Every muscle in Haru's body felt torn, and every bone felt broken. The pain in his joints was like broken glass ground into the sockets, and his flesh felt like one gigantic bruise. Even before he was fully awake, he was aware of the pounding headache that beat a deep bass between his temples. A moan escaped him and he tried to sit up. To punish him for this temerity of motion, the drummer in his head beat a rising crescendo that struck him dumb and deaf with agony. His entire body was an orchestra composed of demons manically working their instruments in a symphony of pain. He fell back and devoted all of his attention to the simple task of breathing. "Am I dead?"

He felt something cool press against his forehead, and the sensation was soothing. "No, you aren't dead, young man, but it doesn't seem to be from a lack of effort on your part. Lie still: your fever is just breaking now."

It had been a woman's voice that spoke, but Haru was hard pressed to determine whether the voice belonged to a mortal human or the ghost of a half-remembered fever dream. He moaned again as his mind protested the strain of reason, and all coherent thoughts scattered like birds at the sound of a thrown rock as he plummeted once more into oblivion.

He could not have said how long he lay there, or indeed where "there" was. Time did not begin to exist for him as anything more than a theoretical abstract of which he had no more than the vaguest recollection until he felt sunlight touch his face. There was a healing property of sunlight, or else the sporots had decided that Haru's soul was not worth collecting at the present, for it was not until that morning that Haru opened his eyes at last and beheld the world around him with the eyes of a dead man blessed with an unexpected resurrection.

He was in a small room , with bleached walls and a thatched roof. The bed on which he now reposed and previously languished was a simple wooden cot of the type used in healers' domiciles across the Earth Kingdom. On a wicker nightstand beside him was a copper pitcher containing water, which Haru seized with eager hands and devoured with the thirst of one returned from a desert grave. The liquid was room temerature and had the metallic tast that city water often did, but its potability was not for one moment in doubt, and it felt to Haru like the balm of the gods. He swished it around in his mouth for a moment, allowing the parched tissue to absord the lifegiving water, then swallowed.

Or, tried to swallow, in any case.

The water seemed too much for his abused throat, and he gaged, coughing up the water all over his sheets. He fell back as agony gripped him once more, squeezing his eyes shut at the pain. His throat blazed with thirst. Hunger gnawed at him, and he noticed for the first time that his hands had begun to shake.

The door at the far end of the room opened and a young woman entered. Upon seeing that her charge had awoken, she brushed a strand of brown hair away from her face and turned her head over her shoulder. "Mistress Kue Lin, the earthbender is awake."

From somewhere beyond the door, Haru heard another female voice reply, and he recognized it as the voice from his dreams. He could not discern the words but, given his present state of mind, he was proud of his capability to identify the room's newest occupant as a living woman, rather than one of the cackling devils wreathed with flame that had haunted his nightmares.

The young woman shut the door behind her and walked over to the bed. She was a year or so younger than Haru and she walked with a slight limp. Her robes whispered as she sat on the stool beside his bed and placed a new pitcher of water on the table. She produced a white cloth and dipped it into the water. "Lay back," she instructed, and lowered a corner of the rag to Haru's lips. He was quick to grasp the girl's intent, and he sucked the moisture from the rag, savoring the moisture that balmed the arid tissues of his mouth and throat. When the rag was dry, she remoistened it and repeated the process. This went on for several minutes, until Haru's disued throat was loose enough to take small sips from an earthen cup.

"Easy," the girl advised him. "Easy. Don't drink too fast. You're in Ba Sing Se, and there is plenty of water. My name is Song. I'm an apprentice to Kue Lin. We are healers."

Neither name meant anything to Haru, but be was too enraptured by the feeling of water sliding down his dry gullet to press for details. He took another drink and said nothing. The girl held the cup for him, and his throat soon became loose enough for him to take larger gulps. He devoured the water, cup after cup, and even licked the some of the residue from the girl's fingers.

Song giggled. "Easy there! You'll drink up all the water in the city if you continue like this. Drink slowly." She brushed a strand of Haru's hair back from his forehead. "Are you a soldier?"

Haru smiled, barely noticing the pain in his cracked lips so great was the ecstasy of his rehydration. His voice was hoarse and cracked, but the pain was receding. "Nothing so exciting. I'm a coal miner." Concious that the price the Fire Nation had put on his head might be enough to tempt even the citizens of Ba Sing Se, he fished around his mind for a false name. "My name is Lee."

The corner of Song's mouth twitched, and Haru sensed that he had lost some of the girl's good will. "Is it now? There seem to be a lot of Lees running around the Earth Kingdom, getting into trouble."

"Pardon?"

Song shook her head. "I apologize. Pay me no mind: your name is your own business."

The door opened once more to admit a middle aged woman in a blue robe. She had the hair and copper complexion of a Water Tribe woman, though the chestnut in her hair was yielding to the gray. She was trim, and there was something stately about her, despite her plain clothes. The sole concession that she made to the land of her ancestry was the blue theme in the otherwise Earth Kingdom cut of her robes.

Song bowed to the woman. "Mistress Kue Lin."

Kue Lin smiled and returned the bow. "Song. How is our guest faring?"

Song indicated the empty pitcher of water. "His name is Lee, and he's suffering an acute dehydration. His fever has broken, and he seems lucid enough. I have not yet inspected his wounds."

"Doubtless they are unchanged from last night." Kue Lin moved toward the bed and Song vacated the stool for her and stood to the side. Kue Lin sat by Haru's bed and looked into his eyes. He felt the uncomfortable sensation that she could see right through his skull and into the thoughts beyond. Her gaze, though, was not unkind. It was not the gaze of a judge who condemned: it was the gaze of a woman healer who saw afflictions that she wanted to heal. "You say that your name is Lee?"

