Chapter Text
A menacing blue face snarled at her from the ground, its body ungracefully limp.
Zohra prodded the wooden mask with the flat edge of her broadsword, frowning. This was not how she'd expected the night to go.
It had been nearly a week since she'd noticed the black clad figure, not quite fully obscured in the shadows of the dark alleys of the Lower Ring. At first, she was just impressed someone around here had managed to outsmart the Dai Li’s ridiculous curfew; she'd seen the sword-swinging spirit on accident, after a particularly disastrous night of drinking the stolen rice-wine from Liah's employers (Middle Ring up-and-comers who couldn't survive a day without her roommate cleaning up after them). Liah made decent money, far more than she did; Zohra had argued several times that they didn't really need to steal anything from the new money snobs Liah worked for, that she could just as easily walk into a store and buy whatever she wanted. Liah disagreed; her employers deserved to have their cheap alcohol stolen, because who on earth would drink anything this vile if they could afford not to. Zohra had laughed at that, thrown her hands up in defeat; Liah looked the part of coquettish Earth Kingdom child maid, but that's where the similarities stopped.
Since that night, something had stirred inside her. The spirit, or whatever it was, seemed familiar in a way that unsettled her, like she'd seen it before, the memory just out of her reach. She'd stayed up every night then, forsaking precious hours of sleep before a horrifically early rookie shift, running inventory at the street's communal granary, to get a glimpse of the blue face that seemed to float over the rooftops, running in larger and larger circles and eventually dropping out of sight behind a raised pillar. She fantasized about running in the same way- Ba Sing Se was suffocating, its crowded streets weighed on her so heavily in her first few days as a lone refugee that she almost went mad. She'd had nothing to her name until she'd conned her way into a job at the granary, except the clothes on her back, and the swords her father had made her the year he died. It was hard work forgetting him, but she'd managed to do it well enough, until his face had become as blurry as that of her mother's, whose death Zohra didn’t even really remember. She felt some guilt at this intentional amnesia- maybe it was cowardly, to not cope with Dad's loss because she couldn't bear the pain. As far as she could remember, it had been just the two of them, travelling the Earth Kingdom for years until his declining health forced him to settle down and start work at a forge in the Taihua district, the closest thing she had to a home. They'd spent two perfect years there until Dad died of whatever infection had settled in his lungs (Zohra hadn't bothered reading up on the diagnosis- she knew when a battle was lost). Once Fire Nation soldiers captured the town to construct an easier trading route to Gaoling, Zohra had little choice but to leave with the rest of the refugees who had been deemed useless to their new rulers’ needs.
Back to the matter at hand- Zohra realized she had no idea what to do now that she'd gotten a hold of it. Not an it, she reminded herself, as she felt the heat radiate off this certainly human form; it's a person. Should she just leave him here after she had taken him out for no reason beyond boredom, beyond wanting to prove that she could? She hadn't practiced with her swords in months, ever since she'd gotten to Ba Sing Se. Though this recent victory was an indicator that she wasn't totally useless yet, she knew she was getting rusty; she had to figure out a way to get back to training, but how? There were no such schools or gyms in the Lower Ring; the Earth King had probably figured that it wasn't a good idea to give a bunch of angry, poor people easy access to dangerous weapons. She'd slashed around a few times in the granary during her shifts, which had ample floor space- and no one except other clerks like her would even go in there until they needed to during the winter. But, slashing around wasn't real training, just exercise- she needed a half-decent partner to practice with.
She sighed, and decided the only thing she could do at the moment was to drag him somewhere the Dai Li wouldn't find him. She owed him that; she had ambushed him without reason, from the roof of the seedy tea shop opposite her apartment, and felt the exhilaration of landing softly behind him, still undetected, and quickly stunning him with a quick jab from her sword's handle to the side of his neck (an easy bastardization of a chi-blocking technique her father had taught her that would knock out an opponent for at least ten minutes). But, she knew she was lying to herself; she did know why she'd done it. She'd seen his swords, larger than her own but so familiar, like the ones her father had made in their ill-fated forge in Taihua. Who would be in Ba Sing Se with swords like these? Non-benders of the Earth Kingdom preferred anvils or their own fists; swords were always a rarity.
