Asleep on the Wind 3/5
Hooray for Zuko and the gAang!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that is all i have to say.
Title: Asleep on the Wind
Rating: PG-13 (Jet swears a whole three times in this chapter; should I change the rating?)
Spoilers: In this chapter, slight spoilers for "The Boiling Rock (part 1)" and "The Firebending Masters" and a vague one for "The Western Air Temple"
Standard disclaimers apply.
Summary: Jet hated change; hated it because it was what had forced him into this position in the first place, wavering between right and wrong, what he’d always believed and what was being forced upon him against his will.
Chapter One, and Chapter Two
Jet should have realized that Bee and Shot would notice he had not gotten a job, that he had no plans to do so, that he hadn’t unpacked his small bag for the last week they had all spent together. He should have remembered that Bee and Shot were sharper than most, and even without his obvious hints, they would have been able to know from listening to his terse silences and half-forced smiles.
Still, he was unprepared when Smellerbee set down the cup of tea she’d been drinking after dinner one night and said:
“When are you planning on leaving then?”
Jet looked up sharply from his hardly eaten bowl of rice to find both Longshot and Smellerbee watching him intently.
For one wild, impossible second, he thought about denying it, about unpacking his things and selling his hookswords and learning to want the life Smellerbee and Longshot were offering to him.
“I should have left a while ago,” he said instead, letting his gaze drop to the small bowl in his hands. Tiny wisps of steam unfurled and drifted lazily into the night air, dissipating quietly even as he watched. “I just couldn’t quite get myself to…you know.”
He just couldn’t quite bring himself to leave so quickly, to surrender the last dregs of his former life to eternity. He dragged his gaze up to meet Longshot’s dark eyes, his mouth set into a thin line, tight lines creasing his forehead.
“I can’t stay here,” he told them. “Not really.”
Longshot nodded once, a bit sadly, and looked away. Smellerbee sighed. And then, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that his statement was completely true. He couldn’t stay here anymore. It was time.
“Jet,” Smellerbee said, hand reaching out instinctively when he stood.
Silent, they stared at one another for a while; eventually Smellerbee slowly dropped her arm, and Jet heard every silent plea in her intense gaze. He looked away, unable for once, to find any words to comfort her. When a hand clapped onto his shoulder gently, Jet was unsurprised to see Longshot standing beside him, his expression unreadable (for the first time since they had ever known him) and Jet’s bag in his other hand. He took the bag from his friend as if he’d been offered the greatest of gifts, smiling lightly.
They shared a hug then-Smellerbee bounding off the floor in her quick and graceful manner and nearly causing them all to fall. Jet felt a laugh bubble up in his chest, bittersweet and heart wrenching in its own way, and all too soon Bee and Shot pulled away, giving him one last glance before carefully stepping over their dinner and heading for the door. Jet shouldered his bag and followed them, picking up his hook swords on his way out the door.
Bee and Shot took him to the outskirts of town, where the three of them stood around and spoke without speaking and heard with their eyes. Finally, Jet took a deep breath.
“I’ll see you guys around then,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.
And even though Jet knew it was a lie, and Smellerbee and Longshot probably knew it was a lie, they smiled back at him.
“Definitely,” Smellerbee said, eyes bright and smile tight.
Longshot, whose smile had faded until it was merely a rueful quirk of his lips, put a hand on her shoulder. Jet hesitated then, because he wanted to tell the both of them how much they meant to him, how he couldn’t have survived in the forest, in Ba Sing Se, in the Fire Nation, without them. He wanted to tell them that he loved them, more than he could remember loving the fading memories of his parents, his early home in the Earth Kingdom. But when Jet opened his mouth, the words disappeared, left the air between them hollow and cold.
“Be careful,” Longshot said quietly, and Jet knew that they understood, knew that Longshot was supplying the words when both Smellerbee and himself became the ones to stare silently and drill words into each other’s brains.
“I will,” Jet said, his smile soft and genuine.
And then, quickly before he could change his mind, he bounded into the underbrush surrounding them, and disappeared.
***
Jet headed west after that because he’d always gone west when things went bad. When the Fire Nation first destroyed Jet’s life, he followed the sunset and eventually found ways to survive on his own. When he decided he’d find other kids who needed help surviving, he headed towards the largest stream in the area (West of his location) and found Longshot and Pipsqueak, wandering about and looking lost, like he had. When Jet killed his first Fire Nation soldier, he waded through the river and followed the current (which technically ran South/Southwest, but that was close enough) and found Smellerbee curled in on herself, nursing an ugly red burn on her leg. So it only seemed natural then, to head in that direction, even if he had never seen a map of the Fire Nation and had no real idea where he was heading.
So by day he chased the sunset, and by night he followed the stars, even if there were a few constellations in the inky sky he’d never seen in the Earth Kingdom before; he was still sure the Great FoxBear’s tail pointed to the North Star, and that was all the information he needed to gain his bearings.
After a seemingly indeterminate amount of time-hours had passed, perhaps, but the dawn was still far from rising-Jet decided that he was too far gone to turn back, so he climbed a tree, found a wide branch that could both support his weight and accommodate for his lanky frame when he lay down, and tried to get some sleep.
He was unsurprised when sleep eluded him, even if he was exhausted. He jumped down hours later, when the sun was rising, and continued on.
For three days he meandered through the wilderness, dozing under trees sometimes and other times just walking and thinking. So far, he’d not met a single person, and he wondered then at the habits of Fire Nation civilians. In the Earth Kingdom, Jet couldn’t walk through the forest for more than an hour before stumbling across a traveler or a refugee. Was it because the war was farther away here? It made sense. The people here had no reason to flee their homes; they didn’t go to sleep at night wondering if the enemy would burn down their lives.
Jet waited for the anger to resurface, for jealousy and hatred and boiling indignation to swallow him whole, but it never did.
