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Chapter Text

Zuko hadn’t heard correctly. His heart had just stopped, and his chest was suddenly full of angry hornet-bees, but there was a simple explanation: he had simply misheard the producer.

“I—I’m sorry?” he croaked out, a strange grin coming to his face, as if what he’d heard—misheard—was real, and a very funny joke at that.

The producer—Jun was her name—gave him a blank stare over her clipboard, which she had been quite dedicated to all morning, seemingly checking off tasks as banal as “Shout at Zuko about his wrinkled trousers” and “Send Zuko stink eye if he’s five minutes late to breakfast.”

“Clothes. Off, now,” she said in a clipped voice, before returning to her clipboard, making another check mark, this time probably next to “Give Zuko heart attack for no reason but the fun of it.”

“I—I don’t—”

“Did you think we’d let you do it later? Or off-camera or something? Come on, we’re starting now, and we’re already three minutes behind schedule—”

“But—”

“I better be seeing your butt in approximately five seconds—”

“Jun, what? What?” he heard himself saying. “Why—why do you want me to—to take off my clothes?” He whispered the last bit, even though Jun was speaking at her normal, rather loud, volume.

Previously, the handful of crew members surrounding them had been engaged in light conversation, the sound providing background noise amid the quiet of the desert. But everyone went silent at Zuko’s questioning, ensuring it didn’t matter whether he whispered or not.

Jun slowly raised her eyes from her clipboard again and gave him her most brutal glare yet. “This show is called Naked and Afraid,” she spat, tone dangerous. “Have you never even—” she stopped, setting her jaw. “What, exactly, did you expect?”

Zuko’s whole world seemed to turn over, his understanding of what he had agreed to do suddenly collapsing, shattering into a million pieces, and blowing away in the desert breeze.

“Um,” he said weakly. “I thought it was a metaphor.”

One of the cameramen tittered, and Jun sent her death glare toward him, before snapping it back to Zuko.

“You know, like—spiritually naked—” Zuko tried, but he closed his mouth quickly when he thought Jun’s eyes might actually pop out of her sockets.

“Take your fucking pants off right now,” she growled.

Zuko moved to hurriedly undo his belt, and the cameras all closed in to capture the moment.

Once he was well and truly naked—no contraband hair ties allowed, even—Jun told him to put everything back on and undress again, in case the cameras got a better shot of him stripping the second time.

The second time was, at least, less excruciating, and this time he managed not to make eye contact with the boom mic operator as he dropped his boxers.

“Have you actually never seen the show?” a small voice asked him as shooting of his disrobing wrapped.

He turned to one of the camera crew, a short girl named Ming whom he was rather jealous of, on account of her being fully dressed. Apparently, it wasn’t strange to make small talk with someone completely naked about topics besides that person being completely naked.

“No,” he admitted. “I didn’t—I didn’t really know—” he paused, furrowing his brow. “I was a late addition, you know? I was replacing a different guy—he dropped out two weeks ago—”

“Oh, right!” Ming said cheerily. “I forgot. You’re the veteran.”

Zuko flinched at the word, but Ming didn’t seem to notice. She adjusted her camera for a moment before she twisted her mouth in thought. “Still, most of our contestants have seen almost every episode…”

The bees in Zuko’s chest swelled. This was not an experience that was simply going to be televised on local news or as part of a documentary on survivalists. This was…this was a TV show. This was a game show.

Oh, Agni help him.

Agni help Uncle when Zuko gets back to Ba Sing Se, because the old man had not said Zuko was going to be a fucking contestant on a reality TV show.

Two weeks ago, when Uncle had called Zuko about an “opportunity,” he had said that a friend was in need of a survivalist to fill in for a “retreat experience” in the Si Wong Desert.

Most people going to the retreat, Uncle said, prepared for many months in advance, but he thought Zuko would be ready now. After all, Zuko had just come back from military service, his uncle had said knowingly, so his survival instincts were fresh.

“Just come back” was a bit of an overstatement. It had been nearly one year since Zuko was discharged from the Fire Nation military and came to live with Uncle. But in truth, that one year had felt like one long, extended month that wouldn’t end.

And he had indeed returned to civilian life a stranger to frequent showers and regular meals. He was a stranger, really, to other people—to the hustle and bustle of Ba Sing Se and the noise of televisions and retail store music.

So, he liked to disappear into the woods, the mountains, where it was quiet and no one would ask him what it was like being a special ops soldier, and if he wanted to yell and scream, no one would hear him.

Zuko was struggling, his uncle knew it, and increasingly frequent solo retreats in the Earth Kingdom wilderness were the only way that Zuko was able to function as a human being.

Uncle called it “healing.” Zuko knew what it really was: running away.

But he had never had to try to survive in the desert. His special ops missions were usually in the tropics, sometimes in the temperate forests, rarely in the tundra—but he’d never even been to the desert. And Uncle Iroh knew him well enough to know that Zuko wouldn’t ever back down from a challenge, from a way to prove himself.

Plus, the travel cost to the desert retreat—which he had been told was called Naked and Afraid, a cheesy but not unexpected name, Zuko thought—would be fully covered. He just had to show up.

So here he was. Completely naked.

Ming continued her chattering to him, unfazed that his nether regions were only barely covered by an itchy burlap sack—the only piece of “clothing” he was allowed.

“But at least your partner will probably have seen the show, right? So if you have any questions, you can ask them—”

Wait, what?

“My—my partner?” he asked—no, yelped.

Ming’s eyebrows furrowed together, panic overtaking her face for a brief moment before she relaxed it. “Well, that must be a welcome surprise, right? You won’t be alone! Naked and Afraid is always two players, and you work together—”

Zuko was going to throw up. Not only did he apparently sign up to broadcast this entire experience—21 days of survival in the desert—on national television, but he had to do so naked, and he had to so with another person.

Fuck. That.

There was nothing stopping him from walking away. His uncle had been doing Jun a favor by having Zuko step in, and it’s not like he’d be missing out on any possible prize. The reward for completing the three weeks of survival was just that—knowing that you completed three weeks of survival.

He’d already done that and more, and had the PTSD to prove it, thank you very much.

And he was not about to air it all—his thoughts as well as his bits—alongside some other guy who’d probably want to hunt together or talk about their lives back home, and—no. No way.

“Yeah, I’m—” Zuko started to say, fully intending to finish his sentence by quitting on the spot.

But Ming interrupted him, drowning out Zuko’s protest with a bright, “Oh, good, she’s here!” as she turned away.

And then Zuko wanted to throw up for a completely different reason.

He internally chided himself for his accidental sexism—survivalists were a lot of men, okay? And his special ops unit was all men.

But the naked person walking toward him was very much not a man.

His first thought, actually, was that she might not be entirely human, this goddess that was approaching with a light smile on her face and zero clothes on her body.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

“Hi,” the goddess said, her small smile turning into a broad grin at him—him! “I’m Katara.”

And—oh shit. Oh shit.

Uncle in the hot springs. Uncle in the hot springs. Uncle in the hot springs.

Zuko moved his burlap sack so that it covered him up just a smidge more, just in case—well—

Because Zuko’s small handful of problems just had a boulder of a problem dropped on all of them, smashing the others to smithereens, and that boulder was apparently called Katara, which was a very beautiful name and immediately seemed to match the rest of Katara, which—Uncle in the hot springs, UNCLE IN THE HOT SPRINGS—was doing things to him against his will.

He wanted to sink into the ground.

He wanted to float away.

He wanted to become an inanimate object, specifically the burlap sack that Katara was casually wearing—off to the side of her hip and covering absolutely nothing, maniac bent on his destruction that she unknowingly was—so that he didn’t have to think, feel, or experience this excruciation anymore, and also so that he could be nestled in between Katara’s plump and perky breasts—

But Katara was staring at him, waiting for him to respond, and he was her teammate now (why would he ever consider quitting the show?), so he raised his hand and gave her a stupid little wave.

“Hi, Zuko here.”

There was no time for small talk, which usually Zuko hated in principle, but at this point in time it might have been nice to talk with Katara about the weather, or how her travel was, instead of the two of them being shooed off to the actual desert to begin their—well.

He supposed he couldn’t call it a retreat experience anymore.

But as it turned out, they could be shooed off to live naked in the desert together and get to know each other, at least where Katara was concerned.

And an hour into their experience, as they slowly trudged toward the only water source the camera crew had told them about, Zuko already knew a lot about Katara.

He learned that she was a dog musher back home in the South Pole, and being a dog musher required a great deal of strength, endurance, and athleticism. Which made sense, if the muscles defining Katara’s (very naked) arms and legs were to be believed. She regularly set off into the frozen tundra—its own kind of desert—with only a small pack of gear and her team of polar-bear dogs. He learned her brother—also a musher—was taking care of her dogs back home while she competed on Naked and Afraid—an experience, he learned, that she was only pursuing in hopes the exposure would help her reach more people with an Indigenous perspective on climate resilience.

Zuko made a point to make an insane level of eye contact with Katara as she spoke, because he very much did not want to act like a pervert. He already felt quite guilty that—unbeknownst to Katara—he had planned to dip out of this experience until she’d shown up with nary a bit of clothing, like The Birth of Venus come to life.

