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Fire and Rain	By : Keyriethenightbringer Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality > Het- Male/Female Views: 2035 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: ATLA and its characters do not belong to me. I make no money from this work.

Chapter List
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The transition from sleep to complete wakefulness for Iroh had always been instantaneous. The only other person in the family that was never troubled with grogginess was Zuko. His nephew had already struck camp and was on the other side of the clearing training.
            Iroh yawned. “Good morning, Zuko. Did you sleep well?”
            Zuko paused in the middle of a form. “Yes. I made you breakfast.” Zuko pointed to two bowls of rice and berries on their sitting log.
            “What a nice surprise.” Iroh reached for a bowl, glancing over at Kairakea’s sleeping place. She slept soundly, her entire body curled around her balled-up blanket. He ate his breakfast, made a mental note to teach Zuko the finer points of rice cooking, then joined his nephew for drills after a good long stretch.
            “Uncle, I want to go east,” Zuko said as they moved through their forms, the fire arcing and zooming around them. “The Avatar was last seen crossing Serpent’s Pass.”
            “Do you know where he is going?”
            “If he took Serpent’s Pass heading north, he’s going to Ba Sing Se.”
            Iroh was afraid of that. But he would rather be by his nephew’s side. They finished the basic firebending forms and moved on to the higher-level techniques Iroh had taught Zuko.
            “If we’re going to Ba Sing Se, we’ll need to stop at a village and get more supplies. The city is weeks away from here.”
            “We have to be fast. We already gave away our position at the last village. I don’t want the Fire Nation tracking us.” Zuko’s eyes flitted toward Kairakea. “I don’t want her here anymore either.”
            “Don’t be so quick to refuse new friends, Zuko. She may yet have a purpose.”
            “What? Is she going to dance us to the Avatar?”
            “I don’t care where she dances us, as long as I can watch,” Iroh said with a grin.
            Zuko rolled his eyes. They began to spar. The sun gently climbed up the sky and softened the crisp edges of the breeze that whispered in the tops of the bare trees.
            Kairakea woke, blinking owlishly against the bright daylight, and watched them as she ate her breakfast, as enthralled by their dance as Iroh had been with hers. The time she’d spent watching firebenders during her captivity had given her some insight into their methods, their philosophies, their techniques and how they differed from waterbending. But because she’d only been exposed to a small number of firebenders, her knowledge and assumptions had been skewed. Watching Iroh and Zuko showed her just how radically.
            Yuto and those around him bent fire as a weapon, for power. They used emotion and desire as fuel. They only learned what they were told they must learn, and paid no attention to the ebb and flow of chi.
            Watching these two was like watching a whole other class of benders. Especially Iroh. Afterwards, Kea counted on two hands the number of times she nearly cried out in surprise when Iroh used pieces of waterbending moves to bend fire against Zuko. Iroh seemed eminently aware of his chi and his nephew’s, so much so that he almost knew Zuko’s moves before the boy made them. But Zuko held his own. Using the wisdom his uncle had doubtless been giving him, Zuko understood that the essence of fire was energy, breath and life, not destruction and domination. So he fought not like Yuto had, with fire as a weapon, but with fire as a part of him, an extension of his body. Kea yearned to join the match, to taste the exotic flavor of the fight, but understood that this was training.
            The fight was over with no clear winner. Iroh and Zuko faced each other, the older man breathing no heavier than his nephew, and bowed in a respectful salute. Kea gave them a hearty round of applause. Zuko’s face clouded and he turned his back to her, but Iroh sat down beside her with a big smile.
            “That was as entertaining as any dance I’ve ever done,” she said.
            “That depends on how clothed you are.”
            Kea gave Iroh a good-natured but solid punch on the shoulder. “You old goat. I’ve always thought good firebending looked a little like dancing. Very smooth. Fluid. Oh! Speaking of that! I saw you use part of the water whip form on Zuko. Where did you learn that?”
            Iroh enjoyed the way her curiosity, childlike in its enthusiasm, lit up her entire body with energy. “I suppose I promised to tell you my story today.”
            “You also promised me tea.”
            “We don’t have time for tea and stories!” Zuko snapped as he whipped around and slung his pack over his shoulder. “We have to keep moving east! The Avatar will already be through Serpent’s Pass by now!”
            Kea’s smile dimmed a few watts. “Oh. The Avatar.”
            “Yes, the Avatar. We’re going after him and we can’t afford to have you slowing us down.”
            Iroh rose and shouldered his own pack. “Come on. We can look for white jade flowers and talk while we walk.”
            Walk and talk they did. All day, from morning to dusk. Iroh filled Kea’s curious ear with more than he had originally been planning to tell her, but he found himself unable to say no to any of the million questions she asked him. Especially right after a short rainstorm, through which Kea ran with the delightful abandonment of a child, bending the water into dazzling shapes as it fell, laughing as it soaked her through. She’d arrived back to where Iroh and Zuko sat under a tree, panting and grinning.
            “Firebenders caught in rainstorms look like wet cats!” she’d bellowed, laughing fit to burst. Iroh had endured the rain and the jibe gladly, because both had given him a stunning view of her gauzy clothes plastered to her skin.