It was on the fourth day of his journey when the solar eclipse came. He was fishing, sitting on a large rock and thinking that anyone who ever thought solitude was a good idea must have been fucking crazy, when he noticed a shadow pass over the sky. He paused, thinking of flying bison and war balloons, of a boy with golden eyes that looked deceptively lost and determined, and his heart nearly stopped. Eventually, however, he came to realize it was an eclipse, so he lightly set his fishing rod down and lay on the grassy bank to get a better look.
Jet spent the next eight minutes lying in the grass, his head pillowed on his arms. It was an amazing sight really, and suddenly, he felt the absence of Smellerbee and Longshot as an aching stab in his chest. He imagined himself saying something snide and clever to them, and having Smellerbee laugh indulgently at him, Longshot rolling his eyes beside her. Jet closed his eyes against the thought, because suddenly it hurt too much to bear.
In all his life, he’d never felt as lonely as he did then, watching the sky and thinking that the moment was more significant than he was giving it credit for. The loneliness swallowed him up, making him ache from the inside all the way to the ends of his toes.
When the darkness finally cleared, Jet sighed and continued on.
Three days later, Jet fell into a deep sleep. It was the first he’d managed since he left his friends, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he dreamt. And, because that was just the kind of luck he had now, he dreamt of Li.
In his dream, Li was with the Avatar, dancing on a mountain top with a pair of dragons. Jet watched in the strange, disjointed way one sometimes got to dream in, from above the quartet, rather than inside it. He watched the waning sunlight gleam off Li’s dark hair and pale skin; the way Li’s golden eyes caught the sunlight and danced with it, became the sun itself. He watched the expression on Li’s face as it melted from anxiety to determination, and when the dance was over and he was safely in the valley below, to joy and awe and purpose.
Jet knew the way one simply knows things in dreams that the pair was among a tribe of firebenders, although these firebenders looked like none Jet had ever seen before. Gone were the armor and tanks and machines, replaced by mere face paint and spears. These people, he realized, cared not about destruction and evil; they cared for the balance of the world, for harmony. Though they wielded the power of the sun, this tribe meant no harm.
Firebenders, he thought, already acutely aware of his body lying in a twisted pile beside the riverbed, where he’d dropped down in exhaustion. And still, not dangerous.
Jet watched the Avatar and Li leave the mountains, his eyes trying to open and reveal the world of the waking, but Jet resisted for as long as he could. The Avatar said something, distant and far away as Jet hurtled through space back to consciousness, and called Li by a strange, powerful sounding name, but Jet didn’t hear it right. He was already waking by then, blinking away Li’s serene face from his vision. He tried to recall the name-Li’s real name, he was certain-but the word slipped through the cracks in his sleepy memory, like water running through his fingers.
Firebenders, he thought again. Trustworthy?
But no. It was still too soon to believe it.
Jet couldn’t muster up the energy to feel angry then, to hate as he rightly should. He was just so tired of it that he couldn’t fight anymore. He was tired of hate, of suspicion, of the frustrating ache in his chest whenever he thought of Li, equal parts blinding anger and crippling regret.
So instead of looking for the deeper meaning behind his dream, he settled for remembering Li’s graceful movements as he danced across the cliff face, feeling a pang of jealousy at the Avatar and the Dragons alike, for having known dream-Li for longer than Jet himself had.
***
Zuko couldn’t sleep.
He knew it was nothing he should lose sleep over; he’d hardly even known the guy, after all. And it had been his own suspicions that had at last gotten him caught. It wasn’t Zuko’s fault.
And yet.
He’d heard the story from Katara, quietly eavesdropping and hidden behind a pillar of stone earlier that night because she still didn’t trust him. But he’d heard it nonetheless, the story of Jet’s brainwashing-told at the near desperate prodding of the littlest one, The Duke-his fight with the Avatar, and the boulder that had crashed down on him afterwards. Zuko heard Katara’s quiet, disjointed despair on how no one could survive a blow like that, but that if perhaps she had been more skilled as a healer, if the moon had been full, if they had had more time, she could have helped.
“But there’s no way-,” she had whispered to her brother, Toph and the others.
But no.
It couldn’t have been true. Zuko knew Jet. True, he’d only been trusted for maybe a handful of days at most, but Zuko felt he knew Jet all the better once he’d gotten suspicious. Zuko knew it every time Jet was sitting on a stone window sill, day or night, waiting for a glimpse of firebending. He saw Jet every time, even if Uncle never even suspected that Jet was there.
Jet couldn’t have died. He was too stubborn, too proud, and too tough to be beaten by the Dai Li, by a simple boulder. He had to have found a way. He couldn’t just-not-have lived. Because then it would be his, Zuko’s fault.
He would have killed the only person who had trusted him almost at first sight. True, perhaps once they’d set foot in Ba Sing Se, Zuko had lost that trust, but even after everything, he realized, he still counted Jet as his closest friend.
The Avatar had wondered once; back when Zuko was a different person, if the circumstances were different, if they had lived in an age before the war, how they might have been friends. It wasn’t so hard to believe now, after everything, and now Zuko wondered the same about Jet. He and the Avatar had become friends, despite everything (at least Zuko hoped so), and perhaps, it could be so with Jet one day. Because something had happened on that refugee barge, the beginnings of something bigger and more important than himself, and his mistakes had only delayed it slightly.
And Zuko would not allow that something to have died under Lake Laogai. He was sure, now more than ever, that once the Avatar restored balance to the world, he’d fix what had happened between Jet and himself. He’d fix it so they could be what they were on the ferry again, and if not that, then what destiny had been trying to create between them.
But if it was true-if Jet had died that day under Ba Sing Se-
There was only one person he could ask who might know the answer and trust him enough to divulge it.
Zuko dragged himself out of his tiny room in the Western Air temple and silently went over to the dying campsite, where the weak embers cast long shadows across the Avatar’s face, sitting alone with his knees as a barricade between himself and the world.
