to find. There was the Zuko who loved his uncle. The Zuko who taught me Firebending. The Zuko who danced with me. The Zuko who saved me from collapsing on a muddy road by pretending to be my husband. And that memory brought me straight to the Zuko I'd been trying so hard not to think about—the Zuko who kissed me.

I hadn't let myself dwell on that night—on our "honeymoon"—since it had happened. I had told myself I had put it out of my mind, but if I was being honest, I knew what my behavior the past week with the caravan had been about, and it hadn't solely been to tick off Jet. I was just looking for excuses. I welcomed the low light of late afternoon as I felt my cheeks flush, and I nearly bit my tongue when I tripped over a gnarled tree root.

Zuko glanced over his shoulder at the ruckus I made through the underbrush as I caught myself. He stopped, sword dangling at his side, and he stared up through the canopy of trees.

"I guess we should find some shelter. It's only going to get darker."

"That's how nighttime works," I muttered, but he'd already swung himself into the low branches of the nearest tree. I soon lost sight of him entirely. I couldn't even hear the rustles of leaves or the groan of branches to know which way he'd gone. I nearly jumped out of my skin when he dropped to the ground behind me.

"There are some hills off in that direction." He pointed through a line of tree trunks. "I saw some stacked rocks that look out of place. It could just be a slide, but it might be a ruin of some kind. Either way, it'll give us something to keep our backs to."

Ever the strategist, Zuko nodded to himself and set off toward his stupid rocks. I followed, wondering why we needed to fortify our backs and if that meant he thought his sister might be tracking us still. I didn't really want to think about it, though, so I just said a little prayer that she wasn't. Happy as I was to teach some Firebenders a lesson, I didn't think I could fight two nights in a row with no sleep.

Even though it was out of our way, it didn't take very long to reach what were, indeed, very old Earth Kingdom ruins set into a large hill. Zuko tilted his head to the side and stared at them for a few moments.

"They're a lot like the one in Kaicho," he said, pulling himself up onto a pile of toppled stones.

"Oh, look at me. I studied architecture."

"I won't apologize for being educated."

"Yeah? Well... I've learned how to survive."

Just to irritate me I assume, Zuko nodded charitably and then wrinkled his nose a bit. "I was never supposed to be out here. Survival depends on a different set of skills in court. I'm surprised the Avatar didn't teach you anything about politics."

I blinked. "He's twelve."

Wait. Was he? Was he thirteen, now? How old was I? What month was this?

"How long have we been together?" I asked

Zuko's foot slipped and he winced as his knee struck a rock. "Together?" He closed his eyes for a few seconds and his brow dipped toward the bridge of his nose. "I don't know. I took you— I mean, I captured you months ago... Four, I guess? I've had you—no, I... I mean, we... uh, this..." He sighed and hung his head, gesturing between us. "Four months."

I chose to ignore his furious blushing and started counting months and days in my head. "I'm turning fifteen soon." He raised his eyebrow and nodded in a matter-of-fact way, and I gave him a sharp look. "How would you know?"

I didn't expect an answer, and all I got was Zuko's gaping fish face, so I scrambled over the rocks past him and slid down the other side into the first room of the abandoned temple. The fading light reached only halfway into the room, as if it didn't have the courage to face what might lie just beyond the threshold. I couldn't see anything but a few more piles of rubble where one of the walls had collapsed long ago under the weight of a tree and a dark arch that led deeper into the hill. But a soft glow filtered into the edges of my vision, growing until I was enveloped in a flickering light. As Zuko stood at my back, he moved his arm around me and held his hand aloft, a small fire dancing in his palm.

"We shouldn't go far," he said. His voice moved from one side of my head to the other as he looked around the room. "It isn't stable, and there's no telling what's made a home back there."

Still, we took a few more steps together. The scrape of our soles on the stone as we shuffled forward seemed louder than it should have. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness and echoed back to us, and a cool breeze whistled its way up from the tunnels just beyond our vision. The air was heavy and smelled of moss and rotting leaves. Just the kind of place you'd want to spend the night.