Not that her being naked was the reason he was still here. He just, you know, couldn’t leave her in the lurch. She had expected a partner during this experience, and he wasn’t about to let her face sand sharks and buzzard wasps alone if he could do anything about it.

And maybe he also liked her smile and wouldn’t mind seeing it for the next 21 days. Whatever!

“What about you?” Katara asked, finishing a story about how she used to watch Naked and Afraid with her dad and brother and throw sea prunes at the television whenever someone made an inadvisable survival decision, which in her family’s estimation was pretty much all the time.

“What about me?” Zuko repeated, trailing off.

“What’s your background?” asked Katara. “What brought you here?”

“Oh,” Zuko said before falling silent. “Um,” he said, after several seconds.

“Well, I know you’re a survivalist,” Katara said patiently. “How’d you get into it?”

Zuko should have known—he should have known—that they couldn’t just talk about her for three weeks.

“Military,” he grunted, and then braced himself for the comments—the sickening, ignorant praise.

But then something happened that had never happened before. He might have missed it if he weren’t staring so intently at Katara’s face instead of anywhere else, or if he hadn’t been trained so thoroughly on understanding the subtleties of body language and nonverbal cues, all the better to read informants.

He didn’t miss it though. As soon as he said the word “military,” and maybe for just one-tenth of a second, Katara’s face twisted upward into a sneer, as if she had smelled something terrible—and then it relaxed, the picture of calm, like she’d never reacted at all.

“Oh, huh,” she said.

“You hate that,” he said at once.

“What?” Katara said immediately, staring straight ahead as they walked. But he couldn’t pull his eyes from her. He could see sweat dripping down her neck from the heat.

“You hate that I was in the military.”

“I don’t—no, of course not!” she said with a little laugh that was clearly fake.

“I saw your face,” he said, insistent and eager, unwilling to back down even though Katara’s body language was currently shouting, Spirits, this is so awkward.

Katara was silent, trudging forward without a single glance at him, as though if she just walked fast enough, she wouldn’t be stuck in the desert with an ex-military guy for three weeks.

“You’re the first person I’ve met since I came back that didn’t thank me for my service,” Zuko muttered as they—finally—approached the oasis.

At that, Katara stopped herself in her tracks.

Zuko slowed as Katara swiveled toward him, and he watched as her once-easy expression twisted like she’d bitten into something sour—not altogether unlike her reaction to his former job. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Do you want me to salute you?”

“Agni, no,” Zuko said with a chuckle, even more delighted when Katara’s brows shot up in surprise. “I didn’t say you hating it was a bad thing.”

“I didn’t—” Katara tried again, but Zuko wasn’t having it.

“You did, but it’s okay.” He sighed. “I hate it too.”

Katara tilted her head to the side. “Really?”

“So you’re admitting you hate it?”

The small smile came back, and Zuko didn’t want to investigate why a woman he’d starkly met an hour ago (and had only talked to stark naked) could make his heart speed up with her smile.

“I’m not admitting anything,” she said, but this time her eyes were dancing. “But tell me more about you. You know all about my polar-bear dogs—why did you hate the military?”

When they reached the small spring (temporary, by the looks of it) that was marked on their map, Zuko kneeled down to fill their water pot. The pot was the one item they were given by production.

“It wasn’t what I—expected, I guess,” he said. “Well, it was,” he amended. “Until it wasn’t.”

He filled their pot—Agni, he was thirsty, but they needed to boil the water first—and he and Katara began walking a short distance from the spring; they needed to spend the rest of the day building their shelter, and they couldn’t stay too close to the water in order to avoid predators or even flash floods, as small as the spring was.

Katara remained quiet as they moved—he was pretty sure she was letting him talk when he wanted, rather than forcing him to share, and for that he was grateful.

“Same old story, I guess,” he said as they trudged up a sand dune toward higher ground. The sun had long passed them overhead, the heat of the desert starting to break. Zuko could see a small grove of palms in the near distance. They would set up their desert shelter there.

“I wanted to help people.”

“That’s always a noble goal,” Katara said softly.

“Yeah, well,” he said, setting the pot on the sand and looking around for a fire source—determinedly avoiding her eyes.

His heart was sinking just like the sun was. He didn’t understand why he’d been pleased by her initial reaction—all it meant was that she’d hate him that much faster.

“I very much did not meet it,” Zuko finally bit out.

He didn’t want to talk about this anymore. In fact, he was starting to regret deciding to stay on this stupid show—even though he wasn’t about to abandon Katara to face the desert alone, no matter how capable she clearly was.

He may have been glad that she didn’t fawn over his military background, but that didn’t mean he was ready to talk about all the terrible things he did in his country’s name.

And the fact that he himself was not proud of his service? It didn’t mean she’d still want to be friends with him.

“I think I see some shrubbery we might be able to burn,” Zuko heard Katara say after a beat, and then she was gone, granting him the alone time he was used to—and still so desperately needed.

Or maybe she was just escaping him while she could.

Zuko sighed, and then he got to knees and began using his hands to dig a trench.

The first night was fucking cold.

Zuko knew it would be—intellectually at least. They were in the desert, after all.

But he’d forgotten what it felt like to freeze his balls off, especially when said balls were not covered by any sort of warm clothing whatsoever.

Their shelter helped, at least. After Katara came back with branches and sticks they could use to build a fire, she joined him in digging out the shallow trench where they’d sleep that night. She’d even had the bright idea to hunt for two rocks—which she’d found near the water source—and which made digging substantially easier. After about two hours of digging in the cooling late afternoon and early evening, they’d managed to form a pit in the ground the length of him and about twice as wide as Katara.

It was only about a foot deep, but they told themselves they’d finish digging later. For now, they needed to build cover—which they did, with long branches gently placed across the trench and tented with dried palm leaves.

Dinner was almost nonexistent—they also told themselves they’d find subsistence in the early morning when the sun wasn’t quite so hot—but they’d also lucked out and found several fallen dates littering the ground around the palms.

Zuko was used to hunger, and he expected it in the literal desert. But Katara seemed much more optimistic, telling him food was in a surprising number of places if one knew where to look; Katara was one of the contestants who prepared for months before the show, and she’d memorized all sorts of desert flora and fauna as well as what could be eaten and what might be poisonous.

Zuko felt very stupid for thinking he’d have been able to survive unfamiliar terrain by himself just because he knew how to do it in the mountains, tundra, and forest.

The desert was a different beast. It hadn’t even been half a day, and he was pretty sure he would have quickly died on this “experience” if Katara weren’t here with him.

Not that he wanted to get ahead of himself. They still had plenty of time to get themselves killed.

Chapter Text

Zuko was ashamed of the fact that it took spilled blood for him to doubt the army for the first time. In some of what he had read since then—on little-populated message boards or in self-published memoirs—soldiers often started becoming disillusioned early on. Maybe they talked to a village elder who shared their own reservations, or maybe they noticed that the poverty they’d meant to snuff out just kept getting worse. Or that some of the troops in local allied forces were a little too…short. A little too young.

For Zuko, it took years.

He wanted to think that he was distracted by hunger pangs and the toll of hiking miles a day on unforgiving terrain. Special operations was different than your typical rank-and-file—he had to juggle the logistics and strategy of a mission in his head as well as basic survival. How to live off the land. How to keep warm in freezing temperatures. How to hide from guerilla fighters without dying of starvation.

But he knew that his ignorance wasn’t just because of the stress of the job; he’d been intentionally ignoring the corruption, the child soldiers, the extortion, until one day he couldn’t anymore.

He remembered the exact day that everything finally shifted. It would still take some time afterward for Zuko to fully understand that he couldn’t do it anymore—but the cracks began to form on a brisk morning in the Fire Nation archipelago.

It was the day after a successful, late-night mission, on an island that was unnamed, as far as he knew. Zuko picked his way down a rocky slope to a small circle of huts, which the map in his hands told him was the location of last night’s raid.

The rudimentary houses rose like mottled gray teeth from the ridgeline. Amid the biting morning chill, one of the huts was faintly smoking.

That was the one they’d hit just before midnight. Commander Zhao had said there wasn’t time to wait for daylight, that someone was transmitting information to the rebel cell and needed to be swiftly eliminated.

As Zuko neared the smoking hut, he saw the other side was collapsed inward, the rubble of the wall already swept into a neat pile. Beside it was a small shape wrapped in a wool blanket. A foot stuck out—a foot that was much too small, and much too still.

Zuko swallowed and found he tasted bile. A feeble wind stirred the dust of the fallen stone, and Zuko watched as the blanket shifted in the breeze.

“I don’t get it,” he rasped to Chan. “All these houses were marked green last week.”

Chan looked back at him, his eyes reflecting the same uncertainty that Zuko felt rising up and threatening to overwhelm him.

“I dunno, man,” Chan whispered, shifting uncomfortably, as Ao, their fixer, joined the two of them.

Ao had been their guide for months, but Zuko had never seen his face so grim. “The villagers say he was 10.”

“What the fuck?” Zuko ground out.

But suddenly, Zhao was there, as if summoned by the feelings of doubt in his subordinates.

“The drone flagged a heat signature, and the compound matched the footage.”

“Compound?” Zuko repeated weakly as he stared at the ruined hut before him.

“And command gave the OK.”

“Commander, they said he was 10—”

“Who says 10-year-olds can’t be terrorists?” Zhao shot back. He turned away from them and pulled out his radio. “Civilian casualties minimal,” he said into it. “I repeat, minimal.”

