Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender; the show and its original characters, location, etc. are ©Mike, Bryan and Nickelodeon. Sura, Kamala, and all other original locations and characters are © me, Lady Asvin.

Chapter 7: Cadence

The return home that evening was much like the return had been the previous evening. Hong and Zuko made their way back to their hut along with the other stone carvers; when they arrived, they separated, Hong to the loft and Zuko to the futon, to sleep next to their women. The little incident in the mines hadn't gone too far from his thoughts, but the fatigue of the previous day had compounded the fatigue from working all day that day, and he had barely changed out of his street clothes when his head hit the futon and he crashed.

"Zuko," whispered a voice moments later. "Zuko!" He opened his eyes blearily. It wasn't a moment later, he realized; it was a week and a half later, and the days had blended one into the other until he didn't remember when he had gotten to Tanarak, or the last time he'd slept on a proper bed with hangings, or the feeling of taking a long, soaking bath. The girl hissing at him came into perspective, her long hair loose around her shoulders, framing him with its soft thickness.

"I'm up," muttered Zuko grouchily. "Why am I up?" Katara sat back on her heels, and he noticed that she was already dressed. She held her parka in one hand, and his in the other, along with his day clothes.

"Because today, we're going to follow a basket," she said decisively. Zuko realized that it was some hours before dawn; the distributors would start making their rounds to the huts soon, if they hadn't already. He dressed quickly and without shame before Katara. Adventure makes strange bedfellows, thought Katara as he changed.

Literally.

They rolled the futon and quietly made their way through the front door and out into the pitch-black, snowy landscape. A few flakes still fell, and counting back the weeks, Zuko realized that the Fire Nation must be entering the early days of fall. For a moment, he was homesick; in his mind's eye, he could see the leaves in the garden changing colors, the grasses fading to a dull brown, the air picking up a sweet crispness that left the skin tingling hours after one had returned indoors.

Katara interrupted his reverie by pointing out a parka-clad distributor opening the door to Nawang's hut. With one smooth flick of her wrist, she froze the hinges so the door remained just slightly open. Using the stealth learned during hard years of war, the two crept in and watched the distributor hand off the baskets of food to a pair of servants. One went directly into Nawang's inner sanctum, the private core of the evergreen; but the other feinted, and abruptly turned left after following her partner for several feet. Katara and Zuko looked at each other and nodded fiercely; stealing after the woman, they realized that they were making their way deeper and deeper into the tree. Zuko's blood buzzed strangely in his ears. It couldn't be sunrise; that was hours away. Still, the buzzing grew louder and louder until Zuko had to focus intensely just to follow the servant girl without giving himself away.

Katara swiped at him suddenly, and both benders flattened themselves against a wall, shielded by a lacquered-wood buffet covered in unlit candles. The woman had stopped and was looking around her suspiciously. Satisfied that nothing was amiss, she leaned in until her ear touched the wall and her mouth was at a knothole in the wooden panels.

""My life I give to my country," she recited rapidly. "With my hands I fight for the Phoenix King. With my mind I seek ways to better my country. And with my feet may our March of Civilization continue." Zuko's blood ran cold; in this city of hatred and despair, monotony and seclusion, a decade after the war had ended, why was this woman reciting the Fire Nation oath that pledged allegiance to his father? The buzzing in his ears left as unexpectedly as it had arrived, and now he could see why; moments after the servant had repeated the oath, the knotted panel slid into a pocket and disappeared from sight. Looking around once more, the servant slid through the opening and turned a sharp right, walking a few feet in pitch blackness. Katara and Zuko followed her, squeezing themselves into the walls as much as possible; the space was less than three feet wide, and the servant would have to make her way out without seeing them, or they were lost.

She was doing something in the pitch dark. Katara and Zuko strained their vision, but neither could decipher what was happening until the servant stepped back, tugged on a rope, and then exited quickly back out to Nawang's evergreen sanctum. Where she had been, at her eye level, the basket was hovering. They waited until the knotted panel slid shut before Zuko ignited a minute flame on his palm so that they could see.

The basket was affixed to something like a dumbwaiter; the box had wheels connected to a set of tracks, and the tracks disappeared into a tunnel. The tunnel was hardly wide enough for a person's head, but when Zuko sent a blast of fire down it, Fire Nation insignias colored into existence every few feet.

"Like the mines," whispered Zuko, and turned to look at Katara. "I know she's at the end of this tunnel."

Katara nodded, but her eyes were worried.

"We don't fit," she murmured. "How will we get to her?" The tightness of the space was beginning to wear on them. There were barely four tiles to stand on, and the oppressive darkness of the room seemed to eat at Zuko's tiny flame. He cast the light about for some kind of help, and was about to give up when a spark briefly illuminated a silver ladder above the dumbwaiter. Katara saw it and motioned for Zuko to give her a lift. The situation seemed to tense for words; extinguishing his light, the firebender laced his fingers together and hoisted the waterbender toward the ladder. When she made contact, two things happened; a flare shot up over the ladder and Katara screamed in pain.

