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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
- 7
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- 9
The day turned into a cold, foggy beast whose chill breath annoyed the trees and tugged at the steel grey sky. They walked quickly, sharing a companionable silence, eating meals on foot. Kea glanced up at the roiling silver sky frequently.
            Over the next week, they skirted the south edge of the villages from which they’d come and regained their northward course to Serpent’s Pass. Winter dropped its cold on them like stones. The sky remained sullenly grey but nothing fell. Once the sun muscled through the clouds for a few minutes and shone weakly, as if fighting the thick blanket of clouds had taken all its energy. The bland sunlight offered no respite from the bite in the air and the perpetual wind which teased strands of Kea’s long dark hair across her face. The cold didn’t bother Iroh, and if it affected Kea, she didn’t let on. She’d been born of an arctic people, short, stocky and strong, a tolerance of cold built into their bodies.
            When they could, they camped by a source of water so that Kea could continue her training. The work kept them warm and the experience gave them each a new appreciation for the other. They took turns making meals and tea and slept curled against each other every night.
            Iroh had come to love the routine they’d created and yearned for Zuko to complete it. Once he’d accepted Lu Ten’s death and once he’d learned how to find the good and pleasurable in all things, life became much more joyful. Nobody else around him seemed to have this skill. But Kea had it more figured out than most. With her, Iroh did not have to look for good and pleasurable things; they were laid out before him like a feast.
            They made camp in a well-used clearing near a small lake. The brush was beaten down in a wide circle around a stone-lined firepit. Iroh had tested the ashes to see if it had been recently used, but they were cold. Kea wondered aloud what sort of people used the campsite. Iroh told her they were earthbenders. Kea asked how he knew. Iroh pointed to an arrangement of rocks by the firepit in the shape of an armchair. Kea laughed. Iroh challenged himself to make her laugh at least ten times a day.
            They’d had supper and now Kea sat by the fire with her tongue poking out and her face scrunched up with the delicate effort of teasing out the burrs and tangles from her hair. Iroh approached her and held out his hand. Confused at first, she then realized the meaning of the gesture and handed him the brush. He eased himself down behind her with the rock-chair at his back and took her hair in his hands. The first thing he noticed was its texture. It was thick and a little coarse, but not unruly. The dark waves flowed down to the middle of her back, and Iroh ran the brush down these waves like a raft down a waterfall in slow motion.
            The brush came from the Fire Nation. Its wooden handle was carved and inlaid with flames of opal. A dragon with a ruby eye that caught the firelight twisted around the head. Zuko’s sister Azula had had one very similar when she was small. Iroh shook his head to clear it.
            Kea’s hair was the color of rich, fertile earth, a few shades darker than her skin. Each tangle he found he worked out with slow gentleness, as if it were a knot he was massaging out of a muscle. There weren’t many, but he continued to brush because he liked her hair, liked the half-lidded contentment on her face, just liked to be close to her.
            “Since you have been learning firebending from me, would you be kind enough to teach me some waterbending?” he asked.
            “I thought you already knew it,” she said without turning.
            “I know a little.”
            “And isn’t the trade dancing for firebending?”
            “We can renegotiate.”
            She turned slightly, only one eye and the corner of a smile in view. “I’m shocked. You’d give up watching me dance for learning waterbending?”
            “I never said anything about cancelling our current arrangement. I said we could renegotiate.”
            Kea chuckled. “Thought so.”
            “So what do you want in return for teaching me?”
            She appeared to think for a minute. Then she turned to face him full on. The glow Iroh saw in her eyes almost knocked him over. It was a fierce, demanding glow, hot and full of desire. The smile that came with it curved up her face like dragon horns. She raised herself up on her hands and knees, planted one arm on each side of him, pinning him to the chair, and kissed him.
            It was a double shock. First because she had kissed him at all, second when the electricity of it hit his spine and ricocheted up, down, up, down. Shock, confusion, and not a small dose of desire filled him. Despite that, he put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back.
            “Should I stop?” she purred, as if challenging him to say yes.
            “I think you should.”
            Her face fell. “Why?”
            “Because I am not right for you.”
            She leaned back on her haunches, confused. “Who is, then?”
            “Someone y--”
            “If you play the age card I’ll bend you into a knot and drop you into the next lake we come to.” The light in her eyes brightened, hardened and flared. “I’m a big girl, Iroh, I can make my own decisions.”
            “I thought you wanted to get away from firebenders.”
            “The selfish, violent, stupid ones, yes.”
            Iroh found himself agonizingly caught. A big part of him, getting bigger by the minute, wanted to give her what she wanted. But the part of him that was sensitive to the ordeal she’d undergone frantically tried to backpedal him.
            “If you’re that uncomfortable, we don’t have to,” she said, “but I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know what you want.” She placed her hand on his chest.
