BETWEEN HEARTBEATS
by SouthSideStory & MayimOr
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CHAPTER ONE
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Ba Sing Se is unlike anywhere Katara has ever been before. Even the Northern Water Tribe's capital city, with its elegantly carved buildings and elaborate canals, pales in scope and size. Last winter, she'd been impressed by its great ice gates hidden and revealed by waterbending, but next to Ba Sing Se's massive rings that wall might as well be a child's toy.
"Wow!" Sokka says, as another train rushes by, propelled across its stone railways by earthbending.
They've been here a month and he's still so impressed with the infrastructure that he can't stop oohing and aahing at everything.
Aang has been quiet, and he's barely talking to Toph at all. She acts like it doesn't bother her, but Katara knows it does.
"Aang, when we get back do you think we could run through some waterbending forms?"
He crosses his arms, staring out the window. "I need to distribute more posters. But then maybe after." Aang says the last bit with a smile, the kind he only gives her lately.
"Okay, whenever you're ready."
Soothing him gets harder by the day, but she's trying.
"We should work on your earthbending too," Toph says.
Aang scowls. "Right."
Katara would be thankful that Toph can't see his face, but she can undoubtedly tell how irritated he is just by his voice.
Sokka knocks his elbow against Toph's. "While they splash around we could check out the noodle shop. I know you like noodles."
Toph smiles softly, but it looks forced. "Yeah, that sounds good. I'm hungry, and I can't teach on an empty stomach anyways."
They reach their stop in the upper ring, then walk back to their house. Aang says nothing, just grabs a bag full of flyers and zooms off on his glider in a gust of wind. Leaving them behind.
He's good at that.
Toph and Sokka both sigh.
"Guys," Katara says, more sternly than she means to.
It's not Aang's fault that he's taking this so hard. He's lost everything, and Appa is the only link he has left to his past. No friends, no Gyatso, no culture, no home. She can't blame him for grieving, and neither should Sokka and Toph.
"Look, we get it, he's upset and Appa is the only connection he has to his people blah blah blah, but that doesn't mean he's not being a huge jerk to all of us," Sokka says. "Even you."
"What do you mean, 'even me'?" Katara asks.
Sokka rolls his eyes.
"We'll see you later," Toph says.
They're out the door before she can ask to come along. It wouldn't have killed them to invite her to join them, or at least offered to bring something back for her.
I like noodles too.
That's petty and immature. She can't afford to act that way or even think that way, not when she needs to hold their group together.
She walks into the room she shares with Toph, picks up her bag of belongings, and riffles through her things. For so long, her whole life has been contained, ready to pick up and go at a moment's notice. Now that they're settled down again she could unpack, but it's hard to shake the fear that they'll have to run as soon as she does.
Not least because Zuko chased them to the ends of the earth. Always popping up when he was least expected—and least wanted.
Katara can't help wondering where their banished prince has ended up. If his uncle is all right. If he's staying out of his sister's line of fire. Zuko is nothing if not unlucky, and the last time she saw him he looked in dire need of a decent meal (or ten).
She has too much to worry about to add Zuko to the list. Even if she had time to care about him, he doesn't deserve it.
Katara holds the spirit oasis water tightly in her pocket. No matter what happens, she has some kind of power. The ability to change things, even if their world gets dark. She tells herself that every morning when she wakes, and most of the time she believes it.
She should practice her waterbending. She went through a few forms this morning, but not enough. Master Pakku would call her lazy if he could have seen her. She'll teach Aang later, but she needs to hone her own skills, not just his. If she doesn't improve, she could end up like she did in the North Pole, unconscious on the ground while an enemy abducts Aang.
She doesn't feel like practicing, though.
Katara lies on her bed and stares up at the ceiling, playing with the edge of the blankets.
What are they even doing here? It's been over a month of sitting around, and they've made next to no progress. She hates idling in the upper ring, sightseeing like tourists while people in the lower ring struggle.
Aside from the obvious problem of there's no war in Ba Sing Se, there are other deeply troubling issues here. A few days ago, she got bored and rode one of the outbound trains to the end of the line. Her upper ring papers allowed her such a privilege, but she watched as passengers from other parts of the city were stopped and searched. Even told that they couldn't go certain places because of their status.
