[fic] Something to Hold Onto, Chapter 4: Pieces Scattered Everywhere
Title: Something to Hold Onto [4/13]
Word count: 8,900
Pairing: Jet/Zuko
Rating: A very hard R for language, violence and sexual content
Summary: Since the day the walls of Ba Sing Se fell, the Freedom Fighters have struggled to protect what remains of the city and its people. Jet and his second command, a mysterious boy named Li, have spent the summer piecing together an army, hoping for a chance to take the city back for good. But Li is also Zuko, and the time for that secret is quickly running out. Soon, he'll have to decide exactly who he is, what cause he's going to fight for and where his heart lies.
This chapter: Two weeks later
Notes: As I am reminded on a near-daily basis sometimes, kittyjimjams and jlh are goddamn lifesavers, and without them this fic would never have gotten done. boredgods and gulliblesnail both contributed really gorgeous illustrations for this chapter, which are linked to in the text and in a complete list at the end. (And particular thanks to boredgods for doing these on her laptop ON VACATION IN ARIZONA, seriously <3)
:: Previous Chapter ::
The Jasmine Dragon wasn't that big - before the war came to Ba Sing Se, Jet had been able to cross the main room with a few, long strides. Now that space was home to several dozen almost-soldiers, and the distance between the kitchen and the corner where his friends slept took a quarter-hour to navigate.
His feet hadn't even reached the gold-and-green carpet when he felt someone tug at the back of his shirt. Roo, a runner, one of Jin's early finds. He glanced down at her, automatically dredging up the details of her history. Her parents had been away visiting relatives when the city was sealed off, and her grandfather had been killed by a Fire Nation soldier who wanted his hogchicken for dinner. Jet couldn't see the burn scar that covered most of her back, but he knew it was there. "Hey," he said, careful to smile.
"Jet, there's a squirrelmouse!" said Roo, hopping nervously from one foot to the other. "Su Dao found it in the pantry, and I said he should put it outside but he thinks he can train it to carry messages like a hawk, and he's been sleeping with it in his hammock but then it jumps around at night and keeps us all up." She paused to take a breath. "And he said not to tell you but he keeps snitching nuts from the pantry to feed it."
Jet concentrated on his smile, making sure it reached his eyes. "Tell Dao if he wants a pet, he has to feed it from his own share."
Two more steps, and a boy with one eye missing slipped out from between the canvas hangings: Yan Jing, a butcher's son from the outer ring whose kills were neat and quick. "One of Wang's swords broke during practice this morning." He kept his eyes down, old enough to be cautious. "She'll need another one, but…"
Jet felt his grin begin to slip a little, and covered it by running a hand back through his hair. Xiao Si Wang had been a particular favorite of his, the scar on her face a point of some sympathy between them. "Smellerbee's in charge of the armory, now," said Jet, understanding perfectly the awkward, unasked question. He couldn't quite keep the edge out of his voice. "She'll take care of it."
He made it around the last corner and past the front door without interruption, but in the final stretch he heard someone else call out his name. He didn't turn, only stopped and waited for Dusty to catch up. The smile had faded to something like a grimace, so he dropped it entirely. Dusty was a team captain - he shouldn't need to be coddled.
"I don't think Gen's up for going on tonight's raid," he said, speaking to the back of Jet's head. "He still gets dizzy when he stands up, and Xue Sheng's not sure the wounds won't open again."
"Tell Wang to stay close to him, then."
"But-"
"He's been off his feet since the Eastern Gate," Jet snapped, still not turning around. "If he can't pull his fucking weight he can find somewhere else to sleep."
He ducked into what passed for Longshot and Smellerbee's room and yanked the canvas flaps closed behind him, cutting off whatever else Dusty might have said. Not out of any real anger, though Dusty would probably take it that way. Jet simply didn't have the words left in him, for Dusty or anyone else.
He sat down on the thin, patched futon, his breath fast and shallow as he rested his forehead on his knees. He could still hear it: the inescapable buzz of a roomful of anxious whispers. Sometimes an argument or excited shout would rise up from the hum, only to be shushed out of prominence again. Jet covered his ears with his hands, tried to concentrate on the the soft rumble of his pulse and the faint creak of bones in his wrists.
He'd expected the first couple weeks to be hard, and they had been. He woke each morning from a few hours of shallow sleep and stared at the rows of hammocks above him. Smellerbee and Longshot were usually still asleep, and he would turn his head to watch them, matching his breath to the rise and fall of their chests in the thin light of dawn. Theirs was the only company he sought, the only conversation that didn't exhaust him. The others had started to blur into a wall of tired faces, looking to him for that spark of hope they all craved. But Jet didn't have one anymore, neither for them nor for himself.
Li had made a mockery of his life, of everything he had thought he was trying to do. He'd been wrong about Li - dangerously, sickeningly wrong. And that had called everything else into question, robbed him of the certainty that had driven him for as long as he could remember. All that remained was a grim list of necessities that never seemed to shorten, every day a struggle to hang onto what little they had left.
Every morning he thought, Why do this to yourself? The answer was always the same, always just enough: Someone has to. No one else will.
Some time later the canvas parted again, and Smellerbee ducked through to sit beside him. He knew it was her without having to look up - from the way she moved, and because no one but her and Longshot would dare intrude like this.
"It's almost dinner," she said quietly.
Jet removed his hands from his ears, but didn't lift his head. "Not hungry," he mumbled.
"That's what you said at breakfast."
"I wasn't hungry then, either."
She sighed. "The raid tonight's gonna be tough. You'll need your strength."
"I'll be fine."
"If you faint on me I'm leaving you behind."
"If you have to."
He heard her snort in irritation, but she wouldn't push him further. She knew better than to try. "I talked to Ping," she said, changing the subject instead. "He thinks we should pull Dusty off the first wave. Have him back up Wang and Gen instead."
Jet lifted his head, mostly so he could shake it. "You're good, Smellerbee, but you can't take out ten guards by yourself. Not without them raising an alarm."
Jet knew what she would say next and braced himself for it, willing her to drop this shit for once and just do what they'd agreed on. Which had never worked before, of course, and didn't work now. "Jet, you know half those guards won't be there," she said. "There's no point in-"
"There're ten guards assigned to that warehouse," said Jet icily. "So we'll plan for ten guards." He turned to look at her, his eyes narrowed in challenge. "Unless you have something you wanna tell me?"
She stared him down for a long time, black eyes boring into his. But eventually she sighed and looked away. "Fine. Waste Dusty's time if it makes you happy."
"I will, thanks."
"You wanna pretend like nothing's going on, you go right head."
"Nothing is going on."
"Why, because you say so?" she snapped, one step farther than she'd let herself go before.
Jet's fists clenched around handfuls of bedding. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
Smellerbee made a sharp, sweeping gesture that took in the canvas walls. "Don't you?"
Jet looked down at his knees, jaw so tight he felt his teeth might shatter, his eyes fixed and unblinking and his ears full of the sound of his own blood. Still, he heard Smellerbee sigh, felt her hand rest lightly on his shoulder. He didn't shrug her off, and they sat that way for some time, neither one of them speaking. Finally he blew out a long, slow breath and pushed himself to his feet.
Someone had to. No one else would.
The raid was a shitty situation however you looked at it; it promised all the things Jet hated most about this fucking war in this cursed hole of a city. They'd be fighting indoors in close quarters, against an unknown number of Firebenders - those who'd been assigned to tanks were now mixed in with the infantry. The runners would be involved, which meant Jet and the other soldiers would have to protect them as well as watching their own backs. They'd be relying on civilians, who usually meant well but crumpled under pressure. Ping seemed sure the Dai Li would be keeping an eye on the place, and Jet supposed he would know. The Freedom Fighters only had six benders, Ping included, to hold off whoever decided to show. A shitty situation all around, but Jet didn't see how they had much of a choice.
Ba Sing Se was a massive city, home to hundreds of thousands of half-starved people. Jet's men could steal enough rice to keep the poorest of them alive, but distributing it themselves was impractical - they didn't have the numbers or the time, and it left them too exposed. Luckily, Jin had devised a clever compromise. The middle ring housed several large dry goods stores, the sort of place she'd gone as a child to buy tea and cloth. Some of the owners had stayed behind, reluctant to abandon their property to the Fire Nation, and Jin had persuaded a few of them to act as middlemen. They made sure the rice got to the people who needed it, and in return, the Freedom Fighters protected them from the worst of the occupation.
Tonight, Jet waited in the largest of these massive stores, crouched beside a window that faced the warehouse behind it. The Fire Nation had seized control of it three days ago, and Jet doubted they'd be generous to the peasants when their own men were going hungry. Two thirds of the food the resistance had scraped together sat on the shelves of that warehouse, more than they could afford to lose if they hoped to live through the winter.
Jet sighed. Who was he kidding? They'd be lucky if they made it to winter, the way things had been going.
He'd sent the owner out front with a broom, telling him to go about his usual business of closing up for the night. Now he and Longshot watched for signs of movement, swords in hand and bow half-drawn, ready to burst out into the yard if things went bad. This raid was a desperate one, and all of them knew it. The Eastern Gate had destroyed any illusions they might have harbored about reclaiming territory, let alone holding it. They'd have to move the rice, by hand and all at once, and this would be their only chance to try.
Smellerbee and Dusty were nearly at the door before Jet saw them, running low and silent through the shadows cast by street lamps. Jet opened the door just wide enough for them to slip through, and soon the four of them were crouched in a circle on the dusty wooden floor.
"Any problems?" Jet asked.
"No," said Smellerbee. "Fast and easy." She met his eyes and scowled. "There were only four guards left." The rest she didn't say, but Jet knew all the same.
At first he'd been able to ignore the signs - a few expected guards mysteriously absent the night of a raid, or a handful of enemy solders that went missing in the middle of a fight. But this he couldn't explain away, and Smellerbee had made it clear she was tired of letting him try. Only four guards left, he knew, because the other six had been knocked out, bound and gagged before she and Dusty could get to them.
"Wang and Gen just signaled," she went on, her point having been made. "Patrols are taken care of. We're good for ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."
The Earthbenders were already inside the warehouse, and once Jet's group was through the door Ping sealed it shut behind them. Four of the other benders were lifting bales of rice down off the shelves with thin palettes of stone, pairs working in sync to guide each one through the air. Ping and his lieutenant moved to face each other at the center of the room, bare feet set wide on the earthen floor. They took a deep breath, raised their splayed hands until they were at eye-level, then thrust them down in a sharp, powerful motion that opened a gaping, black tunnel in the ground between them.
