I really hope you liked the last chapter guys, and that this one will clear some things up. Thanks for all the reviews and everything, I'm truly honored. Also, SOMEBODY please give me the name of a good, multi-chaptered Zutara fic I could read. I want something deep and well written, so let me know if you know of something I might like to read. Thanks!

Chapter Ten
Truth

She was distracted by a sudden change in temperature. It had been a humid night, but they'd gone somewhere cool and dry. She felt something brush her upturned face and recoiled, then recognized it as a coarse sort of fabric. She paid closer attention, thinking that maybe she could memorize the way out of this hell.

She started bouncing. The Blue Spirit was going down steps. They seemed to go on forever, and anxiety took over as her brain fled the scene. They couldn't already be at the palace, she was too far away. Maybe they were taking a secret passage.

She shrieked again when she felt him shirt beneath her, and suddenly her feet were free and on the ground again, and steel was pressed into her throat. She froze- he was going to kill her.

The blindfold was ripped from her eyes, and she blinked in the sudden light. The man in the mask was standing to her right with a sword pressed lightly against her throat, and the black holes that were his eyes seemed to be staring right through her.

"Go ahead, do it!" she spat, clenching her teeth. It would only take one small flick of his wrist to open her throat, and if he was going to do it, she wasn't waiting around for him to build up the suspense. She refused to play his game.

He walked in front of her slowly, keeping her at the tip of his sword, then leaned down and pulled a ring up on one of the floorboards. A trapdoor opened, and he walked closer to her to open it, taking the blade away from her skin. She stared down into the black abyss for just a moment, then watched as he disappeared into it. She was alone in a room far beneath the city- she could tell by the humidity and the temperature that she was nowhere near the surface.

She touched her throat, expecting a line of blood, but he hadn't even broken the skin. Her instincts were conflicted- how could she trust him? He'd nearly killed her. She wasn't going after him… but why had he brought her all this way just to leave her? And she didn't know how to get back to her home.

Katara swore under her breath, then jumped into the trapdoor. There was a terrifying moment of freefall, then her feet hit the ground and she rolled, bouncing back up into a crouch. Something touched her shoulder and she flinched away, recognizing the gloved hand of her demon. He pushed her forward lightly, and she stepped forward with an annoyed little huff.

"Quit pushing me, I don't know where I'm going!" she muttered quietly, and heard his footsteps come to a stop behind her. And then they were in front of her, and his hand was on her shoulder, leading her forward. He pushed slightly, telling her to stop, and she waited, blind.

She didn't scream when his hands wrapped around her waist, not even when he picked her up and carried her bridal style down another flight of stairs. She felt his beating heart beneath her hands, and realized he had probably saved her from eating the stairs because she couldn't see where she was going.

"Thanks," she snapped begrudgingly, and felt him shake with a silent chuckle beneath her hands. That staircase was longer than the one before, and she felt as if the walls were coming closer. She fought to stay calm, and felt his clutch her closer in response to her panic.

Then, he pushed open a door with his foot, and they were once again in a dimly lit room- it was his room. A pool of oil sat in a dish, lit by a smoldering wick in the center. The flickering light it gave illuminated a small bed and a dresser with a wash-bin on one side of the room, and a small arsenal of swords and knives on the other. The weapons shone as if illuminated from within, and she suddenly recognized the metal they were wrought from.

"You have lunar steel weapons?" she asked, walking closer in fascination. She remembered Sokka's 'space sword' that had been lost in the Fall of Ozai, and how she'd later found out that there were other forgers who had found stores of meteors and made weapons to fit. The blades were sharper than most and lighter as well, and she wished she could tell Sokka what she'd found.

She turned back to the Blue Spirit, who seemed unconcerned that she was getting so close to his weapons. He was instead staring at one of the walls, which was covered by peeling wanted posters of criminals in Caldera. She recognized a few names, but most of them were mysteries to her.

Some of them had crosses slashed across them. Others were covered with black inked questions, little scribbled and question marks. She saw a map of the city as well, painted with numbers, with one place in particular circled. She stepped closer, trying to make it out, but felt him tap her shoulder. When she faced him, he pointed his sword to the right and jerked his head, telling her to move away.