I don't know if it was an animal or the combination of the dripping and whistling, but I would have sworn I heard a light giggle. It sounded far away and hollow, like it came from the very deepest chambers of the crumbling ruin.

"Did you hear that?"

Zuko nodded as he took a step toward me, his expression grave in the light of his flame. We stood still, straining our ears in the relative silence. Finally, when neither of us heard it again, Zuko shifted away from me. "The wind," he said, "or the water. It's nothing. Let's make camp."

With our limited belongings, making camp consisted mostly of selecting which patch of stone we'd each sleep on. I would have preferred bedding down as close to the entrance as possible, but the wind had picked up outside, and the crude wall of fallen rock made a poor break. Leaves and other detritus swirled around the remaining stonework in little spurts and eddies. The next room in put us closer to any creepy crawlies, but I was a Waterbender, and Zuko was a Firebender. What worry did we have for the stray lizard bat or centi-spider? The wind howled outside, but we didn't feel it.

Zuko gathered limbs from the dead tree that had crushed one of the walls, and he built a fire near the doorway of the second room where gusts from the first room would funnel the smoke away. We stretched out on either side of it with our heads toward the outer door. Zuko was on his back with his right side toward me. He was still awake by the time the fire had died down to fierce embers, and in the red glow, I could see his open eye rolling around as he inspected the darkened ceiling.

I shifted onto my side, resting my head on my folded arm, and watched him. His chest rose and sank slowly, and he blinked against his exhaustion, lashes thick against his pale cheek. His mess of black hair had fallen back from his forehead, and my gaze traced the line of his brow down his straight nose to his slightly parted lips. He was the handsome prince, again—all flawless profile and glittering gaze—and in the dim light where he wouldn't see my blush, I gave myself permission to revel in it.

I'd spent the last months in a maelstrom of conflicting roles: enemy, prisoner, roommate, caregiver, sparring partner, travel companion, wife… Today, I'd mostly played the part of cantankerous martyr. But I was so tired of being angry with Zuko all the time and so tired of being angry with myself when I wasn't. What would it hurt, for this one night, to stop being angry? Because the truth was, I didn't want to be on this side of the fire. I didn't want to be just looking at him.

For this one night, I agreed with the little voice in my heart that said I missed his body beneath my hands. I missed his leanness and his warmth. I missed the iron of his fingers around mine and the way my head fit against his back. I longed to be enveloped in his scent, the smoke and spice that, despite all my misgivings about who he was, reassured me just with its presence. And, fleeting though it had been the first time, I wanted the brand of his mouth on my neck and the press of his lips against my own. I let myself feel them, then—the ghosts of all the things I'd been too afraid to really feel in Kazan's barn: Zuko's desperate grip on my upper arm, the roughness of his scar against my jaw, the way my soaked shift had seemed to disappear between us when he crushed me to his chest, his breath against my temple... and the terror that I might, for the briefest moment, imagine myself with him in the Fire Palace.

No matter what happened between here and our rendezvous with Iroh, I knew I would never feel those things again the second after we found Aang. This new Zuko I had fought and healed and kissed would be lost to me in wind and fire, and I didn't know how much of my heart that loss would burn away with it.

My chest tightened and my eyes stung, and I realized that it hurt very much to not be angry with Zuko. In that moment, he rolled over and looked at me. His brow furrowed and he started to speak, but I wiped my eyes with my palm and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"What do you think this place was?"

As he turned his head toward me, the ruddy glow of the embers highlighted the relief of his scar, and it felt easier to be surly again. He answered quietly, "I don't know."

I propped myself up on my elbow, surveying the edges of stones and motifs I could still see in the dying firelight. Ruins, temples, and the like had been a new thing for Sokka and me. Aside from the wrecked husk of the fire nation ship trapped in the ice not far from our village, there wasn't a lot going on in the South in the way of ancient or even permanent architecture. Everything we had, we'd build from the snow and ice, and everything we had, the Fire Nation eventually destroyed anyway. The Air Nomad temples, the Earth Kingdom ruins, they were all strangely immense and mysterious to me, and I often felt like I was trespassing.