She didn't get off the train in the lower ring, but she could see a different world outside the windows. The development and housing were far denser, without the upkeep and infrastructure to maintain a larger population. From the look of the passengers, disease clearly runs rampant in the poorer parts of the city.
She never really witnessed poverty until she left home. There were times of scarcity and times of abundance, but burdens were always shouldered collectively by the entire tribe, not a select few. Or select many, as seems to be the case here in Ba Sing Se.
Katara considers the nice home she gets to live in here, simply by virtue of who she's traveling with. It's wrong, and she wants to make a difference, but she's not sure what she can get away with in a city with eyes everywhere.
Someone knocks so loudly that she can hear it easily across the house.
"Coming!"
Katara hurries to the front door and opens it to find Aang, eyebrows pinched and mouth flattened into an irritated line. At least he came back.
"Do you want to waterbend? Or just talk?"
He shrugs. To anyone else, he'd look indifferent, but that's not Aang.
Katara puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. "Hey, I know this is hard right now, but you can't give up hope that we'll find Appa. I'll keep thinking of things I can do to help, and so will Sokka and Toph. Okay?"
He nods. "Thanks, Katara. It means a lot that you care."
"Of course I do."
He smiles. "I really like that, how much everything matters to you."
She smiles back at him. "How about we tackle set number eight together? It's been giving me trouble too, maybe teaching you will help me out."
"Sure, let's do it."
He sounds genuinely enthusiastic for the first time in days. If nothing else, she can do this right. Make Aang happy, be a good waterbending master, a good friend, and help him when he needs her.
As they head to the courtyard, Katara explains the form to Aang and he listens to her eagerly. Like usual, he mimics her every move with natural ease. If he was anyone besides the Avatar, it would be so enviable it's maddening. She's learned to cut herself some slack since the water whip incident; it's not fair to compare her skills to countless millennia of wisdom in a fourteen-year-old package.
"That's great, Aang. I think we could actually make it more difficult. It's humid today, so why don't you draw water from the air while you do it?"
Aang pulls a face. "Why would I ever have to do that?"
"As a waterbender, you need to always be looking for water, to see it everywhere. It's how we think—"
"I don't have to do that, though," he says, a hand behind his head. "If I don't have water I can just bend air or earth."
"Yeah, but it's about precision and waterbending philosophically. If you don't want to try it, that's fine I guess…"
Katara curls her fingers carefully, searching for the invisible droplets of water around her until they hiss into a small stream that she twirls between her hands.
Aang grins. "You can do so many amazing things."
Amazing things I'm trying to teach you!
"It's just practice," she says firmly.
"Even Master Pakku had a hard time doing that."
"The air is drier at the North Pole," Katara says. "But thank you."
"It's crazy that there's water like that. In the air."
She creates a small cyclone, straightens and freezes it into a shard of ice, then bends it back to a liquid. "There's water almost everywhere. It's limiting to think otherwise."
"Yeah," Aang says dreamily.
Katara casts the water aside, since he's clearly lost focus. They must have worked on too much today.
"Do you want to find Sokka and Toph for dinner? I bet we can still catch them."
Aang frowns. "There aren't many vegetarian meals at the places Sokka goes."
"Oh. Well, we could grab you something on the way—"
"I don't like eating separately from everyone all the time. It makes me feel left out."
"Then why don't I eat with you, and we can find Sokka and Toph afterward?"
He sounds painfully hopeful when he asks, "Really?"
She clearly needs to do better at making Aang feel included if sharing one meal has him this excited.
"Of course. Besides, I like vegetables. They're so scarce in the South Pole, it's been fun to try different varieties while we've been traveling."
"There's a lot more. And I don't only mean vegetables. There's so much out there in the world, all kinds of possibilities."
He'd certainly know. Aang probably traveled more before he could toddle than she had by the time she was sixteen.
"I haven't really let myself think about that," Katara says. "Just getting through each day the best I can."
It wasn't like this before she left her village. She used to live in the future. When Dad comes home. When the Avatar returns. When the Earth Kingdom fights back. When the Fire Lord is defeated.
Now that's more overwhelming than she can stand. It's too many ifs and whens, too many conditions. Sometimes those things never happen, leaving her with nothing.
