A/N: We added a couple of lines to the previous chapter because several people felt Aang was too OOC. He was, but we kind of intended it that way. He's under a lot of stress, poor kid. Anyway, it's not crucial at all that you reread chapter one, but in case you'd like to you might find it ever-so-slightly different from the first time you read it.
Thanks !
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Chapter 2
He crept silently into his room at the inn, slightly amused that he had to enter through the window when he'd paid for a week's stay.
It was late. Or early, however one wanted to look at it. He would sleep most of the day and then leave when the crowds at the market slowed to a trickle.
He placed his swords on the floor by his bed, within easy reach. He pulled off the dark clothing he wore, wrapped it around the mask and stuffed it all under a table in the corner.
He washed his face and fell back onto the futon, his eyes closed. Very slowly the tension began to leave his body. If only his thoughts would settle, he might be able to sleep.
Unbidden the veiled woman came into his mind along with the burn victim who he had so desperately hoped and equally desperately feared would be his mother. The woman dressed as the Painted Lady from the old children's stories seemed to have healed the burned woman. He wasn't positive about that, but the story he'd heard about the accident at the plant had told of burns over eighty-five percent of the woman's body. The patient being tended by the healer had some burns on her arms but nothing more that he could see.
And if the Painted Lady was healing the woman, was she then a water bender? His exhausted body wanted to sleep but his mind wanted to figure out the mystery.
He'd tracked Ursa to this small town and the trail had suddenly gone cold. There were those who had seen her, or someone who looked just like her, but nobody had seen her in a couple of weeks. That was not surprising in this town however as people would go for month long periods at the incinerators, sleeping in a dingy barracks between shifts.
So it had been entirely possible that the victim could have been Ursa. But it hadn't been. And even as disgusted as he was at the thought of his mother working manual labor, he simply wanted to find her at this point. To see her again and ask her why.
He had followed the veiled woman because she intrigued him. She had been stupid enough to walk by herself through the town and into the forest and he thought he'd see what would happen. Naturally a gang of pigs from the plant accosted her. He had expected that too.
The thought had crossed his mind immediately that she could be the avatar's water bender. Katara. And if she were the one playing the Painted Lady then the avatar would have to be nearby. He'd wanted to follow her just to see. Just in case.
He had begun to doubt his theory however that she was the same person who had been one of the banes of his existence for the past many months when she stood frozen in fear, face to face with the pigs. She had not attempted to fight and while she may have been hiding her bending, the avatar's companion had a quick temper and would have taken the pigs out swiftly, of that Zuko had little doubt. And he was fairly certain she had not been aware of him following her, so she'd had nothing to fear by taking out her attackers and leaving them to tell the preposterous tale.
She had been almost pretty enough to be the water bender. What he'd seen of her face anyway.
The prince rubbed his temples. He was going to have to go back to the palace soon. He had told his father he was going away to make sure the rest of the avatar's entourage hadn't been behind several of the stories they'd heard lately of upstarts and sabotage. He was never able to lie, but his father had made no objection. And maybe it wasn't a lie. If he should come across the avatar's group while he searched for his mother then that would just be a bonus, wouldn't it?
Now that Zuko thought about it, he wondered if he was going to get some kind of nasty surprise when he got back to the capitol. He had found that his sister was plotting against him as usual. It would be a great victory over her if he should return with the avatar's traveling companions along with the avatar himself. Or proof of the enemy's death.
He shrugged off such thoughts. It was unlikely that the Painted Lady was the obnoxious water bender. And if he confronted her and she wasn't, she would probably run and the people of the town would lose a valuable healer in the process. Iroh had once told him of Northern Water Tribe healers and how they were all women and they didn't fight. Could such a woman have ended up in the Fire Nation?
He would know for certain if he followed her again a few times. She couldn't hide her identity forever.
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As Katara dipped her fingers into the red paint she thought about her mission. She would go to the infirmary that tended the victims of accidents at the incinerators. Many of the burns might have already started to heal into scars, but she could lessen the pain at least.
"Katara," Aang's whispered voice came from behind, startling her into bending some of the paint from her bowl and threatening him with it.
"Don't sneak up on me like that." She breathed irritably.
"I need to tell you something." He said looking at the ground.
"First, I need to tell you thanks for not telling Sokka. He would have had Toph bend me into the ground and then made me sleep like that all night." She said.
"Well, there was a lot of talk in the village about the Painted Lady healing a woman who was badly injured. But Sokka wasn't there to hear it."
"Is that why you went to the village alone earlier? Because you knew they'd be talking about it?" She asked, even more gratitude washing over her.
"Yeah. I didn't want Sokka to hear the Painted Lady gossip. He will though." Aang warned her.
