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Healing Touch	By : Omnicat Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Het - Male/Female Views: 8030 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Healing Touch
- 1
Healing Touch
It was hopeless. The damage, she could feel so much damage, it just wouldn’t end.
"This isn’t good." she heard a small calm, detached part of herself say, while the rest tried frantically to make sense of the mess of fractures and ruptures and swelling that she felt in Jet’s chest. It wouldn’t even stop bleeding and shifting.
"You guys go and find Appa, we’ll take care of Jet." Smellerbee said.
"We’re not going to leave you!"
"There’s no time. Just go." a voice suddenly said, and everyone looked to Longshot in surprise. "We’ll take care of him. He’s our leader."
"Don’t worry Katara. I’ll be fine." Jet somehow managed to say, and smiled that infuriating smile that never failed to make her believe him.
But even as she stood up and bended her water back into her pouch, the threat of the Dai Le and Appa’s continued absence waging war against her concern for Jet, she knew he was lying. All that tissue, crushed, bruised, torn - if he didn’t get help immediately, he would die, and it wouldn’t be slow and painful.
She could feel Aang tugging at her sleeve, urging her to come with him, Sokka and Toph - they needed to leave, now, or they’d meet the same fate and they’d never find Appa - and she could feel the ghost of Jet’s hands on her shoulders, squeezing reassuringly, his arm tightly and securely around her as they ascended to the treetops, his callousness and blind hatred breaking her heart. It wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense. It never had, no matter how hard she’d tried to sort it out.
He was going to die here if she left now, die because he couldn’t let go of his hatred and he tried to help them, and she’d never find out what part of it had been the real Jet and what part had been caused by the wounds in his soul left by the Fire Nation.
"Katara, come on!" Aang urged.
He’d die.
"No." she heard herself say. "I will never turn my back on someone who needs me."
She whipped around to face her friends. "You guys go find Appa without me. He has to be down here somewhere, and after all the trouble we’ve caused Long Feng, it won’t be safe for him anymore." Sokka and Aang stared at her, reluctance written across their faces, and even Toph’s unseeing eyes were turned in her direction. "Go! We’ll find each other again later. You’ll have a ten ton flying bison. He’s hard to miss."
"But what about you?" Sokka looked at her like he thought she’d gone crazy, his hands halfway between tearing his hair out and shaking her shoulders.
"We can’t lose you too, Katara." The pain on Aang’s face almost broke her resolve. But she only had to look down at the pain on Jet’s to find it back.
"I’ll have Longshot and Smellerbee to watch my back. Right?" She looked over her shoulder; Smellerbee nodded, looking frantic with hope. "Good." Uncorking her water-skin and kneeling down, Katara focused all her attention inwards, into her own reserves of strength and into Jet’s failing ones. She unfastened his shirt and pushed away the straps and strings holding his armour together with clinical movements. "Now get moving and don’t bother me while I’m trying to work."
Tuning out all else, Katara sent her consciousness deep into the cells of Jet’s body, called upon the things Yugoda had taught her about the human body in the healing huts of the North Pole, tried, with her water, to feel the remnants of the natural flow of blood and energy in his skin, muscles, organs, to enhance what was failing and reconnect what had been broken. She didn’t notice Longshot stopping Sokka from dragging he away, a desperate, pleading look on his normally stoic face, didn’t notice Aang’s frustrated shout as they left, didn’t notice the silent exchange between Jet, Longshot and Smellerbee, or the latter two’s departure in opposite directions.
Handfuls of water went into the job, two at the time, and when her pouch was empty she drew moisture straight from one of the drainage canals running along the sides of the room. As long as she had water to guide and fuel it, her healing energy could reach every part of Jet’s body and use his own regenerative abilities to restore the damage. There would be scarring, stiffness and heightened sensitivity, but as troublesome as old wounds could be, at least they weren’t lethal.
Sweat trickled down the sides of Katara’s face and her breath was laboured. For what seemed like hours now, the majority of her efforts had gone into focusing, searching, piecing together bone shards and shapeless globs of flesh, trying to find the right slot for everything that had shifted so violently. Once she’d managed that, the actual healing came easy, almost as natural as breathing. But as she worked longer, it began to take more and more effort, and by the time she got to mending the large fragments of his ribs and breastbone she’d saved for last, she couldn’t do it anymore. The tissue wouldn’t budge. She barely had enough energy left to make sure everything was in place, if not secured, before withdrawing.