She frowned. "Say please." He didn't, just reached out his other hand and pushed her aside gently. Then, he knelt down and pried up a floorboard, sending a shiver through her body. They boards moved easily, revealing yet another passage downwards. He stared up at her, half his body swallowed up by the darkness he stood in. he seemed to be waiting for her, though she never knew exactly.

"I'm not going down there. I don't know what you want, but there is no way in hell that- ugh, never mind." She rolled her eyes, knowing she couldn't argue against her curiosity (and his swords) and hopped down after him, leaving the boards open behind them in case she needed to make a quick getaway.

A light moan floated back towards her, and she froze- was that the demon, or maybe the wind? He turned back to look at her and shook his head, then opened an unseen door and flooded the hall with eerie green light.

She was immediately brought back to the crystal catacombs, and to Zuko- she'd completely misjudged him then, had hated him more than she could ever say. But by the end of their time together, she'd been ready to help him- nervous too, but trusting him not to hurt her.

He could have easily killed her then, but he hadn't. The Blue Spirit had been around her on multiple occasions, just the two of them, but had never done anything to hurt her. How could she not go with him now? He couldn't be Azula's puppet.

She walked forward into the room, seeing little green lanterns on the walls. They cast a haunting glow over the man slumped in the corner, the one who bled lightly and groaned in pain.

"Oh, Yue," she gasped, running forward to help him before she recognized the black and golden robes of the Dai Li.

"Get away from me!" the man spat, and she narrowly avoided a spike of rock jutting up beneath her feet. She stumbled to the side, watching as he stomped on the ground, bringing a barrage of rocks from the wall and straight for her. She dropped to the ground, waiting for the next attack, but it never came. She looked up, her heart racing, and saw the Blue Spirit standing in front of the Dai Li agent, his Dao blades forming a scissor around his neck. The sweaty, raging man glared up at him.

"What do you want? Why did you bring her here?" Katara stepped forward with a grimace.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she shot back, and the earthbender glared at her.

"Hellcat," he said, and spat a mouthful of blood at her feet. She walked forward and swung her fist, hitting him full across the face and watching in grim satisfaction as he reeled back. Her knuckles pounded, but with a slight twist of water brought up from the moist ground, the wound was healed.

The Blue Spirit stepped back, went to the wall and pulled out a small knife from his side. He turned back to the concrete, began swiping at the barrier with the blade. Every time he did, another white mark was emblazoned on the stone, and by the time he swung around and threw the knife into the wall by the Dai Li agent's head, there was a clear message for them to see.

Tell her everything.

"About what?" Her question was directed at the Blue Spirit, but he just inclined his head towards the man. She turned back to him. "Tell me what?" He wouldn't meet her eyes, so she stalked back to him, grabbing him by the hair and pushing a thin string of water around his neck, squeezing until his face turned purple.

"Tell me what?" she screamed, letting him go, feeling the full moon singing in her blood. She could be horrified later. Now was a time for information, and she was going to get it no matter what it took.

"Fine," he coughed, wheezing and writhing like a worm on the floor. "Fine. I'll tell you. I was an agent of Long Feng, but Azula changed that. We came back with her to the Fire Nation for her coronation, but before that happened, she dismissed us.

I knew things were bad in Ba Sing Se, and I wasn't about to go home. So I went underground, I found a cheap little apartment and I stayed in Caldera. My comrades all left except eight of us, and last I heard the ones who went home are spending their new lives in a jail cell. But about seven months after Azula was taken down, she found me. I thought she was insane, but apparently some nutcase had thought it was a good idea to heal her."

Katara growled, thinking back to her brief sessions with the princess. "Go on," she said, enraptured by the story.

"She brought me back to the palace, and we went underground to meet the others who stayed- I don't know exactly where it was."

He stopped talking, and eyed her suspiciously. She was just moving forward to hit him again when the Blue Spirit flitted forward and cut a line in his cheek. The man howled, his back arched, and Katara was struck by her stupidity. She was deep under the city with two dangerous men, neither of which she was entirely sure she trusted. One minute she was sure the Blue Spirit was awful, the next her curiosity had taken over and she was following wherever he led.

This hunt for Zuko had completely skewed her common sense.

