Chapter Notes: So sorry this is late - busy weekend was busy, but luckily I have today off, so I can still get this up! Also, to the anon reviewer on "chapter 2", aka Avatar Returns Part 1, to whom I can reply in no other way: thanks so much!

This one was a fun one - um, not for Katara, Katara's part was pretty tough in this chapter, but Yin! I hope you all like Yin pretty well, because ... she isn't going away. *sheepish*

Chapter Seven: The Waterbending Scroll (Part 1)

"But how did they get out of the city?" Zhao shouted, slamming a smoking fist down onto the table.

Yin kept her face perfectly still, maintaining a look of vague professional interest. "Perhaps the local rebels helped sneak them out," she said, carefully avoiding a more direct lie.

She'd known Captain Zhao wouldn't let this go easily, but all the same, she'd been hoping to avoid a truly intense investigation. She'd made her choice, and she'd make it the same way again if she had to; but, she thought ruefully, perhaps she should have taken more than thirty seconds to consider her course of action. She didn't quite regret getting the Avatar and her friends out of Jindao, but doing it had constituted a commitment of somewhat terrifying magnitude. If Zhao found out, he was going to kill her himself.

So she would have to make sure he didn't find out.

She cleared her throat. "If I may, sir: perhaps one of the guards at the city gates saw something."

Zhao forced out a breath through gritted teeth, and then, with a visible effort, unclenched his hands. "Yes," he said, "yes," and stood. "Have them questioned, Lieutenant." He paused, giving her a searching look. "No; better yet, do it yourself."

Yin forced herself to grimace faintly in dismay. "Sir, I have other duties-"

Zhao dismissed this objection with a careless wave of the hand. "None as important as this," he said. "I must know who is responsible, and you will find out for me."

Yin pressed her fist to her palm in acknowledgement, and backed out of the room; the moment she was free and clear in the hallway, her knees nearly buckled in relief. The protest had been a good touch, and she was glad she'd thought to do it; Zhao was never obliging if he could possibly help it, and nothing could ever be as important to him as whatever he wanted at any given moment.

Now, she only had to find that guard, and figure out a way to guarantee his silence. Money, she thought, would be ideal; after that day in the plaza, Yin found that she had lost her taste for the sword somewhat.

.*.

Kishen was the thirty-seventh guard led into the temporary holding cells, and Yin recognized him at once. She had known his face vaguely before, from meals with the enlisted soldiers; known he would appreciate her mild humor from the great belly laughs he habitually let out at such meals; but she hadn't known his name.

"Kishen," Yin repeated, and made a minor show out of tapping her brush thoughtfully before she added his name to the list. It had helped make a couple of the others nervous, having the reminder that she was an officer, educated and powerful; truthfully, she hadn't learned to read or write until after she had gotten her commission, but none of them knew that.

"Lieutenant," he said, dipping his head a little and saluting with a brief press of knuckles to opposite palm.

She leaned back a little, and gave him a long, measuring look. "You were on the east gate yesterday, when the Avatar escaped us; is that right?"

He frowned, very faintly, and said, "Yes, sir," slow and leading, like he wanted to ask her what was going on but wasn't sure it was allowed. He glanced at the door, which was ajar, and then said, "But I'm sure you already knew that, sir."

So he did remember. At least he'd been circumspect enough to give Yin some maneuvering room. "If you hadn't been on the gate rotation, you wouldn't be here," she said blandly, "but we like to double-check these things."

"Of course, sir," he said.

She took a moment and sucked in a slow breath. If she didn't do this right, they were both probably going to die. "The captain is very, very displeased by the Avatar's escape," she said. "He is understandably eager to find out how the girl and her companions managed to leave the city." Not quite as specific as she'd like to be, but given that he remembered her, it ought to be enough.

And - there, yes; Kishen's eyebrows rose just a touch, eyes gone wide beneath. "The girl?" he repeated, a little less cautiously.

"Yes," Yin said, and didn't look away as she reached down to pick up the bag of coins sitting by her ankle. "I feel certain there will be a terrible punishment for silence," and she let the bag drop to the table, from just high enough to make it clink a little, "and a fine reward for useful information." She gave Kishen a moment to look at the bag, and when his gaze came back to her face, she gave him a tiny, hard-edged smile. "You know how kind the captain is."

