Chapter Two

On Lee's next day off from work at the foundry, he and Kara left Hiro with the widow Peng again and, equipped with the passports Sokka had given them, signed by the head of the provisional council, they headed to the upper ring to meet the Avatar.

Sokka himself met them at the gate. He greeted his sister with a hug that she gladly returned, and was polite enough to Lee himself, but Lee could still tell the other man had reservations about him. It would be natural enough to have doubts, finding a long-lost relative married to a total stranger, and Lee could almost let himself believe that was all that Sokka's suspicion amounted to. But Kara had also explained to him that Sokka shared the Avatar's belief that Lee was in fact the disgraced prince of the Fire Nation.

Lee knew he wasn't. But he supposed he would also be pretty suspicious of Prince Zuko, wherever he was, so he tried not to blame Sokka too much for that, either. Once they cleared up the Avatar's confusion, hopefully everything would be fine.

As Sokka led them to the house where he and the Avatar were staying, Kara was openly astonished by the luxury around them in the upper ring - verdant gardens, bubbling fountains, and sprawling, palatial homes, so different from the crowded lower ring where they lived. Lee was less impressed - his family had moved around a lot when he was younger, and he had vague memories of an opulent mansion where his parents must have been servants at one point. The colors might have been different in Ba Sing Se compared to the Fire Nation colonies, but wealth was the same everywhere.

The Avatar met them in an ornate sitting room with plush pale green chairs and a polished wooden table. "I'm glad you came, Katara," he said as he gestured for them to sit. "And you, too, Zuko," he added - sincerely, Lee gauged, but clearly an afterthought. And of course, he still insisted on using those names, which were not theirs.

Kara did not take one of the proffered seats, and neither did Lee. "Before we discuss anything else, we need to get one thing straight," Lee said firmly. "My name is Lee, and my wife's name is Kara." He pointed to each of them in turn for emphasis. "You need to call us by the right names, or we're both leaving."

The Avatar looked to Kara, of course. Though it was Lee whom he had approached first, it had quickly become apparent to both of them that the Avatar was far more interested in her. "Is that how you feel, too?" he asked.

Kara nodded her agreement.

The Avatar sighed. "Alright then," he said reluctantly. "Kara, Lee - please have a seat." He gestured to the chairs again, and this time they accepted the invitation, though Lee noticed that Kara perched stiffly on the edge of the chair, which was richly upholstered and probably cost about a month's rent for their tenement apartment. "Would you like some tea?" the Avatar offered, placing one hand on the handle of a porcelain teapot painted with yellow songbirds.

"Yes, thank you," Kara said politely as Sokka sat down in the chair on the other side of her, far more comfortably. The Avatar poured a cup for each of them, then turned questioningly to Lee, who shook his head.

"No thanks," Lee declined. Glancing around the room with its wide windows and gilt woodwork accents, he asked instead, "Whose house is this?"

"Lord Gu is a distant cousin of the former Earth King," the Avatar replied as he poured a final cup of tea for himself. Lee recognized the name from their passports. "He's leading the provisional government now, and will probably be elected as Kuei's successor if we can't locate him."

Fire Nation occupation and Dai Li takeover didn't seem to have hurt Lord Gu's fortunes any, Lee thought. But he kept that to himself. They weren't here to argue politics.

Kara tapped her fingers against the side of her teacup. "You mean you haven't accosted some fishmonger in the lower ring and accused him of being the deposed Earth King?" Lee couldn't suppress a small smile at her sarcastic tone, and he noticed Sokka unsuccessfully smothered a snort of laughter as well.

The Avatar also smiled, far more cheerily than Lee thought was called for. "Not yet," he replied as if the joke were not at his own expense. "But if you see Kuei selling fish, you let me know." He took a steady sip from his own teacup, and then became just a bit more serious. "Which I guess brings us to business." Setting his cup aside, he reached for a thick scroll with three very official looking seals - all broken - that was also sitting on the table. "Have a look at this."

To Lee's surprise, the Avatar handed the scroll to him.

