Chapter Text
Zuko didn’t mean to antagonize Katara. He really didn’t. She just took personal offense at everything he said. It wasn’t his fault that the fire nation killed her mother. Agni, he was only 7 when it happened. But that didn’t stop her from glancing scathingly at him and touching that spirits-cursed necklace of hers every time he so much as took a breath.
Zuko was meditating.
In the process of Fire Meditation, you have to focus solely on your breathing and feel your chi flowing in and out with each breath. Even with your eyes closed, you become totally aware of your surroundings. Every sound, every breath of wind, becomes one with your (hopefully) even breathing as you turn your attention inside yourself.
Which is why Zuko could FEEL Katara’s glare burning two holes into the back of his head as his small candle-fire flickered in time with his breath.
Eventually, he could take it no longer. He rose to his feet and looked sharply at the irate Water Tribe girl.
“What?”
Katara didn’t stop glaring at him. “What are you doing?”
Zuko sighed. “I’m meditating. Does that offend you in some way?”
Katara snorted. “You should be training Aang, not staring out into the sun like it's the only thing left that matters.”
Zuko bit back an irritated reply. “Aang is training with Toph right now, I can’t exactly train him in Firebending while he’s Earthbending.”
Katara glared. “Then you should at least be doing SOMETHING. Tui and La, you’re lazy.”
Zuko rubbed his temples with his forefingers. “I AM doing something. I’m meditating. What’s wrong with that?
“Meditating is just a fancy word for sitting around doing nothing. Get off your butt and go, I don’t know, go cry for your daddy.
The small candle flame behind Zuko flared up intensely, becoming over four feet high. Zuko balled his hands into fists, closed his eyes, and breathed slowly and deeply until the errant, emotion-fed flame decreased to a normal size.
He was just about to open his eyes again when a solid wave of water slammed him hard into the temple wall. He really, really hoped that that sharp report wasn’t a few of his ribs breaking, but the agony that engulfed his left side pretty much shattered (ha ha) that thought. As he crashed to the ground, he felt ice pressing in on his torso, exponentially multiplying the pain there. Zuko coughed desperately, feeling hot liquid (that he prayed to Agni wasn’t blood) slide out of his mouth.
Katara stood over his immobilized form, a water whip at the ready, the candle between them, once so lively, now sputtering with half-hearted smoke.
“What are you DOING?!
Zuko desperately tried to gather his breath, but the ice pressing in on him was too tight. “I w-was just going to ask you the same que-” He broke off into a coughing fit, blood seeping out onto the stone floor. Not good.
“You were Firebending at me. What the hell were you thinking?! And after I defend myself, you have the audacity to ask me what I’M DOING?!”
Zuko tried to reply, but his vision was darkening at the edges from lack of oxygen. He struggled to take in a breath, but was confronted by the combined restraints of the icy tomb he was encased in and his (probably) broken ribs.
“Spirits take you, answer me when I’m talking to you!!”
Zuko managed to gather a few meager wisps of air. “Can’t….breathe…”
“Don’t try to fake injury on me, it won’t convince- Yue, is that blood?”
Zuko could only cough in reply, his vision tunneling until he could only see Katara through a small hole very very very far away.
“Oh, Spirits- Zuko, can you hear me?!”
Zuko, head spinning, listened to the faint echo of her words, “me, me, me?”
The last thing Zuko heard before his eyes slid shut was Katara cursing.
“Tui and La, what have I done?!”
-_-_-_-__-_-_-__-_-_-_-
“Tui and La, what have I done?!”
Katara stared down at Zuko’s unmoving, bloodied form in something resembling hysteria. She frantically released him from the ice, laying hands sheathed in healing water on his chest. She felt the erratic stutters of his heart and the slow, painful-sounding drag of his lungs. What was wrong with his lungs?
Zuko’s body was seized by a coughing fit even as he lay helpless under Katara’s hands, blood spilling from his mouth in a crimson froth. Katara pressed down on his ribs, flinching back as they moved inwards under the pressure. Oh, Spirits. I broke his ribs, didn’t I?
Running feet in a measured cadence alerted her to Toph’s approach. “Katara, Aang was looking for you, but he couldn’t-” She broke off, one hand suddenly pressed to the ground. “Katara…what happened?!”
Katara could only shake her head, mortified at what she had done. She thought one of Zuko’s broken ribs might have punctured a lung.
“That would explain the blood.”