Kishen's gaze flickered back and forth between the money and her face one more time, and Yin forced herself not to tap her fingers. "I do," he said at last, and then, "My admiration for the captain is equal to your own."

Yin nearly sighed in relief, but then he hesitated for a moment, and she felt a brief, sudden surge of panic - maybe he hadn't understood any of it, maybe he had missed her point completely. After another moment, though, he gave the coins a wry sort of look, and spoke again.

"I'm certain that the captain," and here he tilted his head meaningfully toward her, "would give a fine reward indeed; but a truly loyal soldier would refuse to take it."

Yin stared at him, uncomfortably confused. Was he refusing her offer? He'd already acknowledged that he didn't much care for Zhao; surely he had to know that telling the captain what he knew wouldn't end well for him, even if loyalty demanded he do it.

Kishen watched her for a moment, looking faintly amused, and then said, "May I speak frankly, Lieutenant?"

"Within reason," Yin said, hoping he'd hear it as the warning she intended it to be.

"I respect you, sir," he said, and, yes, that was definitely a smile creeping onto his mouth. "I hear good things about you. Battalions under your command fare well, I am given to understand. I'm sure there's nothing you could ask of me that I would not happily do; especially if I were lucky enough to be transferred to one such," and he gave her another meaningful look. He waited a beat, tossed a quick glance at the door, and then said, "But I'm afraid I don't know anything about the Avatar's departure from the city."

"A shame," Yin said automatically, and rose to escort him to the door. A transfer to one of her units? That was what he wanted? And he'd already half-fulfilled his side of the bargain, too - granted, he could still go to Zhao later if she failed to come through, but having to change an already-established story would reduce his credibility somewhat.

She glanced at Kishen as they reached the door, to find that he was still watching her. "I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful, sir," he said, pressing fist to palm again.

"So am I," she said. "Heading back to your barracks?"

"I may report to my commanding officer first," he said. "Lieutenant Hako, that is."

"Very good," Yin said, dismissive, and made a mental note to speak to Hako as soon as possible.

They walked as quickly as they dared. Running would draw attention they probably ought to be avoiding, and besides, Katara hadn't yet recovered her balance entirely - she was still leaning heavily on Suki's shoulder.

The main road took them east and a bit north, following the course of the Lin Wei; none of this had gone right, but north was where they were trying to go and east was away from Fire Nation territory, so in the absence of a plan, Suki figured, it was as good a route as any.

They walked longer than was pleasant - probably good practice for the long trek to the northern coast that lay ahead of them, but not very much fun. They took brief breaks to rest, but all of them wanted to leave Jindao as far behind as possible before they let themselves really sleep. Suki didn't complain, and, startlingly, neither did Sokka; Katara was too tired to. But by the time they reached the outskirts of the village on the second day, the sun already gone behind them, Suki's feet felt like blocks of wood.

Pian-Lu was small, but even after sundown, the streets were well-lit, and the center of the town was packed noticeably tightly, like a lot of buildings had gone up in a relatively short span of time.

"There's an inn up there," Sokka said, "but much as I would love to sleep under a roof, I think maybe we shouldn't."

"It would leave more of a trail for the Fire Nation to follow than if we just set up our own camp outside of town," Suki agreed.

"Sounds good," Katara said, though Suki suspected she wasn't entirely sure what she was agreeing to; her head had tipped to the side a little, and her eyes were mostly shut. The trip had been hardest on her - Suki remembered how deeply she had slept after her show of force back home, and this time, she had done a lot more. She'd walked by herself for part of the day, but now they were both supporting her again.

Suki grinned over Katara's ear at Sokka, who rolled his eyes. "Okay, but that means you're going to have to stand up by yourself for a minute, you manifestation of elemental power on earth," he said.

"... Why not the inn, again?" Katara said plaintively, and then smiled a little. "That's sweet, but somehow I don't think you could hold me up."

"Aang," Sokka surmised, and then squinted around at the air nearby. "You have no idea how much I wish you were tangible, dead guy."

They manhandled Katara out past the closest houses, and off into a little copse of trees not far from the river - a perfect spot, as Sokka noted happily, because they could lean Katara against a tree instead of just dropping her on the ground.