Aang was lost in thought, and for a moment, Zuko could see the man he would become. Zuko could see the wisdom of a thousand generations lurking behind his eyes; he could believe, without a doubt, that Aang would defeat the Firenation, that he would be the one to restore harmony and peace to the world. Zuko could see a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and instead of crumbling beneath the power of such expectation, he was lifting it up to a place it had never before been.
But then the Avatar caught sight of him, and the age and wisdom and expectation melted away as a smile took its place, and he was just Aang.
Aang jumped up, and with his fist resting just under the palm of his left hand, bowed deeply.
“Sifu Zuko,” he said, with that lopsided grin he sometimes wore when unsure of himself.
Zuko copied the movement mostly out of habit, before he sat down opposite Aang, motioning with his head for the Avatar to do the same.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said in answer to the unspoken question.
Aang nodded, letting a breath of air sweep him off his feet and guide him back to his seat by the fire.
“Me either,” he said, bringing his knees up to his chest again and wrapping his arms around them. They were silent for a while, Zuko staring into the dying fire and trying to gather up the courage to say something. “Katara and the others, they’ll come around,” Aang said suddenly.
Zuko nodded grimly. Because even though it wasn’t what was bothering him at the moment, Zuko wasn’t sure how much more of Sokka’s suspicion and Katara’s seething disapproval he could take. Zuko took a deep breath, let it out as a whisper of smoke; tried not to look at anything. He settled for watching the fire intently.
“I hope so,” he said. He tore his gaze away from the meager embers, waiting until the fiery blobs of color faded away to reveal Aang’s face again. Then, “Listen Aang; I was wondering if I could ask you something. A favor.”
“Sure,” Aang answered, eyes lighting up and legs extending automatically. “What is it?”
“I. Well. I heard Katara talking earlier, about Jet,” he said, already feeling foolish.
“Yeah,” Aang said, the barest hint of a frown springing up across his forehead. “What about him?”
“Well, when you left him, Katara said he was still alive, but that he had probably died.” At Aang’s nod, he continued. “And well, you can pass into the spirit world, right? So I just thought-”
Zuko trailed off, unsure how exactly to ask for what he wanted. Aang was still frowning; his impossibly large eyes boring through Zuko’s carefully constructed barriers. Zuko looked away, embarrassment filling his gut.
“If it’s too much to ask for, it’s okay,” he said, standing quickly and brushing dirt off his pants with quick, sharp movements. “I’ll just-”
“No, it’s not that,” Aang answered, steepling his fingers under his chin. “I mean, I’ll do what I can, if that’s what you want. But I can’t make any promises. I just didn’t know you knew Jet.”
Zuko nodded slowly, sitting down again as he did so.
“Yeah,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as raw and lost as it felt. “I knew him. He just didn’t know…what I was.”
Aang had no answer to that. He merely closed his eyes and let his arms rest against his knees, slipping into his meditative state. Eventually, his arrow-shaped tattoos flashed luminescent, and Zuko waited.
He sat there, watching the prone, limp form of the Avatar until the fire at last sputtered and died and the beginnings of dawn began to lighten the sky. Then, because he figured the others would be up soon and he should at least give them a reason to start liking him, he gathered some firewood and relit the campfire.
At last, with a sigh that sounded as if it had escaped from his very soul, Aang stirred. Immediately, he jumped up, eyes wide with something that looked so much like relief that Zuko forgot how to breathe.
“He’s alive,” the Avatar said, voice full of wonder. “And he’s here somewhere. In the Fire Nation.”
***
“What do you mean Jet’s alive? Are you sure?”
Katara’s voice carried easily through the early morning air, and even though she was speaking with Aang farther off, Zuko could still hear her easily. He frowned to himself and poked at the campfire with a long stick, watching it instead of the large pot simmering above it. Hopefully, he looked suitably occupied with what he was doing; he didn’t need Katara to think he was an eavesdropper on top of everything else.
“What’s Princess Perfect going on about this time?” Toph asked as she came and sat beside him, rubbing at her eyes sleepily.
“I don’t know,” Zuko lied, turning back to watch the fire.
He liked Toph the most of everyone in the Avatar’s little group, not just because she was the first to accept him. She spoke to him frankly, which after a childhood spent coddled by servants and Fire Sages was definitely welcome. Also, she didn’t speak to him maliciously or with the awkward Yeah-we’ve-totally-had-this-conversation-before-except-you-were-trying-to-capture-us-back-then tone of voice. But sometimes, like right now, she was too observant for her own good. Toph made a faintly noncommittal noise, as if to prove his point; he glanced sideways at her and saw she was smirking at him slightly.
“Built in lie-detector here, remember?” she said, waving a hand in front of his face like he was the blind one in this conversation. Zuko quickly looked away, feeling a flush creep up his face. “But yeah, whatever. If you’re gonna keep secrets from the girl whose feet you burned, I’m cool with that.”
“They’re talking about Jet,” Zuko said quickly, thinking really, she was still using that against him? “I asked Aang to look for him in the Spirit World, and he says Jet’s alive.”
“Jet…Jet…Good-looking brainwashed guy? Crazy eyebrows?” she asked, waving a hand around vaguely and grinning. “Didn’t know he’d gotten to you too, Sparky.”
“He hasn’t ‘gotten to me’,” Zuko answered irritably. “And I told you not to call me that.”
Toph held her hands up in a gesture of defeat, but from her wicked grin and the way she tilted her head mischievously, he knew the gesture for what it was. Actually, Zuko took it back. Toph wasn’t his favorite. Sokka was. At least he was dense enough to-
“Sure Zuko, you just keep telling yourself that.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully before continuing. “So Jet’s still around then? Are you gonna go off and look for him?”
Zuko would be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind; it was the only thing he’d been able to think about since Aang had returned from the Spirit World. If he had been alone, then perhaps he would have already gone off to search for him, but he wasn’t anymore.