Jet watched with one eye still on the rock-sealed door as the first runners climbed up out of the hole, Roo at the lead, and headed straight for the waiting stacks of rice. He hated that it had to be this way, that he was bringing these kids anywhere near a fight. They weren't like The Duke, or like he'd been when he was their age - city life had left them soft by his standards, and this plan had been born from a sorry lack of options. A wagon on the street wouldn't make it three blocks; a stone sledge underground would be pathetically easy for the Dai Li to track. That left the runners or nothing at all.
Smellerbee, Longshot and the other fighters had already moved to help, easily lifting the bales up onto the younger kids' backs. Soon a steady stream of runners flowed in and out of the tunnel, shuffling down red-faced with strain only to jog right back up again a minute or so later, ready to pick up their next load. But the math had never looked good: thirty-two runners, over two hundred bales of rice, a city full of Firebenders that didn't want them taking it back.
Ping moved away from the bustle of activity and crouched down, sinking his fingers into the dirt. He frowned, and Jet went to stand beside him.
"How close?" Jet asked.
"Hard to say," said Ping. "We don't have much time." He gestured to his men as he straightened, and three of them took up positions along the warehouse walls, eyes closed and palms against the plaster. The last two - the weakest, Jet noted, scrawny young chickens who drowned in their armor - kept lifting rice down from the shelves.
"Get ready," said Jet, eyes flickering between the benders..
Smellerbee, Wang, Jing and Dusty broke off from the group of runners, drawing their knives and swords as they formed a circle , their backs to each other. Longshot climbed a half-empty shelf, notching his first arrow as soon as he'd reached the top. The rest of the soldiers formed a loose perimeter around the stacks of rice.
This was the part Jet hated the most: the waiting. But it didn't last long.
"They're here," said Ping. The words had barely left his mouth when the first tremor hit, rattling the empty wooden shelves.
"Time to go!" Jet called, praying the runners wouldn't freeze. They didn't, though their eyes were white with panic as they scrambled to fasten their final loads in place. All six benders were at the walls now, fingers and toes sunk knuckle-deep and faces twisted up with strain. Ping had told him this might happen, but it was an odd thing to watch all the same. Odd and a little terrifying. The Dai Li were trying to force their way in, and Ping's men were pouring their strength into the walls and floor, fighting to hold it all together.
"Too many," Ping grunted, sweat running down his forehead in thin streams.
Half the runners were still on the floor. They couldn't close the tunnel until it was clear. Shit. "Forget the rice!" Jet barked. "Get the hell out of here now!"
Kids poured down into the tunnel, tripping over the bales and each other, their guard close behind. Ping's lieutenant broke away from the wall, sprinted across the room and dove down after the last of the retreat, the ground swirling and spiraling shut like an iris. Underground, Jet knew, he was collapsing the tunnel, smoothing out layers of bedrock to hide any trace of their passing. But that kind of work took time. He'd need cover to finish it, or the Dai Li would pick up his trail.
The warehouse had started to shake, trickles of plaster dust falling from the rafters and ceiling. Some landed in Jet's hair, but he didn't brush it away. He backed up untill he stood between Smellerbee and Wang, watched as long cracks formed and spread along the walls.
"Can't," Ping gasped, and the south wall exploded.
Chalky dust billowed up into the air, instantly coating the back of Jet's throat, but through it he could see the first soldiers as they clambered over the rubble. Most were hit full in the chest by Longshot's arrows, knocked backwards by the force of the impact, blood trickling from their mouths. But the next group shoved their bodies aside and swarmed through the breach, too fast for Longshot to pick them all off, who knew how many more behind. Ping's benders had abandoned the perimeter, and Jet heard stone crashing together, above and to either side, as the Dai Li made their entrance. But he didn't look. His eyes were on the line of Fire Nation soldiers. None of them were armed.
Jet dove into the middle of them, blades flashing as he ducked under the flames, hooked an ankle and threw one soldier into another, smashed the spur at the end of his hilt into an armored temple, felt it push through metal and into flesh and bone. He planted a foot on the man's chest, kicked him away as he jerked his sword free, blood spattering his face, rich and warm on his lips. He licked them as he spun around, hooked a blade into the shoulder of a Firebender looming behind Wang, the flame in his hand dissolving as Jet yanked him backwards. The crescent blade at his knuckles sliced the man's neck open, clear through to the spine, the dirt floor turned to mud by gore as Jet ran to meet his next kill.
Then the ground erupted beneath him, tumbling his body through the air. He hit what felt like a wall and then the ground, landing shoulder-first, swords somehow still in hand but all the breath knocked out of him. Shards of stone were still raining down as he rolled to his feet, spit out a mouthful of blood and tried to get his bearings. He'd been thrown halfway across the warehouse, against the sealed-up doorway. Two Firebenders had already spotted him. He avoided the first attack but he could feel the flames on his back, smelled cloth and hair burning as he bobbed up again, swords crossed in front of him, ready to die on his feet, like he'd always imagined he would.
Later, he'd remember the next few moments in perfect detail, as if time had slowed to give him the chance to take it in. The Firebender was only ten feet away, the flame that boiled from his fist too wide and too fast for Jet to escape, still off-balance from dodging the blast before it. He had time to hope they'd finish him off, instead of dragging him away to die in some interrogation room. He wished he could have seen the forest again. He wished other things, too, that he couldn't bear to put into words.
But the fire didn't reach him. Something dropped from above, landing just in front of him. Someone who broke the flames apart with twin blades, glanced over his shoulder and caught Jet's eye for an instant, his own wide and golden.
Jet wanted to be angry, and he was. Li had lied to him. Li was one of them, for fuck's sake. But as Jet stood there in the warehouse the anger was drowned in a flood of relief, an irresistible tide that pulled him back to before things had fallen apart, adrenaline-fueled currents of emotion swirling to the surface. Li crouched in front of him as he had a hundred times before, so close Jet could smell his hair and his sweat, dizzyingly familiar.
Another fireball, and this time Li juggled it between his blades, gathering it up and hurling it back again, forcing the soldiers to dodge their own flames. Jet knew what Li was doing but just then he couldn't care. Li moved away from the wall and Jet followed him, knocking stone projectiles from the air as Li turned more flames aside, the fire flowing around them like a river. It was all too easy to slip into the old rhythms, to let his body move as it wanted to, reading Li's movements and matching itself to them. No matter that the flame clung to Li's blades, curled around them like a living thing until he flung it back toward the soldiers. No matter that he shouldn't have known to be here at all.
"Time!" Ping barked, already on his way across the warehouse, a pair of Dai Li close behind, all riding waves of earth that rolled along the floor. Distracted, the Firebenders didn't see Li's blades until he'd rammed the blunt hilts into the backs of their skulls, dropping them just as Ping careened past. He hit the sealed door at full speed, tore the stone away and launched it back toward the Dai Li as Jet and Li sprinted out into the yard. Then Ping was behind them again, catapulting them up onto the rooftops with a well-timed column of stone and then following himself. This, at last, was comfortable territory, and the three of them ran easily along the sloping tiles, leapt across alleyways and scrambled over walls, splitting up for blocks at a time only to merge smoothly back together.
Li's movements were silent and fluid, his dark robes making more sound than his feet, every leap graceful and every landing solid and sure. Jet stayed a few strides behind, watching him. The night air and exercise cleared his mind, pushed the anger and confusion and worry aside until all that remained was the sky and the city and their bodies in between. It would be so easy to let this happen, allow Li to slip back into his life as if nothing had changed. A part of Jet wanted to, the same part that ached to sleep in his old bed and remembered how Li's mouth tasted in the morning. The part that wanted to reach out, even now, and touch the trailing edge of Li's sleeve. The stupid, blind, soft-hearted part that had believed him in the first place.
When Ping dropped down to the street again, Jet and Li followed without hesitation, the ground giving way beneath them as soon as they made contact. The room they found themselves in was a bare rectangle as wide as Jet was tall, lit by a cage full of luminescent crystal. One of the few bolt holes still undiscovered. They crouched beneath the low ceiling, holding their breath, waiting for the last of the night's trouble to pass overhead.
Fuck, if only.
Jet watched Li from the corner of his eye, the calm of a few minutes before rapidly draining away as a sickening uneasiness rushed in to fill the void. He thought of the last time he'd seen Li's face like this, drawn with worry in the dim, green light. The last time he'd seen Li's face at all, back when life made some kind of sense, before a broken chain had turned it all on its head.
Li was always easy to read and damn near transparent when he was upset. He may as well have been shouting for all the subtlety he managed now. His eyes kept flickering sideways, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, his breath hitching. Without wanting to, Jet knew just what Li was thinking: that he was nervous, trying not to look excited but failing, happy but not sure he was allowed to be.
No. Jet tore his gaze away, shouting inside his own head. No, you don't know. You don't know anything about him at all.
Li stopped pretending not to stare, his expression shifting to something more intent. "You're hurt," he said softly, the first words Jet had heard him say in two weeks.
Jet reached up automatically, felt the tangle of singed hair and the raw, oozing burn on his neck. The place where the fire had come too close, caught him before he could pull away.
"Get me out of here," he said, struggling to keep his voice level.
Ping must have heard the panic in his tone, because he didn't argue. He bent a panel of stone out of the way, and as soon as it was wide enough Jet hauled himself through the opening, not caring that the edge scraped against his open wounds. At least the pain was exactly what it seemed to be.
He didn't turn around to watch Li climb out onto the street, though he could hear it well enough to know when Li was standing, the ground having closed behind him again once Ping had followed. Jet imagined he could feel Li reach out to him, his hand inches away from Jet's arm, his face pinched with worry. Pitying him, which only made Jet angrier, only planted his feet more firmly on the ground. "What the fuck are you doing?" he snarled, with all the venom he could muster. "Why don't you just go back to the Fire Nation, huh? You fucking bastard, that's what you wanted right? That's what that shit was all about!"
"Jet-"
"Why are you still here?!"
Jet expected hesitation, then. The hand would be drawn back, the eyes widened with hurt and confusion, mouth half-open as Li struggled to think of what to say. In his mind, that was how it went.
In the empty street above the bolt hole, there was no hesitation at all. "You asked me to stay," said Li, quiet but firm.
Jet turned in time to see his dark, lithe shape slip back onto the rooftops, black against indigo and just as quickly gone.