She cursed under her breath as she dragged the man, still with his mask on, behind the crumbling granary where she was always the first worker in; no one would approach the building for at least another six hours, and he'd be long gone by then. Once she was sure she was out of sight, she took his swords out again, examining them for the maker's signature.
She almost dropped them in surprise when she saw what she had been suspecting: made in Taihua. She knew she shouldn't be as excited as she felt; he had probably lived in or travelled through Taihua, had probably bought them off one of Dad's regulars, maybe from the forge itself- there wasn't much of a mystery involved, now that she thought about it. She contemplated taking them, but paused- that wouldn't make her feel much better, or be of much help. The blades were clearly made for someone much larger than her, they felt awkwardly heavy in her hands, and there would be no way of explaining a second pair of swords to Liah. Frowning, she sheathed them again.
And then, on an impulse she didn't know she had, she lifted the mask off the man's face, careful to not touch the exposed skin of his neck, and almost jumped back in surprise- he had the most awful, horrible scar she had ever seen. Even in the dark, she knew it was the work of some ruthless firebender, and winced. Once she got over the scar, which angrily covered his left eye all the way back to his ear, she noticed the rest of his face; gaunt, pale, but young- a teenager, sixteen at the most. She felt a rush of concern for him, and had to force herself out of it; she was done playing neighborhood vigilante. He'd wake up soon, and realize someone had knocked him out and deposited him, swords and all, behind the granary, and taken nothing. If nothing else, she'd probably confused him into never leaving his house again. Awkwardly, she tried to put his mask back on his face, hoping to leave no trace of herself at the scene-
She let out a soft shriek as a hot hand grabbed her wrist.
Why did this happen to me?
Zuko wasn't one for rhetorical questions- that was Uncle's forte, but this was not what he had expected tonight, not after a week of undisturbed sneaking. He wanted to scream in frustration; who on earth had chi-blocked him, let him fall to the ground, and taken his mask off, and been stupid enough to stay there?
He jumped to his feet, taking in the sight of the girl staring at him in wide-eyed shock, her feet in a defensive stance, straining against his grip on her arm. She was a half a head shorter than him, in a dark tunic and armed- wait, what? She has swords. Zuko felt the weight of his own pair safely tucked in their sheath- she was holding her own pain. He was also acutely aware that he had to make as little noise as possible now; the Dai Li agent that he had seen patrolling the streets this past week couldn't be too far away, and this girl had already made enough noise to startle the rat-badgers, one more false step and there could be something much more vile to deal with. Without thinking, he lunged forward, pinning her to the wall behind her, his hands clamped over her mouth.
She squirmed uneasily under him, but didn't make a sound, her eyes fixed on his. Once she stopped moving, Zuko tried adjusting his own stance- he was uncomfortably aware of how narrow this space was, how un-skillfully he had tried to restrain her-
And in that moment of hesitation, she brought her knee to his chest, throwing him flat on his back, and crossed her swords at his neck.
I hate this city.
She bent down, peering at him, looking pleased. He tried to push her off, but he knew it was futile- she knew what she was doing, and had immobilized him completely, her knee still exerting a menacing pressure on his chest. "Nice mask," she said, her expression slowly turning serious. "Look, I don't want trouble."
"Then get off me," he snarled back, clenching his fists, lamenting the lack of his own weapons; had she sheathed them beforehand, so he wouldn't even notice they were out of his hands? This was humiliating, and dangerous; had he accidentally firebent when she had chi-blocked him? That happened, sometimes; he'd been on the receiving end of Ty Lee's jabs too many times to count, and knew that once you lost control, your body could get desperate enough to spit out sparks in a last-ditch effort. He didn't want to think what would happen if she had actually seen that; against his will, he was confronted with the panicky memory of Jet at the docks of Ba Sing Se, his eyes bulging out as he tried to make sense of what he thought he had seen Uncle do…
"Where did you get your swords?"