Two weeks later, on a different island and in front of a different hut, the team began to move, but Chan froze. He started screaming about how they were about to target the same house—and kill the same kid. Zuko grabbed him, slamming a hand over his mouth as he tugged him away, trying to get him behind cover to calm down. He managed to pull him into the woods, where Chan collapsed into heaving—but at least quiet—sobs, while the rest of the team cleared the building.

Later that night, Chan was med evac’d to a field hospital, and Zuko never saw him again.

Miraculously, Zuko managed to get some sleep the first night, and when he awoke, it was to a camera hovering just above his face, the lens poking through the palm fronds that covered his and Katara’s sand trench shelter.

He’d been having a rather pleasant dream about floating on a buoyant lake before he was mercilessly pushed back into his new reality: sand, sun, and a camera guy named Chong.

Katara stirred next to him, her lovely umber hair spread out over her (still naked) body, and the two of them wordlessly climbed out of their shelter to meet the camera crew.

Zuko was still blinking sleep from his eyes, all too aware of the parts of his body where sand had unfortunately found its way in, when Ming grabbed his arm and began tugging him away from their little camp, deeper into the palm grove. He turned and saw Katara being led away by Chong, and pushed down a very stupid and irrational (right?) pang of jealousy.

“Okay!” Ming said with way more enthusiasm than the situation required, letting go of his arm to fiddle with the video camera on her shoulder. “This is your very first interview segment. We just want to get to know you a little bit better. And find out all about the first night!”

She looked up at him then, positively beaming—once again, her energy a few notches higher than necessary.

He didn’t say anything in response, but that didn’t dim her smile.

“Let’s start with, what led you to take on this challenge?”

Zuko frowned, and again didn’t reply.

Ming stayed behind the lens of her camera, the little red “recording” light flashing at Zuko while he stood there, silent.

After several seconds—much longer than most people would wait, Zuko thought—Ming poked her head out from behind the camera. “Um, Zuko?” she asked, in a tone suggesting she thought he simply hadn’t heard her, rather than the obvious: He was an asshole, and he didn’t want to do this.

He sighed. He supposed it might be less work to try to answer her questions rather than stand there stoic for an hour.

“I, uh, didn’t really—um. I was a late arrival, right? Uh. My uncle, he—well. I didn’t know I’d be naked. Uh. But here I am.” He paused. “In the desert,” he finished, with a smart little nod.

Ming peeked around the edge of the camera, her eyes wide like a catdeer in headlights.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

“Let me—um—let me just ask something else,” Ming said slowly, moving back behind her camera. “How would you describe Katara so far?”

“Oh,” said Zuko, before he choked on his spit and began coughing uproariously. “She’s uh—she’s very—she’s—quite, uh—”

Unfortunately, the only word besides “beautiful” that Zuko could think of—the only word that was now on repeat in his head—was—

“—naked,” he said with another cough.

He wasn’t as confident in that answer.

Ahead of him, he saw the red light turn off as Ming shut down the video camera.

“Right,” she said, taking a step back and motioning for him to follow her back to camp. “I, uh, think that’s enough for today,” she said.

On second thought, maybe Zuko was doing better at interviewing than he expected.

Katara didn’t arrive back at camp for another half hour. Zuko could see where Chong pointed his camera at her, her hands moving widely as she spoke, though he couldn’t hear anything she said. He snuck glances at her, though, while he worked with his fire starter; contestants were allowed to bring one survival item with them, and Zuko had brought his spark rocks. It had been a prescient decision, in both his and Katara’s opinions, because there was precious little to burn as fuel in the desert.

Katara had brought a triangle-shaped ulu—also a smart choice, or at least it would be once they actually found some food to cut.

Eventually, Zuko got the fire going within the fire pit he had dug the previous night. Two cameras focused on him as he blew on it gently to help the embers grow as they burned the dead palm leaves. He tried to pretend the cameras weren’t there—it was only the second day, and the camera activity was certain to only get worse.

He was reminded of the time he had dislocated his shoulder during a high-altitude parachute jump, when he’d hit turbulent air after he threw himself out of the aircraft. He’d moved out in the correct position—spine taut, arching into the fall—but upon hitting rough air, his right arm had jerked violently backward with a sickening pop. His vision had actually gone white as he continued to free fall, the seconds ticking down like long days as he fought nausea. Then, after he pulled the ripcord with his left hand, pain as he’d never known shot up his neck alongside the chute that curled open above him.

But he’d landed on the ground alive, and he grit his teeth as he told his teammates he was good to go—it was just a shoulder, not something important like his trigger finger—and he pretended he was good until he believed it too.

Three hours later, surrounded by only the quiet noise of the jungle at night in their hideout, Zuko bit down hard on one of Takeru’s old gloves as Chan forced his arm back into its socket. Zuko knew how to live with discomfort; in fact, he was a pro. He didn’t make a single sound.

Unfortunately, the crewmembers next to him were making lots of unwelcome sounds. They weren’t talking to him, at least, but they sure were pressing a lot of buttons, and the clicking noises were already driving Zuko up a wall.

It hadn’t yet been 24 hours, but Agni did he miss walls.

“Oh, you got the fire going, amazing!” Katara exclaimed when she finally returned, her expression sunny and her cheeks bright—but that may have just been early signs of a sunburn.

The two of them were able to stave off dehydration by continuing to drink their boiled water, now cooled, and Katara left the camp to try to find some food.

Zuko, strangely, didn’t find that he was hungry. All he’d had was the dates from the night before, and a few dates again this morning, but his body wasn’t thinking about food.

It was thinking about how tired he was already.

Though he’d been able to sleep the night before, it certainly felt like he hadn’t. His muscles were aching from the strange position on the sand, and the sun was currently pounding down on him in a way that made him want to curl into a ball and drift away.

Probably not a wise thing to do, however.

Instead, Zuko stood and wiped the sand off his junk before he toed after Katara—and he actually toed, because the sand was hot as fuck and it felt like he was burning his skin off.

He found her—this time near Ming and her camera—holding a large rock high above her shoulder, as if she was poised to strike. Zuko, on instinct, took a step back—bizarrely, he thought Katara looked like she was competing in a test of strength, a chikaraishi in her arms.

Ming didn’t move or say a word as she filmed.

And then, Katara indeed struck. She threw the stone on the ground with a powerful grunt, and then she screamed. Zuko ran forward at this, determined to help her with whatever was wrong—but Katara simply screamed again and jumped into the air, and Zuko realized she was celebrating.

She turned toward him just as he opened his mouth to say something. Raising her fist in triumph, she shouted, “I caught us a snake to eat, motherfucker!”

Zuko picked up the crushed snake with a cactus log and delicately carried it back to their camp, Katara and Ming trailing behind him, the former regaling the latter with the story of the snake hunt, even though Ming had been right there.

As he and Katara roasted the snake over the fire, the crew left for the day—finished with work.

He and Katara, however, were already home, in the unforgiving desert.

And the second night seemed to grow even colder than the previous evening.

As they lay in their shallow shelter, Katara very reasonably—and horrifyingly—suggested that the two of them cuddle for warmth.

Well, she didn’t say “cuddle,” she said “share body heat,” but they both knew that she meant cuddling. And Zuko knew that it didn’t mean anything—he’d had to cuddle his fellow soldiers plenty of times in order to keep warm, and besides a few jokes, it was just accepted as a normal part of survival.

The soldiers were never completely naked, though.

And he’d never wanted to jump a squadmate’s bones.

Zuko didn’t even have the benefit of his burlap satchel, because the scratchy material was not comfortable for sleeping, or for anything beyond carrying the very little stuff they had, really.

At first, Katara pushed her backside against him, forcing him to be the big spoon—but that lasted approximately five seconds before Zuko—very tactfully, in his opinion—flipped over so that she had to spoon him. In explanation, he muttered something about physics and heat transfer and smaller bodies, all completely made up but hopefully sounding believable enough so that she didn’t catch the real reason he’d shifted position (his raging hard-on).

It was a small comfort to know that once he was fully starving, he likely wouldn’t have to worry about inappropriate erections, what with his body prioritizing the, you know, starvation. But as it was, the breakfast sandwich he had yesterday, and the nasty but filling strips of snake from earlier that day, weren’t too far in the rearview mirror.

He was also pretty sure he’d want Katara even if he was dying and she was covered in leeches or something.

Agni, he was such a pervert.

He prayed he wasn’t making her uncomfortable.

In fact, he continued to pray he wasn’t making her uncomfortable as the night continued and the temperature dropped, because there was nothing else to do and he could not, for the life of him, fall asleep.

The first night of rest must have been a fluke, somehow. The desert must have been lulling him into a false sense of security.

Lulling them into a false sense of security, because he soon realized Katara was also awake; he couldn’t hear the soft hum of her deep, slumbering breaths that had soothed him to sleep yesterday.

“Katara?” he whispered after a moment. “Are you awake?”

There was silence for a beat, and then in a small, stilted voice—as if she were trying not to move her mouth—Katara breathed out “Yes.”

“Are you…okay?”

“No,” came the reply in that same, strange voice. “There’s—something—leg.”

Oh.