Looking back, Zuko was amazed he'd held out for so long.
At first he'd tried to think of it as a challenge, like the games he'd played with his sister and her friends when they were young. Back then his aims had been childish - spying on the Fire Sages and snatching the hats from courtier's heads - but the skills involved were much the same. How close could he get without being seen? How quickly could he dart between the shadows? It helped to pretend he stayed out of sight by choice, that nothing drove him but a desire to prove that he could.
Last night, Jet had shattered that illusion completely, splintered it into sharp little pieces that burrowed in under Zuko's skin. The venom in Jet's words had made their situation painfully clear, erased any doubt that Jin had been right to turn him away from the kitchen door. He wasn't a little boy playing at stealth - he was a man cast out of the only life still left to him. Banished all over again, this time without even the illusion of a path back to grace.
Still, it had been an exhilarating sort of destruction. Half a day later, Zuko's hands were still shaking as he tapped leaves into a battered pot. He'd seen Jet again. Not from a rooftop or shuttered window, but up close, inches apart as they'd fought and run and hunkered down together. Jet had ended it all in a storm of anger, but before then, in the thick of everything, Zuko had seen the way Jet looked at him. Jet's eyes had held the same hunger he felt in his own gut, the ache that tightened with every day they spent apart. He hadn't imagined it. He wasn't sure he understood it, what it was or what it meant, but it had been there: a half-starved desire that mirrored his own.
Zuko found he couldn't stay still for very long, his body almost as frenetic as his thoughts. He jogged down the weathered steps of his building, filled a bucket with water from the communal well, and thought of how tired Jet had looked, dark smudges of blue under his eyes. Back in the apartment, he checked the shutters before conjuring a flame under the kettle, and wondered why the smell of Jasmine had faded from Jet's clothes. As drumming fingers counted out the time the pot of oolong had left to brew, he considered how the two changes might be related, and felt an odd little shiver at the answers his mind supplied.
When they finally knocked at the door, Zuko leapt across the room to answer it, rattling the teapot and cups he'd laid out.
Jin beamed at him from under the hood of her cloak. "We brought dinner," she said cheerfully, offering a lacquer box neatly wrapped in cloth. Xue Sheng hovered nervously beside her, a small earthenware pot in his hands, and Ping loomed behind them both. His face was hard to read in the shadow of his hood, but Zuko thought he looked even more somber than usual.
Zuko had gone scavenging in the other empty apartments, and one of his discoveries had been a low, three-legged table. A scrap of firewood and some inexpertly hammered nails had fixed it well enough to use, and the four of them sat around it now, cross-legged on the floor. Except for Zuko, who knelt as he poured the others tea with the neat, graceful movements his mother had taught him. The familiarity was soothing, however incongruous with his surroundings.
At first, the talk was all business: they'd only recovered about half the rice, but the runners had all made it back safely, and none of the injuries were fatal. No one knew what had happened to the shopkeeper and his family, or if the Fire Nation suspected their involvement. The rice would go to another dry goods store in the outer ring, one with a lower profile that might be overlooked.
Zuko listened to all of this attentively, but his fingers twisted themselves in the hem of his shirt. "Did he say anything?" he asked, as soon as Xue Sheng had finished with the details of their arrangements.
Jin sighed as she lifted the lid from the clay pot. "Not really," she admitted, pulling bowls toward her and spooning out portions of barley mixed with rice. "But Ping told me what you did." She smiled as she handed Zuko his share. "I'm sure he was happy to see you, Li. He's just confused, that's all. He'll get over it."
"'Confused' isn't the word I'd use," said Xue Sheng darkly.
"He's been fighting…the Fire Nation since he was a kid," said Zuko. He'd almost said "us," but after a night spent battling Firebenders that seemed a foolish way to look at it.
"You saved his life," Xue Sheng muttered. "Twice. You'd think he could at least say 'thank you.'"
"It's fine," said Zuko, staring down at the neat little pile of steamed greens Jin had served him. He pushed them around his cracked porcelain bowl, no longer particularly hungry "He just needs some time."
"I think he knows we've been coming to see you," said Jin. "He hasn't said anything, but I can tell."
Zuko sighed. "We knew he'd figure it out."
Ping had listened to all of this without comment, eating his dinner in small, methodical bites between sips of tea. With that last comment of Zuko's he lay his chopsticks across his empty bowl, rested his hands in his lap and said, "You realize the risk we take, speaking with you this way. The Fire Nation could ruin us if they knew half of what we tell you."
Zuko frowned. "I won't tell them. You know that. I'm just trying to help."
"I want to trust you, Li," said Ping. "Just as I want to trust Jet. You both appear to be honorable men." Zuko could hear the steel in his words. "But neither of you have been honest with us."
Zuko swallowed. He wasn't ready for this, not yet. Asking them to accept a Firebender was bad enough, but trusting the Fire Lord's son? "What do you mean?" he asked weakly.
"Two weeks ago, an Earthbender came to speak to you and Jet. You met with him in private, about matters you chose not to share with the rest of us. You began to act strangely, so much so that I was asked to keep an eye on you. A task I am sorry to have failed in so spectacularly."
Zuko grimaced. "Ping, you didn't-"
"Let me finish," said Ping. Zuko's mouth snapped shut. "That you left after what happened under the lake was not surprising. That you had a bag packed and waiting - one that Jin tells me wasn't there a few days before - was strange. What Jet said to you last night was even stranger. It implied some past conversation about your traveling to the Fire Nation, but I cannot imagine why you would have spoken of it before the lake. And I have witnessed every word the two of you have shared since."
Zuko blinked at him, his brain struggling to readjust. "Wait, you mean…he didn't tell you about the invasion?" The blank stares on all sides made it quite clear Jet had not, and Zuko had to bite back relieved laughter that this was the mystery Ping wanted untangled.
Zuko explained as much as he knew, supplying all the details he could remember. Jin gasped a little at the news that the Avatar was still alive, but Ping's frown only deepened.
"You wanted to go," he said flatly once Zuko had finished.
Zuko felt his cheeks flush, but he nodded. Jin reached out to pat his forearm, her smile only a little unsteady. "You're not from the colonies, are you?" she said softly. "You just wanted to go home."
Zuko managed another stiff nod, skin burning still hotter.
"But you didn't," said Ping.
"No."
Zuko was ready for them to ask why, press for more details, but no one did. Zuko found was as grateful for that as he was for the dinner they'd brought, or the fact that they came to visit him at all.
Instead, Xue Sheng sniffed in disapproval. "It seems like a ridiculous plan to me," he said. "With the Earth King's armies they might have stood some chance, but now? Even if they make it to the capital, they'll never reach the Fire Lord."
"When is this invasion exactly?" asked Ping.
Zuko paused to think. "They set out from Xi Mian Bay a week ago," he said, doing the calculations in his head. He didn't have much experience on sailing ships, but it had once been his business to know what they could do. "They'll reach the capital soon. Five days. Maybe six, if the winds are bad."
Xue Sheng frowned, then pulled a roll of parchment out of his robes: a calendar, the summer months covered in his perfect scholar's handwriting. He pointed to a date midway through the seventh month, which he'd marked with a solid black circle. "We'd planned a party for that day," he said. "My friends and I at the University. We were going to climb one of the hills in the agrarian ring and watch from there."
"Watch what?" asked Jin patiently.
"Tell me something, Li," said Xue Sheng, slow and thoughtful. "What would happen to a Firebender if there were an eclipse? If the moon covered the sun completely, even for just a few minutes?"
"We draw energy from the sun," said Zuko, just as slow as he considered the question. "It's harder to bend at night. If the sun was blocked entirely? I don't know. We wouldn't be able to bend as well. Maybe…" He looked to Ping, his thoughts a whirl of implications. "Maybe not at all."
"Not such a ridiculous plan," Ping murmured.
"The eclipse will only last eight minutes," said Xue Sheng, keeping pace with the train of the thought. "That degree of coordination…"
"We would need to be precisely positioned," said Ping. "Once the window opened, we would have to move quickly. Decisively." He glanced at Zuko, who knew what he meant - it wouldn't be a night for mercy.
"We'd still have the Dai Li to worry about," said Xue Sheng.
"Which is why secrecy would be essential," said Ping. "We would have to keep most of the men in the dark as to our advantage."
"So they'd think they were going on a suicide mission," said Xue Sheng, sounding dubious.
"They'll do whatever Jet tells them to," said Zuko, quietly certain. "They believe in him." Jin laid her hand on his back, then, warm through his shirt. He didn't know why she'd done it, but he was grateful for the touch. He'd spent so much of the last two weeks alone.
Xue Sheng frowned as he pushed his spectacles up his nose. "You're assuming Jet will listen to us. He'll know it was Li's idea." Jin shot a glare in his direction but he went on, pretending not to notice. "Who else could have told us about the invasion?"
"Maybe if we explain it the right way," said Jin, cautiously hopeful.
"He'll do what's best for the city," said Zuko. He remembered standing on a roof with Jet's arm around his shoulder, a question answered with no hesitation: This is my home, now. I'm not gonna turn my back on it. His chest tightened a little with pride. "That's why he wanted to stay. So he could help."
"As things are," said Ping, "the resistance won't last through the fall." He crossed his arms, his head bowed. "What choice do we have but to try?"
"Then it's settled," said Jin. "We'll tell Jet about the eclipse. And about the plan. Well..." She laughed nervously. "As much of a plan as we have."
"What if he doesn't believe us?" asked Xue Sheng. "What if he says no?"
"He won't," said Zuko.
"But what if he does?"
"Then we'll have to reexamine our options," said Ping, in a tone Zuko didn't like at all.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that, then," said Jin. Her hand still on Zuko's back, she slid it up to squeeze his shoulder.
"I guess I'll just…wait here, then," said Zuko, suddenly awkward as he remembered his place in all this. After so many afternoons spent crowded around the kitchen table, Jet beside him as they poured over maps and argued the particulars of timing and team captains, it felt strange to be so wholly removed. But there was no denying the truth of things: he was no longer welcome at that table, and he had already done all he could.