“I don’t know,” Zuko answered honestly. “It’s not up to me.”
Toph looked like she was about to say something in response, but at that moment Sokka came stumbling into the campsite, eyes still resolutely closed and a sleepy smile on his face. Zuko would bet money on-and yes, at that moment he tripped on the pile of firewood Zuko had gathered. He nearly toppled into the fire and was only saved when Toph brought her fist out automatically and bent two bands of stone to clamp around his ankles to pin him to the floor. Sokka crumpled into a heap beside the fire with an undignified squawk, his head landing awkwardly amongst the pile of firewood. Toph grinned evilly.
“Thanks Toph,” Sokka said dispassionately.
“No problem Sokka.”
“I don’t know Aang,” Katara’s voice said from the other side of the courtyard, skeptical as always. “He betrayed us last time.”
“Well, yeah,” Aang said a little while later, walking backwards into the campsite and stepping on Sokka’s hand as he went-he was still grappling with the bands of stone chaining him to the floor. Aang didn’t even glance down at him. “Oh, sorry Sokka. But he more than made up for it, don’t you think Katara? He gave his life to try to save us.”
“Who did?” Sokka asked when he finished muttering angrily to himself. “Toph, do you think you could-”
“Fine.”
She stomped on the floor once and the bands disintegrated.
Sokka jumped up just as Katara returned to the campsite; she peered into the pot and, noticing it wasn’t quite bubbling as much as it should be, frowned and turned back to Aang.
“What were you two talking about?” Sokka asked again, looking between Aang and Katara curiously.
Toph smirked and Zuko scowled deeply at the fire, pretending to be lost in thought.
“Jet,” Aang said.
“But didn’t Jet die?” he asked, frowning and sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the flames, as far away as possible from the firewood, Zuko noticed. Then a truly terrified expression crossed Sokka’s face and he swung his head around the campsite, as if searching for something. “Unless he’s been turned into a zombie!!!”
“No,” Aang answered excitedly, diplomatically ignoring the zombie comment. “He survived.”
“Oh,” Sokka said, just a bit disappointed.
Zuko looked up, unable to help himself, to see Sokka quirk an eyebrow at the Avatar, his misplaced fear gone as quickly as it had arrived.
“Aang says he’s in the Fire Nation somewhere, and that we should look for him,” Katara said as if Sokka had asked. She frowned. “What do you guys think?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Toph said loudly, grinning from ear to ear and standing, one finger pointing into the air in an exaggerated effort to look stately and important.
Katara looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. Zuko’s scowl, if it was at all possible, deepened.
“You do?” she asked.
“Of course I do!” Toph repeated, stomping her foot impatiently for emphasis. “So what if he got a little brainwashed and tried to kill us? I’m sure nearly dying fixed that up just fine.”
Zuko raised an eyebrow at that statement even as Katara scoffed. He’d have to ask to hear that story in its entirety later.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Sokka said suddenly.
They all turned to him then, surprised; Sokka just shrugged.
“We can use all the help we can get,” he said by way of explanation. “And besides, he was a good fighter.”
“Yeah, he was,” Zuko replied absently (almost fondly and mostly to himself), remembering with aching clarity the flash of Jet’s hook swords in the darkness. Zuko had been training nearly nine years to become a master swordsman with his dual swords, and Jet’s skill had been equal to his own. He knew that kind of talent came from years of fighting. It would be useful.
Toph made a strangled hacking sound that Zuko was pretty sure had started out as a laugh, and he scowled again when he saw they were all staring at him now. Katara and Sokka looked like twin goldfish with the way their mouths were hanging open; Toph was grinning in a way that made him want to toss a fireball at her head, and Aang had an eyebrow raised in a way that was not very flattering at all, in Zuko’s unbiased opinion.
“What?” he asked, irritated.
“You knew Jet?” Katara asked surprised.
Zuko clenched his jaw and met Katara’s skeptical expression.
“Yes,” he answered defiantly. “What’s so wrong about that?”
“Nothing I guess,” she said in a way that actually meant there’s so much wrong with that thought that I can’t even begin to explain it.
There were a million sharp remarks Zuko wanted to fire at her then, and who cared really if she ever trusted him? His job was teaching Aang firebending, not making friends with Katara. But then The Duke, Haru and Teo came bounding in from some unknown part of the temple, and the story had to be explained all over again.
Eventually, it was decided that yes, if they could find Jet, someone would go looking for him. The Duke offered almost immediately, and Haru and Teo volunteered to go with him not long afterwards. Zuko figured that they liked the idea of doing something useful for once instead of sitting around like furniture.
For the first time, dinner that night felt relaxed and friendly, as if Jet’s death had been a toxin polluting the air that had at last been removed. Zuko offered to make tea, and no one looked at him like he might secretly poison the brew, so he told Uncle’s favorite tea joke, except, really, how did that joke go? And when they laughed and Katara teased him, for the first time there wasn’t an underlying current of viciousness to her smile. He grinned, thinking maybe he wouldn’t have to gain these people’s trust the hard way: by risking his life and sorting out their issues in complicated ways.
Zuko was just thinking that he’d pull The Duke aside later and ask to go with them on their search; they planned on leaving tomorrow afternoon and Zuko figured Aang had earned a couple of days off from firebending anyway, when Sokka asked to talk to him. And of course, because nothing in his life went according to plan ever, Sokka had to say those thrice damned words-regain my honor-and Zuko couldn’t let him go alone.
Early that morning, after the two of them crept onto the War Balloon, Zuko kept them floating and mostly sulked. He hoped that The Duke and the others wouldn’t find Jet before he made it back to the temple; he wasn’t sure how Jet would react if Zuko just swept back into the campsite on a war balloon, Fire Nation insignia emblazoned proudly on its face, with no real explanation, fresh from the highest security prison in the Fire Nation.
He hoped, more than ever, that he would have a chance to explain himself.
Chapter Four.