            He took her hand and held it in both of his. “You should choose someone who has more in common with you. Not just age.”
            Kea fixed him with a scolding schoolteacher glare. “You should know better than that. Where you’re from or which element you bend or how old you are doesn’t matter. I know you know that too. So there’s got to be something else holding you back.” As if she’d suddenly figured it out, the sensual smile slid off her lips and her eyes widened in alarm. “Oh. It’s your wife, isn’t it? You still miss her, don’t you? Oh Iroh, I’m so sorry.” She bolted up and strode out of the circle of firelight before Iroh could speak.
            Was she right? Iroh had certainly thought about doing things with Kairakea he’d only done with his wife, but when it got down to it, was the memory of her blocking him? He thought about it for a while, decided not, rose and walked toward the lake.
            There he found her, standing still and quiet in the shallows, her upturned face somber and lined by moonlight.
            “Kairakea,” he said softly.
            She spoke without moving. “I was a fool. Selfish and stupid. Thinking only of my desires. Damned Yuto rubbed off on me. I’m sorry, Iroh.” And now she turned. “Please forgive me. I hope this doesn’t change things between us…”
            Iroh put a hand on her shoulder, offered a conciliatory smile. “Kea, there is nothing to forgive. I do miss my wife very much, but that is not the reason I resisted you. I did not want you to act on an impulse that you would regret later.”
            Kairakea gazed at him, blinked. Then she threw her arms around his neck in a tight, loving hug. “You are the sweetest, most thoughtful man I’ve ever met,” she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.
            “You haven’t met many good men then.”
            She coughed a dry chuckle and unhooked her arms from around his neck. “No I haven’t. Which is why you are so important to me. I’m not entirely sure how you see me, whether it’s as a daughter or friend or lover or some combination of the three, but either way I don’t want to do anything that will sabotage what we do have. That is more important to me than…. If you think… if you want to… if it will bring us closer together then we can, but if you’re uncomfortable at all…”
            “How do you see me, Kea?”
            She paused to think, a bit derailed by the sudden change in topic. “At first, before I met you, I wanted you to be a sort of cross between friend and protector. But it changed when I got to know you. The more I learned from you and about you, well… the more attractive you became.”
            Iroh marveled that any woman could find him, a pudgy old retired general, attractive.
            “Of course you did your part to encourage me, you shameless flirt.”
            Guilty as charged, he thought.
            “Call it a warped holdover from being a concubine, but… I actually sort of like it when men look at me. Especially you.”
            Oh no, he thought. That desirous glow was creeping back into her eyes again. It had taken most of his willpower to resist it the first time.
            “So how do you see me, Iroh?”
            How to put it? “I see you as a beautiful young woman whom I am fortunate and glad to know.”
            Kea arched an eyebrow. “Nice try.”
            “It’s true. There are all kinds of knowledge in this world. I am fortunate to know you in the ways I do, and would be glad to learn about you in new ways.”
            Her smile broadened, her eyes flashed. She leaned in for another kiss, but he stopped her with a touch to her cheek. She looked a question at him.
            “Teach me a waterbending technique.”
            “You are a wicked tease, old man.”
            “And you enjoy every minute of it.”
            They practiced at the water’s edge under the guiding light of the full moon. When he was young, Iroh hadn’t liked nighttime. Had liked it less during a full moon. Like all firebenders, his abilities were weakest during full moon nights. But as he aged and matured, he discovered that he could use the ebb in his natural chi to strengthen other kinds he’d developed. But that proved to be harder than he’d planned.
            Kairakea was positively ruthless. And not with her training. She took every opportunity (and created some of her own) to touch and caress him. She steered him through the moves by standing behind him and pressing her whole body against his. Every now and then Iroh caught a glance at her face. By the look of that impish grin, she knew full well what she was doing, and what effect it had on him. Each feather-light touch of hers sizzled his skin. Each word of praise or encouragement she cooed sent a delicious shiver up his spine. Just when he thought he could not bear it any longer, she stepped back and announced, “All right, end of lesson. You did very well, despite all the… distractions.”
            They bowed to each other. “Thank you, master,” Iroh said.
            The compliment had its intended effect. She puffed with pride and beamed. “One last cup of tea before bed? My turn.”
            They idled at a game of Pai Sho as Kea brewed. Iroh’s attention was so diverted by the light in his opponent’s eyes that he almost lost to her. But he reasserted himself and won in four moves. Kea did not kick up her usual crowing, good-natured fuss; instead she flipped Iroh’s winning Lotus tile back at him. “Good game.”
            They settled down to sleep. Kea cuddled close to him to avoid the cold. He expected to have to endure another volley of teases and torments from her, but she behaved herself. To his slight disappointment.
- 7
- 8
- 9
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Fire and Rain