"You're a considerate soul," Suki told him, letting him take Katara's weight, and started unrolling her pack.

Katara fell into a jumbled and unpleasant sleep almost the moment Sokka helped her lie down on her mat; her dreams were full of screaming and sobbing and blood pooling on paving stones. Somewhere around the middle of the night, she turned away from yet another gleeful soldier with a sword only to find herself face to face with Aang, who gave her a somber blue-tinged look.

"Aang," she said, still hazy with dreaming.

"Don't do this," Aang said. "Remember what you told me, back at the temple? About blaming myself?"

She did; though here, in the dream, her memory was vague. But this wasn't the same - this wasn't the same at all, she thought angrily, he just didn't understand-

Aang shook his head. "Stop," he said, and drifted closer, lifting one hand toward her forehead. "Just sleep, all right? Just sleep," and the rest of the night, she didn't dream anything at all.

.*.

Even with Aang's help, she still woke feeling tense and guilty, though physically, she was much improved. Aang was sitting next to her sleeping mat, and quite possibly had been all night; she gave him one long look, and then dropped her gaze and avoided his eyes for the rest of the morning.

She remembered him coming into her dream - it was like that first dream she'd had, of Kyoshi and Roku and Aang together; it had been somehow more real, and she remembered it correspondingly better.

She'd been right, a little, but so had he: it wasn't the same, even if you ignored the question of magnitude, but it wasn't so dissimilar that her own words suddenly didn't apply. She knew she'd been right to say what she had at the temple, and she knew it was still true; but now she was on the other side of it, and she also knew why Aang had looked at her so doubtfully. At the time, she'd thought he was especially sensitive - and little wonder, given that all of his people were dead; but he hadn't killed them, and she'd been sure that was the important point.

Now she suspected it was the lingering feeling of helplessness that mattered. She couldn't stop thinking that there must have been something she could have done differently, done better, to keep those people from dying; and she went over it in her head again and again until she was seeing the plaza of Jindao on the backs of her eyelids.

"Well, you're feeling talkative this morning," Sokka observed.

Katara looked up to see him, and Suki next to him, gazing at her. Sokka looked mostly curious; Suki just looked concerned. "Just - thinking," she told them, a little belatedly. Her bowl was still mostly full; the rice in it had gone cool, but she made herself eat a few bites anyway.

Suki and Sokka shared a quick glance, and then Sokka shrugged and let it go.

"We should go into the village today," Suki said, and because she was Suki, she actually managed to pull off the change of subject without it sounding like it had been deliberate. "We've got a long walk ahead of us; if there's anything else we need, we should get it now."

.*.

Katara and Sokka's supply of Earth Kingdom coins was nearly gone, but they had enough left for a few more things - might as well get some extra food, or a good pair of shoes.

Pian-Lu didn't have much of an open-air market, but most of the new-looking buildings in the middle of the village turned out to be shops.

"I don't understand," Suki said, glancing around the shelves inside one of them. "There are practically more shops than there are people living here."

"Not quite," the shopkeeper said wryly. He was a pleasant-looking man with a touch of grey in his hair, and though they'd been poking around without buying anything for several minutes, he hadn't bothered them; just started sweeping behind the counter and humming to himself. Now he set his broom back down and gave Suki a small smile. "But you're not far wrong. I wouldn't wish the Fire Nation on anybody, but we've found there's business to be had, this side of a Fire Nation border." He made an expansive gesture toward the shelves. "Half this stuff, they'd seize, if you tried to sell it in Jindao - Water Tribe jewelry, incense from Ba Sing Se, the little stuff. And they'd throw you in jail for the other half."

"I bet," Sokka said, picking up a belt buckle. "Can't think they'd be too happy about people hawking buckles with the seal of the queen of Jansung on them."

"Exactly," the shopkeeper said. "But people still want them. So we make a living selling things the Fire Nation doesn't want you to have."

Katara, wandering along the far wall, lost the thread of the conversation abruptly; she'd been looking at a shelf of the supposedly Water Tribe jewelry and feeling vaguely amused, but then she had spotted the shelf below it.