Title: Asleep on the Wind
Rating: PG-13 (Jet swears a whole three times in this chapter; should I change the rating?)
Spoilers: In this chapter, slight spoilers for "The Boiling Rock (part 1)" and "The Firebending Masters" and a vague one for "The Western Air Temple"
Standard disclaimers apply.
Summary: Jet hated change; hated it because it was what had forced him into this position in the first place, wavering between right and wrong, what he’d always believed and what was being forced upon him against his will.
Chapter One, and Chapter Two
Jet should have realized that Bee and Shot would notice he had not gotten a job, that he had no plans to do so, that he hadn’t unpacked his small bag for the last week they had all spent together. He should have remembered that Bee and Shot were sharper than most, and even without his obvious hints, they would have been able to know from listening to his terse silences and half-forced smiles.
Still, he was unprepared when Smellerbee set down the cup of tea she’d been drinking after dinner one night and said:
“When are you planning on leaving then?”
Jet looked up sharply from his hardly eaten bowl of rice to find both Longshot and Smellerbee watching him intently.
For one wild, impossible second, he thought about denying it, about unpacking his things and selling his hookswords and learning to want the life Smellerbee and Longshot were offering to him.
“I should have left a while ago,” he said instead, letting his gaze drop to the small bowl in his hands. Tiny wisps of steam unfurled and drifted lazily into the night air, dissipating quietly even as he watched. “I just couldn’t quite get myself to…you know.”
He just couldn’t quite bring himself to leave so quickly, to surrender the last dregs of his former life to eternity. He dragged his gaze up to meet Longshot’s dark eyes, his mouth set into a thin line, tight lines creasing his forehead.
“I can’t stay here,” he told them. “Not really.”
Longshot nodded once, a bit sadly, and looked away. Smellerbee sighed. And then, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that his statement was completely true. He couldn’t stay here anymore. It was time.
“Jet,” Smellerbee said, hand reaching out instinctively when he stood.
Silent, they stared at one another for a while; eventually Smellerbee slowly dropped her arm, and Jet heard every silent plea in her intense gaze. He looked away, unable for once, to find any words to comfort her. When a hand clapped onto his shoulder gently, Jet was unsurprised to see Longshot standing beside him, his expression unreadable (for the first time since they had ever known him) and Jet’s bag in his other hand. He took the bag from his friend as if he’d been offered the greatest of gifts, smiling lightly.
They shared a hug then-Smellerbee bounding off the floor in her quick and graceful manner and nearly causing them all to fall. Jet felt a laugh bubble up in his chest, bittersweet and heart wrenching in its own way, and all too soon Bee and Shot pulled away, giving him one last glance before carefully stepping over their dinner and heading for the door. Jet shouldered his bag and followed them, picking up his hook swords on his way out the door.
Bee and Shot took him to the outskirts of town, where the three of them stood around and spoke without speaking and heard with their eyes. Finally, Jet took a deep breath.
“I’ll see you guys around then,” he said, trying to make light of the situation.
And even though Jet knew it was a lie, and Smellerbee and Longshot probably knew it was a lie, they smiled back at him.
“Definitely,” Smellerbee said, eyes bright and smile tight.
Longshot, whose smile had faded until it was merely a rueful quirk of his lips, put a hand on her shoulder. Jet hesitated then, because he wanted to tell the both of them how much they meant to him, how he couldn’t have survived in the forest, in Ba Sing Se, in the Fire Nation, without them. He wanted to tell them that he loved them, more than he could remember loving the fading memories of his parents, his early home in the Earth Kingdom. But when Jet opened his mouth, the words disappeared, left the air between them hollow and cold.
“Be careful,” Longshot said quietly, and Jet knew that they understood, knew that Longshot was supplying the words when both Smellerbee and himself became the ones to stare silently and drill words into each other’s brains.
“I will,” Jet said, his smile soft and genuine.
And then, quickly before he could change his mind, he bounded into the underbrush surrounding them, and disappeared.
***
Jet headed west after that because he’d always gone west when things went bad. When the Fire Nation first destroyed Jet’s life, he followed the sunset and eventually found ways to survive on his own. When he decided he’d find other kids who needed help surviving, he headed towards the largest stream in the area (West of his location) and found Longshot and Pipsqueak, wandering about and looking lost, like he had. When Jet killed his first Fire Nation soldier, he waded through the river and followed the current (which technically ran South/Southwest, but that was close enough) and found Smellerbee curled in on herself, nursing an ugly red burn on her leg. So it only seemed natural then, to head in that direction, even if he had never seen a map of the Fire Nation and had no real idea where he was heading.
So by day he chased the sunset, and by night he followed the stars, even if there were a few constellations in the inky sky he’d never seen in the Earth Kingdom before; he was still sure the Great FoxBear’s tail pointed to the North Star, and that was all the information he needed to gain his bearings.
After a seemingly indeterminate amount of time-hours had passed, perhaps, but the dawn was still far from rising-Jet decided that he was too far gone to turn back, so he climbed a tree, found a wide branch that could both support his weight and accommodate for his lanky frame when he lay down, and tried to get some sleep.
He was unsurprised when sleep eluded him, even if he was exhausted. He jumped down hours later, when the sun was rising, and continued on.
For three days he meandered through the wilderness, dozing under trees sometimes and other times just walking and thinking. So far, he’d not met a single person, and he wondered then at the habits of Fire Nation civilians. In the Earth Kingdom, Jet couldn’t walk through the forest for more than an hour before stumbling across a traveler or a refugee. Was it because the war was farther away here? It made sense. The people here had no reason to flee their homes; they didn’t go to sleep at night wondering if the enemy would burn down their lives.
Jet waited for the anger to resurface, for jealousy and hatred and boiling indignation to swallow him whole, but it never did.
