ZW 2015 Day 1: Happenstance
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Coincidence
The first time she sees him, there's something familiar but nothing she can put her finger on. Eventually, she's attributed familiarity to the number of times she's run into him.
Katara has enough pull with people, as the Avatar's girlfriend (soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, if you ask the acolytes), that she hasn't needed to bring back the Painted Lady disguise to offer help. That doesn't mean she doesn't miss it. Every once in a while, she thinks it would be nice to be so revered as a spirit that people would thank her for helping them instead of constantly heckling her to heal this and heal that and then eyeing her with that "disdain-for-the-peasantry" look. It's aggravating. While she notices it more when they go to the Fire Nation, there are several Earth Kingdom cities that are guilty of the same snootiness-Aang is too busy being fawned over to have these kinds of problems.
Toph would understand, but she's not here.
Zuko still looks at her like that sometimes.
Sokka doesn't notice, probably in no small part because one, he can't heal the sick or fix rivers or any of the other things she has to do, and two, he's been too busy following Suki around.
All in all, she's really tempted sometimes to put on a hat and a veil. So, when she's leaving yet another town with a name she doesn't feel like remembering and sees someone in a mask flitting through the streets with a devilish blue mask, her first feeling is jealousy. Her second is suspicion. Slamming herself against the wall of a nearby building, she waits in the shadows for a moment, watching him climb to the roof of a house and jump across to the next, and the next.
Well. Two can play that game.
Katara follows as silently as she can, cognizant of the water sources she passes, trying desperately to keep eyes on the masked man. He leaps from the last house before the edge of the village, landing in a bale of hay, and then he springs up as if the drop was nothing. Narrowing her eyes, she stops her pursuit and sprints back to the campsite-only an airbender has that kind of grace. It must be Aang.
To her consternation, when she gets back, hair wild around her face and red in her cheeks, Aang is dead to the world, snoring softly. Momo perches on his chest and opens one eye when she comes closer, then disinterestedly nestles into Aang's chest and goes back to sleep.
Apparently, airbenders aren't the only ones in this world who defy gravity.
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Republic City has become a bustling metropolis within a few years of its founding, to the surprise of everyone (including its founders). Zuko is pleasantly surprised that no one recognizes him despite that statue Toph metalbent into the center of town, much to his exasperation. Her detail work was surprisingly good, but Aang had asked some of her students to make minor adjustments after she'd finished. The Fire Lord wasn't the same without the scar and the shoulder pads.
Despite his grumbling on the subject of the statue, Zuko wasn't entirely opposed to it-It had become something of a pastime for him to direct the court painters to it and draw inspiration from there instead of forcing him to sit in an uncomfortable chair for hours. Their imaginations were good enough to colorize it.
Just the same, he likes to keep his identity under wraps, just in case, so when he goes out at night, the Blue Spirit mask is fixed firmly in place. Apparently, he's not the only one with this idea. There's a girl, his first night in Republic City that summer, wearing a hat and a veil. From this distance he can't tell what the marks on her arms are, but she reminds him of Uncle's Painted Lady folk tale. Silent as death, Zuko sneaks up behind her. Unfortunately for him, his old habit of not thinking things through still occasionally plagues him, and when he reaches out and touches her shoulder, she screams and drowns him in a torrent of water before vanishing.
Okay. Spirit or waterbender. Probably waterbender, but that was an unusually impressive amount of water.
Zuko resolves not to sneak up on women in the middle of the night after this.
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Katara runs into the masked man for the third time following revolts in Omashu. Team Avatar has arrived upon Bumi's death to maintain order and work out a succession, and although most of the citizens are less than pleased by the Fire Lord's presence, at least a few of them privately think this might be a good time to think about boosting their chances of being chosen by offering alliances.
"I'm not here to get married!" Zuko exclaims, in what Katara knows to be shock but the Earth Kingdom man probably takes to be indignance. "I'm here to represent the interests of Fire Nation people who have settled here."
The man snorts loudly and stalks away.
"Zuko," Katara says, trying not to laugh. "I hear you're getting married."
Naturally, Zuko turns several shades of red and purple before stuttering that Aang specifically asked him to come and he wouldn't have if he'd known this is how people were going to take it and why can't he ever do anything right.
"Aang wasn't completely honest with you. It's not a bad idea for you to marry someone from Omashu, if you met someone you liked."
Zuko blinks. "What."
Katara shrugs. "It's been a while since you and Mai broke up. We thought a few blind dates might not be such a bad idea."
"You did this. You told these people to do this."
"No! I just knew it would happen and didn't tell you."