It took her a second to realize she had said the last phrase out loud. She looked up uncertainly at Toph, whose unseeing eyes somehow managed to convey horror, shock, and anger at the same time. “Katara…what happened here?”
“He-he’s hurt. Badly. We need to get him back to the fountain, into the water, then I can-”
Toph knelt next to her. “That’s not what I asked. He doesn’t have much time, so we’ll put a pin in this for now. But you will tell me what happened. Help me carry him.”
The tone of her voice brooked no argument. Slowly, Katara rose and got her hands around Zuko, lifting him up gently in accordance with Toph's command. Together they lifted him to the fountain, which was mercifully deserted, and lowered the disgraced Prince’s unconscious form into the tepid water.
Which immediately began steaming as soon as it touched his skin.
Katara pressed her hands to his chest and began the painstaking process of pulling the shards of Zuko’s ribs out of his lungs. Zuko barely reacted during the process, a testament to the severity of his injuries.
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HOURS LATER
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Katara fell back, exhausted from her labor. Toph, ever the silent sentinel, was quick to catch her before she injured herself.
“Thanks” she murmured tiredly.
Toph stared at Katara with her blind eyes, then felt Zuko’s slow but steady pulse. “Katara, I know you’re tired, but you have to tell me what happened.” She felt Katara’s heartbeat speed up. “Now.”
Katara started crying as she stared up at Toph. “I-I can’t-”
“Yes you can. Tell me what happened.”
“No!”
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED OR I SWEAR ON THE SPIRIT OF AVATAR KYOSHI THAT I WILL BRING AANG HERE AND THEN BEAT THE CHI OUT OF YOU UNTIL YOU TELL ME!!”
Katara looked, wide-eyed, up at the furious Toph, who for good measure, glared down at her sightless.
“B-but-”
“No! No ‘buts’! Tell me what happened!”
Katara was shaking like a leaf. She didn't know what to do in the face of Toph's fury. Toph's next comment decided the matter.
“Tell me what you did to him.”
“Why do you assume that it was me? He just fell and he got hurt really badly!!”
Toph sighed. “You know I can tell you're lying, right? Even someone with no Earthbending could tell that you were lying. For Spirits sake, Katara! You're not a whiny child!”
Katara whimpered.
“Well, maybe I'm wrong on that count.” Her voice softened. “I promise, I won’t judge you for whatever went down between you and Zuko. But in order to fix the problem-”, Toph made a hand gesture to silence her incipient comment, “and yes, there is CLEARLY a problem, I need to know what happened.”
Katara laid her head back weakly into Toph’s arms.
“Do I have to?”
Toph nodded. “Unless you want me to involve Twinkletoes in this, yeah.”
Katara sighed. “Zuko was meditating on the temple platform. He had a candle in front of him and I think he was doing that Firebending thing where he timed his breaths to the flame. I confronted him about being lazy and he stood up suddenly and the flame got really big and I didn’t know what to do and I-”
“Katara, calm down.”
Katara sniffled. “I-I Waterbent at him. I knocked him into a wall. I think I broke his ribs and the shards got into his lungs. I d-didn’t mean to, I was just scared!!”
Toph groaned. “So, let me get this straight. Zuko was minding his own business-”
“Being lazy-”
“-Minding his own business, and you told him to get up and do something, right? “
It sounded so much worse when she put it like that. “Right…”
“What exactly did you say to him?”
Katara blinked and looked away. “I-I don’t remember…
“That’s a lie, Katara, and you know it.”
Katara sagged against Toph. “I said that meditating was just a fancy word for sitting around doing nothing. I told him to get off his butt and…and…”
Toph looked at her sharply. “And what?”
Katara closed her eyes in defeat. “I told him to go cry to his daddy.”
Toph’s blind eyes widened. “Of all the stupid insensitive things in all the world, you told the guy whose father burned half his face off to go cry to his daddy? What were you THINKING?”
Katara’s eyes widened then, too. “Wait, his FATHER gave him that? As in Fire Lord- oh Spirits…”
Toph’s muscles clenched. “You didn’t know?! You decided to insult him and you didn’t even know? Katara, are you a mature Water Tribe teen or a sniveling moon-cursed IDIOT?!”
Toph’s tirade was effectively ended by a low moan coming from the fountain. Zuko’s good eye fluttered open, the hazy, fevered molten gold scanning the milky green. As his good eye settled on Katara’s sea blues, however, he desperately tried to scramble backwards, eliciting a cry of pain as his injured ribs made contact with the fountain wall. He noticed with a clinically detached sense that the waters were stained pink. His pain-clouded mind put two and two together and he shrank away from Katara, making himself as small as he could.
