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There is no war in Ba Sing Se. Only rain. It’s the perfect place.
For him, because the eternal absence of sunshine is an excuse for his weak Firebending.
For her, because the inexplicable rainy weather left no room for suspicion even if water behaved strangely around her.
He first meets her at the Jasmine Dragon, escorting a noble’s daughter. The Beifong heiress too sickly to even be touched by rain had to be granted dry passage through the Upper Ring. He doesn’t see them arrive, but he’s told to see them off. She makes a show of acting the part of a sun god’s priestess before clearing a sunny path for the other girl.
Her flowing movements captivate him. Not because they’re particularly beautiful. (They are.) But they’re too elaborate, too practiced, too unlike what he’d seen as a child in the Fire Nation capital. Rumors say she comes from occupied territory, explaining her non-traditional looks and mannerisms.
Starting then, he keeps tabs on her. If it’s a sunshine job in the parks or the plazas, he’ll be there. And in the periphery of the sunlit pockets she makes, he reconnects with his bending. He figures he does want to be in the sun again. It takes a year to deliberate with himself before he finally decides to hire the so-called priestess for an afternoon to practice his bending katas.
He persuades her to keep his bending a secret, saying he’s escaping his abusive father – the one who gave him the scar. The best lies do have some truth to them.
“Just like the lost Fire Nation prince,” she observes.
“I heard he got his scar from training,” he refutes. “Besides, his scar is on the other side.”
The more times he hires her, the more his doubt of her being an actual priestess grew. One afternoon, the clouds threaten to cover the sun too quickly and he feels her control waver.
“Are you alright? We can end now.”
She eases out of her stance and the rain comes pouring back down around them.
“You’re a Waterbender, aren’t you?” he asks without regard for the fact that he is from the enemy nation.
A fight ensues. She easily overpowers him. Him being without practice, the moon beginning its ascent, the rain beating down any spark of fire he starts. But he knows his defeat isn’t merely circumstantial. She bends rain and clouds out of the sky – obviously, she is powerful in her own right. Maybe that is why when they’re on the ground, with him pinned to the muddy earth and her threatening him with an ice dagger to the throat, he only answers, “You’re beautiful.”
They don’t meet again after that. She refuses to entertain even another offer of a job from him. He does hear about her other jobs and he still goes to the big events. To see her. The sun, too, maybe. He at least sees her regularly at the Jasmine Dragon. Every month for over a year she accompanies the Beifong girl to the teashop, until a few months pass when she doesn’t. He hears that some lord or other took her on retainer. Good for her, he supposes.
He doesn’t expect it, but it’s easy to find where her new, more permanent job is. On the fields between the Inner and Outer walls, sun shines every morning. He secretly goes without seeing her, basking in the sun doing his Fire katas at the edge of the property.
On one morning, the sun disappears too early. So he dares peek over the high fence. Would he even see her in these vast fields? He spots her crouched in the middle, oddly without her priestess garb. His distance and the loud rain allow him to catch only the angry “filthy Waterbender!” and “to the Fire Nation!” When the Dai Li soldier pulls her up, her standing posture is odd. He realizes in horror that she’s shackled to the earth.
For the first time in his life, he feels the chill of the rain down to his bones. Guilt easily consumes the rest of him. He has been enjoying the sun she allowed to shine while she slaved away for Ba Sing Se.
I love her more than I love the sun.
So he steals her away the very next morning, hiding her in the already crammed apartment he shares with his uncle.
The first thing they do is cut her hair and dye it black. As the stained water drips on their apartment floor, they move on to the second thing. A shouting match, only blessedly kept from neighbors by the strong pelting of rain against tiled roofs.
“It was you wasn’t it! There’s no one else who knows, you must’ve told someone! How could it have reached Long Feng? He came with the Dai Li!”
“I swear, it wasn’t me!”
“I trusted you, Lee! You’re the first one I ever trusted! What was the price? Did they allow you to continue living here, hiding from your monster of a father?”
By the end of it she still doesn’t believe him and only bitterly accepts their hospitality. She knows too that for now, this is where she’s safest.