It was on the fourth day of his journey when the solar eclipse came. He was fishing, sitting on a large rock and thinking that anyone who ever thought solitude was a good idea must have been fucking crazy, when he noticed a shadow pass over the sky. He paused, thinking of flying bison and war balloons, of a boy with golden eyes that looked deceptively lost and determined, and his heart nearly stopped. Eventually, however, he came to realize it was an eclipse, so he lightly set his fishing rod down and lay on the grassy bank to get a better look.
Jet spent the next eight minutes lying in the grass, his head pillowed on his arms. It was an amazing sight really, and suddenly, he felt the absence of Smellerbee and Longshot as an aching stab in his chest. He imagined himself saying something snide and clever to them, and having Smellerbee laugh indulgently at him, Longshot rolling his eyes beside her. Jet closed his eyes against the thought, because suddenly it hurt too much to bear.
In all his life, he’d never felt as lonely as he did then, watching the sky and thinking that the moment was more significant than he was giving it credit for. The loneliness swallowed him up, making him ache from the inside all the way to the ends of his toes.
When the darkness finally cleared, Jet sighed and continued on.
Three days later, Jet fell into a deep sleep. It was the first he’d managed since he left his friends, and for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, he dreamt. And, because that was just the kind of luck he had now, he dreamt of Li.
In his dream, Li was with the Avatar, dancing on a mountain top with a pair of dragons. Jet watched in the strange, disjointed way one sometimes got to dream in, from above the quartet, rather than inside it. He watched the waning sunlight gleam off Li’s dark hair and pale skin; the way Li’s golden eyes caught the sunlight and danced with it, became the sun itself. He watched the expression on Li’s face as it melted from anxiety to determination, and when the dance was over and he was safely in the valley below, to joy and awe and purpose.
Jet knew the way one simply knows things in dreams that the pair was among a tribe of firebenders, although these firebenders looked like none Jet had ever seen before. Gone were the armor and tanks and machines, replaced by mere face paint and spears. These people, he realized, cared not about destruction and evil; they cared for the balance of the world, for harmony. Though they wielded the power of the sun, this tribe meant no harm.
Firebenders, he thought, already acutely aware of his body lying in a twisted pile beside the riverbed, where he’d dropped down in exhaustion. And still, not dangerous.
Jet watched the Avatar and Li leave the mountains, his eyes trying to open and reveal the world of the waking, but Jet resisted for as long as he could. The Avatar said something, distant and far away as Jet hurtled through space back to consciousness, and called Li by a strange, powerful sounding name, but Jet didn’t hear it right. He was already waking by then, blinking away Li’s serene face from his vision. He tried to recall the name-Li’s real name, he was certain-but the word slipped through the cracks in his sleepy memory, like water running through his fingers.
Firebenders, he thought again. Trustworthy?
But no. It was still too soon to believe it.
Jet couldn’t muster up the energy to feel angry then, to hate as he rightly should. He was just so tired of it that he couldn’t fight anymore. He was tired of hate, of suspicion, of the frustrating ache in his chest whenever he thought of Li, equal parts blinding anger and crippling regret.
So instead of looking for the deeper meaning behind his dream, he settled for remembering Li’s graceful movements as he danced across the cliff face, feeling a pang of jealousy at the Avatar and the Dragons alike, for having known dream-Li for longer than Jet himself had.
***
Zuko couldn’t sleep.
He knew it was nothing he should lose sleep over; he’d hardly even known the guy, after all. And it had been his own suspicions that had at last gotten him caught. It wasn’t Zuko’s fault.
And yet.
He’d heard the story from Katara, quietly eavesdropping and hidden behind a pillar of stone earlier that night because she still didn’t trust him. But he’d heard it nonetheless, the story of Jet’s brainwashing-told at the near desperate prodding of the littlest one, The Duke-his fight with the Avatar, and the boulder that had crashed down on him afterwards. Zuko heard Katara’s quiet, disjointed despair on how no one could survive a blow like that, but that if perhaps she had been more skilled as a healer, if the moon had been full, if they had had more time, she could have helped.
“But there’s no way-,” she had whispered to her brother, Toph and the others.
But no.
It couldn’t have been true. Zuko knew Jet. True, he’d only been trusted for maybe a handful of days at most, but Zuko felt he knew Jet all the better once he’d gotten suspicious. Zuko knew it every time Jet was sitting on a stone window sill, day or night, waiting for a glimpse of firebending. He saw Jet every time, even if Uncle never even suspected that Jet was there.
Jet couldn’t have died. He was too stubborn, too proud, and too tough to be beaten by the Dai Li, by a simple boulder. He had to have found a way. He couldn’t just-not-have lived. Because then it would be his, Zuko’s fault.
He would have killed the only person who had trusted him almost at first sight. True, perhaps once they’d set foot in Ba Sing Se, Zuko had lost that trust, but even after everything, he realized, he still counted Jet as his closest friend.
The Avatar had wondered once; back when Zuko was a different person, if the circumstances were different, if they had lived in an age before the war, how they might have been friends. It wasn’t so hard to believe now, after everything, and now Zuko wondered the same about Jet. He and the Avatar had become friends, despite everything (at least Zuko hoped so), and perhaps, it could be so with Jet one day. Because something had happened on that refugee barge, the beginnings of something bigger and more important than himself, and his mistakes had only delayed it slightly.
And Zuko would not allow that something to have died under Lake Laogai. He was sure, now more than ever, that once the Avatar restored balance to the world, he’d fix what had happened between Jet and himself. He’d fix it so they could be what they were on the ferry again, and if not that, then what destiny had been trying to create between them.
But if it was true-if Jet had died that day under Ba Sing Se-
There was only one person he could ask who might know the answer and trust him enough to divulge it.
Zuko dragged himself out of his tiny room in the Western Air temple and silently went over to the dying campsite, where the weak embers cast long shadows across the Avatar’s face, sitting alone with his knees as a barricade between himself and the world.