“Shit,” Zuko breathed, now also trying to keep himself still, for Katara’s skin was barely inches from him. “What does it—do you know what it is?”

“Something—crawling.”

Zuko repressed a shudder. He hated bugs.

He tried to run through the small list of wildlife that he knew was in the desert. He’d never been to the desert before this death trip, but he’d seen nature shows and stuff. Insect-wise, he knew there were giant rhinoceros beetles, but besides that, he was running a blank. Maybe there were also little rhinoceros beetles. Maybe whatever was crawling on Katara was just a little rhinoceros beetle—

“Could you try—to get it—off?” came Katara’s voice in quiet pants.

Shit.

Zuko agreed wordlessly by slowly—steadily—lifting his torso from the sandy ground until his head brushed the palm leaves of their enclosure. The light of the full moon fell across Katara’s body in streaks due to the shade of the palms, and Zuko forced his eyes from her top half to focus on the smudge of darkness that was indeed slowly moving along her calf.

He sucked in a breath as he grabbed the rock he kept near his “bed” in case any—uh, giant rhinoceros beetles and other unknown things—snuck up on them in the night.

He’d just shoo whatever it was off her leg. The thing was small and dark—and most likely a little rhinoceros beetle, he thought, as he scooted himself in the sand and leaned toward the creepy crawly, arm outstretched to brush it away.

But at his movement, the little rhinoceros beetle lifted its very unlike-a-beetle tail.

Shit.

Suddenly, Zuko was all too aware of the not-actually-a-beetle-haha’s stripes, its iridescent wings, and the barbed tail that it was raising in warning.

That was a fucking scorpion bee.

Zuko wanted to be unfazed in the face of danger. Calm. Collected. Sexy.

He really meant to be.

But instead, he shrieked.

Fortunately, his scream made Katara and the scorpion bee flinch, and the thing rose away from her leg immediately, wings flapping indignantly.

“Get it!” Katara yelled, nearly shrieking herself as she snapped up, dislodging the palms. “The rock—the rock!”

Zuko did what he was told, lifting his rock as the scorpion bee buzzed around them, looking pretty angry.

Katara was also buzzing, scrambling around in the sand as Zuko raised the rock—was he just supposed to like, throw it?

So that’s what he did, a gentle toss toward the thing—

“Don’t SMASH it!” Katara shouted, no trace of her soft voice remaining.

Okay, he did know that she was an animal lover, but this was a scorpion bee—

“Then it’ll be harder to eat!”

Well.

Fortunately for Katara, the rock fabulously missed the bulk of the bug—though it did nick its wing, bringing the bee down to the sand.

As soon as it hit the ground, Katara was on it, putting it out of its misery (?) as her ulu quickly sliced the stinger off, separating the venom from the rest of the remains.

Katara was breathing heavily, and Zuko thought he could still hear the echoes of her shouts in his ears. Palm fronds surrounded them, their sad little structure having fallen in the fight with the scorpion bee.

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want the head or the abdomen? I’m good with either.”

Zuko hesitated. “You know, uh—you can have both. Just have both.”

Her eyes shot to his, a wild look in them. “Are you sure? Aren’t you hungry?”

Of course he was hungry. He was so hungry that he’d been fantasizing about eating the dried palm fronds above their shelter as he’d tried to sleep, no matter how scratchy they’d be going down. The brief moments earlier in the day when he’d thought he wasn’t hungry must have been delirium. But the very thought of eating a scorpion bee’s head made him want to retch.

He’d had to eat a lot of weird things in remote areas before…but he had never had to resort to eating bugs.

And as far as he was concerned, he never would. Death first, thank you.

Plus, maybe refusing to go halvsies on eating the bug would make him seem noble. Sexy, even.

“I’m sure,” he said. “It’s all yours. How are you going to—”

He was going to ask Katara how she was going to cook the thing, but she had already thrown it into her mouth and swallowed it whole before he could finish his question.

She sighed and then glanced back at him. “We’re sure I can’t eat the stinger, right?”

The scorpion bee mishap (or, their “unexpected windfall” according to Katara) was only the start of…a series of unfortunate events.

When they rose the next morning—it probably wouldn’t be fair or accurate to say “when they woke”—it was to discover that their little spring had fully dried up.

Zuko and Katara stared for several minutes at the empty bed where the spring had been, a silent vigil for a water source that had left the world too soon.

“I guess…we’ll have to move,” Zuko said finally, voicing the truth of the matter as if he were informing Katara of a death sentence.

Which it very well could be, all things considered.

“Right,” she said weakly, still gaping at the dry sand before them.

The camera crew had arrived not long before, silent and keeping out of sight for once. This time, it was easier to ignore them.

Zuko and Katara didn’t speak as they packed their bags, which took approximately 10 seconds, because they had about three items between them, not counting the portable video cameras they were supposed to use to document after-hours happenings.

Zuko hadn’t even pulled his out yet—the world would never know of their great battle with the scorpion bee.

And that’s how they left their first camp, their trench abandoned behind them and all the figs Katara could carry in her bag, the camera crew trailing them at a distance.

They walked without a clear destination in mind. The map the producers had given them was rather rudimentary, with clipart pictures showing wildlife locations and the former spring—no other water locations. There was, however, a poorly drawn picture of a canyon toward the west, and both Zuko and Katara thought that boded well for water and for shelter they didn’t have to dig themselves.

So west it was.

Chapter Text

Zuko’s feet were killing him. He’d brought his standard-issue hiking boots, but alas, they were with Jun at whatever cushy hotel the crew went back to at the end of each day.

Katara had, she’d told him, practiced walking barefoot on rocky beaches and slathered her feet in some sort of concoction for weeks beforehand to toughen them up. So, Katara barely seemed to notice how the sun beat down on the sand, turning it into hot coals.

Zuko, at least, was used to pain—even if he did, indeed, notice it.

And while Katara hadn’t been able to prepare for how the heat of the sun would affect her skin, her darker complexion meant that she wasn’t quickly turning the color of an overripe tomato, as was Zuko.

Zuko didn’t know how long they walked before they could see the canyons in the distance. The crew had stopped following them and instead set off a drone to tail them, taking video and flagging their location so it’d be easy to meet up with them the next day. (They had had hats and shoes, but the walk was still too much.)

Red- and taupe-colored rock formations towered above them, rising up from the sand like the sides of a chest.

The walk to the canyon had taken longer than expected—had taken, in fact, most of the daylight hours. But fortunately, it seemed as though they wouldn’t need to build shelter. Because the wide canyon spread out before them was littered with holes and crevices both small and large, including some that were clearly entrances to cold, dark caves.

It would be an early night for Zuko and Katara—if they were asleep, then they couldn’t think about hunger or exhaustion.

It didn’t take long to find their shelter for the night. Katara tossed pebbles inside each cave entrance or rock overhang they approached and waited to see if animals skittered out. Once, they were greeted with the flapping of wings as a cloud of flutter bats soared at them. In the second cave, no animals appeared, but Zuko pointed to large droppings on the floor that came from—well, something.

The third cave had a partial overhang and thus was only somewhat enclosed, the cavern opening soared above them for an admittedly beautiful view of the stars. Katara remarked that this cave may actually be cooler at night. And Zuko knew, too, that they could still build a fire here, and the smoke would easily dissipate out of their shelter.

It was the end of the third day. They’d made it for three days so far.

As they lay down, the canyon was still—nothing but the hiss of the wind curling through the tall rocks and the crackle of their dying fire.

Then, Zuko bolted upright before he even knew why. The silence had shattered, and a woman’s scream, thin and distant, carried on the wind.

The memories closed in—other nights, other screams—women wailing as they cradled people they couldn’t save, the sounds of their grief louder than the death throes around them—

He took a deep breath and tried to remember his practiced method of calming himself. It had just been a dream after all.

Still, the scream lingered in his ears, sharp and familiar.

Deep breath for four counts—hold for six—exhale for eight—

But his counting was interrupted, because he hadn’t been dreaming: The woman screamed again.

“Katara,” he said, and at once, his partner jolted awake. Katara grabbed her ulu and got to her feet immediately, scanning their surroundings for danger. Her eyes flashed in the dimming orange light of their fire’s embers.

“What happened—”

Before he could explain, the woman screamed again—closer.

“Oh no,” Katara said, and for some reason, quickly bent down to grab a fistful of sand.

“I—should we help her?” Zuko bit out, because Katara seemed like the kind of person who would not let a woman’s screaming go unanswered. And also because Zuko didn’t like the thought of something being out there hurting a person. If there was something out there on the hunt, he and Katara would likely be the next two caught in its sights.

But it was a mark of Katara’s generosity that she didn’t laugh at Zuko as her gaze cut to him, understanding in her eyes as she just slightly shook her head. “That’s not a woman, Zuko.”

“Huh?”

“That’s a pumayote.”

As if called by Katara speaking the name of its species, something growled outside their little canyon shelter.

A shadow shifted just beyond the glow of the fire. Zuko reached for a nearby rock, aware of the cold sweat on his hands and his desperate wish that he’d chosen to bring a machete rather than spark rocks.

But Katara didn’t hesitate—at once, she threw a handful of sand on the fire, and the flames responded, growing bright. She did it again, and again—her stance steady and rooted—as she kindled the fire enough to make the flames flare and leap, but not enough to smother them.

Then, it was quiet.