Toph let Katara fall, drawing out an exclamation as her head hit the stone floor. Toph walked over to Zuko slowly, her hands raised in front of her in a peaceful gesture. “Easy, Sparky, you’re safe. No one’s gonna hurt you. You’re gonna be fine.”
Zuko shrank back farther, shaking his head as though to clear his eyes, then shivering in pain as the motion put pressure on his injured side. He coughed a few times, noting idly the taste of iron that filled his mouth at the action.
Toph stepped gently into the water, hoping her expression looked gentle and kind as she advanced toward the cowering Zuko. “It’s ok, no one here is gonna hurt you.”
Zuko managed to look scathing through his pain-filled, feverish visage. “That’s what I thought, too—" His words broke off into a coughing fit and what strength he had managed to gather left him, sending him toppling against the edge of the fountain, sparking even more coughing.
Toph turned for a moment to glare at Katara, then stepped over to Zuko and held him up for the duration of the coughing fit. She gently laid a hand on his chest, then pulled it back as he shuddered in pain. “Jeez, Katara, how hard did you hit him?” She pulled Zuko out of the fountain, then laid him gently on his bedroll nearby. As she pulled the blankets over him, his fever-glazed eyes regarded her warily. It hurt her to feel how much trust he had lost.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Zuko struggled to sit up, cursing as his strength failed him once again. Spirits, Agni, and Avatar Roku his chest hurt. His vision was a blurry haze of blinding color, dark spots, and motion. He felt a hand on his chest and desperately tried to remove it as it sent agony coursing through his body. His vision darkened and he barely retained consciousness through the electric waves of sensation. He felt a hand shaking him and wished it would stop doing that.
“Hey, Sparky, you still with us?”
So the hand shaking him belonged to Toph. She was the only one who called him that. He relaxed slightly and huffed out a breath, before he realized how much that was gonna mess with his lungs. He felt a coughing fit approaching and rolled to one side before it hit. He felt small puffs of flame coming out with his coughs and really really hoped Katara wouldn’t hit him again. Spirits, it wasn’t his fault that Firebending was linked to his emotions. He was dimly aware of a voice asking him questions but he was too out of it to register the questions or to reply.
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“Sparky? Hey, Sparky, can you hear me?”
Toph cursed as Zuko didn’t respond, flames still spewing from his mouth. When the fit subsided, his eyes were slitted with pain and smoke rose with each rasping breath he managed to take in. “Spirits, Sparky, is that normal? Like, should we be worried?”
Zuko looked as though he would stay silent, but then replied in a thin voice. “Is…what normal?”
“The whole dragon imitation thing every time you open your mouth.”
“That’s…normal…at least, as normal as…it can be.”
He couldn’t see much, but he could imagine Toph looking at him with disbelief. “You sure? ‘Cause I’ve never seen you do that before.”
“I’ve never…had an insane…Waterbender—“ He broke off as the coughing fire engulfed him once more. Once he had regained his breath, he resumed. “Throw me into ...a stone wall…before.”
“No, really?”
“Last time…it was ice. Hurts…less. I’ll be fine. Where…where’s Katara?”
“About 10 feet away, probably staring at you like you’re about to explode. You aren’t, are you?”
Zuko started violently. “Wh-what?! She-she’s here? Now?! I—” More fire spewed from his mouth, as he became obviously distressed, and he curled protectively around his injured side. He seemed genuinely scared of Katara, which…Spirits damn her…made a lot of sense, given the severity of his injuries and his casual mention that this wasn’t even the first time this had happened. Toph’s attention was drawn back to him as his bearing changed. His breathing deepened and evened out, his shuddering and coughing ceased, and his eyes regained most of their molten gold clarity.
“Sparky, what are you—”
Zuko suddenly hauled himself to his feet, swaying slightly, then regaining his balance. He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, wondering when his head would stop feeling like a war balloon.
“Woah, Sparky, how did you—”
“I’m fine.”
He refused to elaborate, instead backing away from Katara, only turning his back and limping away after he was out of water-whip range.
“Care to explain that, Sugar Queen?”
Aang startled them all by dropping from the ceiling. “Hiya, Sifu Toph! You left real quickly, everything ok? Woah, what’s wrong with Katara? And why is the fountain water pink? And why are there scorch marks on the ground…ok I think you better tell me what happened.