Suddenly she became aware of the sharp pain in her knees, the chill that had settled in her legs. She let herself fall to the side and leaned on one elbow as she pulled her legs out from under her by hand, too numb to move them on their own after sitting still for so long.
Grimacing as the circulation returned to her feet and calves with a horrible tingling feeling, she looked Jet over. "Don’t move." she warned. "I healed as much as I could, but if you move now you could hurt yourself again."
Jet’s face was ghastly pale and his eyes had a wild, haunted look. Katara realised uncomfortably that if he had screamed or writhed while she worked, she hadn’t noticed.
"That was -" His voice cracked. He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed thickly. "Spirits, please don’t ever do that to me again unless I’m on the brink of death again."
"Did I hurt you?" she asked, crawling closer to him.
"It wasn’t... pain, but... - things - moving -" A violent shudder ran though him, his face contorted in pain, and then suddenly he grinned tightly. "But at least now it only hurts when I breathe!"
Katara practically fell over from relief. She wiped her forehead with a shaking hand and decided it was no use trying again until she’d regained some of her strength. Sitting back with her stiff, tingling legs stretched out in front of her, she looked around the cavernous room they were in.
Longshot and Smellerbee were nowhere to be seen, but neither were any Dai Li, and the only sound was her and Jet’s laboured breathing and the steady rush of water over rock. She could only assume the Freedom Fighters had taken up guard outside and were waiting for her to come out and either declare their leader dead, or present him as good as new.
Her gaze drifted from the rock protruding from the floor. As good as new would be too much to ask, though...
Her entire body ached from the exertion and a dull pain in her skull throbbed in sync with a heartbeat that was not her own. And if she didn’t at least manage to fuse the shattered bones back together enough to prevent them from shifting, one wrong move could unto all her work thus far.
"Try to keep your breath even, Jet, and whatever you do, don’t try to move." She looked back down at where he lay, prone and still in front of her, a mere shell of the confident, charismatic guy she knew. "What happened? You were in really bad shape."
"Long Feng. He tried to turn me against Aang with one of his brainwashing tricks, but Aang managed to stop him - stop me. So I turned around to attack Long Feng instead, and Long Feng defended himself by bending a pillar of rock into my gut." He tilted his head to the side. "My swords should be here somewhere."
"They are. I see them." One stuck straight from the opposite wall. "You’re lucky that rock hit your ribs. It may hurt now, but if it had been a little lower, it might have gone straight through you."
"Gee, thanks for letting me know." Jet said with a wince. He looked back at her. "How am I going to get out of here if I can’t move?"
Katara nodded and took a deep breath. "I’ll give it another go. I already healed the soft tissue and the organs that were damaged, as well as most of the smaller bone fragments. Now it’s just a matter of fusing the bigger bones back together, bandaging it tightly and getting a lot of rest." She managed a wry grin. "You won’t be using those swords for a while, I’m afraid."
She drew water to her and coated her hands with it. Before she could touch his chest, one of Jet’s own, cold hands caught her wrist, and the moment their eyes met he held those too, as firmly as he could muster.
"Thank you, Katara. I - I don’t deserve this."
A smirk popped up out of nowhere. "Too right you don’t. But I never turn my back on people who need me. And I believe that every person deserves at least one second chance, even if they’ve destroyed villages and harassed innocent people. Like you. And the Fire Nation."
It was a challenge, and he knew it.
And he took it.
"That sounds like it would make a good new motto for the Freedom Fighters." he said with a bashful smile.
Katara liked that smile, the sincerity in it. She smiled back and set to work.
Stretching her consciousness from her own body, through the water filled with glowing blue energy, into his. Down through his skin, the layers of tender, newly restored tissue, into the bones. And then it was all in the push and pull that governed the ocean: pulling energy from reserves deep inside her own body and pushing it into his, to the marrow of his bones. Pulling the energy of Jet’s body to where she needed it, through the damaged areas, where it left its own natural healing mark, and pushing it through her own limbs, ready to use it to gather more of her own energy and start the tide anew. But the bone was denser than the soft tissue had been and absorbed energy like a sponge, burning it up without showing much progress in return. It was like seeing through a gauzy veil or hearing through a pillow clamped over your ears, and it was hard, so hard...