"There were sailors in the room. When they saw us, they went crazy, thinking we were Fire Nation executioners there to kill them. They said if we loved our nation we'd stop and listen to what they had to say, but Azula instructed us to erase their memories. We set up our stations in other rooms and started the process, but the men I was assigned kept talking.

"Apparently, Fire Lord Zuko brought a woman back from the mysterious place in the Earth Kingdom. Not like a lover, they said, an older woman. They stayed on the ship for a month after a two and a half month journey, so they weren't very happy about it, but something changed. Zuko stayed locked in his room with the woman, and whenever anyone saw him, he was quiet and angry, like when he was younger.

"By the time they got to port, no one was looking for him, and they noticed too late that the both of them were gone. They searched for him, but he'd skipped out. The woman had taken all her possessions too- it was like she never existed."

Katara's heart was pounding in her head. She found herself pacing back and forth, passively noting the Blue Spirit, unmoving as stone. "Describe the woman," she said, an inkling of speculation tugging at her mind. He didn't say anything, and she moved forward, grabbing a fistful of his tattered robes and hissing in his face. "Tell me, you bastard, what did she look like?"

"I don't know!" he shouted, "I wasn't there! I don't know!" She released him, her blood boiling as she walked away from him. She came face to face with the Blue Spirit and stopped. He was staring straight at her, and she wondered for the thousandth time what lay beyond that metal, leering mask. Maybe the man behind it silently doubted her. Maybe he knew that the man wasn't telling her everything he knew.

She looked up at him. He tilted his head towards the man, and she turned back to the Dai Li agent. Her hands came up, the fingers twisted in a way she had sworn off long ago. The man froze, his eyes bulging. He tried to fight it, but no one was ever immune to this technique.

She bent his blood until he was standing, and the Blue Spirit automatically sliced through the manacles on his wrists. She forced his arms to stay at his sides, ignored his pained cries. She knew it hurt, knew how it made the body ache and the head feel as if it was going to explode- strangely, she felt something like it in her own body.

One agonizing step at a time, she made him walk forward. "Put your sword up," she whispered to the Blue Spirit, and he did as she asked, holding the blade steady as she walked the Dai Li agent to the very tip of the steel.

"Oh, Spirits no, please! Please!" She made him stop, watched the one drop of blood bead on his shirt and soak through the fabric. He was crying and twitching like a dying spider, and a part of her was so horrified by the sight that she thought she was going to be sick.

She hid her feelings, and braced herself. "You tell me everything you know, or I will make you keep walking."

"I erased their memories! I did, but it was too important, too strong. I knew they would remember eventually- I killed them, I killed them all so that they would never tell. And I told Azula what they said. She was upset," he said quickly, desperately, "she was upset and she told me to leave and never come back. I did, and I spent almost three years hiding before this… thing found me."

She waited a moment, then sighed and flexed her fingers, watching him wince. "Anything else?" Her voice sounded dead and gone, but rage still squeezed her heart. This was the man who killed Ju Huan. She was inside him, plucking at his veins, and all she wanted was to be out of him, to step away from the man who got rid of her path to Zuko.

"Yes!" He was grasping at straws, she could tell, but he went on. "When I left Azula, she said something- like muttered it under her breath." She felt the Blue Spirit stop breathing and considered the thought that he hadn't heard this before.

"Oh really," she said scathingly, "What did she say?"

The man's eyes widened, and he took a deep breath. "I'm not sure, but I think… 'Mother', she said, I think that's what she said." Katara unconsciously gasped and tightened her muscles, hearing the man scream in agony. "That's all I know! That's all I know! Please!"

She was frozen, completely unable to do anything. Azula's mother. Zuko's mother. Lady Ursa, who had disappeared and haunted him for his entire life without her. He'd found her. He'd brought her home, and then died, Azula had known and-

She'd killed her own brother.

Suddenly, things moved very fast. The Blue Spirit thrust his arm forward, the sword jutted through the man's body and out his back, and Katara felt a horrifying pain lancing through her. She screamed and felt her body moving forward, felt strong arms wrap around her, and let the Blue Spirit's mask lull her into the deep, cool darkness.

So what did you guys think? Can Katara trust the Blue Spirit? Is Ursa still alive? And if so- where is she?

Please review :)