Zuko groans and drops his head into his hands.
"Here's the name of someone I thought you'd like. Her name is Jin."
Zuko narrows his eyes. "I knew a Jin in Ba Sing Se."
"I know," Katara chirps. "She told me. She's very upset that you lied about your name and knowing how to juggle, but she's open to seeing you again."
Katara is nothing if not snoopy, so when the whispers start to go around that the Fire Lord has made a personal call, she takes herself to Jin's apartment for tea. "So," she begins, sly smile on her face. "Was it good to see Zuko again?"
Jin shrugs noncommittally. "Lee and Zuko are very different people. He's still cute though."
On the whole, Katara is not convinced this is going to work out, and she's even less convinced when there's a prickle on her neck when she leaves Jin's building. Turning a corner, there is the masked man, tucked into the shadows with two swords drawn. "Hey!"
The man jolts. He looks as though he's about to run, but something seems to have frozen his feet to the ground. Katara takes a moment to wonder why, but it shortly thereafter occurs to her that she did, in fact, freeze his feet to the ground. Suddenly, the thundering of footsteps descends upon them, and there are three very large, very dangerous looking men surrounding them. "Let me go, you idiot," the masked man hisses.
Katara rips the ice from his feet and flings the shards at the men. "Were you waiting for them?"
"Obviously."
His voice sounds familiar, but she can't place it. "Why?"
"They've been robbing this neighborhood for weeks and no one has done anything."
Fair enough. Back to back, they take out the thieves. The blue mask is a blur in her periphery, but she can hear the whistle of his swords and the slap of the flat against the side of someone's head. Katara stands over them proudly, hands on her hips. "Take that, losers."
But when she turns, her new friend is gone.
Frustrating.
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Katara throws herself into the couch when she finally makes it back to her room in Bumi's old palace. Aang, who has dozed off waiting for her, wakes with a jolt. "Katara! Where have you been?"
"Fighting crime."
"Without me?!"
"Sorry. I was having tea with Jin when I ran into this guy with a blue mask and dual swords-"
Aang gasps dramatically. "The Blue Spirit! Remember? The guy from the play who rescued me from Zhao?"
Katara blinks. "That's the Blue Spirit? Why would he be in Omashu?"
"I guess you could have met a knockoff."
The thought is mildly offensive, but she has no evidence either way. "I guess."
"Let's go see Zuko! Maybe he can help."
Katara narrows her eyes at him as he blows himself at the door. "Why would Zuko know anything about this?"
Aang freezes. "Uh, I don't know, don't Fire Lords know lots of weird things? And Zuko's been all over the world. Maybe he's met the Blue Spirit."
It all sounds a little flimsy. "You know what? I think I'm going to bed. We can talk to Zuko tomorrow."
They never do get around to it. This development is fortunate for Zuko, who is at that moment and long into the next day very busy trying to convince his pounding headache to go away. He'd forgotten how unpleasant it is to take a rock to the back of the head.
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By the time Katara has married Aang, given birth to Bumi, and mostly forgotten about the Blue Spirit, Zuko has nearly forgotten about his encounter with the Painted Lady. He's not sure what to think when he sees her again, after so many years. He's been touring the outer edge of the Fire Nation for the last year, surveying infrastructure and personally assuring the peasants that he's not going to send their sons off to another war-people said he'd never have time for this, and he knows the capitol will be a disaster when he returns, but this is worth it.
Aang and Katara had joined him in Shu Jing, saying something about wanting to see how their river cleaning efforts had held up over the years. Not so well, as it turned out, but that would be fixed easily enough. Katara, very pregnant and very moody, had been snapping at both of them for most of the day (likely in no small part due to the fact that Aang didn't want her doing any heavy waterbending until after their daughter was born). So, Zuko thought, it might be a better idea to get some of the looking around done on his own. The three of them could talk to the locals tomorrow.
He wanders down to the old factory, hoping to find some waste receptacle or something that could be causing the river pollution, but she's beaten him to it. A woman with a hat and veil is there, separating sludge from water and discarding the sludge high up on the bank. Definitely a waterbender, then. A spirit would be, to borrow a phrase from Sokka, more spirity. Briefly, he entertains the idea that Katara is the Painted Lady, but why would she bother disguising herself-and then the waterbender turns and Zuko can see that she is, in fact, very pregnant. Just like Katara.
So he does what any rational person would do and does not sneak up on her this time-he remembers what happened last time. "Katara?"
She whirls around. "Who are you?"
"Uh, it's me."
"The Blue Spirit," she finishes.