She collapsed almost before realising it. Gasping for air from pure shock, she gathered water for a check-up.
"Oh no..." she groaned upon ‘seeing’ the result.
"Katara, are you okay?" Jet asked worriedly.
It’s not working. A flash of panic shot through Katara. I’m not strong enough.
Should she just give up on trying to heal him further? Should they try to get him out of here as he was now? This place was awfully big, and that ladder would be a nightmare. Not to mention smuggling him through the streets of Ba Sing Se. She had no doubt the Freedom Fighters could secure a safe place to keep him hidden while he recuperated, but dragging a badly injured man who could barely stand on his own two feet such a distance was asking for trouble.
"I just need more water." Katara said fiercely, daring the world to prove her wrong. With a swoop of her arm Jet’s entire torso was suddenly encased in liquid. She set to work again, but even with all that water it was no use.
When the water was spent, only a faction of the crack she’d been working on had healed. If she went on like this, she would exhaust them both, and then they’d be even worse off.
"Katara?" His hand found hers again.
"It’s not working." she admitted, only barely able to meet his eyes.
Something hard came over his features. "Katara, if anything happens, I want you, Longshot and Smellerbee to leave without me."
"What? No way!" Katara exclaimed. "I’ve put too much effort into healing you to give up now."
"I came down here to help you and Aang rescue Appa, not to be rescued myself. I won’t let the Avatar find back one companion only to lose another."
"What I do is my decision, my responsibility, not yours!" she countered, but Jet went on: "And I promised Longshot and Smellerbee that we’d start over here in Ba Sing Se. After everything I did and made them do, a second chance with a clean slate is the least I owe them. But a second chance to live, not a second chance to fight themselves to death."
"A second chance to survive losing everything they care about, you mean?"
Jet stared at her in wide-eyed shock, blinked several times in rapid succession, then looked away. His voice was bitter. "They’ll get over it. They’ll realise I was never worthy mourning soon enough."
The air left Katara as if she’d been punched in the gut. "You’ve really changed, haven’t you?" she realised. "You meant what you said back in the city."
"I haven’t changed." he said with a smile so humorless it seemed to suck external humor right from the air. "I just realized the truth after that day with the dam."
Had that been her doing? For a moment Katara could only stare. Jet was undeniably handsome, but hatred and loathing didn’t suit him. (Nor did looking like a living corpse, but hey, better than being a corpse.) Then, what he had said slowly began to sink in, and determination filled Katara, along with a measure of relief and an almost ecstatic, tingling warmth.
"If that’s the case," she said, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders, "there’s more than enough reason to keep you alive."
Jet’s eyes snapped to her, wide with shock. Katara had to bite back a triumphant grin.
"You have too much to make up for to die just yet, Jet. Think of all the good things someone like you could do! Taking that away from the world now that you’ve finally found the right path would be worse than anything you’ve done wrong in the past."
Again he stared at her, disbelief and protest clear in his eyes.
Eventually his jaw set as he shook it all off. "We’re wasting time. The Dai Li are all around us, they could come storming in any minute now. Unless you can think of a way to mend my ribs fast, I’ll just have to risk a punctured lung on the way out. It’s up to you, Katara."
His eyes bore right into hers. The intensity in them awoke butterflies in her stomach she had tried to stab and burn to death for a long time, and almost as if the memory had been waiting for this moment, she recalled a conversation with Yugoda, one she had been trying to forget with almost equal vervour.
All the other girls had already left after their lesson in the healing hut, but Yugoda had asked her to stay because she was older than the others. Now, at fourteen, she was still a girl, but in a few years time she would be a woman, able to bear children. And to a waterbender with inborn healing abilities such as herself, the step into adulthood would also bring a peculiar new way of using her powers.
Back then, Katara had thought it best not to tell the woman that she was unusually early with this*: her first bleeding had occurred not three months before Aang came along, and she was having a hard enough time keeping it hidden from her male traveling companions as it was. Now she wished she’d been less prude (she had helped deliver babies, for crying out loud!), because if this way of healing was really as extraordinary as Yugoda had made it out to be, it might be the best way available to her to heal Jet.