Aang was lost in thought, and for a moment, Zuko could see the man he would become. Zuko could see the wisdom of a thousand generations lurking behind his eyes; he could believe, without a doubt, that Aang would defeat the Firenation, that he would be the one to restore harmony and peace to the world. Zuko could see a boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and instead of crumbling beneath the power of such expectation, he was lifting it up to a place it had never before been.
But then the Avatar caught sight of him, and the age and wisdom and expectation melted away as a smile took its place, and he was just Aang.
Aang jumped up, and with his fist resting just under the palm of his left hand, bowed deeply.
“Sifu Zuko,” he said, with that lopsided grin he sometimes wore when unsure of himself.
Zuko copied the movement mostly out of habit, before he sat down opposite Aang, motioning with his head for the Avatar to do the same.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said in answer to the unspoken question.
Aang nodded, letting a breath of air sweep him off his feet and guide him back to his seat by the fire.
“Me either,” he said, bringing his knees up to his chest again and wrapping his arms around them. They were silent for a while, Zuko staring into the dying fire and trying to gather up the courage to say something. “Katara and the others, they’ll come around,” Aang said suddenly.
Zuko nodded grimly. Because even though it wasn’t what was bothering him at the moment, Zuko wasn’t sure how much more of Sokka’s suspicion and Katara’s seething disapproval he could take. Zuko took a deep breath, let it out as a whisper of smoke; tried not to look at anything. He settled for watching the fire intently.
“I hope so,” he said. He tore his gaze away from the meager embers, waiting until the fiery blobs of color faded away to reveal Aang’s face again. Then, “Listen Aang; I was wondering if I could ask you something. A favor.”
“Sure,” Aang answered, eyes lighting up and legs extending automatically. “What is it?”
“I. Well. I heard Katara talking earlier, about Jet,” he said, already feeling foolish.
“Yeah,” Aang said, the barest hint of a frown springing up across his forehead. “What about him?”
“Well, when you left him, Katara said he was still alive, but that he had probably died.” At Aang’s nod, he continued. “And well, you can pass into the spirit world, right? So I just thought-”
Zuko trailed off, unsure how exactly to ask for what he wanted. Aang was still frowning; his impossibly large eyes boring through Zuko’s carefully constructed barriers. Zuko looked away, embarrassment filling his gut.
“If it’s too much to ask for, it’s okay,” he said, standing quickly and brushing dirt off his pants with quick, sharp movements. “I’ll just-”
“No, it’s not that,” Aang answered, steepling his fingers under his chin. “I mean, I’ll do what I can, if that’s what you want. But I can’t make any promises. I just didn’t know you knew Jet.”
Zuko nodded slowly, sitting down again as he did so.
“Yeah,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as raw and lost as it felt. “I knew him. He just didn’t know…what I was.”
Aang had no answer to that. He merely closed his eyes and let his arms rest against his knees, slipping into his meditative state. Eventually, his arrow-shaped tattoos flashed luminescent, and Zuko waited.
He sat there, watching the prone, limp form of the Avatar until the fire at last sputtered and died and the beginnings of dawn began to lighten the sky. Then, because he figured the others would be up soon and he should at least give them a reason to start liking him, he gathered some firewood and relit the campfire.
At last, with a sigh that sounded as if it had escaped from his very soul, Aang stirred. Immediately, he jumped up, eyes wide with something that looked so much like relief that Zuko forgot how to breathe.
“He’s alive,” the Avatar said, voice full of wonder. “And he’s here somewhere. In the Fire Nation.”
***
“What do you mean Jet’s alive? Are you sure?”
Katara’s voice carried easily through the early morning air, and even though she was speaking with Aang farther off, Zuko could still hear her easily. He frowned to himself and poked at the campfire with a long stick, watching it instead of the large pot simmering above it. Hopefully, he looked suitably occupied with what he was doing; he didn’t need Katara to think he was an eavesdropper on top of everything else.
“What’s Princess Perfect going on about this time?” Toph asked as she came and sat beside him, rubbing at her eyes sleepily.
“I don’t know,” Zuko lied, turning back to watch the fire.
He liked Toph the most of everyone in the Avatar’s little group, not just because she was the first to accept him. She spoke to him frankly, which after a childhood spent coddled by servants and Fire Sages was definitely welcome. Also, she didn’t speak to him maliciously or with the awkward Yeah-we’ve-totally-had-this-conversation-before-except-you-were-trying-to-capture-us-back-then tone of voice. But sometimes, like right now, she was too observant for her own good. Toph made a faintly noncommittal noise, as if to prove his point; he glanced sideways at her and saw she was smirking at him slightly.
“Built in lie-detector here, remember?” she said, waving a hand in front of his face like he was the blind one in this conversation. Zuko quickly looked away, feeling a flush creep up his face. “But yeah, whatever. If you’re gonna keep secrets from the girl whose feet you burned, I’m cool with that.”
“They’re talking about Jet,” Zuko said quickly, thinking really, she was still using that against him? “I asked Aang to look for him in the Spirit World, and he says Jet’s alive.”
“Jet…Jet…Good-looking brainwashed guy? Crazy eyebrows?” she asked, waving a hand around vaguely and grinning. “Didn’t know he’d gotten to you too, Sparky.”
“He hasn’t ‘gotten to me’,” Zuko answered irritably. “And I told you not to call me that.”
Toph held her hands up in a gesture of defeat, but from her wicked grin and the way she tilted her head mischievously, he knew the gesture for what it was. Actually, Zuko took it back. Toph wasn’t his favorite. Sokka was. At least he was dense enough to-
“Sure Zuko, you just keep telling yourself that.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully before continuing. “So Jet’s still around then? Are you gonna go off and look for him?”
Zuko would be lying if he said the thought hadn’t crossed his mind; it was the only thing he’d been able to think about since Aang had returned from the Spirit World. If he had been alone, then perhaps he would have already gone off to search for him, but he wasn’t anymore.
“I don’t know,” Zuko answered honestly. “It’s not up to me.”