"Guess."

"Fine." He took a long, beleaguered-sounding breath. "The temple in Kaicho might have been dedicated to a mountain spirit or something. This temple could have been built by people who practiced a precursor religion." He was quiet for a moment and then muttered, "Maybe it's the mountain spirit that keeps whispering."

I sat up straighter. "You heard whispering?"

Suddenly, there was way too much dark space behind me, and I got to my feet. Zuko watched as I stepped over him, rolling toward me when I planted myself against the wall on his side, which put him between me and any whispering spirit. He stared at me for a long minute.

"What? There was a drip over there. It was wet. And a draft. It's cold. It's wet and cold." He glanced meaningfully at the new space I was occupying, and I shrugged. "And the floor was sloped; I couldn't get comfortable."

He sighed. "I was teasing you. On second thought, this was probably just a storehouse."

"Too late."

I knew he was trying to calm me back down, but just as he said it, I heard a faint whimper. This time, though, there could be no mistaking it for an animal or the wind. Whoever it was, they were young. Zuko sat up, then, his gaze fixed on the doorway that led beyond our room where the coal light was swallowed up by darkness.

What would a child have been doing out on their own in a place like this? Had they gotten lost? Maybe there was a village nearby. I could imagine a little boy or girl wandering in and getting turned around in a labyrinth of corridors and chambers. Or maybe they'd taken shelter here, as we had. They were probably terrified. I moved to stand, but Zuko's hand suddenly tethered my wrist. He gave a gentle tug to bring me back to his side.

His voice was hard-edged, his fingers vise-like when he spoke. "It's the wind." His hold on me didn't loosen until I nodded and sat back down. He lay down, then, and rolled over to face the fire. Even though his breathing was slow and his posture relaxed, I noticed his hand move to rest on the hilt of one of his swords. A few more silent seconds passed, and then he said, "Sleep with your back to mine. It'll be warmer."

The howling of the wind woke me up every half hour. At least, that's what it felt like. And every time I woke, I was lost—the stone and vines and darkness around me so unfamiliar. But then the heat from Zuko's back brought me to my senses. I remembered my fear from earlier in the evening. The giggle, the whimper, Zuko's whispering mountain spirit... Normally, it would have driven me mad to sleep with my back to potential danger. But Zuko was there, dutifully facing the gaping maw beyond our makeshift camp.

It felt sort of impossible to be afraid, knowing he was between me and whatever else there was, knowing how ready he always was to launch himself into a fight. I immediately wanted to kicked myself for the childish thought. He wasn't my dad, sleeping at the threshold of our hut when the polar bear dogs came stalking. He was Zuko, and he'd done this before—made sure we were touching at night—so that he'd know if I tried to escape while he slept. As if I hadn't already had plenty of opportunity.

I felt the need to begin inching away from him, slowly and carefully, until we were no longer touching. There, let him wake up in a panic every half hour, wondering where I'd gone. I was still facing away from him, even though it didn't really matter. The fire had burned out long ago, and all that was in front of me was inky blackness. The wind had died down, so I listened hard, waiting for the first rustle of robes, the first grunt under his breath that said he had missed the pressure of my back against his. And under that thick silence, I heard crying. It was faint, like the whimper, and sounded all too childlike.

I swallowed hard. I'd heard stories that started this way. Sometimes, in the South—so said someone who had heard it from a cousin or a trader or the uncle of a friend—hunters would hear children or loved ones in the wind out on the ice. Some of them followed those sounds into the blizzards and never came home.

I was tempted to just lie there, shove my back against Zuko's, cover my ears, and clench my eyes shut until morning. The crying continued, though, drifting up to me on that stale breeze that had wound its way through the ruins. Why did I feel so weak? I was a Waterbender. My best friend was the Avatar. Surely, I could face a spirit if that's what it turned out to be. What I knew I couldn't face, though, was leaving in the morning with the clawing doubt that I might have left a child to die here. I glanced briefly in the direction of where Zuko was sleeping. He would just try to stop me again.