So she takes it day by day, and all those days will add up to something. She has to believe that.
"You should look forward to the future," Aang says. "It's like you told me about Appa, we can't give up hope."
She plasters a smile on her face. It's easier than it should be. "Thanks, I'll try to remember that. Now let's go eat!"
They make their way to Aang's favorite food stall. She talks with him and laughs at his jokes and eats her tofu noodles with gusto, but she's not sure what it is she feels.
There has to be a way to shake off this uncertainty, to give herself direction. How can her days add up to anything meaningful when they're as empty as she is inside? She needs something different, something that will save her from ending this war at a zero-sum.
Maybe she'll find it in the lower ring if she looks in the right places. Or better yet, the wrong ones.
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When Katara sneaks out of her room that night, the moon is half full, bright and unfinished overhead. She's reasonably sure that Toph noticed her leaving, but she doesn't care what other people get up to, and for that Katara is grateful.
She steps onto the westbound train, her upper ring papers tucked in her pocket. Nobody from the upper ring is going west at this time of night, so she has the car to herself. The way the earthbenders move it is truly amazing, and now that she's undistracted by other passengers, she understands why it impresses Sokka.
Katara taps the window with restless fingers, warm all over but close to shivering. She's alone, one small person in the largest city in the world, heading out into the darkness. And why shouldn't she? Aside from teaching Aang waterbending, she doesn't have any obligations tomorrow.
Perhaps this should feel isolating, sitting on a quiet train without any company, but it doesn't. Even back home, she could find pockets of time to be alone. Out on the ice, surrounded by nothing but cold, white silence. In a boat, paddling through the freezing water without a soul to bother her. Mending socks while Gran Gran was at weaving circle, one crooked stitch at a time. Simple solitude. She's missed it to a certain degree, more than she realized.
Her alone time gets interrupted when she reaches the middle ring. All kinds of passengers start boarding, old and young, men and women, some obviously wealthy and some poor. Katara has gathered that everyone who works in the upper ring lives in the upper ring, but the rest of the city isn't so neatly divided. A fair amount of people work in the middle ring but commute down to the lower ring. She assumes for better pay.
The train fills up quickly, and an old woman hovers awkwardly by the door, gripping a railing. Those gnarled, veiny hands have seen decades of hard work, not unlike Gran Gran's. When Katara offers her seat, the old woman takes it happily.
The lighting on the tracks dims as they go down, and the ride gets bumpier. Katara has to hold on tight to a chain loop, and she still rocks back and forth against the people next to her.
"End of the line!" a man shouts into the car.
Katara files out with everyone else.
Normally she'd return by the east train, but since this is probably the last train with service to the lower ring tonight, she'll have to walk to the middle ring to get back to her house.
I didn't think that through.
She hasn't really thought any of this through. She doesn't even know what she's doing here.
Katara follows the crowd out of the station onto a poorly lit street. The buildings are crammed close together and crumbling, and a gritty sheen coats nearly everything. Even the people, who are still out and about, as busy as if it was daytime. There's a vibrancy among them, though, an energy that the stilted, controlled upper ring lacks.
Around the first corner Katara takes, she sees a middle-aged woman carrying a very large bag of rice. She stumbles, falling to the ground, her rice spilling across the cobblestones. Within seconds, three teenage boys emerge from an alleyway, snatch up the half-full bag, and run off. The woman tries to get up, but she slips and yelps, clutching her ankle.
Katara considers chasing the boys. They need a good thrashing, but she can't just leave this poor woman injured in the street.
As she approaches, the woman waves her off, saying, "I've got it, I've got it."
Apparently, she doesn't got it, however, because when she tries to stand she only falls again. She lets out an impressive stream of curses, snatches up a handful of spilled rice, and flings it toward the alley with a growl.
"Let me take a look," Katara says. "I can help."
The woman stares up at her, one eyebrow raised, her voice dripping with disdain as she asks, "What can you do?"
Katara pulls water out of her waterskin, bending it until it glows blue. "Quite a lot, actually."
When she finishes healing the woman's ankle, the bag of rice drops down to the ground at the end of the block. Katara hurries over, scanning the rooftops. No one's there, the elusive do-gooder already gone.