Accepting it cautiously, Lee unrolled it - and found he had a hard time making heads or tails of what was written. Something about an "asset" in the lower ring, an experimental procedure done by someone named Doctor Cai, and then, in one line, the name Prince Zuko. "What am I looking at here?" he asked, glancing back at the Avatar with his eyebrow raised.

But it was Sokka who answered. "That is a document from the secret Dai Li archives, a file which was created some six years ago, right around the time Fire Lord Iroh says he last saw his nephew in Ba Sing Se."

Kara leaned over curiously, and Lee held the document out for her to read - if she could read it. "This must be written in code," she commented.

"Yeah, most of it is," the Avatar agreed. "We're still working on deciphering it. But we know that the Dai Li definitely had Prince Zuko, definitely did a brainwashing experiment on him, and definitely set him up with a new identity as a refugee in the lower ring."

Lee tossed the scroll back down onto the table, where it promptly rolled itself back up. "There are lots of refugees in the lower ring," he pointed out. The Avatar might realize that, if he bothered to do more than look for his missing friends while he was there. "None of that proves he's me."

"Well," Sokka said, exchanging an awkward look with the Avatar. "There is the scar."

Lee frowned, and Kara took hold of his hand. "There are lots of people with scars, too," she pointed out. "Especially refugees."

"Yeah," the Avatar agreed, looking at Lee. "But yours is the exact same scar." Reaching into a breast pocket, he withdrew a folded piece of paper, then unfolded and smoothed it out on the table for all of them to see. "But don't just take my word for it."

Lee and Kara both leaned in to look at the paper. It was a Fire Nation wanted poster - an old one, clearly, because it was issued by the authority of Fire Lord Ozai, who had been dead for some time. The face of the fugitive Prince Zuko glared up at them from the paper, and sure enough, a red burn mark covered his left eye. But the prince's head was almost completely shaved, and otherwise the face was that of a teenager. Lee didn't think the resemblance was particularly striking.

"If this is a wanted poster," Kara pointed out, "then it wasn't drawn from life."

"True enough," Sokka admitted.

"So how accurate is it really?" Lee asked, seeing Kara's point. "The scars are similar, sure, but that could just be a coincidence."

The Avatar immediately protested. "We've both met you…" He caught himself, let out a frustrated sigh, and amended his argument. "Sokka and I have both met Prince Zuko several times before. We know what his scar looks like."

"So we do just have to take your word for it," Lee concluded.

The Avatar sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"It may not be conclusive proof," Sokka spoke up, far more levelly. "But you can at least see where our...theory is coming from."

Lee looked back down at the wanted poster of Prince Zuko. The scars were very similar, even he couldn't deny that, and the rest of the young prince's features were not obviously incongruous with his own. "I guess I can see how I might be mistaken for him, yeah," he allowed, gesturing at the poster. "But the whole Dai Li brainwashing angle still sounds like a stretch."

"Except," Kara said softly, squeezing his hand again and giving him an apologetic look, "we do know there's something wrong with my memories."

"Right," Lee said, squeezing her hand back in reassurance. "So maybe you were Katara, and something made you forget." That was what they had discussed, and agreed was possible, the reason they had come. "But I'm just Lee, and always have been."

The Avatar opened his mouth to argue, but Sokka held out a hand to silence him and spoke instead. "Alright," he agreed. "Let's start from there, and focus on Kara's memories. There was something else important we found in the Dai Le archives." This time he reached into a pocket and withdrew not another document, but a blue vial with a crescent moon stopper, hung from a leather cord. As he held it out for their inspection, the vial spun with a lazy, mesmerizing back and forth motion.

"I'm not sure I know what that is," Kara said doubtfully.

But Lee's insides had gone cold.

The brightly lit room seemed to fade into darkness, everything except the vial shrinking away. Maybe… a voice echoed in his mind, Kara's voice, only younger, more timid. Maybe you could...Maybe you could… Over and over again, a halting refrain. She had laid her hand on his face, fingertips running over the rippled flesh under his eye, her thumb brushing against his lips. Yes, he thought desperately, trying to reorient himself, that had happened, that was real, when he had told her the story of how his father died. She was the first person he had ever told, the first person to ever touch his scar, and it had happened in a dark cell. So why was his mind now filling in a cave of crystals and a green glow?