I had no way of making a fire, so I stretched out a hand, walked wide of where I thought Zuko to be, and silently made my way to the back of the room, testing and searching until my hands met stone. I worked my way to the opening, felt a solid wall beyond, and realized that the room opened into a corridor of sorts. The stone was cold and slick in some places, rough with moss in others, and I tried very hard to ignore any wiggly bits that found themselves beneath my fingers. A low panic began to churn in the pit of my stomach when my hand found the end of the stone and grasped at emptiness. I couldn't tell whether I was passing an opening to another room or corridor or just walking off into a chamber, not knowing what was ahead or if the floor would just fall away before me. My hand found stone again, but the thought was sobering.

As I rounded a corner and decided I was far enough away that Zuko wouldn't see the glow, I opened my waterskin. The water enveloped my hand and filled with chi until it shone with a blue light. It wasn't a strong light and I couldn't see an end to the corridor, but I could see the stones at my feet and just manage to thread my way among the vines and thick roots that grew through the walls and encroached on the path. All the while, the crying grew closer.

The sound led me even deeper into the temple, setting me on a winding descent until stone and mortar gave way to rough-hewn rock. I tried to keep track of the direction, of the turns I had taken, but after the fifth or sixth, I became disoriented. I could deal with finding a way out later. Ever downward I walked until I emerged into a cavern far too large for my small glow to reach the walls. Here, the crying deafened as it echoed in the immense space. I lifted one hand to my ear and tried to shield the other with my shoulder, but the voice still cried and wailed and shrieked—and then the pitch and tone of it began to change, and the crescendo of what now sounded like laughter made my blood feel thick and icy.

Then it stopped, altogether. I stood there in the darkness and silence, waiting.

It was obvious to me, now, that there was no child, and I quickly turned to leave the cavern. I hadn't even managed a handful of steps, though, when a freezing wind whooshed over me, knocking the glowing water from my hand. I reached for my waterskin, but my fingers closed on empty space. Icy darkness enveloped me. I had never felt so cold in all my life. I closed my eyes, but it made no difference in the pitch black. Terror was still welling up inside me.

I took a deep breath. No. I wouldn't panic.

I tried to picture what I had seen of the cavern before my light had been extinguished. The entrance was behind me. There were some rock formations to the left. I slowly turned, intending to shuffle back the way I had come. While I moved, I searched out the moisture in the air. This far down, there had to be water. We had heard the dripping before we'd gone to sleep. There, I could feel it. I circled my arms and coaxed the drips into rivulets and the rivulets into a small stream, and I drew it to me. Just as I bent to gather it onto my hand, that wind ripped through the cavern again, spraying the water in all directions away from me.

Irritated now, I clenched my fists. "How long are you going to play this game?"

"Oh, she's a live one." The voice was high-pitched, chipper almost, and curious. It must have been the voice that was crying, but now I couldn't tell if it was a child or a woman.

The answering voice was deeper, male, and sounded bored, but its tone held a threatening undercurrent. "So many of them aren't... at least not for long."

I gingerly scooted a foot forward. It felt like a million eyes were watching my every movement.

"Hmmm," said the brighter voice. "Haven't we seen this one before?"

"I think so," the other droned. "She already has another life, if I recall. Do you suppose she does? Recall, I mean."

And suddenly, I could see again—except my vision made no sense to me. The cavern was gone, replaced by flashes of red and gold. Instead of the damp chill, I felt heat on my shoulders and sweat trickling down my back. I ducked as a foot came at my head. My gaze followed the length of that leg to its owner, and I saw Zuko—a completely unmarred Zuko—smiling. But that smile dissolved into darkness again.

I started shivering and huddled into myself. "What... What was that? What's happening?"

"Ah, yes," said the bright voice, "the one with the golden things... the combs, was it?"