Like Song, Haru could tell that Kue Lin did not believe him, but would not press his story. "Yes. I'm a coal miner from the western provinces." That last part was true, from a technical standpoint.

"Well, you get in a fair amount of trouble for a coal miner. Song, if you please?"

Song bowed and pulled Haru's blanket back. Beneath it, he wore only his green leggings, and his torso was wrapped with linen bandages. Song unwound the bandages with car and revealed a large, star shaped burn of layered red and yellow scar tissue flecked with dark brown scabs stretched from his sternum to the middle of his ribcage. The flesh was the angry, shiny hue of new skin, and Haru saw that the burn was quite close to his heart. Smalled burns and welts covered the rest of his torso and arms, most of which he could not recall sustaining.

Kue Lin leaned over Haru, inspecting his burns. Several areas of his large wound were still open, with cracked skin showing the wet red beneath. Haru's eyes widened in suprise at the wound. Until that moment, he had not noticed the pain. Now that he turned his mind to it, though, he could still feel the ghostly echos of the fires that had seared his flesh.

"You heal well," Kue Lin observed as Song prepared a poultice. "It seems that you've had a bit of a spat with some firebenders. You were almost dead when we found you."

"You found me? You brought me here?"

Kue Lin nodded. "Song was out shopping when she came upon you in an alley. From what witnesses told her, and I later, you came flying out of a solid wall and demolshed a poor man's cart. You were only semi-concious, and you were raving about some firebenders and your father, babbling nonesense. You seemed quite distressed, and you wouldn't let anyone near you. After drifting in and out of conciousness a few times, you fell down and didn't get up. Song, dear, add a bit more water to that and it will grind easier for you. Excuse me, Honorable Lee. After you passed out, we had a few men from the market carry you back here, and here you have lain for seven days."

The length of time startled him. "Seven days? I haven't moved for seven days?" He tried to sit up, but a starburst of pain that began in his chest and jolted through the rest of his body like fire forced him down again.

"Easy, young man. You're still hurt." Kue Lin waited until Haru no longer showed any signs of trying to rise before she continued. "No, you have not been moved, except by us to change your bandages and prevent you from getting bed sores, for seven days. Song fed you by dribbling honey and tea into your mouth, but you would not have lasted much longer. We used poultices to keep the infection at bay. Song, would you fetch that syrup?" Kue Lin smiled at him. "Song made this syrup herself. It should be finished settling by now, but we couldn't give it to you while you slept."

Song returned with a dark glass bottle in hand, and she measured out a dose into a spoon. She knelt by Haru's bed and began to lift the medicine to his lips. Determined to reclaim at least a shred of his dignity, Haru assured her that he was capable of feeding himself, took the spoon from her and administered the tonic himself.

He tried and failed to keep his expression nuetral as the bitter taste of the root joined hands with the tang of alcohol to wage war on his tongue. Never before had he tasted anything quite so bitter, and the astringent after taste that lingered in his mouth was almost as bad as the thick syrup itself. He tried to supress an exclaimation of disgust, but was unable to maintain a demeanor of perfect stoicism. "Ugh."

His discomfort showed, and Song began to giggle. Kue Lin could not repress a smile, and she soon began to chuckle as well. Haru like to think that he was a big enough man to admit defeat, so he donated to the moment a bemused smile at his own discomfort, prompting Song and Kue Lin to laugh all the harder. While it did not seem all that funny to Haru, whose tongue continued to be haunted by the ghost of the syrup, laughter was a contagious condition, and he soon found himself laughing along with them.

The laughter provided an undeniable relief to him. He had stood at the gates of death, looked into the eyes of oblivion, and had been prepared to walk into that endless void with a determined spirit, but had been pulled back from the brink at the last possible moment. The shadow of death had lingered upon him and, though he had inherited his father's earthly practicality, the few remaining bastions of superstition in his mind could not help but wonder if his spirit had not resided in the realm of the dead for a short while. Now he realized that he was indeed among the living, and the realization lifted from his heart the irons that weighed it down. He seized the water cup and gulped it down, as much to relish the sensation as to wash away the horrid taste of the medicine. This caused Song and Kue Lin to redouble their laughter. As healers in a time of war, they were too used to watching young men die.

Haru place the cup aside, the water tasting like wine. He just lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and marveling at the fact that he was alive. In an instant, the room became the most wonderful manor in which he had ever passed a night, Song became the most stunningly beautiful woman he had ever seen, the bed was the softest on which he had ever reposed. To his consternation, the medicine tasted no better.

After a moment, when the euphoria of not being dead wore off, he turned to face Kue Lin. "Are there any other earthbenders here? I was seperated from my friends, but I saw the gates open for them."

Kue Lin looked at him askance. "The gates, you say? You saw them open."

"Yes, well I--" he paused. Had he seen the gates open? He had assumed that they must have, for his companions had been nowhere in sight when he had reached the wall. "I'm certain of it. They were men on emu horses. A few were pretty badly wounded--err, injured. They must have come in. "

"Honorable Lee, the gates have not opened in three weeks."

Kue Lin's words hit him in the gut. More than three weeks? His first suspicion was that Kue Lin was mistaken. The gates must have opened and closed without her noticing. But, when he saw Kue Lin's expression, all thoughts of that nature vanished like smoke in the wind. This was a woman of keen observation, from whose eyes few details escaped. It was unlikely that Ba Sing Se's massive gates had opened and closed without her notice. Perhaps the earthbenders had entered through a postern gate? In any case, it was clear that Haru's companions were not under Kue Lin's care. If they were in Ba Sing Se, they were safe enough from the Fire Nation. Haru would strike out to look for them after he had rested well enough to walk.

After all, he was in the Earth King's capital city. People did not just disappear without a trace.