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Zuko staggered away from Katara, hoping the others didn’t think him weak. He stubbornly tracked back up to the balcony where he had been meditating before, collapsing into a lotus position facing the chasm. He took a few shivering breaths in and out, letting out small noises of pain with each exhale. He felt at his ribs, pressing on them one at a time just like Uncle taught him. Seven of them caved at the touch, and he bit back a cry of agony. He took off his shirt, wincing as he did so, and inspected the damage. His left side was mottled in various ugly shades of blue, black, and red. As he probed the bruising, his gaze was drawn to the dozens of scars given to him by his father, Fire Lord Ozai. He traced some of them now, the longest whip marks extending for three or four feet around his torso. The knife marks, sets of whitish parallel lines on his chest. The scars from blunt maces, ringed circles on his abdomen and stomach. He sighed to himself, then got the bandage kit from an inner pocket of his robes.
This was going to hurt.
Zuko wound the bandages around his chest and torso, so tightly that he could barely breathe, pressuring the injured ribs into place, then holding them there until the excruciating task was completed. He let out a breath, inwardly sighing at the pathetic-sounding whimper that escaped him. Father would beat him for that, he knew.
Wait. He wasn’t at the palace. Father couldn’t reach him here. He shook his head violently to clear the mind-numbing fog filling it and realized his mistake too late as the motion toppled him to one side. He gave in to exhaustion and lay down on his back, eyes sliding closed.
He hoped Katara wouldn’t hurt him again. Father would love that.
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Aang stared at Katara as Toph explained what had happened. His expression was one of disbelief and sadness. As Toph finished, Aang shook his head.
“Are you sure that’s what happened? I mean, could there be a mistake? Katara would never—Spirits, where IS Zuko?”
Toph shrugged. “He got up and left, somehow, as soon as I told him Katara was here. I don’t know how, but he did. He looked like he wanted to be alone.”
Aang looked up in alarm. “Wait, he was so badly injured he could barely breathe on his own, but he got up and left? That doesn’t make any sense! I’m gonna go find him.”
Toph stood up. “Aang, I don’t think—”
It was too late. Aang was already gone, running through the temple, calling his Firebending mentor’s name.
Aang found Zuko on his back, his hands, palms out, fingers laced over his closed eyes. Aang knelt next to him and shook him gently. “Sifu Hotman? You still with-AAH!”
Zuko awoke with a start, fire coming from his mouth and hands as he jumped to his feet and staggered several steps away from Aang, his hands up in a defensive stance that would protect his injured side. His eyes were wide and unfocused, looking (to Aang at least) slightly hazy.
Aang stepped back hurriedly out of range. “It’s ok, Sifu Hotman, it’s just little old me!”
Zuko’s stance relaxed slightly, and his hands dropped to press against his injured side. “Don’t…call me that.”
Aang, now assured that Zuko wasn’t going to start shooting fire at him, looked at his bare chest. “High Spirits, Zuko, what are all those…things?!
Zuko frowned at him. “…what things?”
Aang stared at him, eyes wide with horror. “Those marks on your chest…please tell me that’s just paint or something!!
Zuko looked down, realized his chest was still bare, and cursed under his breath. “They’re just scars, Aang, nothing to worry about.” After an awkward silence, Zuko spoke up. “Um…if you want Firebending training, just…practice your basic katas. I’ll…watch.
Aang kept looking at his scarred torso, half hidden by bandages. “Where…where did you get those? There’s just so many…”
Zuko’s eyes slid away from him, the scarred one closing. “Not important.”
Aang looked at his face, noting the severity of the scar. His eyebrow was gone, and the ear on that side looked unusable. For the first time, he noticed that it took a familiar shape, though he could not figure out what it might be. “Could you tell me, please? I want to get to know you better, and I feel like there’s so much I don’t know.”
Zuko looked at his pleading eyes and caved slightly. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?” His eyes sought Aang’s. Aang nodded silently.
Zuko took a deep breath. He traced the long lines. “My fa- Firelord Ozai gave me these. They’re whip marks.” He ran his hands over the shorter lines on his chest. “These are knife marks. Ozai gave me most of them, though Azula gave me a few.” He touched the circles. “These are…blunt trauma? I think? Um…most of these are from the guards outside my sickroom right after I got the scar over my eye, which was from Ozai.”
Aang looked at him with a sickeningly heartbroken gaze. “Your father gave you those? How many training accidents did you have? And why were you training with a whip?”