Maybe you could be…

"The water from the spirit oasis," Lee said, coming out of his trance. The green glow faded back to warm sunlight, and the luxurious sitting room solidified around him once more.

Kara, Sokka, and the Avatar all looked at him in surprise, in Kara's case mixed with concern.

"Yes," Sokka said, blinking. He held the vial up a little higher. "You've seen this before?"

"I think I…" Lee hesitated. Kara was holding his hand in both of hers now, and he realized his grip had gone very tight. He looked her in the eye. "You don't remember it?"

Kara shook her head. "It looks Water Tribe, obviously." Anyone could have guessed that. "But I don't recognize it."

Lee ran his free hand through his hair shakily. "Well, I think I do." He pointed at the Avatar before he could say anything, and added defensively, "Not that I think this proves anything." Then he looked back at Kara. "But I think it was yours."

"Oh," Kara said softly. Gently working her hands free of his grasp, she reached over and took the vial from Sokka, turning it over in her hands as she inspected it. "I suppose...I guess it could have been." She shrugged helplessly. "But I really don't remember."

"Interesting," Sokka muttered, staring at the vial in her hands.

The Avatar, however, was grinning broadly again. "Don't you see?" he said, pointing at the vial. "We found that in the Dai Li archives. That means they took it from Katara when they captured her. And if you remember it…" Here he shifted and pointed at Lee instead. "That means you must have met Katara before she was captured by the Dai Li, which means you should remember her as Katara and not Kara, unless the Dai Li messed with your memories too!"

This last point was said triumphantly, which Lee found irritating, but he couldn't fault the Avatar's logic. He frowned back down at the wanted poster of Prince Zuko, still scowling back up at him from the table. Could that really have been one of his memories Lee had just experienced? Or was it all just the power of suggestion, the Avatar's relentless arguments, and the strangeness of this whole situation that was making him second guess himself now?

Kara handed the vial back to Sokka. "Could Lee and I have a moment alone?" she asked, firm. but polite.

Sokka agreed and stood to leave, still examining the vial thoughtfully. With a bit more reluctance, the Avatar followed him. But he still cast one last hopeful look in Kara's direction before he left the room.

"We're making progress," Aang said as soon as he and Sokka were alone in the corridor. "Katara's already starting to believe us, and Zuko has to come around now that he knows his memories are messed up, too."

But Sokka did not seem so optimistic. "Maybe," he said, still looking at the vial of spirit water in his hand. With a sigh, he returned it to his breast pocket and walked past Aang, further down the corridor towards another room, furnished as a study, which Aang had as yet had little use for. "I don't think it's going to be as simple as that."

"Why not?" Aang asked, spreading his hands wide as he followed Sokka into the study. Unlike the sitting room, which was furnished in lighter tones, here the decor was darker, though no less elegant. "Once they realize who they really are…"

"That's just it," Sokka interrupted him, coming to a halt in front of a stately mahogany desk. "Who are they, really?" With his back still turned, Sokka leaned forward, resting both hands on the top of the deks. "It's been six years, Aang," he went on, in a wearied voice. "A lot has happened." In an undertone, he added darkly, "Are you the same person you were six years ago?"

"Of course a lot has happened," Aang agreed, ignoring the question as he marched around to the other side of the desk to look Sokka in the face. "But we can't just give up. We will get Katara back."

Still leaning on the desk, Sokka looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. "And Zuko will go back to the Fire Nation to help his uncle?"

"Obviously," Aang replied. The Prince Zuko he knew had wanted nothing more than to return home and take his rightful place as heir to the throne. Now he had the chance to do just that - of course he would take it, once he remembered who he was.

Sokka straightened, his arms falling to his sides. "And what about the children?"

Aang shrugged. "What about them?"

Sokka looked at him levelly for a long moment, a look that Aang did not quite like. Sokka was an old friend, but as he had pointed out, a lot had happened in the past few years, and these days Aang was finding it hard to get a read on him. But whatever Sokka might have been thinking, in the end he only shook his head and said, "We're getting ahead of ourselves. Kara and Lee still haven't accepted that they are Katara and Zuko."