After the others had left, Zuko cleared away the cups and dishes, lingering over them in the copper sink. He wanted something to do with his hands. But once he'd scrubbed even the imaginary dirt away and set them out to dry, he moved the crooked table into a corner and stretched out on his back in the middle of the floor. He closed his eyes, willing his muscles to unwind and his fingers to still on the capet. He tried to picture the meandering walk through alleyways that climbed to the upper ring, how the Jasmine Dragon might look in the afternoon sunlight he could still feel on his skin. He wondered what Jet would say, if the others would risk mentioning him at all, and how Jet would react if they did. He wondered if Jet had spent his nights like this, eyes on the ceiling as he drifted on uncertain currents. He hoped Jet would remember the lake and the warehouse and see not what Zuko was, but what he'd done. And maybe, however briefly, understand.
"No fucking way," said Jet. "Not in a million years."
Jin frowned, as if she'd somehow not expected this, which only irritated him more. "But-"
"Not if my fucking life depended on it."
Jin blew a frustrated breath through pursed lips. "Jet, please, just think about-"
"I don't have to think about it. It doesn't take a lot of thought to say 'no' to any plan he's mixed up in."
"You didn't have a problem with his plans before!"
He flinched at that, which didn't improve his mood. "I learn from my mistakes."
Jin folded her arms across her chest, her expression growing more obstinate by the second. "You're being completely irrational about this."
"Let's just ignore the fact that you're having afternoon tea parties with a Fire Nation traitor," said Jet, lingering on the last few words. "How do you even know he's telling the truth? What if we build our whole battle plan around what he says, all depending on eight fire-free minutes, and it turns out he just made it all up? We'd be fucked, Jin. We can't take that kind of risk."
"But Xue Sheng-"
"Should stick to accounting and keep his nose out of shit he doesn't understand."
They were standing in the kitchen, Ping and Xue Sheng at the table, Smellerbee and Longshot by the door to the main room - closed, for once, to keep the kids out of this. Xue Sheng pinkened behind his spectacles, but Jin's indignation was unfazed. Her scowl fiercer than ever, she took another step forward.
"He's just trying to help," she said. "We're all trying to help, and if you'd listen for once instead of acting so-"
"So what?" Jet snarled, drawing up to his full height.
Jin held her ground, her eyes bright and sharp with fury. "Crazy," she said. "This is crazy, Jet, and you know it."
The room froze, all eyes on him as fresh anger clouded his features.
"Maybe I am," he said, dangerously soft. "But I'd rather be crazy than dead. Don't come crying to me when you find a knife in your back."
Jin laughed, a harsh bark that had nothing to do with humor. "Oh, that's rich!" Ping looked at her sharply but she was too incensed to notice, her voice rising with every word. "That is rich coming from you! Who threw who out on the street?"
"Jin," said Ping, a warning in his tone.
"Did you even think for one second what it's been like for him? You horrible, selfish, stubborn, ungrateful-"
"That's enough," Ping snapped, and though Jin glared at him she cut herself short.
Jet wanted to shout back at her, wanted to shock that superior look off her face. He didn't let anyone talk to him this way, let alone some city girl who'd never held a sword. Who the hell was she to judge him? If she'd seen what he had, really knew what those people were capable of, she'd understand. None of them could be trusted.
He looked away to where his friends waited by the door, faces grim and lips pressed into mute lines. Fuck, he was so tired of this. He was so tired of everything.
"I don't have to stand here and listen to this shit," he muttered.
He slouched past Jin, bumping her hard with his shoulder, and jerked open the dead-bolt on the kitchen door. No one followed him.
Laying on the roof of the Jasmine Dragon - his back along its straight, wooden spine, legs dangling and hands folded on his chest - Jet tried to focus on what was important.
He pictured the flames that had curled around Li's swords, searing red tendrils that followed his will. The same fire that had twisted itself in the roots of Jet's life, molded him into the man he'd become and forged the blade of his purpose. He had seen what that fire could do, knew better than anyone how ruthless it could be and how quickly it flared out of control, a wildfire that devoured everything. He'd pulled half-dead children from charred houses, too young to tell him their names. He'd watched soldiers brand their conquests, burning fingertips pressed into the skin of boys and women alike, the favorites taken along for later entertainment and the rest left to sift through the ashes of their villages. Jet had built an army from this human wreckage, knew their faces and their stories, had fought and bled and killed for all of them, all the years of his life. He'd done for them what he'd had to do for himself, orphaned and alone in the forest. The Fire Nation had taken everything from him.
Li was Fire Nation. Li was a Firebender. Jet whispered it to himself over and over again, the mantra barely more than a breath on his lips.
"Jet." Smellerbee's voice, only a few feet away. Jet lifted his head enough to see her and Longshot standing on the ridge of the roof, just visible over his ribcage. He sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for Smellerbee to walk past him on the tiles and settle down next to his head. He felt her fingers in his hair, ruffling it lightly. "You're a mess," she said.
"Looks like."
"Here, sit up," she said, tugging a little for emphasis. Jet didn't want to sit up, any more than he wanted to do much of anything, but he sighed and pushed himself upright. Longshot had taken a seat on his other side, watching them in his usual, quiet way. Jet managed half a smile, but it lasted only a moment before Smellerbee's fingers on his neck made him hiss in pain.
"You need to change these bandages," she said. "It'll get infected."
Jet tried to swat her hands away, grimacing. "Later."
"And your hair," she said, poking the burnt tangle at the nape of his neck. "You look ridiculous."
"Since when do you care about my hair?"
"Since you stopped." She pulled a short knife out of her belt and turned his head so he faced away from her. "Hold still."
Longshot's eyebrows lifted by a fraction, the left slightly higher than the right. "Not you, too," Jet muttered. Behind him, Smellerbee had started to work, gently pulling the melted knots of hair away from his scalp and cutting them off with her knife. The damage was worse than he'd thought - he'd hardly have any hair left in the back. "Why's this so important anyway?"
"You're our leader," she said quietly. "You should look the part."
Jet snorted. "Right."
"I'm serious." She worked her way around to the side, the flat of her blade grazing his ear. "No one's gonna listen to you if you look like a lunatic."
She finished with one sideburn, a lock of brown hair drifting down into this lap. Jet glowered at it. "No one listens to me anyway," he said. "A haircut's not gonna make a difference."
She sighed, her breath tickling a little. "Don't be stupid."
"I don't know why I even bother. If they wanna get in bed with the Fire Nation, why stop them?" He realized he was leaving himself wide open with that one, but Smellerbee was classier than that. Or maybe she knew it would be the end of their conversation. Either way, she only clucked her tongue as she trimmed around his ear. "What? You think I'm wrong?" When she didn't answer, he turned around to face her, brows drawn down in annoyance. "Smellerbee, he's-"
"I know what he is," she said. She reached up to his other temple, held a lock of hair taut between her fingers and cut it with a small, neat motion of the knife.
"If you've got something to say, just say it."
Another tuft of hair fell, tickling his cheek. "Jin and Xue Sheng are one thing," she said. "But Ping's no fool."
"And I am?"
She sighed again and dusted the hair off his shoulders. "Jet, I'm not gonna tell you what to do."
"Why not? Everyone else is." Jet shifted his scowl to Longshot. "What about you? You gonna tell me how to run my life, too?"
Longshot frowned, his shoulders sinking almost imperceptibly.
"And give him a chance to finish me off?" Jet ran a hand back through what was left of his hair, chuckling mirthlessly to himself. "Shit, I can't believe this."
"You know he won't hurt you," said Longshot, his voice soft and a little rusty with disuse. "Let him explain."
Jet ground the heel of his palm into his eye, rubbing away the sting. "What'll that help?"
He felt Smellerbee's hand on his back, gently brushing it clean. "It can't make things worse," she said. "Maybe it'll make them better."
Jet tilted his head back, stared up at the wide blue cloudless bowl of the sky and let himself feel it. Really feel it in all the ways he'd tried not to, allowing himself to think what he still couldn't say out loud: he missed Li. Missed him so much it hurt to breathe. And he knew he didn't want to stop, even if he could.
"I hate this," he said.
"I know," said Smellerbee. She moved her hand in small, soothing circles.
"I hate him."
"You don't."
Jet looked out over the city, the rows of buildings that spiraled away from where he sat, descending into squalor as they went. He wondered where Li slept at night - if he slept at all, or if he also lay awake until dawn, wishing it all had gone differently.
"Maybe," he murmured. A few clumps of hair still lay on the tiles by his feet. Jet picked them up and held them in the flat of his open palm. Soon enough a gust of wind caught them, carrying them away and out of sight.
When Zuko slept it wasn't well. His shallow dreams were of a landscape shadowed by walls, too high to climb and too thick to break through. His dream self walked restlessly along them, fingers tracing lines of crumbling mortar as he searched for the hint of a doorway. Just a little farther, he knew, and he'd escape his dreary maze of narrow streets and blind alleys, stumble out into the open where he could see more than a sliver of sky. Just a little longer in the dark, a little deeper into the labyrinth, and he'd find his way.
He dreamed of other things, too; things that left him breathless in the early morning hours, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. The worst were those first, confused moments, when he groped at the empty floor beside him, still half-believing what he'd seen and felt and smelled. Those dreams he tried to forget but never could, their echos impossible to shake.
Tonight, he wasn't certain he'd slept at all. Each time he opened his eyes, the shafts of moonlight on the floor had drifted a little further, the only hint of time passing. He wasn't asleep, but he wasn't entirely awake, and at first he didn't notice the change when it happened. He stared for a long time at the window before realizing the shutters had been thrown open, longer still before he picked out the lean silhouette, distinguished by a faint halo of blue that caught on untidy hair and the irregular landscape of armor.
He pushed himself up, clumsy with sleep and nervousness, his thin sheet falling away. He opened his mouth but didn't speak, irrationally afraid that this, too, was a dream, and that naming what he saw might shatter it.
The shadow watched him silently for long, airless minutes, eyes glittering with reflected light. When he spoke, his words were stiff with suppressed emotion, trembling at the edges. "It would be easier," he said, "if I could trust you."
"You can," said Zuko, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Jet's hand was shaking as he ran it back through his hair. "Convince me," he said, somewhere between a command and a plea.
Zuko licked his lips. His mouth felt dry as sand, all the things he wanted to say caught in his throat like a bone. "All right," was all he could manage. Then, once he'd swallowed again, "Come in."
:: Next Chapter ::
The illustrations for this chapter, and the artists who drew them, are as such:
By gulliblesnail:
Xiao Si Wang had been a particular favorite of his.
In the empty street above the bolt hole, there was no hesitation at all.
like the games he'd played with his sister and her friends when they were young.
By boredgods:
a Firebender looming behind Wang.
Someone who broke the flames apart with twin blades, glanced over his shoulder and caught Jet's eye for an instant, his own wide and golden.