Zuko looked at him with an odd expression. “Aang…these weren’t accidents. None of my scars are.”
Aang stared at his body, shocked. “Your father hurt you on purpose?! Wha-WHY?!”
Zuko’s eyes turned cold. “For being weak. For my Firebending. For dishonoring the crown. For speaking out of turn. For asking the family physician to treat injuries I got as punishment.” Zuko could recite this list in his sleep. Ozai had said it to him enough. He turned his back on Aang.
Aang seemed to focus on one point on his back, a starburst scar that looked like it had been made smashing through a glass wall. Or during an avalanche. Or something. “Who gave you the one on your back?”
“Gotta be more specific. I have a lot of scars on my back.”
Aang glanced away, then looked back. “The big starburst one, with all the little spider-fly web cracks.”
Zuko tensed, as if poised for flight. His eyes shifted from side to side as though looking for an escape route. “Do I have to tell you?”
Aang raised his head suspiciously. “Yeeeeeeeees?” He dragged out the word.
Zuko exhaled a breath laced with fire, then took in another.
His next words shattered Aang.
“You gave me that.”
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
“You gave me that”
Aang fell to his knees at the four short words. He felt words coming out of his mouth, but spent no effort to put them there. “Me? I-I don’t think I-when? What did I do?! Spirits, I-I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have!! You’re lying! You’re just as bad as Katara says!! When could I have done that? No no no no I didn’t I couldn’t…” He was vaguely aware that this mantra repeated over and over until he heard a groan beside him and felt a thin arm slide around him.
“It’s okay, Aang. It’s fine. I’ve had worse. You didn’t do it on purpose. It’s oka—AAH!” The sound was torn from him as Aang violently pushed him off. He fell to one side, injured side screaming in pain, gasping for breath.
“YOU LIAR!!! I DIDN’T DO THAT! I COULDN’T!”
Zuko looked on in sick horror as Aang’s eyes began to glow and he rose several feet in the air, surrounded by a swirling aegis of air and small droplets of water.
“I DIDN’T DO IT! ALL LIFE IS SACRED! I WOULD NEVER! HURT! ANYONE!”
Ironically, as he said these words, he slashed an arm at Zuko, sending him flying several meters into a wall. Pain. Stars burst in front of Zuko’s eyes and a cry of pure agony was torn away by the still-whipping winds. His vision narrowed to a slit, the left eye closing entirely as he struggled to maintain his tenuous hold on reality. Luckily, he didn’t think he re-broke any of his ribs. He had hit the wall on his back, with an arm in between him and the wall. The impact was also less hard. But it still hurt. A lot.
He was dimly aware that Aang had exited the Avatar state. He had fallen to the ground, on his knees, crying softly. Zuko wanted to get up and help him, to profess that it didn’t really matter, it was over now, and other comforting phrases of the sort. But he could barely move as it was. He groaned aloud. He regretted it as Aang’s tear-streaked face snapped up and met his pain-slitted gaze.
“Oh Spirits…what have I done?!”
Zuko reflected on how often he had heard those words today.
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Katara was going deaf. Toph had ranted at her for hours on end until she could tune her out entirely. She hurt. Her head was pounding and she just wanted to sleep. She almost didn’t register Zuko’s cry of pain or Aang’s Avatar-State enhanced yelling. But she did. Toph did too. She felt Toph running towards the source of the sound and mustered the will to join her. As they reached the temple platform where the whole mess had started, a few things registered immediately.
Aang, kneeling and crying, in a near-perfect circle of rubble and dust.
Zuko, prone on his stomach, with a strange-looking wound on his back and a visibly dislocated shoulder.
And blood. Lots of blood.
For some reason Katara’s fatigue-addled mind went instantly to one thought.
Spirits, Zuko’s sexy when he’s shirtless.
Then the rest of her brain caught up to events and she rushed over to Zuko. His molten-gold eyes were half open and unfocused, and he didn’t seem to be responding to stimulus from light. Add possible concussion to the list of what’s wrong with Zuko, she thought wryly. After closing the wound on his back, which looked to be a split scar (Not too old, but not recent), she turned her attention to his shoulder.
“Toph? Can you come here?”
“Already here, Sweetness. What’s wrong?”
She gestured at Zuko. “I need you to pin him down so he can’t move, all except his left arm.”
Toph frowned. “Sugar Queen, you’re not seriously worried that he’s going to do anything to you?! He probably can’t even hear us!”
