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It was late in the evening—after the two had stopped to camp for the night—that Zuko realized that Katara was nowhere to be found. Although she had yet to forgive him, he knew her brother would kill him if he didn't look out for her. Katara had not spoken to him since their encounter with Yon Rha, and, with a heavy sigh, he stood and dusted himself off to go find her. Raindrops fell in heavy rhythm against the tarped enclosure he and Katara had pitched earlier, in complete silence.
Zuko walked around for a half hour before he finally found her at the cove. As they had searched for a place to camp, she had spotted it off the horizon and steered Appa's reins toward it. After scaling the small cliffside, Zuko sat himself on a large rock, allowing the unrelenting, torrential rain to soak him. She reveled in her element, starting and stopping the droplets around her, and it surprised him that such aggression could accompany such graceful movements. Katara seized the water and morphed them into sharp daggers. She threw them at the cliff slide, the icy weapons hitting notches in the wood like arrows meeting their targets. The firebender made sure to be there when she collapsed into the sand. Her knelt, sobbing form nestling deeply into his waiting arms.
Not a protest was to be had from her as Zuko proceeded to rub circles into the small of her back. He figured his attempts at comfort were at least somewhat successful as her sobs subsided. This closure, the banished prince thought, had been a long time coming. Although she would likely never acknowledge this moment to anyone but themselves, he was thankful to have been the one to help her in her darkest hour.