Well, that wasn't the question he expected. He didn't even remember the name of the stupid town he'd stolen them in- only the face of the man who had taunted Uncle, forced him to embarrass himself for a few coins. He scowled at her, keeping his mouth shut.
She didn't flinch at his silence. "I know the Dai Li agent who patrols this street; his name is Fei, and he owes me a favor, and he will have no problem locking you up if I ask him to. Answer the question, and I'll let you go."
Zuko gritted his teeth, using all his willpower to not breathe fire directly in her face.
She sighed, strands of hair clumsily falling out of a metal comb, the kind most women in the Lower Ring wore. "Listen, buddy, I can keep this up all night. Just tell me where you got the swords, and I'll let you go, promise."
"I bought them in the Earth Kingdom," he bit out, begging his heart rate to stay down. Why didn't I just say they were a family heirloom?
"You're not a very good liar."
"Get off me, and maybe I'll remember the truth."
Her lip curled; Zuko still hadn't gotten a good look at her because of the heavy shadow of the buildings, but he could see her eyes glistening- a curiously pale amber. He hadn’t met any Earth Kingdom citizens with eyes like that-
"So you stole them,” she said, cutting off his train of thought. “Any idea where it was? Which town?"
This was getting stranger and stranger. He'd assumed she was trying to be a hero, trying to get him thrown in prison for a couple of copper coins and some credit from her Dai Li friend, if he even existed. "I don't know. Take them, I don't care."
She sighed, her swords still poised, ready to chop his head off. "Fine, I'll let you go. On one condition-"
"No," Zuko said flatly, hoping his tone, stoic as he could make it, would deter her.
She ignored him, plowing on. "You're going to go back to wherever you crawled out of quietly and with your head intact, and you will meet me here again tomorrow, same time."
He stared back, wishing the ground would swallow him whole. What?
"In case I didn't make myself clear- I'm threatening you. This is a threat. You will come back here tomorrow, after midnight, and bring those swords. If I don't see you, I'll find you and get you arrested for…trespassing." She paused, drawing in a breath. "Not many people have a scar like that- you won’t be easy to forget."
Zuko put everything he had into stopping his head from blowing off. He was trapped; he couldn't risk attacking her now. especially not with firebending, not when there was a chance she actually knew a Dai Li agent. Ba Sing Se was the only place safe from the Fire Nation and from Azula, and he couldn't get too far in this wretched city, not with Uncle along, at least, and enough people had seen his face, and, by Agni, he was trapped.
He unclenched his fists; his fingernails had carved little wounds in his palms, now damp with blood, and answered with as much contempt as he could muster up, "Fine."
Her teeth flashed in an unnervingly perky grin. "Don't you want to know why?"
"No." Please, let this be some nightmare brought on by last night's awful, peasant meal.
She sighed, suddenly springing up, her swords still drawn and ready before Zuko could even get off the ground. His head was spinning; he hadn't realized how much she'd restricted his airflow.
"I need someone to practice with. I've never seen anyone around here with swords, and I can tell that you know what you're doing. I won’t hurt you, I just need a partner. Sound okay?"
He tucked the Blue Spirit mask back into his waistband, and didn't bother dignifying that with a response. He sprinted off, taking as many useless turns as he could to lose her track in case she decided to follow him, his heart racing from the encounter. Only after he had crept into their apartment, careful not to disturb a snoring Uncle, did his heartbeat slow down enough for his thoughts to even become coherent.
She ambushed him because she wanted a sparring partner?
What just happened?
Zohra walked back to her flat in a daze, careful to stick to the shadows. She went over the events of the past ten minutes with her ears buzzing; she'd threatened him? Where had that come from? She didn't even know his name, she knew nothing about him other than the fact that he had two swords that matched her own.