Word count: 8,900
Pairing: Jet/Zuko
Rating: A very hard R for language, violence and sexual content
Summary: Since the day the walls of Ba Sing Se fell, the Freedom Fighters have struggled to protect what remains of the city and its people. Jet and his second command, a mysterious boy named Li, have spent the summer piecing together an army, hoping for a chance to take the city back for good. But Li is also Zuko, and the time for that secret is quickly running out. Soon, he'll have to decide exactly who he is, what cause he's going to fight for and where his heart lies.
This chapter: Two weeks later
Notes: As I am reminded on a near-daily basis sometimes, kittyjimjams and jlh are goddamn lifesavers, and without them this fic would never have gotten done. boredgods and gulliblesnail both contributed really gorgeous illustrations for this chapter, which are linked to in the text and in a complete list at the end. (And particular thanks to boredgods for doing these on her laptop ON VACATION IN ARIZONA, seriously <3)
:: Previous Chapter ::
The Jasmine Dragon wasn't that big - before the war came to Ba Sing Se, Jet had been able to cross the main room with a few, long strides. Now that space was home to several dozen almost-soldiers, and the distance between the kitchen and the corner where his friends slept took a quarter-hour to navigate.
His feet hadn't even reached the gold-and-green carpet when he felt someone tug at the back of his shirt. Roo, a runner, one of Jin's early finds. He glanced down at her, automatically dredging up the details of her history. Her parents had been away visiting relatives when the city was sealed off, and her grandfather had been killed by a Fire Nation soldier who wanted his hogchicken for dinner. Jet couldn't see the burn scar that covered most of her back, but he knew it was there. "Hey," he said, careful to smile.
"Jet, there's a squirrelmouse!" said Roo, hopping nervously from one foot to the other. "Su Dao found it in the pantry, and I said he should put it outside but he thinks he can train it to carry messages like a hawk, and he's been sleeping with it in his hammock but then it jumps around at night and keeps us all up." She paused to take a breath. "And he said not to tell you but he keeps snitching nuts from the pantry to feed it."
Jet concentrated on his smile, making sure it reached his eyes. "Tell Dao if he wants a pet, he has to feed it from his own share."
Two more steps, and a boy with one eye missing slipped out from between the canvas hangings: Yan Jing, a butcher's son from the outer ring whose kills were neat and quick. "One of Wang's swords broke during practice this morning." He kept his eyes down, old enough to be cautious. "She'll need another one, but…"
Jet felt his grin begin to slip a little, and covered it by running a hand back through his hair. Xiao Si Wang had been a particular favorite of his, the scar on her face a point of some sympathy between them. "Smellerbee's in charge of the armory, now," said Jet, understanding perfectly the awkward, unasked question. He couldn't quite keep the edge out of his voice. "She'll take care of it."
He made it around the last corner and past the front door without interruption, but in the final stretch he heard someone else call out his name. He didn't turn, only stopped and waited for Dusty to catch up. The smile had faded to something like a grimace, so he dropped it entirely. Dusty was a team captain - he shouldn't need to be coddled.
"I don't think Gen's up for going on tonight's raid," he said, speaking to the back of Jet's head. "He still gets dizzy when he stands up, and Xue Sheng's not sure the wounds won't open again."
"Tell Wang to stay close to him, then."
"But-"
"He's been off his feet since the Eastern Gate," Jet snapped, still not turning around. "If he can't pull his fucking weight he can find somewhere else to sleep."
He ducked into what passed for Longshot and Smellerbee's room and yanked the canvas flaps closed behind him, cutting off whatever else Dusty might have said. Not out of any real anger, though Dusty would probably take it that way. Jet simply didn't have the words left in him, for Dusty or anyone else.
He sat down on the thin, patched futon, his breath fast and shallow as he rested his forehead on his knees. He could still hear it: the inescapable buzz of a roomful of anxious whispers. Sometimes an argument or excited shout would rise up from the hum, only to be shushed out of prominence again. Jet covered his ears with his hands, tried to concentrate on the the soft rumble of his pulse and the faint creak of bones in his wrists.
He'd expected the first couple weeks to be hard, and they had been. He woke each morning from a few hours of shallow sleep and stared at the rows of hammocks above him. Smellerbee and Longshot were usually still asleep, and he would turn his head to watch them, matching his breath to the rise and fall of their chests in the thin light of dawn. Theirs was the only company he sought, the only conversation that didn't exhaust him. The others had started to blur into a wall of tired faces, looking to him for that spark of hope they all craved. But Jet didn't have one anymore, neither for them nor for himself.
Li had made a mockery of his life, of everything he had thought he was trying to do. He'd been wrong about Li - dangerously, sickeningly wrong. And that had called everything else into question, robbed him of the certainty that had driven him for as long as he could remember. All that remained was a grim list of necessities that never seemed to shorten, every day a struggle to hang onto what little they had left.
Every morning he thought, Why do this to yourself? The answer was always the same, always just enough: Someone has to. No one else will.
Some time later the canvas parted again, and Smellerbee ducked through to sit beside him. He knew it was her without having to look up - from the way she moved, and because no one but her and Longshot would dare intrude like this.
"It's almost dinner," she said quietly.
Jet removed his hands from his ears, but didn't lift his head. "Not hungry," he mumbled.
"That's what you said at breakfast."
"I wasn't hungry then, either."
She sighed. "The raid tonight's gonna be tough. You'll need your strength."
"I'll be fine."
"If you faint on me I'm leaving you behind."
"If you have to."
He heard her snort in irritation, but she wouldn't push him further. She knew better than to try. "I talked to Ping," she said, changing the subject instead. "He thinks we should pull Dusty off the first wave. Have him back up Wang and Gen instead."
Jet lifted his head, mostly so he could shake it. "You're good, Smellerbee, but you can't take out ten guards by yourself. Not without them raising an alarm."
Jet knew what she would say next and braced himself for it, willing her to drop this shit for once and just do what they'd agreed on. Which had never worked before, of course, and didn't work now. "Jet, you know half those guards won't be there," she said. "There's no point in-"
"There're ten guards assigned to that warehouse," said Jet icily. "So we'll plan for ten guards." He turned to look at her, his eyes narrowed in challenge. "Unless you have something you wanna tell me?"
She stared him down for a long time, black eyes boring into his. But eventually she sighed and looked away. "Fine. Waste Dusty's time if it makes you happy."
"I will, thanks."
"You wanna pretend like nothing's going on, you go right head."
"Nothing is going on."
"Why, because you say so?" she snapped, one step farther than she'd let herself go before.
Jet's fists clenched around handfuls of bedding. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
Smellerbee made a sharp, sweeping gesture that took in the canvas walls. "Don't you?"
Jet looked down at his knees, jaw so tight he felt his teeth might shatter, his eyes fixed and unblinking and his ears full of the sound of his own blood. Still, he heard Smellerbee sigh, felt her hand rest lightly on his shoulder. He didn't shrug her off, and they sat that way for some time, neither one of them speaking. Finally he blew out a long, slow breath and pushed himself to his feet.
Someone had to. No one else would.
The raid was a shitty situation however you looked at it; it promised all the things Jet hated most about this fucking war in this cursed hole of a city. They'd be fighting indoors in close quarters, against an unknown number of Firebenders - those who'd been assigned to tanks were now mixed in with the infantry. The runners would be involved, which meant Jet and the other soldiers would have to protect them as well as watching their own backs. They'd be relying on civilians, who usually meant well but crumpled under pressure. Ping seemed sure the Dai Li would be keeping an eye on the place, and Jet supposed he would know. The Freedom Fighters only had six benders, Ping included, to hold off whoever decided to show. A shitty situation all around, but Jet didn't see how they had much of a choice.
Ba Sing Se was a massive city, home to hundreds of thousands of half-starved people. Jet's men could steal enough rice to keep the poorest of them alive, but distributing it themselves was impractical - they didn't have the numbers or the time, and it left them too exposed. Luckily, Jin had devised a clever compromise. The middle ring housed several large dry goods stores, the sort of place she'd gone as a child to buy tea and cloth. Some of the owners had stayed behind, reluctant to abandon their property to the Fire Nation, and Jin had persuaded a few of them to act as middlemen. They made sure the rice got to the people who needed it, and in return, the Freedom Fighters protected them from the worst of the occupation.
Tonight, Jet waited in the largest of these massive stores, crouched beside a window that faced the warehouse behind it. The Fire Nation had seized control of it three days ago, and Jet doubted they'd be generous to the peasants when their own men were going hungry. Two thirds of the food the resistance had scraped together sat on the shelves of that warehouse, more than they could afford to lose if they hoped to live through the winter.
Jet sighed. Who was he kidding? They'd be lucky if they made it to winter, the way things had been going.
He'd sent the owner out front with a broom, telling him to go about his usual business of closing up for the night. Now he and Longshot watched for signs of movement, swords in hand and bow half-drawn, ready to burst out into the yard if things went bad. This raid was a desperate one, and all of them knew it. The Eastern Gate had destroyed any illusions they might have harbored about reclaiming territory, let alone holding it. They'd have to move the rice, by hand and all at once, and this would be their only chance to try.
Smellerbee and Dusty were nearly at the door before Jet saw them, running low and silent through the shadows cast by street lamps. Jet opened the door just wide enough for them to slip through, and soon the four of them were crouched in a circle on the dusty wooden floor.
"Any problems?" Jet asked.
"No," said Smellerbee. "Fast and easy." She met his eyes and scowled. "There were only four guards left." The rest she didn't say, but Jet knew all the same.
At first he'd been able to ignore the signs - a few expected guards mysteriously absent the night of a raid, or a handful of enemy solders that went missing in the middle of a fight. But this he couldn't explain away, and Smellerbee had made it clear she was tired of letting him try. Only four guards left, he knew, because the other six had been knocked out, bound and gagged before she and Dusty could get to them.
"Wang and Gen just signaled," she went on, her point having been made. "Patrols are taken care of. We're good for ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."
The Earthbenders were already inside the warehouse, and once Jet's group was through the door Ping sealed it shut behind them. Four of the other benders were lifting bales of rice down off the shelves with thin palettes of stone, pairs working in sync to guide each one through the air. Ping and his lieutenant moved to face each other at the center of the room, bare feet set wide on the earthen floor. They took a deep breath, raised their splayed hands until they were at eye-level, then thrust them down in a sharp, powerful motion that opened a gaping, black tunnel in the ground between them.