"I know. But we'll move on by then." She shrugged.
"I'm glad you healed her." Aang said quietly.
Katara looked over at him and smiled.
"I know you are. I knew even when you were scolding me." She went back to her face decorating.
"I'm not going to stop you from going out anymore, but I'm going to go with you to protect you." He declared.
"And how would you protect me except by bending? If you had fire bending that would be one thing, but as it is, anything you do is going to give you away as an enemy." She said sensibly.
"Same with you." He argued.
"But if they catch me, as if they could, it's no big thing. If they catch you… well, everything's over." She looked down at him with an almost stern expression.
"I can't let you go by yourself." His voice was taking a belligerent tone, which was not typically a good way to get Katara to agree with something.
"Aang, I will not have you coming along. If I wake Sokka he won't let me go, and there are people with burns who need me. But if I have to wake him up and sacrifice the mission myself to keep you from going, I'll do it." She explained, matching his belligerence and making good sense at the same time.
Aang thought about it for a long moment while Katara went back to her face painting. He watched her miserably wishing he had healing abilities too. At least then he could be of some use on her mission. She was right, though. If he needed to protect her all he could do was bend and any form of bending he could do would be total exposure as an enemy to the Fire Nation. And Sokka would not let her go to the people who had been hurt if she made good on her threat and woke him up. So he was going to have to give in.
The most he could do was tell her the truth so she would be as cautious as he needed her to be.
"When you and Sokka were sick that time," He began what seemed to Katara like a non-sequitor, "When I had to get you to suck on frogs…"
"Yech! Why'd you have to remind me?" She grimaced.
"It took me so long to get back because I got captured by Zhao." Aang admitted quietly.
Katara turned to look at him, the expression on her face at once unbelieving and horrified.
"Why didn't you tell us?" She asked.
"Because I was rescued." He continued, his voice still subdued. "By the Blue Spirit."
"You've seen him!" She almost cried out, but then whispered enthusiastically. "See! He is on our side. He helped me and he rescued you!"
"No!" Aang cut her off, holding his hand up. "He wasn't rescuing me to send me on my way. He rescued me so he could take me prisoner himself."
"What?" Her painted brow furrowed.
"It was Zuko."
Katara took a step back, her decorated face frozen in shock.
"Why didn't you tell us?" She asked, realizing it was a little late to be hurt by his omission but feeling the emotion just the same.
"Because I escaped him. It didn't matter. The whole thing was depressing and I didn't want to talk about it." Aang rattled off the reasons but the last one was the only one that rang of truth.
"It's not him." Katara said confidently.
"You can't know that." Aang replied.
"Why in the world would he be here? Why would he have helped me? Zuko only helps someone if he has an ulterior motive, like rescuing you only to take you prisoner himself. The Blue Spirit was telling me to run. He had to have known he'd be tied up with those guys long enough to keep him from following me."
"Maybe…"
"No. Why would he leave the palace? Who would even let him? No, this is someone using the persona, I'm sure of it." She nodded.
"What if it's not?" Aang asked thinking she was probably right but worrying nevertheless.
"I'll be careful. I can handle Zuko." She said ominously.
Then she quickly grinned and kissed him on the forehead before turning away.
Aang watched her walk off through the forest, a blush still staining his cheeks. He would try to stay awake until she returned.
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Zuko crept across the underside of the bridge that would take him to the huge infirmary that held the patients who'd been injured at the incinerator. He was sure the Painted Lady would be here tonight. The village had been alive with gossip about the healing nocturnal spirit. The victim from yesterday was recovering now without a single burn to show for her horrible injury.
The infirmary held long-term patients with severe burns. The woman from yesterday had been expected to die by morning and so she'd been taken to her home for her comfort.
As he approached the square block building he saw a flash off white in the distance. As it grew closer he saw it was indeed the person he'd been waiting for and he made his way over, hiding himself behind rocks and sparse foliage. She never looked up at him, so engrossed was she in finding a way into the building.
He found himself drawn to her. Something about the veil and the mystery of it was … enticing. He stopped himself as he realized he was walking openly toward her. He ducked behind a boulder and watched as she climbed a vine covered trellis on the side of the building and disappeared into the window.
Obviously not the avatar's water bender he decided. She would have raised herself to the window with a column of water rather than awkwardly climbing a potentially rotten trellis. Especially in that incredibly impractical getup she was wearing.
He sighed, shaking his head, and followed her.
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Zuko silently thanked her for wearing the long veil when he saw the tail end of it twitch around the corner, alerting him to her direction. He ran down the hallway, his feet making no sound at all on the tiled floors. He saw her enter a room and crept after her.