            They’d stopped for an hour or so in a small village void of any benders. Kea had danced a small dance, and they had bought supplies with the large amount of cash the awed citizens had dropped into Kea’s pouch.
            The sun paled in the west, throwing the last of its dye into the sky in a last-breath effort to stave off the encroaching night, but the moon would have none of it. It reared in its silverwhite fullness out of the east, demanding its place in the sky. They had barely begun to set up camp a few miles northeast of the village when Zuko pulled his uncle aside.
            “Uncle, I don’t understand why that waterbender is still here. She hasn’t done anything except dance around and bend raindrops! She isn’t even on our side!”
            “What side is that, my nephew?”
            Zuko growled. Iroh put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “It is dangerous to think in sides, Zuko. It forces the world into a black and a white when everything is shades of gray.”
            “You just like having her around to watch her dance.”
            Iroh smiled a little. “So I do. But without her dances, we wouldn’t have had enough money to buy food. And my new Tsungi horn!” He cuddled his prize like a baby.
            “She just doesn’t belong with us. She belongs with her own people.”
            “It isn’t for you to say who she belongs with, and I believe you know that.”
            Zuko thought for a while. Then he dug the Blue Spirit mask out of his bag and tied it to his face. “I’ll meet you at Ba Sing Se.”
            Iroh’s smile disappeared. He understood why Zuko felt compelled to leave, but was saddened by it. The boy had learned so much, from his uncle and from his banishment, but had so much more to learn, most of it from experience. He knew he must let Zuko go, but every time they parted, the older man felt grief and fear wrench his heart. Iroh embraced the son of his heart. “Be careful, my nephew.”
            “I will. I’ll leave a message for you at the first tea shop I find. ‘From Li to Uncle.’”
             Iroh nodded. It only took Zuko a minute to suit himself in black, sheath the Blue Spirit’s wicked double swords and sprint away.
            “Iroh! Is your tea finished? It’s about to oversteep!” Kea hovered eagerly over the teapot hung on sticks over the fire.
            “Oh yes. It’s done.” Iroh trotted over, a small peaceful smile returning home on his face as he breathed the delicate, flowery scent of the tea. He removed the teapot from the fire, set two cups and poured. All the while Kea flitted and hovered around him like a hummingbird at a sweet flower. She took her cup gently despite her eagerness. She inhaled, her eyes dreamily closed. “This smells wonderful. I have been waiting to taste your tea for almost fifteen years.”
            Iroh smiled. “I hope it was worth the wait.” They toasted, and Iroh marked with amusement Kea’s observance of the Fire Nation tradition to let the maker of the meal (in this case tea) drink first. Then she sipped.
            First her face was blank, her eyes closed to lend more power to her sense of taste. She held the tea in her mouth, rolling it around so that every single taste bud was flooded with it. Then she swallowed and parted her lips to invite air into her mouth, to give the taste crispness. The smile that appeared on her face was small, but the long, luxurious sigh of satisfaction and the way all tenseness seemed to flow out of her body gave Iroh all the gratification he wanted.
            He took another sip. It was good tea.
            “This is the best tea I have ever tasted,” she said simply. They shared the entire pot without speaking, taking small sips, letting the tea converse on their tongues. The only sounds were the soughing of the trees and chirps, coos and grumbles of night animals.
            Kea blinked as if coming out of a trance. “Where did Zuko go?”
            “He went ahead to Ba Sing Se.”
            “To… capture the Avatar.”
            “Yes.”
            Kea studied the leaves at the bottom of her cup. “Do you believe he’ll do it? Actually capture the Avatar and take him to Fire Lord Ozai?”
            “That is a complicated question that has an even more complicated answer.”
            Kea raised her eyebrows and lifted her arms: I’m not going anywhere.
            “I believe Zuko was damaged—not just physically—by his banishment. He needs to do a lot of healing, and if pursuing the Avatar is what he needs, then he must do it.”
            “But…” Kea prompted.
            “But I do not believe he will deliver the Avatar to his father.”
            Kea seemed relieved by this.
            “Unfortunately, as you said before, my brother has sent his best kidnappers and assassins after him. If the Avatar is in danger, it is not from Zuko.”
            “You don’t agree with all this, do you?”
            “Agree with what?” Iroh put his teacup down.
            She opened her arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “This. The war. The Fire Nation’s obsession with dominating the world. The hunt for the Avatar.”
            Iroh smiled. “Do you think I would be a fugitive in exile if I did?”
            “Then why are you going along with Zuko? Why are you supporting his search for the Avatar? Especially if you don’t believe he can capture him?”
            “When Zuko was banished, I made a choice. I chose to support my nephew, to guide him and try to cultivate the seed of goodness I found in him. Zuko is the prince, the rightful heir to the throne, and one day he will be Fire Lord. I want to make sure he is a better Fire Lord than his father. Also, I have enjoyed the time away from home. It’s like an extended vacation!”
            “Except for all the people trying to kill you,” Kea said.
            As if on cue, the earth under them heaved and rose, trapping them in coffins of rock, leaving only their faces visible. Four masked men in Earth Kingdom livery dropped out of the trees.
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Fire and Rain