He decides not to argue with her. It might bode better for him in the morning. The Blue Spirit nods.
"There aren't any thieves or murderers here, you know. It's just sludge."
He shrugs, holds up his lantern, and walks in the direction of the factory.
"Wait! Where are you going?"
The Blue Spirit does not speak. For whatever reason, Katara realizing it's him is not high on his list of good things that could happen to him today. They haven't done a project together, just the two of them, since before they started dating their spouses. It would be nice, just this once, to break their unspoken rule.
Ever curious, Katara follows him (he will admit to himself that he's walking a bit slower than usual, to make sure she can keep up). "Why are we going to the factory?"
They've come to the drain pipe of the factory. Pointing into the drain, the Blue Spirit edges closer to it. Katara looks pensive, resting a hand on her belly, but she nods, and they walk into the pipe together. It smells terrible, like 15 years of sewage and metal runoff and chemical spills all mixed up and gurgling from several broken pipes. Which, come to think of it, is probably exactly what's going on here. Pushing deeper into the factory's underbelly, it is soon very clear that several waste tanks have rusted badly and are leaking their contents into the water.
How to solve this. Without welding the metal back together so it can rust again in 10 more years. The Blue Spirit tilts his head, and Katara steps closer for a better look. She perches precariously on a slippery rock and reaches out to him to steady herself. Reaching to the side, the Blue Spirit grasps her upper arm. "I wish Toph were here."
So does he, but he's pretending not to know Toph.
"What if we could clog this drain?"
It's a really big drain, Zuko wants to say, and besides that, whatever is leaking will eventually eat through a dam or whatever they set up. The Blue Spirit shakes his head.
Katara huffs. "I'm open to better ideas."
The Blue Spirit draws a sword and tentatively stabs at the ground.
"You want to dig a hole?'
He nods vigorously.
"Maybe we should get Aang-he's my husband, the Avatar. You knew my name, you must know that." She laughs lightly. "He could earthbend a hole big enough for all of this to flow into."
Alarmed, the Blue Spirit shakes his head rather violently. Zuko and Katara can do this just fine on their own, thank you very much. Aang is not getting in on this. Trying to think of some way to communicate to Katara that she needs to make a giant ice drill, Zuko ponders the situation. After a moment, the Blue Spirit draws his other sword and puts the two points together to form a point. Think, Zuko. Like stirring soup, he moves the swords around and around, increasingly quickly until he's pretty sure she's got it.
"You could just talk to me, you know. Is it an ice pick?" The Blue Spirit nods and spins faster. "An ice drill?" Yes, he nods. "I guess we could try," Katara muses, but it would be easier if we had an earthbender.
Zuko is impatient now. With a jerk of his arm, the Blue Spirit blasts fire at the soggy ground. Water evaporates, leaving a much drier patch. Another blast sends chunks of mud flying in several directions.
Katara stares. "You firebend?" Then she narrows her eyes. "You should have just told me before. Why did you bring a lantern?"
As if to emphasize that yes, he does, and no, he is not discussing his motives for keeping it secret as long as possible, the Blue Spirit directs another blast at the ground. Katara quickly picks up the plan, leaving her confusion for a less pressing moment, and they alternate drilling with combustion. After nearly an hour, they are both exhausted, leaning on each other for support, but there is a large trench separating the rusting tanks from the drainage path.
"We did it!" She crows, and they stumble back into the starry night. Dawn is just beginning to hint at breaking, and the Blue Spirit pats her on the back. Awkwardly.
She laughs and wraps him in a hug. When they break apart, he can see a sparkle in her eyes. "Thank you," she whispers. "It's been a while since I've really felt useful."
Behind the mask, Zuko smiles, but the mask stares into her face impassively. He reaches out, against his better judgment, and touches her face with his gloved hand. It leaves a muddy mark on her cheek. Hoping she knows he's saying thank you, thank you for working with me, thank you for being a better friend than I deserve, thank you for forgiving me, for trusting me, everything he's never been able to say to her. Then he turns away and begins to jog.
"Wait!" She calls after him. "When will we run into each other again?"
Zuko thinks it's for the best that he retires the Blue Spirit, and he vanishes into what's left of the dark.
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A/N: Not super sure how much I like this one, but it sort of wrote itself. Would Zuko tell Katara about his alter ego? I don't know. But we all know Zuko is very complicated, so I can see something like this happening. What did you guys think? Thanks to all who have been reading and reviewing! Especially everybody who tells me what they want to read-a lot of the things are already on my list anyway, so it helps me prioritize.