Jet watched with one eye still on the rock-sealed door as the first runners climbed up out of the hole, Roo at the lead, and headed straight for the waiting stacks of rice. He hated that it had to be this way, that he was bringing these kids anywhere near a fight. They weren't like The Duke, or like he'd been when he was their age - city life had left them soft by his standards, and this plan had been born from a sorry lack of options. A wagon on the street wouldn't make it three blocks; a stone sledge underground would be pathetically easy for the Dai Li to track. That left the runners or nothing at all.
Smellerbee, Longshot and the other fighters had already moved to help, easily lifting the bales up onto the younger kids' backs. Soon a steady stream of runners flowed in and out of the tunnel, shuffling down red-faced with strain only to jog right back up again a minute or so later, ready to pick up their next load. But the math had never looked good: thirty-two runners, over two hundred bales of rice, a city full of Firebenders that didn't want them taking it back.
Ping moved away from the bustle of activity and crouched down, sinking his fingers into the dirt. He frowned, and Jet went to stand beside him.
"How close?" Jet asked.
"Hard to say," said Ping. "We don't have much time." He gestured to his men as he straightened, and three of them took up positions along the warehouse walls, eyes closed and palms against the plaster. The last two - the weakest, Jet noted, scrawny young chickens who drowned in their armor - kept lifting rice down from the shelves.
"Get ready," said Jet, eyes flickering between the benders..
Smellerbee, Wang, Jing and Dusty broke off from the group of runners, drawing their knives and swords as they formed a circle , their backs to each other. Longshot climbed a half-empty shelf, notching his first arrow as soon as he'd reached the top. The rest of the soldiers formed a loose perimeter around the stacks of rice.
This was the part Jet hated the most: the waiting. But it didn't last long.
"They're here," said Ping. The words had barely left his mouth when the first tremor hit, rattling the empty wooden shelves.
"Time to go!" Jet called, praying the runners wouldn't freeze. They didn't, though their eyes were white with panic as they scrambled to fasten their final loads in place. All six benders were at the walls now, fingers and toes sunk knuckle-deep and faces twisted up with strain. Ping had told him this might happen, but it was an odd thing to watch all the same. Odd and a little terrifying. The Dai Li were trying to force their way in, and Ping's men were pouring their strength into the walls and floor, fighting to hold it all together.
"Too many," Ping grunted, sweat running down his forehead in thin streams.
Half the runners were still on the floor. They couldn't close the tunnel until it was clear. Shit. "Forget the rice!" Jet barked. "Get the hell out of here now!"
Kids poured down into the tunnel, tripping over the bales and each other, their guard close behind. Ping's lieutenant broke away from the wall, sprinted across the room and dove down after the last of the retreat, the ground swirling and spiraling shut like an iris. Underground, Jet knew, he was collapsing the tunnel, smoothing out layers of bedrock to hide any trace of their passing. But that kind of work took time. He'd need cover to finish it, or the Dai Li would pick up his trail.
The warehouse had started to shake, trickles of plaster dust falling from the rafters and ceiling. Some landed in Jet's hair, but he didn't brush it away. He backed up untill he stood between Smellerbee and Wang, watched as long cracks formed and spread along the walls.
"Can't," Ping gasped, and the south wall exploded.
Chalky dust billowed up into the air, instantly coating the back of Jet's throat, but through it he could see the first soldiers as they clambered over the rubble. Most were hit full in the chest by Longshot's arrows, knocked backwards by the force of the impact, blood trickling from their mouths. But the next group shoved their bodies aside and swarmed through the breach, too fast for Longshot to pick them all off, who knew how many more behind. Ping's benders had abandoned the perimeter, and Jet heard stone crashing together, above and to either side, as the Dai Li made their entrance. But he didn't look. His eyes were on the line of Fire Nation soldiers. None of them were armed.
Jet dove into the middle of them, blades flashing as he ducked under the flames, hooked an ankle and threw one soldier into another, smashed the spur at the end of his hilt into an armored temple, felt it push through metal and into flesh and bone. He planted a foot on the man's chest, kicked him away as he jerked his sword free, blood spattering his face, rich and warm on his lips. He licked them as he spun around, hooked a blade into the shoulder of a Firebender looming behind Wang, the flame in his hand dissolving as Jet yanked him backwards. The crescent blade at his knuckles sliced the man's neck open, clear through to the spine, the dirt floor turned to mud by gore as Jet ran to meet his next kill.
Then the ground erupted beneath him, tumbling his body through the air. He hit what felt like a wall and then the ground, landing shoulder-first, swords somehow still in hand but all the breath knocked out of him. Shards of stone were still raining down as he rolled to his feet, spit out a mouthful of blood and tried to get his bearings. He'd been thrown halfway across the warehouse, against the sealed-up doorway. Two Firebenders had already spotted him. He avoided the first attack but he could feel the flames on his back, smelled cloth and hair burning as he bobbed up again, swords crossed in front of him, ready to die on his feet, like he'd always imagined he would.
Later, he'd remember the next few moments in perfect detail, as if time had slowed to give him the chance to take it in. The Firebender was only ten feet away, the flame that boiled from his fist too wide and too fast for Jet to escape, still off-balance from dodging the blast before it. He had time to hope they'd finish him off, instead of dragging him away to die in some interrogation room. He wished he could have seen the forest again. He wished other things, too, that he couldn't bear to put into words.
But the fire didn't reach him. Something dropped from above, landing just in front of him. Someone who broke the flames apart with twin blades, glanced over his shoulder and caught Jet's eye for an instant, his own wide and golden.
Jet wanted to be angry, and he was. Li had lied to him. Li was one of them, for fuck's sake. But as Jet stood there in the warehouse the anger was drowned in a flood of relief, an irresistible tide that pulled him back to before things had fallen apart, adrenaline-fueled currents of emotion swirling to the surface. Li crouched in front of him as he had a hundred times before, so close Jet could smell his hair and his sweat, dizzyingly familiar.
Another fireball, and this time Li juggled it between his blades, gathering it up and hurling it back again, forcing the soldiers to dodge their own flames. Jet knew what Li was doing but just then he couldn't care. Li moved away from the wall and Jet followed him, knocking stone projectiles from the air as Li turned more flames aside, the fire flowing around them like a river. It was all too easy to slip into the old rhythms, to let his body move as it wanted to, reading Li's movements and matching itself to them. No matter that the flame clung to Li's blades, curled around them like a living thing until he flung it back toward the soldiers. No matter that he shouldn't have known to be here at all.
"Time!" Ping barked, already on his way across the warehouse, a pair of Dai Li close behind, all riding waves of earth that rolled along the floor. Distracted, the Firebenders didn't see Li's blades until he'd rammed the blunt hilts into the backs of their skulls, dropping them just as Ping careened past. He hit the sealed door at full speed, tore the stone away and launched it back toward the Dai Li as Jet and Li sprinted out into the yard. Then Ping was behind them again, catapulting them up onto the rooftops with a well-timed column of stone and then following himself. This, at last, was comfortable territory, and the three of them ran easily along the sloping tiles, leapt across alleyways and scrambled over walls, splitting up for blocks at a time only to merge smoothly back together.
Li's movements were silent and fluid, his dark robes making more sound than his feet, every leap graceful and every landing solid and sure. Jet stayed a few strides behind, watching him. The night air and exercise cleared his mind, pushed the anger and confusion and worry aside until all that remained was the sky and the city and their bodies in between. It would be so easy to let this happen, allow Li to slip back into his life as if nothing had changed. A part of Jet wanted to, the same part that ached to sleep in his old bed and remembered how Li's mouth tasted in the morning. The part that wanted to reach out, even now, and touch the trailing edge of Li's sleeve. The stupid, blind, soft-hearted part that had believed him in the first place.
When Ping dropped down to the street again, Jet and Li followed without hesitation, the ground giving way beneath them as soon as they made contact. The room they found themselves in was a bare rectangle as wide as Jet was tall, lit by a cage full of luminescent crystal. One of the few bolt holes still undiscovered. They crouched beneath the low ceiling, holding their breath, waiting for the last of the night's trouble to pass overhead.
Fuck, if only.
Jet watched Li from the corner of his eye, the calm of a few minutes before rapidly draining away as a sickening uneasiness rushed in to fill the void. He thought of the last time he'd seen Li's face like this, drawn with worry in the dim, green light. The last time he'd seen Li's face at all, back when life made some kind of sense, before a broken chain had turned it all on its head.
Li was always easy to read and damn near transparent when he was upset. He may as well have been shouting for all the subtlety he managed now. His eyes kept flickering sideways, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, his breath hitching. Without wanting to, Jet knew just what Li was thinking: that he was nervous, trying not to look excited but failing, happy but not sure he was allowed to be.
No. Jet tore his gaze away, shouting inside his own head. No, you don't know. You don't know anything about him at all.
Li stopped pretending not to stare, his expression shifting to something more intent. "You're hurt," he said softly, the first words Jet had heard him say in two weeks.
Jet reached up automatically, felt the tangle of singed hair and the raw, oozing burn on his neck. The place where the fire had come too close, caught him before he could pull away.
"Get me out of here," he said, struggling to keep his voice level.
Ping must have heard the panic in his tone, because he didn't argue. He bent a panel of stone out of the way, and as soon as it was wide enough Jet hauled himself through the opening, not caring that the edge scraped against his open wounds. At least the pain was exactly what it seemed to be.
He didn't turn around to watch Li climb out onto the street, though he could hear it well enough to know when Li was standing, the ground having closed behind him again once Ping had followed. Jet imagined he could feel Li reach out to him, his hand inches away from Jet's arm, his face pinched with worry. Pitying him, which only made Jet angrier, only planted his feet more firmly on the ground. "What the fuck are you doing?" he snarled, with all the venom he could muster. "Why don't you just go back to the Fire Nation, huh? You fucking bastard, that's what you wanted right? That's what that shit was all about!"
"Jet-"
"Why are you still here?!"
Jet expected hesitation, then. The hand would be drawn back, the eyes widened with hurt and confusion, mouth half-open as Li struggled to think of what to say. In his mind, that was how it went.
In the empty street above the bolt hole, there was no hesitation at all. "You asked me to stay," said Li, quiet but firm.
Jet turned in time to see his dark, lithe shape slip back onto the rooftops, black against indigo and just as quickly gone.
Looking back, Zuko was amazed he'd held out for so long.