"True," Aang agreed, looking down at the desk in thought. He could see his own reflection in its polished surface, older and taller than he had been six years ago but every bit as obviously the same person from then to now as Zuko and Katara were. "Do you think we can do anything else to jog their memories?"

"We can try," Sokka allowed. "But remember what happened with Jet?"

Aang frowned. Their last encounter with Jet, here in Ba Sing Se, had occurred just before Katara's disappearance. Katara might not remember those events at the moment, but he certainly did. "It took waterbending to help him remember," he said aloud, at last seeing the point Sokka was trying to make. "But Katara's the only waterbending healer in the city as far as we know," he pointed out. Though Aang himself had mastered all other kinds of advanced waterbending techniques in the past few years, healing was still not part of his skillset. "So unless she can do something like that on herself…"

"Or," Sokka said, reaching back into his pocket and removing the vial of spirit water again, "we could bring them to the best waterbending healers in the world."

It was a logical plan. If Zuko and Katara, in their present state, could be convinced to journey to the North Pole, that would undoubtedly be their best chance of getting their memories back. Still, something deep in Aang's heart protested the idea of sending Katara away, when he had just found her again, for he knew he could not leave Ba Sing Se until he had at least some answers about what had happened to the Earth King.

Sokka seemed to understand his hesitation. "We can try bringing Katara to some familiar places here in the city," he suggested, though he didn't sound optimistic about this strategy. "But if that doesn't work…"

"If that doesn't work, then maybe you're right," Aang allowed. But privately, he had already staked his hopes on the possibility that it would. Retracing their steps from their first visit to Ba Sing Se, telling Katara more stories about their adventures, even just spending more time together - she would remember him eventually.

She was his closest friend. She had to.

As soon as the Avatar had left the sitting room, Lee got to his feet and paced back and forth.

"This is crazy," he muttered, and Kara knew he was probably talking to himself as much as to her.

"I know," she agreed, getting to her feet. She knew exactly how he felt, because she'd wondered if she was going crazy, too. "But when you saw that water tribe vial you sort of…" She waved a hand in front of her face. "Spaced out, right?"

Lee halted his pacing, looking sharply at her. "Who knows what that means," he argued.

Kara came to his side, and rested one hand on his arm. "It looked an awful lot like what happened to me when I first saw Sokka," she said gently.

Lee let out a sigh, taking hold of both of her hands. What he said next was not what Kara expected, but it didn't come as a great surprise either. "When I told you how I got my scar," he said in a low voice, "what did you do?"

Of course, he would be thinking of memories like that. "I reached out for you," Kara replied, pulling her right hand out of his grasp to place it on his face as she had done then, though it had been dark and she had barely been able to make out his features at the time. "And I told you it was nothing to be ashamed of."

Lee closed his eyes at her touch. "I remember that," he said firmly, his lips brushing against the pad of her thumb. "But I think...maybe you had the spirit water with you."

Kara moved her hand along the arch of his scar, brushing her husband's dark hair back from his face. "Maybe I did," she allowed, though she still had no memory of the vial. "Maybe the Dai Li took it from me after that."

It went without saying between them that this fit perfectly with the Avatar's version of events, and that if the night they had spent in that dark cell had in fact been in a Dai Li prison, then they had both been political prisoners - and what would they have wanted with Lee the refugee?

Lee opened his eyes as her hand fell to his shoulder. "I am not Prince Zuko," he insisted, and Kara couldn't help but smile fondly at his resolute certainty. "But whatever is going on here…" He grasped her left hand in both of his, lifting it to his heart. "If reuniting you with your family means digging into my past as well, then that's what we'll have to do."

Kara leaned into him, and he wrapped his arms around her in an embrace. "Thank you, Lee," she said softly. She knew digging into his past was a painful prospect for him, and so far the possibility that his memories were not entirely accurate had promised no happy alternatives for him as it had for her.

She appreciated that he was doing this for her sake.