Eventually, the woman—the pumayote—screamed again, much farther in the distance.

The fire—Katara—had scared it away.

“Thank you,” Zuko said seriously. “If that had been just me—”

He had been alone many times before, deep in the woods or the mountains. Now, he often craved being alone. But usually, he wasn’t so helpless. He’d actually thought the cry of a dangerous wild animal was a person in need. And now—he was literally naked in unforgiving terrain that he knew almost nothing of—and while Katara had been there for him, he likely wouldn’t be able to protect the woman next to him if she needed it—

Katara, however, interrupted his spiraling.

“It wouldn’t have been just you, though,” she said with a crooked little grin as she sank back to the ground.

Her smile, once again, made Zuko’s stomach flip over.

And then Katara herself flipped over, and within a few minutes, he heard her deep and even breathing signal that she had fallen asleep.

A week passed strangely quickly. The days were long, given that they weren’t full of the minutia of day-to-day life like grocery shopping or avoiding trips to the dentist. Instead, each day was devoted to a single objective—well, two objectives—acquiring food and water.

Zuko knew from experience that the body could last for weeks without food, but water was different. Especially in the desert, he and Katara needed to regularly hydrate if they were to survive at all.

They’d found a spring nearby that only lasted for two days before it dried up just like their original spring. Then, they’d spent half a day squeezing water out of the few cacti they’d passed on their jaunt to the canyon, Katara filling a water pouch she’d quite expertly sewn from dried palm leaves. Zuko and Katara had been able to ration that water for a few days, and it was only when both the pot and the water pouch were dangerously close to empty that the two of them realized they were in trouble.

Katara had left that morning to try to find water, leaving Zuko to make cactus jerky for a feast later that night, a rather boring escapade for the crew to document.

They’d left as soon as Jun had pushed her clipboard into her bag and nodded at them, the crew wasting no time hurrying toward the nearby jeeps that would take them to cozy beds and blaring televisions.

But when Katara finally returned to their little home in the canyon, it was with a wide grin cutting through her dirty and harried face.

She sauntered into their rock shelter and tossed down her burlap bag with a sigh. She was, as always, completely naked, and it was funny to Zuko how now he was just…completely used to it.

Well, mostly completely used to it. Sometimes she would bend over just so, and—

But he was decidedly not being a pervert, so he wasn’t going to finish that thought.

“I found a wash,” Katara announced, with the air of someone sharing they’d won a Nobel Peace Prize. “Not too far from here, just a bit east and then down a slope.”

Zuko looked up from where he was trying to peel strips of cactus to dry in the sun.

“Oh?”

“I’m about to go check it out—but I wanted to grab the pot first. I’ve read that even if a wash looks dry, sometimes water is hiding behind rocks or crevices.”

They really, really needed water. After their second water source dried, they’d relied on the few drops of water Katara had in her handmade water pouch, rationing it with the smallest mouthful every few hours.

Zuko felt parched just thinking about it. But if they could fill the pot and the water pouch—

“Want me to come with?” Zuko asked. The sun was sinking, and soon it would be dark—and they’d agreed, albeit silently, that neither of them would venture out alone at night.

Katara, though, shook her head.

“Nah, I got it.” She raised the pot and then nodded at him and the cactus. “I’ll be back before nightfall. You take care of the feast.”

Zuko wanted to chuckle at how these meager pieces of cactus would be their dinner, but—it was going to be a much more substantial meal than anything they’d had in the past few days, hence calling it a feast.

Zuko was laying the pieces of cacti on a rock, ensuring there were no dangerous barbs or spines left in them, and positioning them to get maximum sun for the next hour or so, when a cool desert breeze curved around his face. It felt good in the heat of the early evening—though usually the temperature didn’t drop so much until the sun was fully down.

He squinted up at the sky, where the sun was still hovering above the horizon—though it was partially obscured by fat, gray clouds that were rapidly building along the canyon rim.

The wind was picking up, whistling through the canyon. He shuddered at the eerie noise, so loud against the silent desert. But the desert wasn’t usually so silent—and he clocked that he could no longer hear the usually ever-present cries of the buzzard wasps or hum of the scorpion bees.

Zuko became aware that he was leaving the rock shelter, that he was walking—heading east, where Katara said the wash was—the air growing colder and heavier around him.

He’d felt something like this once before.

He’d been deep in the jungles north of Shu Jing. That town’s famous waterfalls originated from rivers in the lush, remote valleys above it. And there, he and his team had felt the sudden stillness and the abrupt drop in temperature. One of the newer recruits hadn’t moved fast enough…

And then Zuko’s brain caught up to what his body already knew, and he was sprinting.

“Katara!” he shouted. “Katara! Get out of the wash!”

There was no reply.

He pushed himself, spotting a downward slope between two rocky outcroppings—likely what led to the wash. “Katara!” he yelled again, frantic.

“I’m here!” he heard her yell back, though her voice was far away. “You’ll never believe it, I did find water—!” She sounded pleased, and much too casual.

Zuko skidded in the sand as he reached the edge of the slope, a cloud of dust billowing around his legs as he came to a stop, his brain barely noticing that their pot lay discarded by his feet.

The slope below him was steep, but he paused only to get his bearings before he was sliding down the sand and stone to the canyon floor.

As he reached the bottom, Katara sauntered around a bend in the wash and raised her water pouch, tied to her bag, high. “I filled—” she started with a triumphant grin, but then she saw his face. Her smile died instantly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Katara—out—get out of here! Get out of the wash!” he shouted, gasping for breath from his sprint and pointing behind him at the slope he’d slid down.

Katara’s eyes narrowed, confused for just a moment. But his alarm must have allowed no hesitation, because then she was sprinting toward him and the exit, kicking up sand as she fled the wash.

And that’s when he heard it. He’d known he would, because of the gathering clouds, the sudden stillness of animals, the temperature drop.

A loud, rushing roar was building, gaining in volume.

Rather than running up the slope, he ran the last few steps to meet Katara, before he grabbed her arm and tugged her with him toward the canyon wall. Together, they climbed. Their feet scrambled in gravel. Their hands scraped on sandstone.

They didn’t talk, but Katara was panting heavily, panic overtaking her usually calm demeanor.

Finally, they reached the top of the slope, and Zuko helped Katara clamber over the edge, from which point she grabbed his arm and, with a little terrified shriek, pulled him up onto the sand with her.

Not a second later, the water came.

It charged through the wash, a dirty flood of rain, mud, and debris slamming into the sides of the canyon walls, rapidly climbing as it raced to fill any empty crevice it could find. Zuko watched as the water smashed a branch against the rocks, the wood cracking with a sound like an explosion.

Next to him, Katara whimpered, hugging her knees to her chest. Her eyes were wide, staring at the churning water below them.

They sat, just watching the flood rage, before Zuko broke their silence.

“I remembered what it felt like before a flash flood in the jungle,” he said softly. “I didn’t think a wash would be a good place to be.”

Katara was quiet for a beat before she nodded. “No, it wouldn’t be.” She bit her lip, eyes still wide and horrified as she turned her gaze to him. “Thank you,” she said finally.

Zuko shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “Hey, it’s not like you’re out here alone.”

Katara gave him the smallest of smiles. “Do you have your camera? We should probably record this,” she said, motioning toward the new river below them. “And I can give an account of your daring rescue,” she added with a stilted laugh.

It was obvious that she was still shaken up, but if pretending this was just good content for the episode would help her feel normal, he’d go along with it. So even though he wanted to hurl the damn camera into the flood, he dug it out of his bag and pressed record.

The next morning, Zuko awoke to a gunshot.

It was not the first time he’d awoken to gunfire. It wasn’t even the second. But it had been some time since it had happened.

And yet, as his nose filled with the acrid smell of gunpowder, his body knew to respond.

He could hear shouting around him as he shot up and forward, shifting into a crouching position as he opened his eyes to take in the scene around him.

He saw, with some initial confusion, a group of people with cameras around a car, and Katara—naked, per usual—standing a few paces in front of him, her hands on her hips as she surveyed the area.

He was, clearly, not in a combat zone. But the small wave of relief he felt at the realization was eclipsed by a growing pressure of anticipation and fear in his chest.

He tried to take a deep breath, but his heart was racing, and his lungs were constricted. He sputtered, and Katara whipped around.

He knew Katara—and was probably, after 16 days hungry, tired, and naked in the desert with her, completely in love with her. Regardless, her sudden movement had him rearing back to get away.

There was a beat before Zuko watched her features soften. “Zuko?” she asked in a whisper, taking a single, slow step toward him.

His vision tunneled in on her, but she seemed almost blurry. The sunlight behind her, though, was blinding.

He opened his mouth to speak—to tell her that he was clearly dying—but he couldn’t even form words, much less breathe.

He tried to move a hand to his chest, to his heart, but he couldn’t lift his arms. He couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t—

Katara was in front of him, slowly lowering herself to the ground. “You’re safe,” she said softly. “You’re in a—um—cave—with me, Katara. And it is safe here.”

Zuko’s vision focused on her blue eyes. His brain was fighting to be heard over everything, saying stuff like, “Yeah, I know,” and also “This is so embarrassing,” and “I’m okay, I know I’m okay,” but at the same time, “I am not okay.”

“It’s safe here. You’re safe,” she said again.