A scroll lay upon it: generally nondescript, but the caps on the roller ends were inscribed with a Southern Tribe sign that meant it was probably genuine, unlike the jewelry. She glanced over her shoulder to see that the shopkeeper was still talking to Suki, who appeared to be considering the belt buckle Sokka had been looking at.

"What are you doing?" Aang hissed from behind her, drifting down from where he'd been poking around near the ceiling.

"I just want to look at it," Katara said a little defensively, keeping her voice low, and she pushed one of the rollers along the shelf just far enough to see about a handspan of the scroll.

She didn't know what she'd been expecting - maps, maybe, or a clan lineage somebody had decided to set down on paper once - but this was miles better. There wasn't any writing on the part she could see, but that didn't matter; she knew right away from the illustrations, two across the width of the scroll, of a woman in blue in a bending stance. Her hands were in a starting position in one, and in the next, her right hand had shifted forward, the watery blue daubed alongside her following the implied motion.

A Waterbending scroll. Incredible. Scrolls of instruction in any bending art had been rare, and Waterbending in particular even rarer - and that had been before the Fire Nation had started burning every one it could get its hands on.

Katara stared at it. She still needed to go north, no question about it; but until she found a master to teach her, there was undoubtedly quite a lot she could learn from this scroll. Quite a lot, she thought, that it could help her do better the next time that - the next time.

"Ooo, nice," Sokka said admiringly from over her shoulder, and Katara nearly jumped in surprise. "Probably really expensive, though," he added, a little wistful. "Too bad - that would be a big help, huh?"

"Yeah," Katara said, trying to keep her voice even. "Yeah, it would be a good thing to have."

"Katara," Aang said warily from behind her. "Katara, what are you going to do?"

Katara kept her eyes on Sokka's back as he returned to the other side of the shop, and for the first time since Aang had shown up at the Southern Air Temple, she didn't answer him.

"So you'll have to go back to the west a ways," Jong Han told her, gesturing. "You must've passed the crossroads with the north road coming in, if you came from Jindao."

"It's quite possible," Suki said, "but-" we were half-carrying the Avatar after she broke a plaza in half, so I wasn't really looking. "-we were traveling at night most of the way."

Jong Han smiled. "Well, in daylight, you can't miss it," he said. "Now, are you going to buy that buckle, or not?"

.*.

Suki did buy the buckle, in the end; she didn't need it, but it was quite lovely, and she was already in about as much trouble with the Fire Nation as it was possible to get, so there were no worries on that score.

It was a pleasant day, and their easy pace down the road out of Pian-Lu was about as different from their hasty and uncomfortable flight yesterday as it could be. Suki was used to crises, but not to having to get away afterward; and she was starting to feel distinctly grateful for the increasingly few moments they weren't spending trying to escape from immediate danger.

Which was why she sighed a little when the sound of marching feet came to them after barely an hour. Still, a little exhaustion was a small price to pay to serve the Avatar. And getting to know Katara and Sokka wasn't half bad either, she thought, letting herself smile just a little.

All three of them slowed to a stop; Suki couldn't help listening again, just in case she'd been wrong, but, no, that was definitely troops. "That sounds like a lot of people who probably don't like us, coming this way," Sokka said, giving the road ahead of them a resentful sort of look, like it had chosen to lead soldiers toward them just to ruin his afternoon.

"Which means it's time for us to get off the road, I think," Katara said.

Since it led to Jindao, the road was reasonably well-maintained, and there were generous ditches on either side. Fortunately, they weren't so wide that they couldn't be crossed without stepping in the muck pooled at the bottom, and they made it over the ditch and back into the trees barely a moment before the first soldier, riding an ostrich-horse, came into view around the bend.

The man from the plaza, who'd yelled; Suki recognized him instantly, and Katara obviously did, too, judging by the half-ill expression that soured her face. The officers he had with him were riding, too, alongside and a little behind, and they were followed by dozens of soldiers.

One of the officers, she saw as they came closer, was that woman who'd gotten them out, the no-nonsense lieutenant, and Suki instantly felt a little cold. It had seemed like an unbelievable stroke of luck at the time, having exactly the right person to get them out choose to do so at that exact moment; but she had kept her word, and Suki had thought that would be the end of it. But if she had let them go only to turn around and tell the captain exactly where they had gone, well, it only made sense; if she had let them go without giving them up, surely the captain would have had her killed, or at least imprisoned, for a betrayal of that magnitude.