She hadn't lied about knowing Fei- he was new on the beat, a prodigy earthbender, the youngest Dai Li recruit in years, and she knew all this information about him because had been trying to woo Liah, who evaded him at every turn on principle (bind my hands and throw me into the gutter if you ever catch me with a damn cop, Zohra). For a newbie Dai Li, he surprisingly lacked the guts to just ask a girl out himself. She'd been using his puppy love to her own advantage, promising Fei she'd talk Liah into a date in exchange for an I-owe-you.
And it had worked . Well, technically it had; she knew she probably wouldn't follow up on the threat if he didn't show up tomorrow, but it was worth a shot to get a sparring partner- is that the reason some unknown force had possessed her to even ambush a stranger in the first place?
She entered her ground-floor one-room as softly as possible, taking care to not step on any of the creaky floorboards, hung her swords on the crooked nails on the wall next to her cot and fell back on the rough sheets, exhausted.
Her mind couldn't shut down even as her body throbbed with the fatigue of a fight after months of no training. Well, not much of a fight; the boy wasn't as strong as she'd assumed him to be and it hadn't taken much to pin him. He was starved, she could tell by the way his ribs prodded against her knee; was he a refugee, too? How did he escape the war, if he was young and knew how to fight? All the refugees she'd seen so far were destitute, starved, disabled in some sense or the other- no one but the truly desperate came to Ba Sing Se, not even draft-dodgers.
She closed her eyes, begging for sleep. It refused to come; she decided to sit by the window, hoping to catch a breeze on the uncharacteristically warm spring night, trying to forget the look of sheer anger in the boy's yellow eyes. Calm down, she told herself. He'll come, or he won't- he can't hurt you, you have the upper hand. And if he does come, imagine how great it will be to really fight again.
She tried the gratitude technique that Liah had taught her, which she used quite often when she couldn't sleep: think of where you are right this minute, and remind yourself that it beats sleeping in a cramped refugee ship with nothing in your stomach but overcooked, unseasoned jook. Zohra had replaced the horror of the refugee ship part of the technique with the dread of her first night in Ba Sing Se, sleeping in the yard of an old woman who had taken pity on her, promising herself and her father and the Sun and all the stars that she would get a job and work to her bones if it meant never being homeless again. But, even after sweet-talking the manager of the granary into giving a low-life refugee a job, she realized it would be weeks before she could save up enough to pay the mandatory first-and-last-month of rent anywhere in her vicinity.
Until she met Liah; tiny, beautiful Liah, who was raised in an orphanage in the Lower Ring until she had been pushed out by the flood of tinier, more pathetic orphans whose parents couldn’t survive the city, and forced to look for work. Not that she had any trouble finding it; teenage servant girls were the biggest status symbol for Ba Sing Se's merchant classes, and Liah had a remarkably likeable energy, despite her sticky fingers in the workplace. She had been on the lookout for someone to share her single-room apartment with, which was quickly becoming too expensive for her alone, with someone who looked too earnest to rob her. She had told Zohra this jokingly on the anniversary of their first month together, that she looked like she would fight the scariest Earth Rumble Champion tooth and nail for a single scrap, but was terrified of stealing from the most timid of rabbiroos. Zohra had rolled her eyes then, not bothering to stifle a smile; she was grateful beyond words for Liah, to have a friend like her in the loneliest city in the world was an honor she knew she didn't live up to.
She finally drifted off in a restless sleep, head resting on the windowsill.
In what felt like a minute, the sun was up, and her body sprang up against her will at its warmth.
Liah was still in bed, firmly immune to the barely-there glimmer of sunlight streaming in through the window. Zohra rubbed the exhaustion out of her eyes, and made her way to the washbasin, wincing at the thought of a six-hour-shift after basically no sleep, with her body sorer than it had been in a long time. She wiped her face with the wet washcloth, stifling a laugh at the sight of her hair in the mirror- it looked like a boarcupine ready to attack. She smoothed it down with a damp hand and piled it back up on her head, carelessly combing through with her fingers. She rummaged in the larder for something to eat- other than the stolen rice-wine, they were down to their last loaf of rough bread, and there were barely any tea leaves either. She sighed, deciding she needed the tea more than Liah would, and brewed herself a pot, softly cracking her sore neck.