Katara helps the woman up and hands her the bag. "Does your ankle feel better?"
"Yes, and thank you for grabbing the rice."
"Don't thank me, someone else returned it."
The woman smiles. "There's a masked man who goes about at night to help people and deal with troublemakers. I approve, considering no one from the city handles any real crime!"
A masked man sneaking through the shadows to help the downtrodden of Ba Sing Se? She certainly didn't expect that when she stepped onto the night train, but… it's not an unpleasant surprise.
Whoever he is, perhaps he can help her find that unnameable something she's been searching for.
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Zuko's feet throb from standing since dawn. He's tired, and he has to close tonight.
The day in, day out monotony of this life is hard to adjust to. Is this what he's going to do forever? Make tea in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, sleep, repeat?
The idea makes him feel sick. Angry.
He doesn't know how Uncle can be content doing this. He was a crown prince (just like Zuko was. Is.) and he's happy to serve tea and handle money.
Zuko tries to humble himself, but he can only manage it if he imagines this as temporary.
"Lee?" one of his customers asks.
Zuko shakes his head. "Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts. What were you saying?"
"That girl is back tonight! A waterbender from the upper ring. She's been coming down here lately, sets up in an alley and heals people for hours. Last night she promised she'd look at my lower back pain." He smiles, the gaps in his teeth on full display. "I'm gonna be a new man by tomorrow!"
"A waterbender?" Zuko asks.
There are plenty of waterbenders. More than just the Avatar's.
That waterbender likes to sneak around at night, though. He remembers that.
If she catches him here it'll be the end of the boring life he was just lamenting. His tedious string of unremarkable days will get cut short.
Until this moment, Zuko didn't realize exactly how much he doesn't want that to happen.
"What does she look like?"
The customer shrugs. "Brown hair. Blue eyes."
So the vaguest description of most waterbenders.
"And about your age."
There have to be dozens of waterbenders around his age.
Not ones who travel the world.
"Do you have an ailment you need checked out? If you show up early maybe you'll get in tonight!"
"Where's she seeing people?" Zuko asks.
"Down in the alley behind Zhu's. It's not much of a clinic, but she doesn't need bells and whistles to heal people. Just water." His smile is so admiring it borders on dreamy. "I've never seen anything like it."
Zuko resists the urge to touch his scar. Maybe if a healer had—
No. It would take more than bending to fix what Father did to him, even if he was treated immediately. Only a miracle could have saved his face.
"Thanks," Zuko says. "My uncle has a chronic condition that's been bothering him. I'll tell him to head over."
After the tea shop is closed—doors locked, dishes washed, floors swept—Zuko heads upstairs, straight to his room.
"Lee, what are you up to this evening?" Uncle asks.
Now would be the time to share news of the bleeding-heart Water Tribe healer, but Zuko only says, "Going out. Don't wait up."
He slides the screen closed behind him, then digs through his chest of drawers for his all-black clothes. Changing feels better than it should, like with each new layer a little more of him disappears, until he's something different entirely. Not Lee the refugee, not honorless Prince Zuko, but someone completely independent from them.
He slings his swords onto his back, ties on his mask—blue, white, grinning—and opens the window. The moon is almost full, waxing into that awkward shape that isn't quite a circle. Not an ideal time to spy on an enemy waterbender.
Zuko jumps onto the neighboring rooftop anyway, quiet as the wind.
Finding her is easy. The line of potential patients runs out of the alley and along the street, at least thirty people. Whoever this healer is, she has her work cut out for her. Zuko jumps to the next rooftop, getting as close as he can without being spotted.
Sure enough, it's her. He knew it. It had to be. She's cradling a child in her arms, her hands glowing blue in the dark of the evening.
Is she alone?
He doesn't see the Avatar, or the earthbender girl, or the Water Tribe boy. Just her.
She makes impressive work of the people lined up, but even so, this is going to take hours. Zuko settles in to watch anyway, and he doesn't even know why. Maybe she could lead him back to the Avatar, but they're in the upper ring. There's a very slim chance of him making it up there undetected while tailing her. And what's he going to do? Put the boy in a sack and haul him away?
Zuko spots a group of men gathering outside the alley. They're talking in voices too hushed for him to hear, but they seem suspicious. He knows shady when he sees it.