Well, there wasn't anything they could do about it now if she had, Suki reminded herself, and they stayed still behind the trees until the battalions had passed.

Yin fought the urge to sigh. She had gotten to Kishen, who was going to get a transfer order from Hako tomorrow; but she had forgotten about the information that had given Zhao this obsession in the first place. Little wonder, really; it felt like weeks since he had cornered the former prince's ship and returned with the Avatar in his sights.

From the prince's crew, he had learned that the Avatar had been traveling north; knowing her final destination made the knowledge of which gate she had left by somewhat less important than it might have been otherwise.

But he was not satisfied yet: the main road north was a likely route, if the Avatar had elected for speed over discretion, but she might also have chosen to keep to the foothills, or to cross the Lei and take the road on the east bank up to Hansing, and Zhao insisted they find out which was the truth.

Yin suspected his desire for greater certainty was at least partly due to fear of another humiliation like the plaza. That was how he thought of it: as a humiliation the Avatar had laughingly inflicted on him, rather than the devastating misjudgment it had actually been. Whatever you chose to name it, though, it had certainly been a blow to him, and to an extent that gave Yin highly unprofessional feelings of glee. The people of Jindao had been horrified by the deaths at the city plaza; but in their moment of need, the Avatar, after a hundred-year absence, had appeared to protect them, and then escaped the city even despite the heavy street patrols Zhao had instituted that evening. It was like a tale from legend, and the ground they had been handed by the Avatar's long absence had vanished like so much smoke. There were no dispirited faces in Jindao anymore, except those on Fire Nation soldiers.

They rode past the crossroads, and toward the small town beyond; Yin couldn't help casting a glance up the north road, and hoping that wherever the Avatar was, it wasn't here.

The village didn't fall inside Fire Nation territory; but one of the numerous treaties that was currently keeping Queen Yujun from flattening Jindao on top of them also gave Zhao the authority to pursue fugitives through all of the territory belonging to the kingdom of Jansung. He had been granted no other powers, however, and so, much as he scowled at the generous displays of Water Tribe trinkets and artifacts brought down from the Northern Air Temple, he couldn't punish anyone for them.

The first dozen shopkeepers couldn't tell them anything specific, though Yin was fairly certain some of them wouldn't have even if they could have, judging by the uncooperative looks on their faces.

Finally, though, one man looked up when Yin described the Avatar's general appearance and hairstyle to him, and snorted. "Did she steal from you, too?"

Yin blinked. "Steal?"

The man nodded. "Right off my shelf; had her friends distract me, buying a buckle a tenth the value and asking me for directions, and walked right out with one of my scrolls."

"What scroll?" Zhao demanded.

The man pointed to an empty shelf over on the left side of the store. "A Waterbending scroll," he said, and Yin's heart sank.

Zhao smiled.

Suki decided it was best for them to stay off the road for a while: as far as they knew, the captain was still in charge of holding Jindao, which meant whenever he was done searching for them to the east, he would undoubtedly be back this way again.

"You mean we have to keep tromping around in here, even though there's a perfectly good road right over there?" Sokka said, giving her a look of mingled disbelief and mock betrayal.

Katara, though, said nothing; she'd been odd and subdued ever since they'd left Pian-Lu. Suki might have worried that she was still dwelling on Jindao, but her silence had a different tenor, not the same grim pensiveness from breakfast. At least twice, Suki had glanced at her to see a quick flicker of something - annoyance? guilt? - flashing across her face, for no good reason Suki could think of; but surely if she were fighting with Aang, they'd have heard at least half of the argument.

With no clear idea what to do about it, Suki settled for turning back to Sokka, and saying, "Yes, we do. Although if you really want to walk on the road, I suppose you could."

Sokka gave her a suspicious look. "You're trying to trick me."

Suki shrugged, half-hiding her smile. "It's up to you. The captain probably won't take too long to kill you, but it might give us some time to get away."

"Yeah, all right, fine," Sokka said. "Poky underbrush it is."