"What happened?" asked Zuko; Katara had fallen from the second rung, hanging on to the side of the now-visible ladder with her left hand. He could see that her right hand was red and swelling fast, and the smell of burnt skin alerted him to the reason for her distress. The bottom rung and every other rung after was glowing, first red, then white-hot as the trap warmed up; the flare sizzled overhead, rising higher and higher. Zuko shuddered to think of what would happen when it reached its destination.

"Do you want to come down?" he asked Katara loudly, but she knitted her brows determinedly and shook her head no. She single-handedly bent a stream of water out of the corked skin that had been placed in the food distribution basket and healed the burnt hand; when she finished, she let the water fall to the side and extended her now-smooth hand.

"Come on," she said tersely. "If it's this heavily guarded, we must be on the right track." Zuko ignored her hand and leapt, using the walls as push points until his feet and hands landed on safe rungs. Katara had already started to climb above him, and the flare was still rising. They climbed for a long, long time; when they finally reached the top of the ladder, panting, they realized that the light from the flare had intensified. It was coming back down.

"Spirits alive," muttered Katara. The flare had begun to sound, turning into something more like a festival rocket; the moment it began to pop, thousands of red eyes appeared in the dark heights of the cavern.

Spiderflies.

Spiderflies of a size Zuko and Katara had never seen. They were considered common house pests in the outside world, but here, they were bigger than schoolchildren.

Their winged, eight-limbed bodies hung suspended from the unfathomable heights and stretched on miles of sinuous, silky, poisonous webs through the people-sized tunnel they now needed to follow. The flare had woken them, and they began to scramble; Zuko's foot had jiggled a web. If they didn't move quickly, they would become food for these mammoth insects. Zuko reached out to Katara to drag her into the tunnel, sending a blast of fire to turn the web in the way to ashes; but Katara had frozen, petrified, staring at the spiderflies with abject horror.

"Come on Katara," he insisted. "We need to move." Shaking, she grasped the proffered hand and ran after Zuko, drying out the webs so they would burn easier ahead of Zuko once she regained her composure. The spiderflies were chasing them, and she and Zuko had begun working in tangent; she dried out the webs, he blasted lightning at the spiderflies. Regular fire hadn't worked against them, and when Katara shouted Get on the ladder, there are no more webs! he sent a single bolt searing into the wide-open pincers of a spiderfly his own size. Some web had gotten on his arm; as he and Katara climbed desperately away from the spiderfly colony, the skin began to bubble and swell. Their lungs burned, but they didn't stop climbing until they reached the top of the ladder. A quick survey of the landing told them there were no more spiderflies; and since no flares had gone off, they threw themselves on the hard ground with the faith that they were, for the moment, safe.

"Let me see that," demanded Katara, who had seen that Zuko was nursing his arm. He drew in a sharp breath when her fingers grazed the skin, and her mouth set into a firm line. She mumbled something about not having any water, but shot him a quick glance.

"Can I try something?" she asked him. Her blue eyes were troubled, and Zuko could see why; whatever was going on with his skin was spreading, and it had already reached his shoulder.

"Yeah," he said, and Katara rolled up the sleeves of her dress. Closing her eyes, she placed her hands a breath away from his arm and concentrated. Zuko felt something inside him stir; it was as though his blood was rejecting the poison of the spiderfly web. He had seen Katara bloodbend before, in an act of rage and revenge, but this was different; it was as though she was trying to work with his blood, enhancing its natural healing abilities.

"There," she said a little shakily, and Zuko realized his eyes had been closed also. The skin was still red, but the swelling had gone down and the venom was no longer spreading. He bowed to her in thanks, but she shook him off and stood up.

"We're getting closer," he said, and Katara looked at him curiously. He nodded.

"The farther we travel, the closer the insignias get to each other on the walls." This was good news for them both. Of course, they were glad to be reaching their destination; but they had been traveling for what seemed like hours, and their stomachs were stirring with hunger pangs. This tunnel seemed fairly straightforward. They walked, covering each other with tense bodies, prepared for any trap; but as the tunnel wound on, they turned more and more curves without meeting any kind of ambush or setup. Katara had the eerie sensation of being observed and never let her guard down; Zuko's gold eyes searched out the way anxiously, the flame he carried on his palm never dwindling.

Whoosh.

They were in the dark before they knew what was happening. A cold wind whistled through the tunnel, and Zuko and Katara pressed their backs into each other, trying to force their eyes into adjusting.

"I don't know how you got here," said a rusty, unnatural voice. The wind shrieked louder, and Katara swore she could it carrying snow past her face. They were in complete darkness, however, and nothing became clearer.