Sure enough, they bust into the waterbender's makeshift clinic and start roughing up her would-be patients. Pathetic, tired people who clearly don't have much on them.
The waterbender stands up, the child in her lap falling weakly to the ground—she clearly wasn't done healing him.
She's an impressive fighter (he learned that much in the North Pole months ago), so he's not surprised when she takes out most of the thugs. But then one lunges behind her, a knife poised to slip between her ribs—
Zuko jumps down and swings his swords at the attacker before he can even think about it. The man manages to slash the top of his hand with his knife. Blood runs out of the tear in his ruined glove, dripping on his boot, but the blade was so sharp it doesn't hurt much. Not enough to keep Zuko from kicking the bastard in the sternum.
The waterbender pushes the others out of the alley, and the one who came for her with the knife is scrambling away.
He turns to the waterbender. She's almost exactly as he remembers, except that she's not glaring at him with unadulterated loathing. A privilege that will vanish if she finds out who he is.
Zuko sheathes his swords behind his back, and right as he's about to jump away she says, "Thanks for your help."
She gives him an appraising look, like she doesn't know exactly what to make of him. Without asking, she grabs his hand, the one that's still bleeding. She peels away his ruined glove, her fingers cool to the touch against his skin. She glances up at him suddenly, her lips parted and blue eyes round.
There's no way she can know. Unless the Avatar told his friends about the time Zuko saved his neck… and then threatened to slit it. Or maybe they saw a wanted poster, saw this mask and—
No, if she knew who he was, she wouldn't be touching him like this. Gently. Calmly.
She coats her hand in glowing, blue water and runs it over the cut. His skin itches as it closes itself together with her guidance, but it's soothing too. When she's done, there's just a pink line, the kind of faint scar that will fade to silver, then to nothingness. He flexes his fingers experimentally. No pain, and the cut stays closed.
"I hope that's better." She tilts her head to the side, smiling softly. "I'm going to get back to work, but if you need anything, I'm happy to help. And I can keep a secret."
Zuko doesn't know which secret she's referring to, but every single one he has could get him killed, so it's best he leaves.
He jumps up onto the rooftop and back into the night.
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Katara finishes healing the last person in line. Aside from those thugs, it was a relatively peaceful way to spend her evening.
"Thank you," the teen girl she was working on says shakily. She had an awful infection raging through her system. Katara was surprised she could even make it out of her house.
She hands her a gold coin. "Here."
"I don't need any money, I came here to help."
The girl scowls. "You should take payment. I don't want your charity," she says stiffly.
Katara purses her lips. The people of the Earth Kingdom are as stubborn as their element.
She takes the coin reluctantly and sets it with the handful of trinkets her other patients gave her tonight.
"I'll be back tomorrow," Katara says. "You can spread the word. I'd like to help more people."
The girl nods, clearly satisfied that she took her money. "I'll tell my mom. And she'll tell the whole city."
Katara grins. "I appreciate that."
"Thanks again!"
Katara packs up her things as the girl walks off, then heads toward the middle ring train station. It's far too late, she's going to sleep in, but it's not like she has anything else to do in the morning. Aang leaves early to search for Appa, Sokka spends half the day holed up in the library, and Toph sleeps late too.
She likes to help people, but the thing that will keep her coming back is curiosity.
When she touched that masked man—or boy, he didn't seem much older than her—she could tell he was a firebender. What is a firebender doing here? Running around in a mask with swords no less?
Something about him feels off. Familiar? That's ridiculous.
Whoever he is, he's hiding something bigger than being a firebender. He helped her, though, so she'll keep his secret for now. Maybe it'll come in handy.
She hopes she sees him again tomorrow. It's a small thing, that hope, but it's enough to draw her in. She'll be back night after night if she has to, however long it takes to find out what's underneath the mask.
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AN: As you can see from the byline, this fic was co-written with my dear friend MayimOr, who has an account here on FFN and on AO3 under that name!
This started as a Blutara smut oneshot and somehow morphed into a novel-length coming of age romance. But don't worry, it's still smutty ;)
FYI everyone has been aged up by two years. Zuko is 18, Katara 16, Aang 14, etc.
If you liked this chapter, we'd love to hear your thoughts :)