At first he'd tried to think of it as a challenge, like the games he'd played with his sister and her friends when they were young. Back then his aims had been childish - spying on the Fire Sages and snatching the hats from courtier's heads - but the skills involved were much the same. How close could he get without being seen? How quickly could he dart between the shadows? It helped to pretend he stayed out of sight by choice, that nothing drove him but a desire to prove that he could.
Last night, Jet had shattered that illusion completely, splintered it into sharp little pieces that burrowed in under Zuko's skin. The venom in Jet's words had made their situation painfully clear, erased any doubt that Jin had been right to turn him away from the kitchen door. He wasn't a little boy playing at stealth - he was a man cast out of the only life still left to him. Banished all over again, this time without even the illusion of a path back to grace.
Still, it had been an exhilarating sort of destruction. Half a day later, Zuko's hands were still shaking as he tapped leaves into a battered pot. He'd seen Jet again. Not from a rooftop or shuttered window, but up close, inches apart as they'd fought and run and hunkered down together. Jet had ended it all in a storm of anger, but before then, in the thick of everything, Zuko had seen the way Jet looked at him. Jet's eyes had held the same hunger he felt in his own gut, the ache that tightened with every day they spent apart. He hadn't imagined it. He wasn't sure he understood it, what it was or what it meant, but it had been there: a half-starved desire that mirrored his own.
Zuko found he couldn't stay still for very long, his body almost as frenetic as his thoughts. He jogged down the weathered steps of his building, filled a bucket with water from the communal well, and thought of how tired Jet had looked, dark smudges of blue under his eyes. Back in the apartment, he checked the shutters before conjuring a flame under the kettle, and wondered why the smell of Jasmine had faded from Jet's clothes. As drumming fingers counted out the time the pot of oolong had left to brew, he considered how the two changes might be related, and felt an odd little shiver at the answers his mind supplied.
When they finally knocked at the door, Zuko leapt across the room to answer it, rattling the teapot and cups he'd laid out.
Jin beamed at him from under the hood of her cloak. "We brought dinner," she said cheerfully, offering a lacquer box neatly wrapped in cloth. Xue Sheng hovered nervously beside her, a small earthenware pot in his hands, and Ping loomed behind them both. His face was hard to read in the shadow of his hood, but Zuko thought he looked even more somber than usual.
Zuko had gone scavenging in the other empty apartments, and one of his discoveries had been a low, three-legged table. A scrap of firewood and some inexpertly hammered nails had fixed it well enough to use, and the four of them sat around it now, cross-legged on the floor. Except for Zuko, who knelt as he poured the others tea with the neat, graceful movements his mother had taught him. The familiarity was soothing, however incongruous with his surroundings.
At first, the talk was all business: they'd only recovered about half the rice, but the runners had all made it back safely, and none of the injuries were fatal. No one knew what had happened to the shopkeeper and his family, or if the Fire Nation suspected their involvement. The rice would go to another dry goods store in the outer ring, one with a lower profile that might be overlooked.
Zuko listened to all of this attentively, but his fingers twisted themselves in the hem of his shirt. "Did he say anything?" he asked, as soon as Xue Sheng had finished with the details of their arrangements.
Jin sighed as she lifted the lid from the clay pot. "Not really," she admitted, pulling bowls toward her and spooning out portions of barley mixed with rice. "But Ping told me what you did." She smiled as she handed Zuko his share. "I'm sure he was happy to see you, Li. He's just confused, that's all. He'll get over it."
"'Confused' isn't the word I'd use," said Xue Sheng darkly.
"He's been fighting…the Fire Nation since he was a kid," said Zuko. He'd almost said "us," but after a night spent battling Firebenders that seemed a foolish way to look at it.
"You saved his life," Xue Sheng muttered. "Twice. You'd think he could at least say 'thank you.'"
"It's fine," said Zuko, staring down at the neat little pile of steamed greens Jin had served him. He pushed them around his cracked porcelain bowl, no longer particularly hungry "He just needs some time."
"I think he knows we've been coming to see you," said Jin. "He hasn't said anything, but I can tell."
Zuko sighed. "We knew he'd figure it out."
Ping had listened to all of this without comment, eating his dinner in small, methodical bites between sips of tea. With that last comment of Zuko's he lay his chopsticks across his empty bowl, rested his hands in his lap and said, "You realize the risk we take, speaking with you this way. The Fire Nation could ruin us if they knew half of what we tell you."
Zuko frowned. "I won't tell them. You know that. I'm just trying to help."
"I want to trust you, Li," said Ping. "Just as I want to trust Jet. You both appear to be honorable men." Zuko could hear the steel in his words. "But neither of you have been honest with us."
Zuko swallowed. He wasn't ready for this, not yet. Asking them to accept a Firebender was bad enough, but trusting the Fire Lord's son? "What do you mean?" he asked weakly.
"Two weeks ago, an Earthbender came to speak to you and Jet. You met with him in private, about matters you chose not to share with the rest of us. You began to act strangely, so much so that I was asked to keep an eye on you. A task I am sorry to have failed in so spectacularly."
Zuko grimaced. "Ping, you didn't-"
"Let me finish," said Ping. Zuko's mouth snapped shut. "That you left after what happened under the lake was not surprising. That you had a bag packed and waiting - one that Jin tells me wasn't there a few days before - was strange. What Jet said to you last night was even stranger. It implied some past conversation about your traveling to the Fire Nation, but I cannot imagine why you would have spoken of it before the lake. And I have witnessed every word the two of you have shared since."
Zuko blinked at him, his brain struggling to readjust. "Wait, you mean…he didn't tell you about the invasion?" The blank stares on all sides made it quite clear Jet had not, and Zuko had to bite back relieved laughter that this was the mystery Ping wanted untangled.
Zuko explained as much as he knew, supplying all the details he could remember. Jin gasped a little at the news that the Avatar was still alive, but Ping's frown only deepened.
"You wanted to go," he said flatly once Zuko had finished.
Zuko felt his cheeks flush, but he nodded. Jin reached out to pat his forearm, her smile only a little unsteady. "You're not from the colonies, are you?" she said softly. "You just wanted to go home."
Zuko managed another stiff nod, skin burning still hotter.
"But you didn't," said Ping.
"No."
Zuko was ready for them to ask why, press for more details, but no one did. Zuko found was as grateful for that as he was for the dinner they'd brought, or the fact that they came to visit him at all.
Instead, Xue Sheng sniffed in disapproval. "It seems like a ridiculous plan to me," he said. "With the Earth King's armies they might have stood some chance, but now? Even if they make it to the capital, they'll never reach the Fire Lord."
"When is this invasion exactly?" asked Ping.
Zuko paused to think. "They set out from Xi Mian Bay a week ago," he said, doing the calculations in his head. He didn't have much experience on sailing ships, but it had once been his business to know what they could do. "They'll reach the capital soon. Five days. Maybe six, if the winds are bad."
Xue Sheng frowned, then pulled a roll of parchment out of his robes: a calendar, the summer months covered in his perfect scholar's handwriting. He pointed to a date midway through the seventh month, which he'd marked with a solid black circle. "We'd planned a party for that day," he said. "My friends and I at the University. We were going to climb one of the hills in the agrarian ring and watch from there."
"Watch what?" asked Jin patiently.
"Tell me something, Li," said Xue Sheng, slow and thoughtful. "What would happen to a Firebender if there were an eclipse? If the moon covered the sun completely, even for just a few minutes?"
"We draw energy from the sun," said Zuko, just as slow as he considered the question. "It's harder to bend at night. If the sun was blocked entirely? I don't know. We wouldn't be able to bend as well. Maybe…" He looked to Ping, his thoughts a whirl of implications. "Maybe not at all."
"Not such a ridiculous plan," Ping murmured.
"The eclipse will only last eight minutes," said Xue Sheng, keeping pace with the train of the thought. "That degree of coordination…"
"We would need to be precisely positioned," said Ping. "Once the window opened, we would have to move quickly. Decisively." He glanced at Zuko, who knew what he meant - it wouldn't be a night for mercy.
"We'd still have the Dai Li to worry about," said Xue Sheng.
"Which is why secrecy would be essential," said Ping. "We would have to keep most of the men in the dark as to our advantage."
"So they'd think they were going on a suicide mission," said Xue Sheng, sounding dubious.
"They'll do whatever Jet tells them to," said Zuko, quietly certain. "They believe in him." Jin laid her hand on his back, then, warm through his shirt. He didn't know why she'd done it, but he was grateful for the touch. He'd spent so much of the last two weeks alone.
Xue Sheng frowned as he pushed his spectacles up his nose. "You're assuming Jet will listen to us. He'll know it was Li's idea." Jin shot a glare in his direction but he went on, pretending not to notice. "Who else could have told us about the invasion?"
"Maybe if we explain it the right way," said Jin, cautiously hopeful.
"He'll do what's best for the city," said Zuko. He remembered standing on a roof with Jet's arm around his shoulder, a question answered with no hesitation: This is my home, now. I'm not gonna turn my back on it. His chest tightened a little with pride. "That's why he wanted to stay. So he could help."
"As things are," said Ping, "the resistance won't last through the fall." He crossed his arms, his head bowed. "What choice do we have but to try?"
"Then it's settled," said Jin. "We'll tell Jet about the eclipse. And about the plan. Well..." She laughed nervously. "As much of a plan as we have."
"What if he doesn't believe us?" asked Xue Sheng. "What if he says no?"
"He won't," said Zuko.
"But what if he does?"
"Then we'll have to reexamine our options," said Ping, in a tone Zuko didn't like at all.
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that, then," said Jin. Her hand still on Zuko's back, she slid it up to squeeze his shoulder.
"I guess I'll just…wait here, then," said Zuko, suddenly awkward as he remembered his place in all this. After so many afternoons spent crowded around the kitchen table, Jet beside him as they poured over maps and argued the particulars of timing and team captains, it felt strange to be so wholly removed. But there was no denying the truth of things: he was no longer welcome at that table, and he had already done all he could.
After the others had left, Zuko cleared away the cups and dishes, lingering over them in the copper sink. He wanted something to do with his hands. But once he'd scrubbed even the imaginary dirt away and set them out to dry, he moved the crooked table into a corner and stretched out on his back in the middle of the floor. He closed his eyes, willing his muscles to unwind and his fingers to still on the capet. He tried to picture the meandering walk through alleyways that climbed to the upper ring, how the Jasmine Dragon might look in the afternoon sunlight he could still feel on his skin. He wondered what Jet would say, if the others would risk mentioning him at all, and how Jet would react if they did. He wondered if Jet had spent his nights like this, eyes on the ceiling as he drifted on uncertain currents. He hoped Jet would remember the lake and the warehouse and see not what Zuko was, but what he'd done. And maybe, however briefly, understand.