When Sokka and the Avatar rejoined them, Kara and Lee agreed to their proposal that they visit some of the other places in the city they knew Katara had been, to see if anything else looked familiar - to either of them. They went to the house the Avatar and his friends had stayed in, a spa Katara had been to with another girl named Toph, and even the old palace, though the Avatar admitted that it was a ghost of its former glory.

The Avatar also continued his annoying habit of ignoring Lee and focusing all his attention on Kara, whenever he could get away with it. Lee tried not to be too suspicious - it was Kara's memories they were attempting to jog, after all, for Sokka and the Avatar knew little of Prince Zuko's movements within the city. But it was clear Kara wasn't exactly comfortable with the Avatar, either, or with his apparent expectation that every location they visited ought to suddenly bring all of Katara's memories flooding back to her, no matter how tenuous the connection.

At any rate, after an awkward afternoon of touring the upper ring, neither Kara nor Lee had experienced any more blackouts or repressed memories.

The Avatar's disappointment was obvious as they prepared to head back home that evening, and even Lee felt a little bit let down by the experience. He didn't in any way relish the idea of his and his wife's memories being called into question or their pasts dug up, but he couldn't deny there was a mystery surrounding Kara and her family, and he had held some small hope that it could be resolved quickly, and the Avatar could get on with his other, undoubtedly more pressing responsibilities.

But he was also thankful that he had had no more episodes of his own like the one from earlier, and that his memories of his family, however much pain went with them, remained untarnished. He had struggled for too long to come to terms with his father's legacy to have that taken from him now.

Of course, the Avatar wasn't going to accept the uneventful afternoon as proof his theories about their identities were wrong.

"I don't know why none of those places worked," the younger man said dejectedly as they prepared to part ways at the gates to the middle ring. "Maybe if we went back further, and tried going through the Serpent's Pass?"

Before either Kara or Lee could respond to this absurd suggestion, Sokka put a hand on the Avatar's shoulder and said pointedly, "Or we do what we discussed earlier."

The Avatar seemed even more discouraged by this reminder, but he looked back at Kara again - always at her, Lee thought in frustration - and elaborated on this plan. "Sokka thinks the waterbending healers at the North Pole will be able to help you recover your memories."

"The North Pole?" Kara repeated uncertainly, looking to Lee. "That's a long way to go…" It would mean months of travel, leaving his job at the foundry and probably giving up their apartment, none of which sounded like a good idea when they had another baby on the way.

"It won't take that long to get there, if we take Appa," Sokka replied, and the Avatar nodded in agreement. Then, seeing their looks of confusion, Sokka clarified, "That's Aang's flying bison."

"Maybe you'll remember him," the Avatar added hopefully.

"Even if we get there quickly," Lee objected, ignoring the Avatar's comment, "how long would we have to stay?"

Sokka, to his credit, didn't mince words. "I don't know," he said with a shrug. "We've only seen Dai Li brainwashing treated with waterbending once before, and...my sister was only able to bring back some of Jet's repressed memories." He gave Kara an almost apologetic smile as he said this, and Lee got the impression he'd caught himself at the last minute from calling her by the wrong name. "Jet's memories also hadn't been altered as much as yours."

"So we'd still be going there indefinitely," Lee surmised, placing an arm protectively around Kara's shoulders. "You're asking us to just leave behind our whole lives here."

"Are you really sure it would even work?" Kara asked, somewhat more placatingly.

"It's your choice if you want to go, of course," Sokka reassured them. "But as far as I know, it's the best chance you have of finding the truth." With that, he withdrew the vial of water from his tunic once more, and handed it to Kara. "Either way, this is yours."

Kara took the vial. "We'll think about it," she said diplomatically.

Sokka seemed content with this answer. But the Avatar was not. "Hey, before you go," he added brightly, "why don't you meet Appa and see if that helps?"

"We've had a long day already," Lee started to argue. He doubted the Avatar's pet would prove any more memorable than the Earth King's throne room had, and they had the excuse of Kara's pregnancy and their son waiting for them at home for wanting to keep the day short.

But Kara gave him a long-suffering look and said, "One last stop won't do any harm."