Toph looked like she was about to say something in response, but at that moment Sokka came stumbling into the campsite, eyes still resolutely closed and a sleepy smile on his face. Zuko would bet money on-and yes, at that moment he tripped on the pile of firewood Zuko had gathered. He nearly toppled into the fire and was only saved when Toph brought her fist out automatically and bent two bands of stone to clamp around his ankles to pin him to the floor. Sokka crumpled into a heap beside the fire with an undignified squawk, his head landing awkwardly amongst the pile of firewood. Toph grinned evilly.
“Thanks Toph,” Sokka said dispassionately.
“No problem Sokka.”
“I don’t know Aang,” Katara’s voice said from the other side of the courtyard, skeptical as always. “He betrayed us last time.”
“Well, yeah,” Aang said a little while later, walking backwards into the campsite and stepping on Sokka’s hand as he went-he was still grappling with the bands of stone chaining him to the floor. Aang didn’t even glance down at him. “Oh, sorry Sokka. But he more than made up for it, don’t you think Katara? He gave his life to try to save us.”
“Who did?” Sokka asked when he finished muttering angrily to himself. “Toph, do you think you could-”
“Fine.”
She stomped on the floor once and the bands disintegrated.
Sokka jumped up just as Katara returned to the campsite; she peered into the pot and, noticing it wasn’t quite bubbling as much as it should be, frowned and turned back to Aang.
“What were you two talking about?” Sokka asked again, looking between Aang and Katara curiously.
Toph smirked and Zuko scowled deeply at the fire, pretending to be lost in thought.
“Jet,” Aang said.
“But didn’t Jet die?” he asked, frowning and sitting cross-legged on the opposite side of the flames, as far away as possible from the firewood, Zuko noticed. Then a truly terrified expression crossed Sokka’s face and he swung his head around the campsite, as if searching for something. “Unless he’s been turned into a zombie!!!”
“No,” Aang answered excitedly, diplomatically ignoring the zombie comment. “He survived.”
“Oh,” Sokka said, just a bit disappointed.
Zuko looked up, unable to help himself, to see Sokka quirk an eyebrow at the Avatar, his misplaced fear gone as quickly as it had arrived.
“Aang says he’s in the Fire Nation somewhere, and that we should look for him,” Katara said as if Sokka had asked. She frowned. “What do you guys think?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Toph said loudly, grinning from ear to ear and standing, one finger pointing into the air in an exaggerated effort to look stately and important.
Katara looked at her as if she’d grown a second head. Zuko’s scowl, if it was at all possible, deepened.
“You do?” she asked.
“Of course I do!” Toph repeated, stomping her foot impatiently for emphasis. “So what if he got a little brainwashed and tried to kill us? I’m sure nearly dying fixed that up just fine.”
Zuko raised an eyebrow at that statement even as Katara scoffed. He’d have to ask to hear that story in its entirety later.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Sokka said suddenly.
They all turned to him then, surprised; Sokka just shrugged.
“We can use all the help we can get,” he said by way of explanation. “And besides, he was a good fighter.”
“Yeah, he was,” Zuko replied absently (almost fondly and mostly to himself), remembering with aching clarity the flash of Jet’s hook swords in the darkness. Zuko had been training nearly nine years to become a master swordsman with his dual swords, and Jet’s skill had been equal to his own. He knew that kind of talent came from years of fighting. It would be useful.
Toph made a strangled hacking sound that Zuko was pretty sure had started out as a laugh, and he scowled again when he saw they were all staring at him now. Katara and Sokka looked like twin goldfish with the way their mouths were hanging open; Toph was grinning in a way that made him want to toss a fireball at her head, and Aang had an eyebrow raised in a way that was not very flattering at all, in Zuko’s unbiased opinion.
“What?” he asked, irritated.
“You knew Jet?” Katara asked surprised.
Zuko clenched his jaw and met Katara’s skeptical expression.
“Yes,” he answered defiantly. “What’s so wrong about that?”
“Nothing I guess,” she said in a way that actually meant there’s so much wrong with that thought that I can’t even begin to explain it.
There were a million sharp remarks Zuko wanted to fire at her then, and who cared really if she ever trusted him? His job was teaching Aang firebending, not making friends with Katara. But then The Duke, Haru and Teo came bounding in from some unknown part of the temple, and the story had to be explained all over again.
Eventually, it was decided that yes, if they could find Jet, someone would go looking for him. The Duke offered almost immediately, and Haru and Teo volunteered to go with him not long afterwards. Zuko figured that they liked the idea of doing something useful for once instead of sitting around like furniture.
For the first time, dinner that night felt relaxed and friendly, as if Jet’s death had been a toxin polluting the air that had at last been removed. Zuko offered to make tea, and no one looked at him like he might secretly poison the brew, so he told Uncle’s favorite tea joke, except, really, how did that joke go? And when they laughed and Katara teased him, for the first time there wasn’t an underlying current of viciousness to her smile. He grinned, thinking maybe he wouldn’t have to gain these people’s trust the hard way: by risking his life and sorting out their issues in complicated ways.
Zuko was just thinking that he’d pull The Duke aside later and ask to go with them on their search; they planned on leaving tomorrow afternoon and Zuko figured Aang had earned a couple of days off from firebending anyway, when Sokka asked to talk to him. And of course, because nothing in his life went according to plan ever, Sokka had to say those thrice damned words-regain my honor-and Zuko couldn’t let him go alone.
Early that morning, after the two of them crept onto the War Balloon, Zuko kept them floating and mostly sulked. He hoped that The Duke and the others wouldn’t find Jet before he made it back to the temple; he wasn’t sure how Jet would react if Zuko just swept back into the campsite on a war balloon, Fire Nation insignia emblazoned proudly on its face, with no real explanation, fresh from the highest security prison in the Fire Nation.
He hoped, more than ever, that he would have a chance to explain himself.
Chapter Four.