Katara was quick to reply, in an apologetic tone. “It’s not that. I need him pinned down so I can reset his shoulder. If he moves, it could damage him further.”
Toph nodded acknowledgement of the fact and stomped her foot. Stone restraints emerged from the ground and held Zuko firmly in place. All but his left arm were rendered totally unable to move.
Predictably, Zuko panicked. He immediately tried to get up, twitching spasmodically as he failed to do so, and coughing fire as the action stressed his weary lungs. Katara quickly seized his hopelessly shaking hand in her own, tracing the lines of his muscles up to his injured shoulder. She noticed in passing as she took a more solid stance that Zuko was thinner then he used to be, to the point where she could see every one of his ribs, as well as the muscle outlining them. She made a note to ask him about that as she slowly began to raise the arm. As it hit a ninety-degree angle, Zuko desperately tried to edge away from her. As she continued the work, she braced one hand on Zuko’s head for a better angle, and pulled again on the joint. As she felt the roughness of the scar meet her hand, Zuko let out a rising, shivering scream.
Katara had never heard Zuko scream before.
Neither had any of the others.
It was an awful sound, so heart-wrenchingly raspy and…broken-sounding…that Katara just about broke down on the spot. A few degrees and a subjective eternity later, the joint clunked into place and Zuko passed out.
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A FEW MINUTES EARLIER
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Zuko started in fear and pain as he felt something restrain him and someone touching his arm. He had a vague impression of long dark hair. He was confused. What was Father doing here? Why had he left the palace? Where was he? What was Father–
He felt a searing pain in his shoulder and the hands started moving his arm up, painfully, slowly.
Ah. Father was torturing him. Again. He wished Father would stop doing that.
He desperately tried to get away from him, but whatever (or whoever, he thought darkly) was holding him down did a great job of it and he couldn’t get away. He imagined he could hear Father laughing at his pain as he raised the injured joint higher and higher.
Then, a hand. THE hand. It pressed on his scar, scar Agni Kai speaking out of turn disappointment, and Zuko broke down, letting out a scream that he was sure Father would beat him for.
He felt a wrenching pulse of agony from his shoulder and then everything went black.
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Katara looked at Zuko’s now-still form in something resembling horror. She looked at the marks scattered across his torso, but when she tried to trace one, Zuko automatically flinched away, the movement weak and pathetic looking. She heard Toph gasp and press her hand to the ground as she tried, then Toph was pulling her away from Zuko. She looked at Toph questioningly, hoping her dismay and shock didn’t show in her eyes.
Toph held Katara away from Zuko. “Whatever you just did, it made his heartbeat spike really fast. Too fast. Don’t do it again.”
Katara heard shivering crying coming from behind her. As she turned, she saw Aang sobbing into his sleeve. He looked like a mess. She quickly went over to him, holding him gently.
“Aang, what happened here?”
Aang only shook his head and sobbed.
“Aang, I need you to tell me. I’m not exactly mad at you for…that…after all, I did it first. I just want to know in case I missed any injuries.”
Aang stifled his crying. It made Katara’s heart hurt.
“I-I gave him a s-scar!”
Katara looked at Zuko and frowned. “No, you didn’t. The scar that broke open was old. Like, not really old, but you didn’t do that just now.”
Aang shook his head violently, tears still running down his face.
“N-no, the first t-time! He-he said I gave him that!”
Katara scowled. “He was probably lying.” Her expression softened. “But that’s not the point. How did he end up…” She searched for words. “On the floor?”
Aang shivered. “I-I got scared when he said I gave him a scar and I w-went into the Avatar state. I-I don’t really know after that.”
Katara sighed. “Come on, let’s get you back to the campsite.”
Toph cleared her throat. “Forgetting something?”
Zuko’s eyes were closed, his body still. A hesitant touch from Toph told her that he was cold. She checked his forehead and yelped as she felt the intense heat.
“Katara, is my hand burnt?!”
Katara’s head jerked up, and she scanned Toph’s hand quickly. “A little, but it’s not bad. I’ll get rid of it when we get back to the fountain. What did he do?”
Toph quickly shook her head in the negative. “He didn’t do anything. I was checking his forehead for fever, and it was so hot it burned me!”
Katara shook her head. “I know Firebenders run hotter, but that’s uncalled for. Let me get Aang back to the camp, and then I’ll come back for him.”
Toph planted her feet. “Then I’m staying here until you do.”
Katara sighed. “Okay. Just…be careful. I don’t want you to get hurt.”