Katara took a deep breath, closed her eyes tightly, and willed herself not to blush. "I know of only one other way to heal you. It involves channeling the energies generated during sex away from creating life in a woman’s body and into healing."
There was silence.
A long, long silence.
"Are you saying..." Jet eventually croaked, his voice several octaves higher than usual.
"Healing you with sex. Yes."
"Oh spirits, take me now."
Katara’s eyes bulged.
"No, not like that!" He tried to wave his hands defensively, but cringed and had to put his balled fists back down.
Jet looked like he very much wanted to run away. Jet looked like Katara felt.
"I can’t make you do that!" he said desperately.
And because Katara knew that Jet, king of smooth talkers, most certainly could make a girl do that, in even worse ways than he was actually implying, she exploded with anger.
And she was glad for it.
"Damnit, Jet, I told you, what I do is up to me to decide, not you!" Still talking, so as not to give doubt or propriety a chance to intervene, she began undoing the sash that held her dress together. "Besides, the sex probably doesn’t even have to be together. All Yugoda said was that sexual arousal generates enough energy to produce life when brought to fertile ground, like sparks can cause a fire in a pit full of dried seal blubber. There’s no rule that says the arousal has to come from two sides."
That thought made her shiver, just as the flap of her dress fell to the side to reveal her chest bindings.
"An adult healer and someone having an orgasm, that’s all that’s needed. And I happen to be able to provide both all by myself." She shot him a pointed look as she knelt, with her legs spread, facing away from him, and stuck her hand inside her tight leggings with more bravado than she felt. "You might want to look away if you’re so concerned about my decency."
Then she closed her eyes and forced herself to focus on nothing but her own body, on the fingers playing along the folds of her womanhood and circling around her clitoris.
She could do this. She’d masturbated in the presence of others plenty of times before. That was another hing she was unusually early with, or so Gran-Gran had told her when she first started doing it and rubbed herself with the heel of her foot or a rolled up bedroll without realising what it was she did. But Southern Water Tribe huts had only one room and no privacy to speak of, so Katara had quickly learned to either wait until everyone was outside, to go outside herself and do it far enough away that no-one saw or heard her, or to be silent, keep her breathing calm and even and use muscle contractions rather than movement to help her reach a climax.
If she could work around the sleeping Sokka and Gran-Gran - and even while pretending to be asleep on Appa - an immobilized Jet behind her should be no problem.
Toph had been a bit of a problem; this was the first time she’d touched herself since the addition of the hypersensitive little earthbender. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that the unusually strong arousal she felt wasn’t the result of having been unable to relieve her needs since Toph’s arrival.
It was Jet. She couldn’t get him out of her mind. She tried to imagine being back home, among the ice, with Sokka and Gran-Gran sleeping where Jet was, but her family members were asexual beings in her mind, things that repelled arousing thoughts like waterproof tarp repelled rain, and Jet was anything but.
Her back and behind tingled, she had to fight the urge to turn around and see if he was looking at her.
She moved her fingers across the juncture of her legs expertly, lightly caressing her outer labia with her index and pinkie fingers, drawing blood into them with the tantalizing ministrations until her entire pubic region throbbed with anticipation. Keeping her thumb out of the way, her remaining fingers explored the folds and crevices lining her center, occasionally rubbing along the sides of her clitoris and digging ever deeper as she became wetter and the pleasure began to build.
Her doubts evaporating, her imagination provided ghost-like images and sensations of things that did not really happen: Jet, sitting on his knees in front of her, watching her, or pressing up against her back, his arms around her, fingers trailing along her sides and up her legs, his lips in her neck, on her mouth...
One finger easily slipped inside her slick opening, followed by a second without meeting any resistance. She began to rock back and forth on her hand, intensely aware of Jet’s presence behind her.
Was he watching? Did he need to see it to be aroused by it?
She imagined feeling his hands on her body, inside her loosened dress, she wanted to feel his hands there, undoing her chest bindings, touching her bare breasts, his hand slipping inside her leggings along with her own, stroking her buttocks and moving in and out of her, with his fingers, with his cock. Katara inserted a third finger, sped up the pace, arched her back, and despite the instinctual urge to be silent, her panting breaths began to form small whimpers.