"Someone's up early."
Zohra answered without turning around: "It's called going to work, Liah."
"Hey, I'm not complaining. Looks like you already made breakfast."
"Well, if you consider half a cup of tea and stale bread breakfast. We need to go shopping."
"No way, I'll grab us something from the Chu's. They're having another wretched party for their Upper-Ring friends today, there's bound to be some leftovers they won't notice are missing."
Zohra turned around, smiling. "You know I hate roasted turtle-duck. Get me something less game-y, please."
Liah laughed, extracting herself from a thin summer blanket, and stretched her arms above her. "I'm going to get dressed. I’ll eat at the tea shop, the Chu’s don’t need me early today."
"What, my tea isn't good enough for you?" Zohra noticed Liah peer at the dark circles beneath her eyes, but knew she wouldn't ask her about it; Liah maintained that in a one-room, it was better to not ask questions you don't need to know the answers to.
She snorted, and shook her head. "You look like you need it more than I do. No, they have a new server, and Jin from next door said he's cute." Lin accentuated her words with a toss of long brown hair over her shoulder, and a fluttering of her eyelashes.
"Jin thinks anyone's cute," Zohra grumbled. She knew she was being unfair; last night's events were still occupying most of her brain and clouding her filter.
"Don't be cynical, it's not good for your complexion. Do you want to come?"
"No, no thanks, I'm already late for my shift." Zohra dusted the crumbs off her tunic, and arched her back as she got up, the exhaustion of last night still lingering in her bones. She smiled to herself as she thought of what Liah would say if she found out about it; probably something along the lines of there are more tasteful ways of asking someone out on a date than ambushing them in the middle of the night, Zohra.
Poor guy; he was either going to show up tomorrow night and get thrashed, or not show up and live the rest of his life in fear of a crazy girl knocking on his door, her Dai Li friend ready to arrest him.
Liah walked over to the wash basin and goes through the same motions Zohra did, but was less clumsy with her hair, which she wore up in a sleek bun at the nape of her neck, a couple of strands artfully left loose to fall down the sides of her face. She picks out work clothes from the chest of drawers next to her bed; cropped brown trousers and leaf-green tunic with a brown vest, the uniform for Ba Sing Se's servant class. She's changed before Zohra even has a chance to comment on whether she was serious about going to the tea-shop.
Zohra wished she could tell Liah about that part of herself- the part about her being a few steps shy of a sword-master. She had trained with her father for as long as she could remember; in addition to his travelling blacksmith business, her father made the best swords in the entire Earth Kingdom, and was just as skilled at wielding them. Liah would have understood, even encouraged her- she wouldn't report her as a dangerous renegade to the Dai Li, the same way she hadn't gotten her thrown out by their creepy landlord for holding illegal weapons in the first place. Liah had already seen her Dao, but Zohra had told her they were a keepsake from her dead father and her friend was tactful enough to not ask about them again. But, Zohra knew that it would be foolish to tell her, no matter how much she trusted Liah; they'd known each other for only two months.
"I'm leaving now!" Liah said, already half out the door. "I'll be at the tea-shop if you need me in the next hour."
Zohra waved at her without looking up. Once she heard the door close behind Liah, she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She spent another couple of minutes soaking in the sun’s warmth, waiting for the gong that would signal the start of the working day. She crossed her legs and stretched her spine straight, holding her arms directly in front of her, palms facing inward, suddenly feeling energized, her fingers quivering-
-until it finally happened, what she'd been waiting for: a small flame danced across her fingertips, pulsing in time with her heart. She extinguished it as quickly as it had come; there was no need for Liah, or anyone, ever, to find out about this.