And so, with a squeeze of his hand, she led him back through the streets of the upper ring, following the Avatar and her brother to the stables where the bison was kept. Lee didn't know what he had been expecting, but the giant, shaggy, six-legged beast they finally laid eyes on was not it. "That thing can fly?" he asked skeptically.

"He sure can," the Avatar replied, affectionately stroking the beast's fur. "Appa flew us all over the world, didn't you boy?"

Lee supposed the Avatar speaking only to his bison was an improvement over him speaking only to Kara.

The bison in question gave a low grunt in response to the Avatar, then sniffed the air curiously. Lee looked to his wife, to see if Kara showed any signs of recognizing the animal, but she looked back up at him and shook her head. "I've got nothing," she said regretfully.

Before Lee could say anything else, the bison made another noise - an excited below this time, and Lee assumed that even if Kara didn't remember the beast, he might remember her. But to his surprise, when the beast ambled forward, its mouth gaping, Lee was the one who found himself being nuzzled and licked by the bison, as if he were an old friend.

"Get him off me!" Lee protested, stumbling back, now covered in bison slobber. The Avatar spoke a few words to the beast to bring him to heel, and Lee shot an annoyed glare at Kara, who had the temerity to laugh.

"Well, that doesn't make sense," the Avatar said, voicing what they were all surely thinking. Addressing the bison once more, but pointing at Lee, he went on, "Appa, do you know who that is?"

Appa of course could give no helpful answer, but he made another happy sort of noise, confirming that whoever he thought Lee was, he was glad to see him.

Sokka, more practically, had found a towel somewhere in the stable, which Lee gratefully accepted and used to clean himself up as best as he could. "I don't remember ever seeing a giant bison before," he protested, still annoyed. Coming to his side, Kara took the towel from him and wiped at a glob of bison drool he had missed in his hair.

"Well, he seems to remember you," Sokka replied, brows furrowed in confusion. "And I have to say...I would have expected him to be afraid of you, if anything."

"Yeah, I don't get it," the Avatar concurred, looking at Lee for once. "No offense, but every time Appa saw you, as far as I know, you were attacking us, so…"

Lee didn't even bother correcting him that it was Zuko who had attacked them, not him. His mood somewhat improved by no longer being quite so covered in bison saliva, he looked at the animal, who was now the picture of calm contentment. Appa clearly was not afraid of him. Hesitantly, Lee approached the bison, reached out with one hand, and patted the soft fur on his forehead.

It wasn't as dramatic as when he had first seen the vial of spirit water. But the texture of the fur beneath his fingers was familiar, and it did dredge up another voice from the past, though this time he recognized it as his own. First I have to get it out of here. He'd been in a stable, not so different from this one, but it had been...underground? And who had he said that to?

"Lee?" Kara's voice drew him out of his trance. "Do you...remember something?"

"I think I set him loose," Lee answered without thinking. Then he shook his head, withdrawing his hand and turning back to the others. "No, that can't be right…"

"We never did figure out how Appa got free," Sokka said, giving Lee an appraising look, and at his words Lee felt a cold pit form in his stomach. He didn't like what it meant if these random flashes of...whatever he was remembering kept fitting into their story.

"You think Zuko rescued him?" the Avatar asked incredulously. But then, after a moment's consideration, he seemed to think better of his skepticism. "I guess he might have. It would have been right around the same time Iroh says he went missing."

But Lee ignored them, looking only at Kara, and he knew with dread certainty that she understood as well as he did. There was no denying it now, that his memories were as compromised as hers were, and that called everything into question - not only whether Kara's father was still alive, but everything about who they were, how they had met, why they had married. They could still refuse Sokka's plan, go back to their lives in the lower ring and raise their children in peace as best they could, perhaps let the Avatar find a healer to bring to them if it was really so important to him. But they would always be haunted by those questions.

He couldn't do that to her, to their family. He had to do what was right for them, no matter how terrifying or painful it seemed to him. If his father had taught him anything, it was that.

Kara understood all that, and taking hold of his hand once more, she spoke for both of them. "How soon can we leave for the North Pole?"