The squelching sounds of her fingers filling and emptying her slick, dripping hole seemed to become deafening, Jet’s physical presence unbearable. She brought her other hand between her legs as well, desperately groping for the tiny nub of her clitoris, and then she let out a cry, wild and inarticulate -
- and Katara gathered water to her, freed her hands and threw every bit of ecstacy coursing through her into the wound.
It was like diving headfirst into a sand dune. The shock of the suddenly blocked energy paths sent her reeling back, tears forming in her eyes. She sat hunched over, leaning on her hands for support, for a long while, trying to regain her bearings.
"I was wrong." she said eventually, her voice small. "It does need to be a joined effort."
"Katara, you don’t have to do this." Jet said. "I can -"
He tried to sit up, but fell back with a harsh cry caught between his teeth.
"Don’t move!" Katara repeated, leaning over him worriedly. The pain on his face chased away all the doubt lingering inside her, and she reached out to him. Her fingers were still covered in sticky vaginal fluids, so she used the back of her hand to stroke his cheek.
His eyes opened, just barely. "I don’t have to. But I want to." Despite the pain, his eyes widened.
"Katara..."
"Please, Jet, I don’t want to have to leave you here to die."
They stared into each other’s eyes fo a moment, she pleading and he searching. Then he nodded. She smiled.
"Don’t worry, you don’t have to perform in the state you’re in." she said as she stood up. "Your hand will be enough."
"But you said it had to be a joined effort."
Katara pulled her leggings down to her ankles, stepped out of them, and then, after one last moment of hesitation, pulled at a few key knots in her loincloth and began unwrapping it.
"The healer who told me about this technique said that the first time she did this, it was with another woman." Gran-Gran, to be exact. But she’d rather not stop to think about that. "Their hands were the only thing they could use, and it worked out fine." she explained gently, placing the cloth aside and kneeling down. "Can you move your arm?"
He could, though only painstakingly. She wondered how much of the faces he made was physical discomfort, and how much mental.
"Good."
She shifted somewhat to accommodate him and took his wrist. "You need to be able to fit your whole hand against me comfortably. Tell me when that’s the case, alright?"
Jet nodded, apparently not trusting his vocal chords with a girl’s crotch wriggling in his hand.
"Back." he barked hoarsely. "Left - stop."
"Okay." Katara could barely find the air to speak. Jet’s hand wasn’t warm by any means, but his touch burned. Her heartbeat sped up just looking at him, at how they were connected, and it didn’t beat in her chest alone. "Now do what you can. Try not to hurt yourself."
Jet’s eyes went wide with panic. "But I don’t know what to do!"
"You - you’ve never done this before?"
"Not with someone else! You don’t have a - a -"
"Okay, okay, I get it." Katara said quickly. The feel of his trembling hand, down there, was making her insanely, absurdly, criminally giddy; she found herself almost giggling. Good grief, all the chi she had used up healing Jet must have come from her head. "Just... tickle me."
His gaze traveled south, he swallowed - and his fingers started dancing like a spider on cactus juice.
Katara yelped. "Not like that!", and he stopped immediately.
"Gently," she panted, squeezing her eyes shut. "More gently. Like petting. Try it like... petting and curling your fingers at the same time."
Hesitantly, Jet did as instructed.
"Yes, like that." Katara confirmed, arching into the fumbling touch. "Now more firmly. And try following the contours of my body."
His fingers were stiff, heavy and clumsy, but Katara was more aroused than she had ever thought possible. Even the slightest touch left her craving more. The blunt fingertips prodded and stroked at random, grazing her clitoris or the moist edges of her entrance every now and then purely by accident.
"Ngh, do that again - what you just did. That felt good." she urged, and let out a throaty moan when he hit the spot again. "Yessss..."
A rhythm was forming, his touch and her sighs, friction and pleasure following in increasingly suiting succession.
"Jet, I want you inside me. Can you do that?" Two of his fingers curled, and he pushed upwards, and she could feel the first digits penetrate her. "Yes, like that. Now deeper."
"I - I can’t reach. Move closer."