Without the Painted Lady to escort their little girl, the Beifongs request Lee and Mushi for tea service. Their messenger mentions a new home in the Upper Ring. There, he learns that it was an offhanded comment by Poppy Beifong that tipped Long Feng on her being a Waterbender.
“I hear the priestess graciously helped in the fields before she was taken away by some spirit,” says Poppy.
“The Blue Spirit?” he offers.
The daughter calls for his attention to refill her cup. She catches him by the eyes as if hers were seeing. “There’s no Blue Spirit,” she tells him.
Lao Beifong laughs the talk of spirits off.
I love her more than my freedom.
In living with her he finds they share a longing to bend and be in their element. In living in Ba Sing Se he finds they can’t really do that. For her, it’s impossible anywhere else too. Outside the walls, Fire Nation soldiers will kill someone on mere suspicion of being a Waterbender, who they suppose is the next Avatar. Things need to change. The world needs to change.
“Let’s go North. You can learn more about bending there,” he tells her one night. “They’ve been holding up against the Fire Nation.”
“What about you and Uncle Mushi?” Her worry is only natural for someone who has come a long way from being their guest to being their family.
“We’re mere Fire Nation refugees escorting the South’s last Waterbender. I’m sure they’d allow us through.”
They reach the North. He and his uncle aren’t allowed through. She was right, on that afternoon when she first bent rainclouds for him. He’s not Lee. He’s Prince Zuko.
“What was the price?” she asks in a low voice. It’s the same question from when she thought he sold her out to the Dai Li. Her eyes fill with the same hurt too. It’s him who feels different. He’s guilty this time around. They did mean to leave her alone to the North’s care.
“Your safety,” he answers.
“I’m not a child!” She’s understandably upset and grows even more so when he tells her they’re going back to the Fire Nation and that’s why she can’t go with them.
She tells him to stay.
“If I stay, the North just becomes another cage like Ba Sing Se. I can’t let that happen to you again. I won’t. The price is your safety,” he repeats. “For now and after we… deal with Ozai.”
He’s still scared of his father and he’s more scared of what might happen to her inside the Fire Nation, so he begs her to stay.
“I’ll stay,” she finally acquiesces. “When you come back – because you will – I’ll be a Master. And you won’t need to concern yourself with my safety anymore.”
“I’ll be back.”
“Lee, don’t let that be another lie you tell me.”
“I’ll come back to you, Katara. I swear it, on my name and honor.”
“Then I’ll see you soon, Zuko.”
He goes back to the Fire Nation with his uncle and the intention to finally face his father. An agreement is made. His status as the crown prince returned in exchange for finding the Avatar. Not to bring back dead, as they have the Firelord believe.
So for almost three years he writes her letters, vague ones that let her in on their plans. It pains him that she wouldn’t know where to address a reply with him traveling all the time. But he knows she’ll keep her word and keep training to become a Master Waterbender.
He’s exhausted when the Avatar reveals himself, in an iceberg to the South. His tattoos are all it takes for them to realize that this is the same Avatar who disappeared a hundred years ago. A child. All this time they pinned their hopes of finally ending the Fire Nation’s tyranny on a child.
“Do you know how to Waterbend?” he asks the Avatar.
“I’ve only mastered air so far. Can you teach me Waterbending?”
He demonstrates warming his hands with fire. “I’m a Firebender, but I know who would be the perfect Waterbending teacher for you.”
In a week they are back in the North and it’s with Aang running across the snow exclaiming “Sifu Katara!” as if he’d known her all his life. He might as well have, with all the stories of her Zuko shared.
When she comes out of the healing huts, the vision of her makes him wistful. He tries to hold his sigh of relief when she still welcomes him with a smile and open arms.
“I’m back,” he whispers against her hair. It has grown long and wavy and without a hint of the black dye from their days in Ba Sing Se. Now she’s snuggled in a parka, standing on pristine snow. And he thinks that he’d like to see her just like this for a little longer. Just herself, in her element.
But she proceeds to tell them news of Ba Sing Se’s rain finally letting up a week ago and the Fire Nation preparing to occupy it. It’s Toph Beifong who wrote, in an encrypted letter, of course – because it also contains her newfound status as a Master Earthbender.
It seems that the Avatar can be well on his way to mastering the four elements.
The world just might be changing for all of them after all.