Zuko could feel the rocks puncturing his knees from where he kneeled on the cave floor. Sensation: that was a good sign, right?

Katara’s hands were on either side of his face. “Try to breathe with me, okay?”

She was taking deep, steady breaths, and Zuko attempted to mimic her, to take in air like she was doing—he watched her mouth open and close, and it was sort of like a meditation.

Feeling was coming back to his limbs. But the adrenaline seemed to be pouring down his torso and out of his legs, and it hurt.

He took a deep breath, the deepest one yet, and the corners of Katara’s mouth tilted upward—

“What do we have here?” Chong announced, his already loud voice echoing against the rocks. Jarring pain shot through Zuko’s forehead as Chong pointed a camera at him. Ming and Jun were close behind, Ming’s camera trained on where Katara’s hands were still lingering on Zuko’s face. Zuko thought he saw Ming’s hands working the switch to zoom in on the frame.

Shit.

Zuko’s lingering panic attack quickly transitioned into full-on nausea. This was—horrible. He had never felt more naked—and he’d been naked for the past two weeks—

Katara dropped her hands, but her eyes didn’t leave his. “Flamey-O Cereal,” she said immediately, her tone conversational. “Kids love their Flamey-O’s.”

And now he was having auditory hallucinations!

“Except when they’re drinking Catgatorade,” she added. “Don’t sweat it, drink Catgatorade.”

Zuko could not believe that of all the things to hallucinate involving Katara, it had to be commercials.

He took another deep breath, willing himself to snap out of it, but Jun’s sharp voice cut into the cave.

“I know what you’re doing, Katara,” she snarled. “Stop it.”

“Buy cactus juice!” Katara said, louder this time. “It’s the quenchiest!”

“Stop—"

And then, amazingly, Katara began to sing—a hit song that Zuko only recognized because Uncle loved to play it in the car whenever he and Zuko drove to the monthly day hikes they’d take together.

“Secret tunnel,” she sang, off-key. “Secret tunnel! Two lovers, forbidden from one another, a door divides their people! And a mountain then comes apart.” Katara took a deep breath, and then belted out: “Secret tunnel!”

“But those aren’t even the right lyrics,” Zuko heard Ming say sadly.

“Doesn’t. Matter,” he heard Jun bite out. And then to Katara: “Shut up, Katara, now—"

“Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel!” Katara continued, as if she hadn’t heard her. “Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel!”

Zuko thought there would have been more lyrics by now, but perhaps Katara didn’t know them—because he was pretty sure he was not actually hallucinating this, as strange as it was to have a naked girl gently serenading him with a chart-topping single.

“Fucking fine!” Jun yelled, and Zuko jumped—though, he was relieved to note, the action didn’t push him into a panic. “We’re leaving,” Jun snapped to the crew around her, before forcing Ming forward as if to emphasize her point. “That jeep better have been fixed—”

“It’s all good now, boss,” Zuko heard Chong reply, his voice growing distant as the group trudged away.

He and Katara were silent as they watched the production crew climb into their jeeps and turn the engines on. Zuko realized, with a fresh wave of embarrassment, that the sound he had heard earlier was not gunfire, but the noise of one of the jeeps backfiring. That the sharp, sour smell still lingering in the air, was that of gasoline, not gunpowder.

Zuko surprised himself by being the one to break the silence.

“So, Secret Tunnel?” he heard himself ask.

“I figured that song would have the most expensive royalties,” Katara said, turning her face back toward his. “That—and the ads—they were the only things I could think of to make their footage useless.”

As Katara gave him a little shrug, Zuko felt his small, bruised heart expand inside his chest.

Katara didn’t seem to notice the medical miracle occurring before her though, because she casually reached for his wrist. Zuko shivered as she dragged her cool fingers over his skin to find his pulse.

“You feel stable?”

“I’m—I’m good. I’m sorry, I don’t know what—”

Katara cut him off with an expression so disbelieving he found himself laughing.

“That’s better,” she said softly, her face melting into a smile.

Katara’s damn smile made his now-oversized heart flip over, and that extremely stupid image made Zuko laugh even harder—causing her smile to grow wider. She hadn’t let go of his wrist.

“My dad used to have panic attacks, after the war,” she said, once his laughter had waned. “They’re nothing to apologize for. You’re just so used to being brave that sometimes your body forgets you don’t always have to be.”

She was gazing at him intently. The hand that was on his wrist moved up his arm, and touched his collarbone, and Zuko felt his breath hitch for an entirely different reason. Then, Katara moved her hand just above his scar, and stroked his forehead, his hair.

“I—” he tried, not even knowing what he was going to try to say. Katara just greeted his speechlessness with soft, gentle touches.

He wasn’t panicking anymore. He knew that Katara knew that. And yet, in a voice as tender as her touch, she said: “You’re safe. You’re safe here with me. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter Text

They only had four days to go, and Zuko was uncertain how he was supposed to go back to his real life—his Katara-less life—once they finally left the desert.

Even though they were living in actual hell, Zuko…kind of liked his life at the moment. Yes, he was sunburnt beyond belief and so hungry he had considered eating sand the day before, but Katara’s quick thinking to keep the cameras off of him post-panic-attack made him even more grateful than her quick thinking that saved them from a pumayote.

It made him feel warm all over.

Shamefully, it even made his dick, lifeless for days due to starvation, twitch a little.

And ever since that unbelievable moment when she stroked his forehead and he could have died of dehydration and been happy…he had the sneaking suspicion that she liked being around him, too.

He couldn’t be certain. And in fact, he felt pretty stupid for even thinking it. There was optimism, sure, and then there was delusion.

Katara was probably just happy that he wasn’t a totally shit survival partner. Though, he couldn’t help but wonder if everyone pleased that their Naked and Afraid partner could tell direction by the stars would touch them as much as possible.

Zuko knew that it was probably just a cultural difference, or Katara’s personality, that made her touch his arm, or his leg, or his knee, or his face, every time she spoke to him. It did seem like Southern Water Tribe culture focused a great deal more on community than the other cultures he knew understood.

He hadn’t known many other people from the South Pole. But he couldn’t remember any of them stroking his hair as they discussed plans to ration their water. Not that he’d ever had discussions like that with people from the South Pole—

It could have also just been Katara’s personality. She was warm, inviting, and friendly. Sure, he didn’t see her ever stroke Chong’s or Ming’s hair, but that was different. Their hair was clean, and he and Katara were the same level of dirty.

At that thought, his dick twitched again.

“I found a new water source!” Katara announced happily, entering the rock overhang one afternoon after the crew had already left, holding her water pouch aloft. The water Katara had gathered from the wash was almost gone, and the water that was left behind from the flood was too soiled to drink.

“We can go back later and fill the pot,” she said. “There’s a whole grove of new cacti,” she added. “And they’re really beautiful too. All green, and red, and like, purple in a certain light, I think. I don’t know, you’ll have to see it yourself—”

Katara liked talking and sharing about the things she found while on her solo expeditions for water or food, but she was speaking quite rapidly, her sentences seeming to overlap. She turned toward Zuko, her signature smile on her face—though somehow, even bigger—and Zuko realized that her pupils were also, somehow, very large.

He licked his lips. “What did you say this cactus was? The same ones we got water from before?”

“Oh, noooo,” she said, shaking her head, the motions exaggerated. “These are different from those—those were less pretty—and the water of these—the pretty ones—are like, how do I say this—it’s like, quenchier.”

“Right,” Zuko said, starting to feel uneasy. “And did you—did you already try this new cactus water?”

“Duh!” Katara said, so loud it made Zuko jump, and her words echoed through the cave. This was apparently so funny to Katara that she was suddenly lost in peals of laughter.

“Oh La! “Duh,” “duh,” “duh,” “duh,”—tears formed in her eyes as she doubled over in giggles— “That’s so funny.”

“Can I see the new water?”

“Yes, have as much as you like!” Katara crowed as she bounced over to him. “I had a lot, but I filled up the pouch again so you could have a lot too!” She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly serious. “I really, really don’t want you to die.”

“Oh, um—thanks.”

“No, seriously. Do not. Die,” Katara said, lifting her arms onto Zuko’s shoulders. “I will be so pissed.”

Zuko managed a brief chuckle. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you out here alone—"

Katara squeezed his shoulders, hard.

“Hey!” he yelped, trying to step away from her, but her grip tightened and she merely came with him.

“Hey yourself!” she chastised. “That’s not why I don’t want you to die. I would be absolutely fine here on my own. Say it.”

“What?”

“Say I would be fine here on my own!”

“Of course you’d be fine here on your own—”

In an instant, Katara’s glare was replaced by something stricken. “No, I wouldn’t,” she whimpered.

“Katara—” Zuko said gently, still entirely unclear what was happening. “Of course you’d be able to survive—you’re strong, and super smart, and a total badass—”

Katara, however, merely sniffled. “I am all of those things,” she said pathetically, “But I wouldn’t be fine without you. Not here.” Katara’s hand moved up to her breast, covering her heart. “In my heart,” she whispered dramatically, as if that hadn’t been clear.

Zuko stared at her.

Katara was clearly high or something like it. Zuko wanted to take a look at this cactus water and see what was in it, because it was definitely something beyond water.

But he also couldn’t completely staunch the warm hope that was starting to kindle in his own heart.

