Rainbow's Gift (Avatar The Last Airbender Fanfic)

59. The Good Old Times

I ran into the garden's shadows and stopped once I had reached a nearby cherry blossom tree. "Ah, Taliya!" I heard Zuko's exasperated voice, leading me to have a giggling fit. Once I listened to his footsteps, I managed to calm down and continued to run from tree to tree. I could still hear Zuko's footsteps behind me. I sighed. He could never keep quiet. He was horrible at stealth.

I ran as quickly as I could away from him to find myself in a part of the palace gardens I had never been in before. It was beautiful, with a small patch of fire lilies around a giant oak tree. There was a pond beside the tree with a family of turtle ducks swimming in the water. I quickly knelt and plucked a flower.

"Wow, this place is beautiful," I said, not realizing Zuko was standing behind me.

"Yeah, it is." He said, and I jumped.

"You scared me!" I shouted in an accusing tone. Instead of him getting annoyed as usual, he sat down beside me and watched the turtle ducks. I watched him before asking,

"I'm guessing you know this place. How come you've never brought me here?" I asked. His eyes never left the turtle ducks as he answered,

"This was my mom's favorite place in the whole palace." I gasped. He had never talked about his mom to me, so I was pretty surprised he mentioned her.

"We can leave...."I started to stand up.

"No." He grabbed my hand and pulled me back down. "My mom and I used to sit here to talk while feeding the turtle ducks." He said.

I didn't know what to say, so I joked," So you do care about animals." Zuko, finally looking at me, glared before slightly shoving me.

"You're never serious."

I shoved him back."Well, you're too serious." We laughed at that. I looked at Zuko, whose gaze went back to the turtle ducks. "Your mom was an amazing person, wasn't she?"I asked.

"Yeah, she was."

After a few minutes of silence, when I realized my friend wasn't going to say anything else, I stood up. " We need to feed the turtle ducks. Mama turtle duck is eyeing us." I helped Zuko stand and then looked at the turtle ducks. "Nope, I was wrong. She's eyeing you. What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" He said, getting all defensive. I laughed as I started to skip away from him.

"Wait!" He said as he grabbed my shoulder to stop me. "Uh...thank you." He said as he put a hand on the back of his neck. I eyed him.

"For what?"

"Being my friend." He said with a slight blush making me laugh.

"You're welcome. AIfI wweren'tyour friend, you'd probably be friends with Azula's burnt dolls." I said ,then immediately took off.

"We said we would never talk about that again!" He said as he ran after me. I laughed as I ran, almost stumbling.........

••••••••\\\\\\\\\\••••••••••••\\\\\\\\\••••••••••••

I woke up immediately to find myself on Appa's saddle. I scowled. Why was I dreaming about him? "You okay?" Sokka asked, looking at me ias worriedas he always did nowadays. I nodded. I tried to keep my anger in control. I had been dreaming about Zuko for three nights  almost making me ffull-blowngrey again. I didn't want to think about him and what he did to me.

"I think I see a cave below., Aang said, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Shh! Keep quiet!" Sokka said, louder than Aang. Aang immediately let go of our cloud disguise, making Sokka more paranoid. He had been painfully annoying ever since we started flying into the Fire Nation. Appa landed on the ground ,and Sokka leaped off and hid hehind a rock." Great job with the cloud camo ,but next time ,let's disguise ourselves as the kind of cloud that knows how to keep its mouth shut."