Looking in he was appalled to see at least fifteen beds crowded into one room. Workers, people, with varying levels of injury lay hopelessly on the low beds. They made not one sound when they saw the Painted Lady enter the room. Had they known of her healing last night? Had they known she could help them and was here to do that? Had they somehow expected her?
He watched her go from bed to bed, tending each and every patient. It wasn't difficult for him to hide. There was hardly any light in the room and shadows were dark and more than big enough to disappear into.
Some of the people simply sighed and slept when she finished with them, their scars marking them for eternity, but their pain relieved by her touch. Definitely a water bender but only for healing, he was sure of it. Some people's burns were fresh enough that she was able to make all trace of them disappear. He wondered silently what would have happened if she'd been around after his fateful Agni Kai with his father. He probably would have attacked her he smirked.
Once she had finished with the last patient in the room she hurried out the door. He followed. She was down the hall in a flash and disappearing into another room when he heard the guards coming down the corridor, laughing and talking loudly, ignoring the fact that the patients needed rest.
Zuko positioned himself just inside the door. Again, there were only a couple of candles in the room so shadows were abundant. He watched the woman work. These people were more severely burned and the injuries were new. He wondered if there had been another accident so soon on the heals of the last one. He was determined to buy her the time she needed to finish.
He crept back into the hall, climbed up a pitted block wall and clung to two beams on the ceiling. He waited.
"If you really want to see something gross, you should look in here. Fresh broiled." One of them disgustingly laughed as they strode cockily through the hall toward the room where the Painted Lady had met her biggest challenge of the night.
Just as they passed beneath his perch, he dropped onto their heads, using the handles of his swords to render them unconscious. They clattered noisily to the floor and he leapt toward the door where the healing was taking place. The veiled woman was looking up, wide-eyed and he was struck once again by her beauty. Odd, he realized, since he couldn't clearly see her face, but he was certain she was just as pretty as the avatar's water bender, if not more so. He motioned for her to hurry and took a ready stance at the door.
They were not interrupted again, which Zuko found strange since he was still kicking himself for causing such a commotion. Obviously the night shift was sparsely manned. After all, the threat of a patient uprising was quite slim when most of them were in such agonizing pain they wept over the act of drawing breath.
He turned to observe her progress and she was already coming toward him. He jerked his head at the hallway and led the way to an inner stairwell. He'd been here a few times already on his nightly searches and knew the most invisible passages to aid their escape.
The inner route led to another corridor, which held the offices of the administrators of the infirmary. It was here they might encounter guards, he thought. This was where the money was kept. And as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he heard the telltale sound of steel re-enforced boots striking the stone floor.
Zuko hurried the veiled woman down the passageway to another door. He pushed it hard and a burst of acrid air from the standing vents just outside the building hit them hard. He nudged her through first and then followed, walking backward to make sure he saw when the guard would discover them.
At her sudden cry, he turned and saw that a huge, hairy, ape of a Fire Nation soldier had grabbed her. The soldier must have been one of the few who were in such bad grace with the military that they'd been assigned this, the worst duty in the nation. He stank of ale and onions. He was probably outside the building relieving himself, or trying to shirk his duties elsewhere, but their problem was that he was there, not why that was so.
The veiled woman struggled, stomping on the steel toes of the military man's boots and then grimacing in pain. She was trying to pull her arms inward across her body and Zuko wondered if she was going to bend her healing water. Maybe she could fight after all? She would expose herself if she did and then everyone else in the infirmary that she hadn't been able to heal tonight would have to suffer.
He drew his swords. The door behind him opened and the guard stepped out.
"Well, what have we got here? It's not the solstice. What's with the costumes?" Came a gruff voice from the doorway.
Zuko's swords came to life in his hands and he quickly freed her by using the flat of his blade on the soldier's elbow. He motioned as he had last night for her to run before he lit into the soldier, turning their positions so the lout stood between him and the guard. She hesitated just a moment, watching him. To be certain he could handle it? That he wouldn't need healing at some point? He used his sword to make a definitive gesture for her to run as he took out the soldier by shoving the hilt into his opponent's soft abdomen.
She ran. In a different direction from the one she'd run last night, he noticed out of the corner of his eye.
It took him a few more minutes to finish off the guard who had not been overindulging that night, and who knew a few blocks to use against the swords. He ended up sweeping the heavier man's legs out from under him and the guard fell heavily on his back with a clang when his head hit the inside of his helmet. Afterward Zuko looked around to see if he could catch a glimpse of the veil in the moonlight.
She was gone. Disappeared once more into the forest.
He would see her again the next night, he promised himself as he made his way wearily back to the inn. He would find out who she was.
Either that or she was going to get him killed.