“Your eyes are so golden,” she said softly, leaning forward and placing her hand on his scar. “Like the fire at night that keeps us warm.”

“Katara—” he said weakly.

“That’s what you are, to me,” she interrupted. “Something steady, and warm. Something I want to be near.”

“Katara—” he said again, his voice sounding broken to his ears.

He hadn’t known what he was about to say. Possibly something like “You don’t know what you’re saying,” or “What have you possibly been drinking?” or “I know it’s early, but I’m madly in love with you” or even “Every second I’m not inside you is actual torture.” But he was saved from deciding which response to land on, because Katara was suddenly moving away from him, her cool touch gone from his face.

He didn’t have the opportunity to mourn it, because the next thing he knew, Katara was on her hands and knees in front of him, puking all over the cave floor.

Katara threw up for what was probably 10 minutes, but it felt like hours.

It was actually really scary, because they didn’t have a great deal of other water, and that much vomiting could dehydrate her even more than she was probably dehydrated.

Zuko had briefly left Katara’s side to check her water pouch to be sure that whatever she’d gotten from the cactus was the culprit, and sure enough, it was not regular water. It shone almost yellow in the firelight. When Zuko shook it, the liquid sloshed somewhat viscous against the sides of the pouch, almost like juice.

Since knowing she drank something mysterious didn’t actually help anything, Zuko went back to Katara’s side, and brought the pot with its minuscule amount of water to her mouth. She groaned as he tilted her head back and made her swallow.

“Just a bit of water, okay? Got to keep you hydrated.”

“Can I just die, instead?” Katara moaned. Her pupils, at least, were no longer dilated.

“Nope,” Zuko said crisply. “No dying on my watch. Remember what you said about how you didn’t want me to die?” Zuko had said it lightly, joking. But Katara’s eyes snapped to his, panic shining in them.

“What? What did I say?”

Zuko’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Um—you just said—that you didn’t want me to die—”

Katara’s eyebrows flew upward.

He had been reading the signs wrong. She didn’t like him like that. She did want him to die.

“Did I say anything else?” Katara asked, her words somewhat clipped, as if she was trying her best to speak slowly.

Zuko chuckled mirthlessly. “Don’t worry, I won’t hold you to it. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Zuko,” Katara said, demand in her tone. “What did I say?”

“You said that you didn’t want me to die,” Zuko said lightly, as if it didn’t matter to him. “That you wouldn’t be fine without me,” he said, forcing himself to laugh again. Katara let out a sigh of relief, but Zuko kept talking. “Which is of course so not true.”

“What do you mean, ‘of course’?”

“You’re—you,” he said, waving a hand from where he squatted next to Katara.

“Okay,” Katara said slowly. “I’m also on the ground because I drank something I shouldn’t have and then threw my guts up for half an hour.”

“Yeah, well—”

“And you’re taking—you’re taking care of me. You’re making sure I have water. Keeping my head elevated,” she said. Her head was indeed propped up on their two burlap satchels.

“Of course I am,” Zuko muttered.

“So I don’t want to hear this ‘Of course you could survive without me,’” she said, her voice deepening several octaves as she mimicked him.

“That’s not what I sound like—”

She frowned at him. Her forehead was wet with sweat, so Zuko merely responded by pushing the water pot back up to her mouth so she could take another sip, which she did.

“I’m tired,” she announced after he pulled the water away from her mouth.

“So go to sleep.”

“I’m going to. But you should know that I’m annoyed about how clueless you are.”

“What?” Zuko asked defensively. But Katara’s eyes were already closed. “What?” he said again anyway.

If she was still awake, she was ignoring him.

When Zuko woke the next morning, Katara wasn’t there. He couldn’t even remember falling asleep, as he’d tried to stay awake to watch over Katara, but exhaustion must have won out in the night. Zuko sat up, stretching his neck, which throbbed painfully from the strange way he’d been lying on it.

“Katara?” he ventured, listening to his voice echo against the rock walls, which were shining with early morning light.

It must not have been too long after sunrise, so Katara probably ventured out to find food or water before the sun beat down too hard.

Zuko got up and went through the routine he’d developed over the past couple of weeks. He stoked the fire. He cleaned up their sleeping area. Katara had already buried her vomit, which was kind of her, and he felt a small surge of relief that she had felt well enough to do so.

Still, he could completely quash the unease from her disappearance. And then he chastised himself for thinking the word “disappearance.” She hadn’t disappeared—she’d just gone out on an errand and hadn’t wanted to wake him. He had never woken her, always preferring to let her get as much rest as possible. And since he usually got up before her, this was just a new experience for him. That was all.

He checked the newest stash of drying cactus jerky—from edible cactus—and gathered it up from its sunning rock so that he and Katara could have a meal later.

He imagined her pleased smile when she saw they’d have some food.

Then he imagined her at the bottom of a ditch, yelling for him where he couldn’t hear her.

He was just being paranoid. Living in the jungle with guerilla fighters out to kill you and your comrades would do that to a person. So Zuko just shook his head and went about slicing more cactus meat while the camera crew arrived for the day.

“Where’s Katara?” was how Chong greeted Zuko. What a dick.

“Out,” Zuko huffed.

Chong rolled his eyes and stomped away. “Don’t mind him,” Ming said, following behind him. “He’s just annoyed his crush isn’t reciprocated,” she snickered.

“Shut up!” Chong said from several paces away, immediately training his camera on a large rock as if it were particularly interesting.

Zuko stared at Ming. “Chong—likes Katara?”

Ming had the gall to snort at him. “You haven’t noticed his mooning?”

Yes, Zuko had noticed his mooning, but he had hoped no one else had noticed Chong’s mooning, especially if it helped them put Zuko’s mooning into perspective.

But the mention of Chong’s crush suddenly made it very real, and Zuko’s stomach began to sink. Yes, Ming had said his crush wasn’t reciprocated—but many people probably had crushes on Katara. Many people she knew in the real world, who weren’t traumatized one-time killers for the state and whom she had seen with actual clothes on.

Zuko just shrugged. “Whatever,” he said, averting his eyes.

“Oh, come on,” Ming said, pointing her camera at him. “Chong’s not a threat. We’ve all noticed your and Katara’s on-screen chemistry.”

“Please shut up,” Zuko said, crossing his arms and sighing. He knew he was sunburnt across his entire body, but he also knew that he was blushing.

“No, no,” said a new voice—Jun’s. The head producer strode in next to Ming, her clipboard hanging loosely at her side as she pointed at Ming’s camera. “Let’s get a comment on this.” She nodded at something behind Zuko, probably Chong with his own camera. Zuko didn’t deign to turn around.

“I’m not commenting on anything.”

“A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would suffice,” Jun said. “We have all noticed the chemistry, don’t be stupid. We watch hours and hours of footage of the two of you every day, and your constant pining is actually painful—"

Ming giggled, the fucking traitor.

“I don’t pine,” Zuko said, hearing the lie in his voice. “She’s not even—she’s not—” He was trying to say “She’s not even my type,” but his mouth clearly wasn’t going to be an accomplice to such a flagrant falsehood.

“Okay,” Jun said, looking again behind Zuko, her voice rising a bit, “Sounds like that’s a ‘no’ from Zuko on his romantic potential with Katara—”

Zuko was so focused on glaring at Jun and Ming that he hadn’t heard the shuffling in the sand, and the quiet whimpers behind him, until they were almost on top of him.

Zuko whipped around, where Katara was just a few strides away—where she was clearly limping into the clearing. Her face was scrunched up as if she were trying not to cry, but Zuko could hear her tiny sounds of distress, the way her panting breaths were coming closer and closer together.

Jun either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “And what do you think of Zuko, Katara?” Jun asked, her voice reaching beyond teasing into mocking. “Do you think there’s romantic potential there—”

But Katara interrupted Jun before she could finish her question. “I think—I think I need the medic,” she said, her voice weak. And then she collapsed into the sand.

Zuko might say what he will about Jun—and he was definitely going to say a lot about her—but she didn’t hesitate when Katara was in trouble. She yelled immediately for the on-call medic, an old man with a briefcase, presumably filled with medication and treatments, who wore a badge that said “MEDIC” in large characters. Zuko and Katara had not actually had to meet the medic yet, and the medic—who, by the looks of it, had been sitting in the jeep working on a sudoku puzzle—jumped in surprise at Jun’s shout.

Zuko witnessed all of this from Katara’s side, where he had run as soon as she went down, chastising himself for not catching her before her knees hit the sand. She’d probably have painful little rocks embedded in them.

His first thought was that the dehydration or the cactus juice toxins had caught up with Katara, but he couldn’t confirm because at this point she was full-on sobbing. A wave of panic overwhelmed Zuko, but the kind that forced him into action, not paralysis.

“Katara—Katara—it’s me—it’s Zuko—where does it hurt?”

But she just kept crying and shaking her head.

“Katara—please—tell me—”

The old man was still hobbling toward them, and Zuko was furious at his slow speed. He wanted to leap up and grab the guy’s briefcase, even though he knew it would be futile—he didn’t know how to use any of that stuff.

“Katara,” Zuko said pleadingly, grabbing her wrist. Her pulse was racing.

And then she kicked him.

“Ow!” It must be the cactus juice again. She had just made a whole speech about how he mattered to her—

She kicked him again, her foot connecting with his shin.