And two hours later, it was clear she'd been right to insist - the line of ostrich-horses and their Fire Nation riders came back from the east, dust rising in their wake now that the afternoon sun had dried out the road.

It wasn't only soldiers this time, though, and Suki was chilled all over again to see none other than Jong Han, the shopkeeper, being yanked along by two soldiers in the front row of the first battalion.

They crouched down in the woods as the soldiers passed. Even though they'd probably never have been able to hear over the sound of their own pounding feet, Sokka waited until they were much further down the road before muttering, "Well, that's not good."

And Katara - Katara was staring at Jong Han's receding back with a really awful look on her face; more dreadful, Suki thought, than was warranted even by the unhappy possibility that the captain was very soon going to know where they were even more exactly than the lieutenant could have told him. She crouched, frozen, for a moment, and then whipped her head to the side, and hissed, "Oh, it wasn't because I took it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't because of me - you know it was."

Aang, Suki was sure; but the rest of it made even less sense than usual.

"Took what?" Sokka said.

Katara turned to look at them, and Suki saw with startlement that her expression was one of fear - like she was afraid of them, which was utterly ridiculous. "I know," she said quietly, "I know I do," undoubtedly talking to Aang again.

The soldiers were gone, the only sign of them an increasingly distant thumping further down the road, so Katara didn't bother to move slowly when she swung her pack down off her back. She unwrapped the straps that held it together, and flipped the end of her sleeping mat off the top.

"You took that?" Sokka yelped, staring down at the scroll like it was going to leap up and call the Fire Nation soldiers back.

"What is it?" Suki said.

"A Waterbending scroll, she was looking at it in the shop," he said. "I can't believe you stole it!"

"I didn't!" Katara said, looking so uncertain as she did that Suki suspected she was still trying to convince herself. "I mean - I took it, but I wasn't going to keep it, not forever. I just - we've still got so far to go before we find anyone who can teach me anything, and I need - I need to be good at this, I need to be better."

By the time the last word burst out, she wasn't looking at them anymore, and she looked so miserable that Suki's initial urge to shout at her was starting to evaporate despite itself.

Suki looked at the scroll and remembered the first thing Katara had said, and she knew she could fill in Aang's side of the conversation pretty well, now. The captain didn't care that Jong Han had had something stolen from him; that wasn't the kind of person he was. But that Katara had been in Jong Han's shop, and that he had given Suki directions - that was definitely information the captain wanted. And Jong Han might not have been inclined to let on about it, if Katara hadn't taken his scroll.

But then again, he might have, and there were other people in Pian-Lu who had seen them pass by, so if it hadn't been him, it would almost certainly have been someone else. Not that Katara would be thinking of it that way, Suki thought ruefully; not so soon after Jindao.

"I get it," Sokka said, breaking the silence abruptly. "I mean, don't get me wrong: it was still a really terrible idea. But-" He paused for a second. "I understand. Although I wouldn't mind if you decided to let us know before you make us fugitives from any more kingdoms."

Katara gave him a tiny smile that was gone almost as soon as it had appeared, and then shifted her gaze to Suki, still with that odd touch of fear to her expression.

Suki felt a hunch come to her, and ran with it. "I'm not going anywhere," she said.

"I know that," Katara said, but Suki ignored it.

"I said I'd go with you, and I will," she went on. "Even if you make a mistake. Eighty mistakes. The entire reason that you made this one was because you wanted to make things better, and you thought this would help you - as reasons to steal stuff go, that's one of the better ones I've heard."

Katara looked for a second like Suki had lifted some of the weight from her shoulders, but then she glanced out at the road. "But that man-"

"Jong Han," Suki filled in quietly.

"There must be something we can do," Katara said, an edge of desperation to her voice. "We can't let anybody else-" die, obviously, except she clearly didn't want to say it. And Suki understood, she did; but the war was killing hundreds, thousands, all the time, and there was no way Katara would ever be able to stop it if she got herself caught by that captain because she was trying to get one man free.

"He probably won't," Suki said. "He knows which direction we're going, and he's got no reason not to tell them that; and that's all they want, anyway."

"Right," Katara said, but Suki was pretty sure she didn't believe it; and Suki couldn't blame her, when she wasn't sure she believed it herself.