"No fucking way," said Jet. "Not in a million years."
Jin frowned, as if she'd somehow not expected this, which only irritated him more. "But-"
"Not if my fucking life depended on it."
Jin blew a frustrated breath through pursed lips. "Jet, please, just think about-"
"I don't have to think about it. It doesn't take a lot of thought to say 'no' to any plan he's mixed up in."
"You didn't have a problem with his plans before!"
He flinched at that, which didn't improve his mood. "I learn from my mistakes."
Jin folded her arms across her chest, her expression growing more obstinate by the second. "You're being completely irrational about this."
"Let's just ignore the fact that you're having afternoon tea parties with a Fire Nation traitor," said Jet, lingering on the last few words. "How do you even know he's telling the truth? What if we build our whole battle plan around what he says, all depending on eight fire-free minutes, and it turns out he just made it all up? We'd be fucked, Jin. We can't take that kind of risk."
"But Xue Sheng-"
"Should stick to accounting and keep his nose out of shit he doesn't understand."
They were standing in the kitchen, Ping and Xue Sheng at the table, Smellerbee and Longshot by the door to the main room - closed, for once, to keep the kids out of this. Xue Sheng pinkened behind his spectacles, but Jin's indignation was unfazed. Her scowl fiercer than ever, she took another step forward.
"He's just trying to help," she said. "We're all trying to help, and if you'd listen for once instead of acting so-"
"So what?" Jet snarled, drawing up to his full height.
Jin held her ground, her eyes bright and sharp with fury. "Crazy," she said. "This is crazy, Jet, and you know it."
The room froze, all eyes on him as fresh anger clouded his features.
"Maybe I am," he said, dangerously soft. "But I'd rather be crazy than dead. Don't come crying to me when you find a knife in your back."
Jin laughed, a harsh bark that had nothing to do with humor. "Oh, that's rich!" Ping looked at her sharply but she was too incensed to notice, her voice rising with every word. "That is rich coming from you! Who threw who out on the street?"
"Jin," said Ping, a warning in his tone.
"Did you even think for one second what it's been like for him? You horrible, selfish, stubborn, ungrateful-"
"That's enough," Ping snapped, and though Jin glared at him she cut herself short.
Jet wanted to shout back at her, wanted to shock that superior look off her face. He didn't let anyone talk to him this way, let alone some city girl who'd never held a sword. Who the hell was she to judge him? If she'd seen what he had, really knew what those people were capable of, she'd understand. None of them could be trusted.
He looked away to where his friends waited by the door, faces grim and lips pressed into mute lines. Fuck, he was so tired of this. He was so tired of everything.
"I don't have to stand here and listen to this shit," he muttered.
He slouched past Jin, bumping her hard with his shoulder, and jerked open the dead-bolt on the kitchen door. No one followed him.
Laying on the roof of the Jasmine Dragon - his back along its straight, wooden spine, legs dangling and hands folded on his chest - Jet tried to focus on what was important.
He pictured the flames that had curled around Li's swords, searing red tendrils that followed his will. The same fire that had twisted itself in the roots of Jet's life, molded him into the man he'd become and forged the blade of his purpose. He had seen what that fire could do, knew better than anyone how ruthless it could be and how quickly it flared out of control, a wildfire that devoured everything. He'd pulled half-dead children from charred houses, too young to tell him their names. He'd watched soldiers brand their conquests, burning fingertips pressed into the skin of boys and women alike, the favorites taken along for later entertainment and the rest left to sift through the ashes of their villages. Jet had built an army from this human wreckage, knew their faces and their stories, had fought and bled and killed for all of them, all the years of his life. He'd done for them what he'd had to do for himself, orphaned and alone in the forest. The Fire Nation had taken everything from him.
Li was Fire Nation. Li was a Firebender. Jet whispered it to himself over and over again, the mantra barely more than a breath on his lips.
"Jet." Smellerbee's voice, only a few feet away. Jet lifted his head enough to see her and Longshot standing on the ridge of the roof, just visible over his ribcage. He sighed and closed his eyes, waiting for Smellerbee to walk past him on the tiles and settle down next to his head. He felt her fingers in his hair, ruffling it lightly. "You're a mess," she said.
"Looks like."
"Here, sit up," she said, tugging a little for emphasis. Jet didn't want to sit up, any more than he wanted to do much of anything, but he sighed and pushed himself upright. Longshot had taken a seat on his other side, watching them in his usual, quiet way. Jet managed half a smile, but it lasted only a moment before Smellerbee's fingers on his neck made him hiss in pain.
"You need to change these bandages," she said. "It'll get infected."
Jet tried to swat her hands away, grimacing. "Later."
"And your hair," she said, poking the burnt tangle at the nape of his neck. "You look ridiculous."
"Since when do you care about my hair?"
"Since you stopped." She pulled a short knife out of her belt and turned his head so he faced away from her. "Hold still."
Longshot's eyebrows lifted by a fraction, the left slightly higher than the right. "Not you, too," Jet muttered. Behind him, Smellerbee had started to work, gently pulling the melted knots of hair away from his scalp and cutting them off with her knife. The damage was worse than he'd thought - he'd hardly have any hair left in the back. "Why's this so important anyway?"
"You're our leader," she said quietly. "You should look the part."
Jet snorted. "Right."
"I'm serious." She worked her way around to the side, the flat of her blade grazing his ear. "No one's gonna listen to you if you look like a lunatic."
She finished with one sideburn, a lock of brown hair drifting down into this lap. Jet glowered at it. "No one listens to me anyway," he said. "A haircut's not gonna make a difference."
She sighed, her breath tickling a little. "Don't be stupid."
"I don't know why I even bother. If they wanna get in bed with the Fire Nation, why stop them?" He realized he was leaving himself wide open with that one, but Smellerbee was classier than that. Or maybe she knew it would be the end of their conversation. Either way, she only clucked her tongue as she trimmed around his ear. "What? You think I'm wrong?" When she didn't answer, he turned around to face her, brows drawn down in annoyance. "Smellerbee, he's-"
"I know what he is," she said. She reached up to his other temple, held a lock of hair taut between her fingers and cut it with a small, neat motion of the knife.
"If you've got something to say, just say it."
Another tuft of hair fell, tickling his cheek. "Jin and Xue Sheng are one thing," she said. "But Ping's no fool."
"And I am?"
She sighed again and dusted the hair off his shoulders. "Jet, I'm not gonna tell you what to do."
"Why not? Everyone else is." Jet shifted his scowl to Longshot. "What about you? You gonna tell me how to run my life, too?"
Longshot frowned, his shoulders sinking almost imperceptibly.
"And give him a chance to finish me off?" Jet ran a hand back through what was left of his hair, chuckling mirthlessly to himself. "Shit, I can't believe this."
"You know he won't hurt you," said Longshot, his voice soft and a little rusty with disuse. "Let him explain."
Jet ground the heel of his palm into his eye, rubbing away the sting. "What'll that help?"
He felt Smellerbee's hand on his back, gently brushing it clean. "It can't make things worse," she said. "Maybe it'll make them better."
Jet tilted his head back, stared up at the wide blue cloudless bowl of the sky and let himself feel it. Really feel it in all the ways he'd tried not to, allowing himself to think what he still couldn't say out loud: he missed Li. Missed him so much it hurt to breathe. And he knew he didn't want to stop, even if he could.
"I hate this," he said.
"I know," said Smellerbee. She moved her hand in small, soothing circles.
"I hate him."
"You don't."
Jet looked out over the city, the rows of buildings that spiraled away from where he sat, descending into squalor as they went. He wondered where Li slept at night - if he slept at all, or if he also lay awake until dawn, wishing it all had gone differently.
"Maybe," he murmured. A few clumps of hair still lay on the tiles by his feet. Jet picked them up and held them in the flat of his open palm. Soon enough a gust of wind caught them, carrying them away and out of sight.
When Zuko slept it wasn't well. His shallow dreams were of a landscape shadowed by walls, too high to climb and too thick to break through. His dream self walked restlessly along them, fingers tracing lines of crumbling mortar as he searched for the hint of a doorway. Just a little farther, he knew, and he'd escape his dreary maze of narrow streets and blind alleys, stumble out into the open where he could see more than a sliver of sky. Just a little longer in the dark, a little deeper into the labyrinth, and he'd find his way.
He dreamed of other things, too; things that left him breathless in the early morning hours, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. The worst were those first, confused moments, when he groped at the empty floor beside him, still half-believing what he'd seen and felt and smelled. Those dreams he tried to forget but never could, their echos impossible to shake.
Tonight, he wasn't certain he'd slept at all. Each time he opened his eyes, the shafts of moonlight on the floor had drifted a little further, the only hint of time passing. He wasn't asleep, but he wasn't entirely awake, and at first he didn't notice the change when it happened. He stared for a long time at the window before realizing the shutters had been thrown open, longer still before he picked out the lean silhouette, distinguished by a faint halo of blue that caught on untidy hair and the irregular landscape of armor.
He pushed himself up, clumsy with sleep and nervousness, his thin sheet falling away. He opened his mouth but didn't speak, irrationally afraid that this, too, was a dream, and that naming what he saw might shatter it.
The shadow watched him silently for long, airless minutes, eyes glittering with reflected light. When he spoke, his words were stiff with suppressed emotion, trembling at the edges. "It would be easier," he said, "if I could trust you."
"You can," said Zuko, his voice a hoarse whisper.
Jet's hand was shaking as he ran it back through his hair. "Convince me," he said, somewhere between a command and a plea.
Zuko licked his lips. His mouth felt dry as sand, all the things he wanted to say caught in his throat like a bone. "All right," was all he could manage. Then, once he'd swallowed again, "Come in."
:: Next Chapter ::
The illustrations for this chapter, and the artists who drew them, are as such:
By gulliblesnail:
Xiao Si Wang had been a particular favorite of his.
In the empty street above the bolt hole, there was no hesitation at all.
like the games he'd played with his sister and her friends when they were young.
By boredgods:
a Firebender looming behind Wang.
Someone who broke the flames apart with twin blades, glanced over his shoulder and caught Jet's eye for an instant, his own wide and golden.