“Hey!” he yelped, though he didn’t let go of her hand, and he didn’t move back.

“My—” Katara breathed through her tears. It seemed like talking was taking a lot of energy. “Foot—you—dumbass—” she croaked.

Oh.

Zuko shifted down to her feet—to the leg she’d been limping on, right—and lifted the foot in question at the same time that the medic got to them. The old man started to lower himself to the ground, and then paused, seemingly deciding to just hover bent over in front of Katara’s foot.

Embedded in the arch of Katara’s foot—and surrounded by weeks of sand and blisters—was a long, thick, cactus spine.

“I found more cacti—the safe kind,” Katara whispered with a forced laugh.

“Safe,” Zuko repeated, moving his eyes from the horror of the spine in Katara’s foot to her eyes, which were shiny with tears.

“This is a serious puncture wound, young lady,” the medic said gravely. “I’m not sure I…I’m not sure—”

“I know,” Katara squeaked. “I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

Zuko’s dread was rising. “What do you mean you’re not sure?” he snapped at the medic. “Of course you can heal her, aren’t you a doctor?”

“Well—yes—but—”

“Zuko,” Katara said urgently, interrupting them. It still seemed like it hurt to talk, because she was clenching her jaw. “The new cactus grove is southwest of our cavern. It’s not far, but plan for at least half a day out there, just in case. You’ll walk for about an hour before you see a cavern formation that looks sort of like a dog.”

Zuko couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Katara, I’m not going anywhere when you’re hurt!”

She looked sadly at him. “I had a really nice time with you, Zuko, even though this experience sucked and I’m never doing it again.”

“Katara—what the fuck?” Why was she talking as if she was about to die? Yes, the wound looked scary as all hell, but there was a doctor right next to them!

“I know you can make it, even without me.” And then she was crying again, big ugly tears that he wasn’t sure were inspired by him or by the giant needle in her foot.

He gripped her hand tighter. “Katara, you’re being ridiculous, we’re still in this together—”

She took a deep breath. “We’re not,” she said with a little frown. And then, she shifted her gaze to somewhere behind Zuko. “Jun, I’m tapping out,” she said.

“I think that’s best,” the medic said. “I don’t recommend removal in the field—the spine is almost entirely through her foot.”

Jun sighed. “So disappointing, you were such good TV, Katara. All right, let’s move!” she shouted.

Two crew members whom Zuko had never seen before were running toward them with a stretcher. Zuko felt like he was watching the scene from above—there was surely no naked desert experience without Katara—what would even life be like without Katara? He couldn’t even conceptualize it, so he just sat there, unmoving, watching it all unfold—Katara being lifted onto the stretcher, Katara joking with the paramedics, Katara twisting her head to look back at him one last time as she mouthed, “Bye,” tears still streaming down her face.

He was still sitting in that same position in the sand when they loaded her into the jeep, and when he watched her wave goodbye, and when he turned his head to where Ming was still standing, her camera trained on his face. He must have looked as if he’d seen a ghost.

Jun was still there, too, blocking the sun as she stood next to him, writing furiously on her clipboard.

“Well Zuko, you’ve only got three more days out here, so it should be pretty easy. Usually we’d call in a replacement, but three days? You’ll be fine.” She looked up at him. “Sorry for teasing you earlier,” she said, her mouth falling into a thin line. Zuko got the distinct impression Jun didn’t apologize much. “Didn’t realize she was about to tap.”

Jun finished whatever she was writing and shoved her clipboard into her bag. “Let’s go, Ming, Chong,” she said with a sigh. Zuko, still on the ground, didn’t even realize Chong was still there. His camera was also focused on Zuko.

“I thought we could do an interview first,” Ming piped up, and Jun looked at her with an expression that clearly said, “Really?”

“Emotions are high, Jun,” she said, and the other woman shrugged. “Good luck,” she huffed. “I’ll be in the jeep.”

Chong followed behind her as Jun sauntered to the vehicle.

Instead of asking Zuko to look at her, Ming moved in front of him and pointed her camera downward. “All right!” she said, brightly. “So Katara’s tapped. Bummer. How are you feeling?”

Zuko looked up into the camera lens. He felt as if he were dreaming—as if the past half an hour hadn’t happened. Just last night, Katara had her hand on his scar. Just last night, she’d told him she hadn’t wanted him to die, which probably wasn’t the height of romance for most people, but it was for Zuko.

And now he was naked in the desert by himself without the only person that had made him want to stick it out from the very beginning.

And—he knew Katara had a lot of self-confidence—but he couldn’t forget the niggling feeling in the back of his head that one of the last things she’d heard from him was that he wasn’t romantically interested in her—and that was so far from the truth he wanted to scream.

“I’m feeling really bad,” he said honestly. “I feel—I feel like I’m naked and afraid in the Si Wong Desert.”

“Well, the second thing is the name of the show, so—not unexpected!” Ming said helpfully.

“Right,” he sighed. “But I actually feel that way.”

“What are you afraid of?” Ming asked. This was the longest solo interview Ming had tried for since their first disastrous interview. Usually they either interviewed Katara by herself or Zuko with Katara, mostly with a focus on Katara. Zuko had been fine with it—actually, he understood it. Unlike Katara, he was not “great TV.”

But for some reason, this time, the words came easily.

“I’m afraid of a lot of things,” he said slowly. “I’m afraid of not getting better. Of always having to be scared of loud noises and sudden movements. And I’m afraid of not being able to move on…from the things I’ve done.” He took a breath and watched the red light on the camera. “I’m afraid of letting my uncle down.”

Zuko was quiet for a moment, and Ming must have thought he was finished, because she started to ask another question.

“What—” Ming began, but Zuko began speaking at the same time.

“But mostly I’m afraid of…being afraid. Like, being too scared to let myself be okay, you know? Too afraid to let myself be…happy.”

“That’s…. very deep.”

“Not really,” Zuko said. He stood up and wiped the sand off his knees. Agni, he was sunburnt, and he must have lost at least 15 pounds in the past three weeks.

But he’d changed in other ways too. At least he thought he had.

“Yeah, I’m tapping,” he said, looking past Ming and her camera to the jeep where Jun and Chong were sharing a pair of earbuds and doing a coordinated dance to whatever they were listening to.

“What?” Ming gasped. “No—you can’t—we already lost Katara, Jun would be pissed—”

“Jun!” he yelled, but the producer didn’t look up. “JUN!” he yelled again, his voice reaching a level he hadn’t let it reach in years. It felt strangely encouraging to know that he could still shout.

Jun took the earbud out. “What?” she shouted back, annoyed.

He circled his mouth with his hands. “I’m tapping!” he yelled.

Even just saying those words felt good.

Jun didn’t say anything, just threw the earbud on the seat as she marched toward him, storms in her eyes. “Don’t fucking play with me, Zuko.”

“I’m not,” he said lightly, confidently. “I’m done. Can you take me to wherever you all took Katara, please?”

Jun closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was the first moment that Zuko had ever felt a sort of kinship with her. After apparently counting to five, Jun opened her eyes and said in a tight voice, “Would you please reconsider, Zuko? We have just three more days, and I think you were doing really well—”

“I’m not continuing without Katara.”

Jun took another deep breath. “Katara is impressive, yes, but you’ll be fine without her, we actually had you rated higher than her in terms of survival skills, at least at first—"

“She is impressive,” Zuko agreed. “And I’m in love with her, so could you please take me to her?”

Ming dropped her camera.

“Ming!” Jun shrieked, as the girl quickly scooped up the expensive piece of equipment.

“Sorry, sorry! It’s fine!” Ming yelped, jamming buttons to get the thing recording again.

Jun turned back to Zuko, opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

“By all means, keep recording me playing in the sand and eating cactus for the next few days—unless you’d like to get me professing my love to my injured partner on camera?”

Jun stared at him.

Zuko stared back.

Jun broke the silence. “You heard him,” Jun said quickly to Ming, motioning excitedly to the jeep. “Let’s go—let’s go!”

Jun ran forward, shouting at Chong to get out and clean up the site. “We’ll come back for you soon!” she yelled as she dove into the driver’s seat.

“What?” said Chong helplessly, climbing out from the jeep, one earbud dangly loosely from his ear.

“Make sure the fire’s out,” Zuko said helpfully as he clambered into the backseat. “Do you have my clothes?” he asked Jun.

“Chong!” Jun yelled, which was rather unnecessary as he was standing right next to her. “Give Zuko your clothes!”

Well.

“That won’t be—that won’t be necessary—”

But Chong was already taking off his shirt. He threw it to Zuko through the open frame of the jeep and then started on his pants. The guy was apparently way more comfortable with nudity than Zuko had initially been.

“How long do I have?” Chong asked. “I wanna try this cactus juice.”

“Knock yourself out,” Jun said, buckling her seatbelt. She made eye contact with Zuko in the rearview mirror as he pulled on Chong’s shirt. The fabric of a t-shirt felt strange on his skin. He started tugging on Chong’s pants.

Jun didn’t say anything—she just nodded at his reflection in the mirror before slamming her foot on the gas. The jeep’s tires screeched, sand rising up behind them in clouds that stung Zuko’s eyes as the vehicle peeled away from the canyon, a waving, naked Chong behind them.

Zuko was leaving the desert.