Once again, I was assaulted with light and color, fuzzy images I couldn't identify as having any relation to my reality, save one: Zuko scowling as he sat cross-legged next to where I lay in the grass. That view shifted as though I were standing, and as the frigid darkness of the cavern took me again, I tilted and stumbled to my knees.

"What are you doing to me?" I demanded, but the spirits just continued their own conversation around me.

"That's the one. Doesn't seem like she's done much about reconciling them, though."

The lighter voice made a tisking sound. "The poor dear. Two lives must be so confusing." Its tone was anything but sympathetic.

"Agreed," said the deeper voice and then it chuckled with a low malice. "Let's do her the favor of taking this one."

My breaths were short and shallow. The fear writhing unabated in my stomach seemed to fill me, taking up the space my lungs would have used. I closed my eyes again. An insane cackle wanted to rise up in my throat, but I battled it down. I kept seesawing in and out of random scenes of a dream or something like a memory I'd never lived, not knowing when or how long I would be back in the cavern. And all the while, Zuko came and went—Zuko with a topknot, Zuko in formal robes, Zuko in Water Tribe blue—calling my name over and over. If the spirits were coming for me, I couldn't fight them like this.

"Katara!"

"Stop it!" I clutched my head with both hands. "Stop showing me Zuko!"

"Katara!"

His perfect face was before me, but his voice was there and also farther away, like two of him were shouting at me, both at once. And then the dream was severed, and everything was light and heat and an iron hand on my arm. That cruel wind drove through me again, but at my side, Zuko's voice was strong and sure.

"Go ahead and put out my flames, spirit. I'll just make more."

And somehow, I knew that insolence was real. He jerked me upward and I lurched to my feet.

"I don't know what's going on," I cried.

"We're getting out of here."

He took my hand and pulled me toward the mouth of the cavern, through the twisting limestone and patchy stonework. The path I had lost on my way in was easy to see, now. He had not been careful in his haste to reach me, simply burning through the roots, vines, and debris. The corridors were lit with small flames that winked away as they ate the leaves and twigs down to bare stone.

When we burst out into the room we'd made camp in, I pulled my hand from his and leaned against the wall to rest. I was still dizzy from the visions they'd used to attack me, and fear had laced my blood with an urgency that made my head feel like it was three steps ahead of my body.

Zuko made to protest but looked at me for a second, instead, and then bent over, bracing his hands on his knees to catch his breath. I watched him weakly.

"I should have stayed awake." He gripped the back of his neck with both hands. "I knew something was here. I felt it as soon as we crossed the stones." He peered up at me, his expression pained. "I should have stayed awake."

"How could you possibly have felt any of that?"

"I..." He shook his head. "We have to go before they decide we're worth coming after."

As if his worry had summoned them, the female spirit spoke from the dark corridor behind us—curious, bemused, as if they hadn't just tried to kill me.

"Isn't it interesting the way lives converge?"

"It is, indeed, very interesting," the other voice whispered, not actually sounding much interested, as it receded back into the temple, the sound fading until almost all that was left was that hoarse breeze again.

We fled the ruin into the early morning. The gray light barely beginning to bleed over the edge of the horizon made the shadows even darker, but by Zuko's flame, we hurriedly picked our way through the rocks and brush. Just as his light started to fade with his exhaustion, I spied a large hollow in the trunk of an ancient tree. We crawled inside—Zuko first and then me, lying down with my back to his chest. He wrapped his arms around me, and I didn't complain. His breathing slowed, but he still mustered enough of his bending to let heat seep into his limbs and torso.

"What were they?" I asked.

"Spirits. Bored ones."

"They said I had two lives. They showed me... I'm not even sure what they showed me."

His embrace tightened, but I heard the sluggishness in his voice as sleep started to overtake him. "Who knows why spirits do what they do."

I frowned to myself.

"What combs?" I whispered, but I could tell by the rhythm of his breathing that Zuko was already asleep.

I tried to put the thought out of my mind as the lunacy of spirits trapped too long in that deserted ruin and instead took comfort in Zuko's arms, pressing back into his warmth. When he didn't move, I tangled my fingers with his, and I slept like the dead.