She scooted closer, felt him sink deeper into her - his hands were bigger than hers, she realised excitedly, and started rocking back and forth.
"Like that. Keep that up if you can."
It felt absurdly good, and only a distant awareness of urgency kept her from wishing it would never end. Hearing Jet pant, Katara opened her eyes. Blood was returning to his face - but that wasn’t the only place it was going.
He wanted her. Even wounded, his body reacted to her, to the things he was helping her do. And hey, if his body could take and do this much, why not go all the way?
With barely a hitch in the rolling of her hips, Katara bent her upper body and began pulling at Jet’s belt with an outstretched arm. He didn’t protest.
His half-hard member looked odd, like a wilting flower. Surely she could water it for him, she thought, more eager and amused than she knew she logically should be, but beyond caring.
"What do I do with it?"
"Just pull." he said. Even though he was breathing as calmly and evenly as she could have hoped for, he sounded breathless. "Push and pull. Up and down, very carefully."
Closing her fingers around the fleshy protrusion, she moved as instructed, gently but firmly. For a moment, it twitched, and she could feel it growing harder and warmer in her hand as she pumped. Jet’s breathing stayed even, just as she’d instructed, but he began muttering obscenities with each exhalation. When she felt he could harden no further, Katara ceased the rocking of her hips, extracted herself from his fingers carefully, as not to jar his arm and shoulder, and gingerly crawled across his hips until she was straddling him.
"Don’t move." she warned again, taking his erection in one hand and raising herself over him, braced with the other hand underneath his arm. "Try to stay as still as you can and let me handle this."
And then she guided the head of his cock to her opening, wriggled it into her a hair’s breath at a time, and once she was sure he’d fit and go in the right direction, rested all her weight onto him at once.
All she could think then was Spirits that was a cruel thing to say.
Jet’s mouth was open, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, but he hadn’t made a sound or moved an inch. It felt like he filled every last inch of her. She was almost uncomfortably full, and yet it was so good she ached for more.
Resting her hands on his protruding hipbones to keep the both of them steady, she lifted herself up. He was in the way of muscles that used to do that job for her: she felt them clench around his hard length as her legs began to tremble. She barely managed to heft her weight off of him before collapsing, right back onto his cock, which hit a spot deep inside her that made her see stars.
Do that again, she thought. And she did.
With many shoves and jerks, she managed to find a sustainable rhythm that wouldn’t jar Jet’s injured ribcage too much. His hands wrapped around her wrists as if he, too, needed something to keep him steady. His breath stayed admirably even, but he threw his head from side to side, his face contorted, and guttural moans and grunts escaped from his throat.
Katara wasn’t much better off as she moved against him, around him, into him. Her breath gained a keening quality and grew more and more like weeping cries as the tension inside her built, growing tighter and more demanding, until she could give no more, take no more, and she tore one hand from Jet’s grip and crushed her clitoris between two fingers. Her back arched, her legs cramped, her toes curled and the world went blank with release.
She screamed, and without even thinking about it, the blue glow of healing surrounded her, spread to Jet, enveloped them both in bliss and blindness.
Katara fell forward, barely capable of thought anymore, and suddenly Jet’s arms were around her back and behind, and he was bucking his hips and pushing him down against him. The pleasure and friction was maddening, it felt like she was exploding, again and again and again, her mind swept away in the crashing tides of ecstacy, until he jerked and lay still, and she knew no more.
When she came to, she was laying on her back with Jet leaning over her.
"It worked?" she rasped.
"It worked." he confirmed with a smile, leaned down, and kissed her.
Katara’s eyes fluttered closed, but strength seemed to return to her drained body. "What was that for?" she asked when he pulled away.
He laughed and scooted over so she could sit up. "That’s what I should have started with before having sex with you!"
Katara laughed back. For a while they only sat there, tired, sweaty and half dressed while reality slowly came back to them.
"We should get going. The others must be worrying themselves sick." Katara said eventually.
"Good thing I trained my Freedom Fighters so well, huh? Anyone else would have come barging in on us by now."
"Can you stand?"
"Can you?"
She answered his smirk with one of her own. "I am a master waterbender. A little healing sex isn’t going to keep me down!"
And she stood on wobbly legs and went looking for her underwear.
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Healing Touch