"If I kill you, nobody will find your bodies. Like the others before you, you will simply cease to exist to the world." The benders pressed into each other urgently, a cold dread snaking through their veins.

"If I send you back, you will be revealed for what you are, and they will make your death a public spectacle." The voice was as cold as the wind, and seemed to be coming from the tunnel walls; its cadence rang from everywhere at once, assailing their heightened sense of hearing with its grating.

Suddenly, Zuko slumped behind Katara.

"Zuko!" she screamed carelessly, turning quickly to try and catch him. She succeeded only in making his fall more bearable. Feeling around she realized that a needle-sharp pin of some sort had hit him at a vital nerve center. Before she could suffer the same fate, she threw up and arm and used the wind as a shield; for a moment it was as though she were airbending, but then the snow she knew she had felt in the wind responded and created a thin ice shield. As she tried to pull the pin out of Zuko, she had to continue to form the shield; pins cracked the ice and quickly spiderwebbed. If Katara wasn't careful, the shield would collapse into tiny shards of ice. She finally grasped the pin and firmly pulled it out; using a little bloodbending, she got Zuko to sluggishly move about.

"Enough!" screamed Katara, and with great effort, froze everything around her. The wind stopped whistling and the ground had frosted over; although she could not see anything, she knew that the source of the voice was still watching her. Her chest heaved with the effort of keeping everything frozen, and her hair had come apart, sticking to the sweat she didn't know she could produce at these cold temperatures.

"Who are you?" she yelled into the darkness. "What do you want?" The voice made a sound of disgust.

"You, who disturb my solitude, invade my sanctuary, attack my creatures – you ask me who I am? I believe you should answer your own question, and add to that why you are here!" Something in the tone indicated to Katara that the voice was feminine, and her shoulders tensed. Could it be?

"I am Katara, Chief of the Southern Water Tribe," she stated proudly. She prodded Zuko up; if her hunch was right, it was better that he introduce himself. He nodded and dragged to his feet, using Katara for support.

"And my name is Zuko," he forced out through the pain in his chest. "Fire Lord Zuko, son of Ursa and Ozai, ruler of my great Nation." There was no response from anywhere, until the voice reappeared much closer.

"Give me one reason why I should believe you," the rusty voice intoned. "One reason why I should accept as true what so many others have been sent to lie to me about." Zuko's eyes widened as he realized that underneath the rasp of the unused voice lay a familiar cadence.

"My mother once told me that she had done everything to protect me; that I was never to forget who I was." His voice hitched and he leaned harder on Katara. "Though I lost my way, I never stopped thinking of her; and since I found my way, I have been doing everything to reunite with her." Tears sprang to Katara's eyes at the emotion in his voice.

"Please, tell me my efforts have not been in vain." There was no response at first, and Zuko lit a small flame in the palm of his hand to reveal a cloaked, hooded figure standing before him.

"Mother?" he rasped tentatively. The figure struck out a pale hand, fingers landing on the smooth side of his face. They traced the curve of his eyes, the regal nose, the high cheekbones, the strong brows.

"My son," whispered the figure.

Ming Ya climbed down the stairs as per her usual morning routine, dressed and ready to rouse the young couple she had grown rather fond of. Her slippered feet hit the cold floor and she turned to look under the stairs. At first, she wasn't sure if her eyes were playing tricks on her; she rubbed them, blinked owlishly, and peered under the stairs again.

The futon was neatly rolled up out of the way. Pillows were stacked next to slippers, and sleeping clothes were folded and stored next to the futon.

"Hong," she called, her voice watery. "Hong, wake up. Oma and Shu are gone!" Her husband blearily rose from the bed, dressed, and made his way down the stairs; upon regarding the neat desolation the couple had left behind, his mouth set into a grim line.

"Prepare a gift," he told his wife. "I'm going to talk to the guards, and then I'm going to see Nawang. Ming Ya nodded sadly and hoped that for their own sake the couple had not elected to run away or do something equally stupid; if they were accused of deserting…

Ming Ya shuddered as she thought of the last execution in Tanarak.

"They seemed like such good children," she murmured, remembering their tender, awkward romance, their sleeping pattern, their morning parting.

Until tonight, my beautiful Oma, he would say, drawing her in for a kiss.

I'll be counting the moments, she would invariably reply, touching two fingers to her lips. And although it had seemed a bit of an act at first, Ming Ya had understood long before them how and when the words became real.

"Oma, Shu… be safe." She finished preparing a gift basket as an offering for Nawang and silently handed it to her husband, watching as his back grew smaller, until he finally disappeared into the center of the village.

Safe.

Author's Note: Thanks to my readers for being so patient! I covered two extra shifts this week and had an exam in the morning, so I didn't get to finish this chapter until now. Please review! I love to know what you guys think, where you feel it's going, where you think it should go, your suspicions as to what's happening… anything constructive, review away! - Lady Asvin