Chapter Text
Zuko
“Wow, camping… It really seems like the old times again, doesn’t it?”
“If you really want it to feel like old times, I could, um... chase you around a while and try to capture you.”
Everybody laughs at my bad joke. Except for Katara; she’s on the far end of camp preparing dinner by herself.
“Do you like Katara?”
I yelp at Jet’s voice.
He is sitting next to me, leaning against a rock, his arms folded behind his head, looking much more relaxed than he should after a question like that.
“No! I mean, yeah! I mean…” I try to make sense of my own thoughts. “I don’t like her the way you think, I just wish she would stop giving me the stink-eye.”
My gaze drifts back to her, she is walking from one side of the bonfire to the other, picking up the pots and cutting vegetables for dinner. I can still feel Jet’s own eyes on the back of my head though.
“I thought you liked Katara,” I admit, because I did. They’ve been attached by the hip since I joined the group.
He shrugs. “I do.”
“But then why…”
My brows furrow. He simply shrugs again.
“Has anybody ever told you that you are kind of weird?” I say, leaning against the rock as well.
“Oh, yeah, thousands of times.”
He even has a weird eye color, I can never tell if they are hazel green or hazel brown. Right now, with the bonfire from our side of camp lighting his face, they look more green than brown, but still… Ugh, why am I obsessing over him now? With Katara, I got an excuse, if not an explanation; with him, I got nothing. By this point, I’m basically stalking him. He seems tired, fighting his eyelids to stay up, and yet he still has that expression like he was in complete control of everything. (That’s how confident people feel, I suppose.) I wonder if he notices me staring… Spirits, I wonder if Katara notices whenever I’m staring at her.
“If I didn’t like Katara, would you ask her out?” Jet asks just as suddenly as before.
“Wha—I… Um, I—I… I…”
He laughs. The actual sonofsnakebitch laughs! “Don’t worry, Zuko, you don’t have to answer.”
“Then why do you keep asking?”
“I like messing with you.” He turns his head to look me in the eye. Now his eyes look unquestionably warm brown. “I always have.”
I think I might be exhausted myself, or suffering another delusional fever episode, because the only response I can muster is a half-laugh, half-smile. It’s like aside from the new haircut—(he cut his disheveled hair a while ago, it’s not so messy anymore)—he was a different person. Huh, I guess that’s something we have in common.
You know what we don’t have in common? Katara.
I don’t like her the way he thinks, but if I did, he’d beat me at that and ask her out, and she’d say yes because he is crazy tall and crazy good-looking. I almost want to tell him that, maybe if I perform as Katara’s wingman, she’d stop treating me like trash. (I can’t blame her for doing so but it still feels pretty awful.) Then again, she probably already knows Jet likes her because she too is insanely beautiful.
It’s one of the reasons why it feels so bad that she hates me so much, there’s no guy out there who wants to be hated to death by a beautiful girl.
Although, Mai hates me to death now, too.
What’s wrong with my life?
“If you like Katara, why don’t you ask her out yourself?” I say, trying to clear up my head.
“There might be… another person that I like.”
“Really? Who?”
“Uh… Just someone that I know.”
“Yeah, but who? Do I know them?”
“I think you do.”
“Then who is it?”
“Guess.”
“You really are a jerk. You know that, right?”
“I’ve been told that before, too.”
He smiles. He is so…
“Why don’t you go talk to Katara?”
And just like that, I’m back to stalking Katara. She’s still at the far corner of the camp, by the cliff near the beach; she usually has a happy expression on her face but tonight she just looks serious. Angry, sad, most likely wishing she could stab me with an ice peak. I can’t blame her for that either, she had to see her father leave again today.
“You think that would work?” I turn towards Jet.
“I think it is better than you two having a cold war, and you staring at her for hours.”
Great, he noticed that, too.
“I don’t stare at her for hours.”
“Right. Just signal me or something if things get tough, and I’ll sweep in to save you.”
I scoff. “I don’t need saving.”
Katara
I don’t notice Zuko until he is already standing behind me at the cliff, (he is very silent when he walks, which is ironic considering how muscular and tall he is.) Either way, my first reaction is to frown and walk away. (He should have known I would react that way when he walked over here.)
“Katara, wait!” his voice floats above the sound of the waves crashing.
Please, make this quick and incredibly important.
“What?” I whip around, my hands on my hips. The wind pushes my hair to my face and I toss it away.
He holds his hands up in surrender. “Can we talk for a second?”
“I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
When I turn to leave again, he yells behind my back: “This isn't fair! Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you?”
I turn around, doing my best to transmit all the hate that he inspires me right now. My own words are sharp and filled with venom: “Oh, everyone trusts you now! I was the first person to trust you, remember? Back in Ba Sing Se. And you turned around and betrayed me! Betrayed all of us!”
He grimaces like I might as well just stabbed him and twisted the knife inside. Truth be told, a part of me wants to stop being mad at him, but another, more dominant part of me can’t help it. And I hate it because this is horrible!
I’m living a miserable life among my friends, I’ve ostracized myself from the group, and rationally, I know Zuko has proven he is on our side. He has done good things for me, but I just… can’t let go. I truly believed he was different back in Ba Sing Se, and look where it got me. Aang almost died—the Avatar almost died, and I will never, ever, ever let myself be that vulnerable again!
“How come what happened in Ba Sing Se is any different from what Jet did to you?” (I had no idea he knew about that.) “I know what happened between you two and you forgave him.”
“That is completely different!” I counter although I don’t know if it is true. “Jet almost died because I left him behind in Lake Laogai! I am trying to make amends!”
“And I am trying to make amends with you!”
“I don’t want you to make amends with me!” I snap. “Why do you even want me to forgive you? We don’t need to be friends to fight the war together. You want to feel better about yourself? Then you could stop bringing disaster to us, like today that I lost my father again, because of you!”
“You can’t possibly blame me for that!”
Jet
I know I shouldn’t be listening, but I really want them to bury the hatchet—or whatever it is that they use for war in the Fire Nation and the Water Tribe. I feel like such a wannabe for knowing so little about the war outside the forest, but I didn’t want this to turn into another fight!
“Okay, okay.” I step into the light from behind the rocks. “I didn’t mean for this to turn into a screaming match.”
Zuko is very much not happy with me right now. That’s a bummer because I thought we were hitting it off back at the bonfire.
“Yeah, you were the one that told me to come talk to her.”
“You told him to come talk to me?” Great, now Katara is mad at me too. “Why?”
“Because you two need to let this go!” I’m tired of seeing the people I care about get into stupid fights. First, I dragged Smellerbee and Longshot to the disaster that went down in Ba Sing Se, and now I’m seeing my two crushes go for each other’s throats! That’s messed up! “Don’t you remember that my anger and knife-happy attitude were what almost got me killed? And, Katara, I don’t want you to make amends with me either. I don’t want you to feel like you owe me.”
Normally, I really like her when she smiles, but this smile is tense. (Then again, I really like her all the time .) “Okay, then I’ll just stop talking to the two of you.”
She walks away shoving Zuko with her shoulder, but I stop Zuko before he can leave too. “Zuko, wait.”
I catch him by the arm. I can feel his skin is hot under his clothes.
“What, you have another great advice?”
“C’mon, don’t be mad, I really wanted you guys to talk.”
“I want to talk,” he repeats. “Katara obviously doesn’t.”
“So what? You’re just gonna give up?”
“No, I’m gonna find a way to make things right,” he assures. “Actually, I’m going to talk to someone who can help me out with that.”
So hotness—(no pun intended)— and brains.
“I’ll go with you.”