"Merits" Part 23
Author: moor / beyondthemoor on LJ
Title: Merits
Part : Twenty three
Genre: Romance/humour/vamp/Modern AU
Fandom: Avatar: TLA
Pairing: Zutara, Jetara
Length: words, approx... forgot to count this time, sorry! Eeps.
Rating: M
Disclaimer : “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and all related rights belong to their original creators… I am not among their ranks.
AN: In response to hyperoo' s vampire/Zutara challenge, I present…
Part Twenty three
Jet stared at his cell phone in irritation for the hundredth time since he’d woken that morning.
Where is she?
Huffing under his breath, he accepted the coffee cup from the concession truck and started back towards the plant for the second half of his shift Sunday morning, taking care not to slip on the random icy patches hidden beneath the fresh snow. Spring just couldn’t come soon enough.
“Something wrong?” the now-familiar voice inquired from just behind him.
The shaggy-haired young man glared over his shoulder at the unwelcome stranger who’d made a habit of coming to bother him at work for the past month. His face conveyed his impatience and he tried to shake the man off.
“No.”
He moved purposefully faster, not stopping.
“Are you sure? Perhaps I’d be able to be of some assistance. You’re worried about someone, correct? The lovely dark-haired young woman you spend your time with?”
“What?” Jet whirled on the man now, and forced himself to reign in his temper. It was a war to control the furious suspicions that suddenly raced through his mind, though. How did this guy know about Katara? What does he know? Automatically Jet scanned the street and vicinity for any indication this was a trick. Finding none, he unleashed his anger on the man, his lips curling back from his teeth until they were bared. “Where do you get off talking to someone like that? And how would you know? Are you stalking me? Why are you constantly following me around?” It was reaching a breaking point.
The man in the long, slime-green coat put his hands up in a peaceful gesture before him, and looked down at the ground a moment, appearing almost contrite at his preposterous behaviour. When he knew that he had Jet’s undivided attention, Long Feng hid a smile before schooling his face into an impassive, well-meaning look of compassion.
“I am an old acquaintance, family friend if you will, of your lady’s,” the vampire lord said and folded his hands together in front of him, inside the long, gaping sleeves of his coat. “I am merely concerned about her well-being.”
“Well you can go home, everything’s fine,” he barked the curt words bitterly; clearly everything was not fine. Why was she not returning his calls again? He’d checked her apartment and she hadn’t been home since Friday; she hadn’t gone to his place in the meantime; he had no way of reaching her friends… His head spinning with concern and frustration, Jet realized he was ignoring the man who waited patiently for either an apology or a polite dismissal. You’re in deep trouble if he really is a family friend and you blew him off, a voice inside him whispered in caution.
Biting off a growl, Jet ran his free hand through his hair and looked over the man before him again.
“How long did you say you’d known Katara?” he asked with gruff curiosity, sizing the man up in a glance. He didn’t look like the type Katara normally associated with.
“Oh, we’ve known each other since before she was born; it’s been a while since we talked face to face, though. I don’t even know if she’d recognize me now compared to back then,” Long Feng’s mouth quirked in a half-smile. “Our families have known each other for generations.”
Still unsure, Jet took a sip of his coffee and considered the man’s words.
Bad news, screamed his inner-voice. Stay away!
Jet took another sip, feeling the steam warm his frost-reddened cheeks. Considering.
Feigning a chill from the cold, the vampire gave a shiver. “Well, I just wanted to stop by to let you know I saw Katara leave that dance club Friday night with her friends; I know how careless she can be sometimes and how she always forgot to call her family when she was young to let them know she was staying out… So I’m here to reassure you she is fine. She is with friends. They seemed to know each other well; they were very… close.”
With that bit of bait dangling behind him, Long Feng turned to bid adieu to his prey.
“Have a good day,” he said pleasantly, and with a short bow he started on his way again.
The rabbit watched the fox walk away.
“Wait!” called Jet against his better judgment. His eyes narrowing, brow tightening, he felt his heart squeeze at the possibility someone knew more about Katara’s whereabouts than he did; that they may know how to contact her. That the person before him may be able to help him find her, confirm she really was fine.
“Yes?”
“Who… Who did you see her with again? The other night?” he asked casually, but Long Feng recognized the desperate hunger in the young man’s eyes. Really, this is too easy, he thought to himself but his face was a mask of happiness at being able to help a new acquaintance.
“Ah yes, I believe it was her new colleague from work.”
“Colleague from work?” She doesn’t have any new girlfriends from work, thought Jet, not that she’s mentioned. Unless it’s…
His eyebrows lifted in understanding, and Long Feng clasped the opportunity to plant the seed.
“Yes, his name was Zuko Sozin, I believe. Strange, I hadn’t realized they were as close as they were last night… Well, I suppose sharing an office, every day, does bring friends-excuse me, colleagues-closer together. Is there anything else I can do for you, young man?” asked the vampire, suddenly the model of concern when he saw the emotions flashing across Jet’s face. “You seem a bit-.”
“I’m fine. Thanks for letting me know she got home ok.” Headache. Headache. Spin, dizzy. Where’s the Aspirin? Jet’s vision swam a moment and he stood very still to calm the accusations his subconscious hurled at him mercilessly. What the hell… they hate each other… Why would they?... But he could be lying… But what if he isn’t?...
Long Feng nodded and with another short nod in Jet’s direction he departed in his usual slow, deliberate stride.
The end-of-break signal blew and the workers around Jet tromped back inside the factory, stomping out cigarettes and tossing their empty coffee cups in the trash bin on their way in.
Within his fingers’ grasp Jet felt the coffee he held slowly cooling, and the snow begin to fall again, a heavy, silent blanket to smother the city.
The next afternoon.
Things were not going well.
Zuko stared at Suki with forced patience while she in turn glared at him with open mistrust in the parking lot outside Katara’s apartment building.
For her part, Katara pulled her coat tighter around herself and shuffled a bit from one foot to the other. “Just lemme know when you two are finished your stare-down; I’m ready to go inside any time now…” she muttered and blew warm air into her hands.
The other two didn’t move. In fact, they acted like they hadn’t heard her.
“Ugh,” shaking her head angrily, Katara stalked off on her own towards the main entrance of her building. She had no idea why her friends were acting so strange-or when exactly she’d started considering them both ‘friends’-but it was ridiculous how they were treating each other. And why were they so worried about her returning to her apartment? Did they think it had magically grown booby-traps overnight?
Well, over two nights.
Sunday afternoon was dark and overcast, her residence looming like a gray-coloured doyen amongst the other dwellings of her neighbourhood. It had taken a lot of negotiation when Zuko had called her the day before, but she’d managed to convince Suki and Toph that Zuko wasn’t the monster she’d originally led them to believe (Katara was mature enough to admit ruefully most of that misconception was due to her own string of complaints and allegations against him).
But the trio hadn’t had a warm reunion at Suki’s car that afternoon, and the outdoor temperature was the least of the problem.
She was already at the elevator before Zuko and Suki arrived behind her in a rush.
Breathing harshly, they didn’t speak to her or each other and simply waited coldly for their ride to Katara’s floor.
“Did you kiss and make up?” she asked, rolling her eyes as she boarded the elevator at its familiar ding when the doors opened.
When she looked back at her companions as they stepped in behind her, she couldn’t help it, she laughed out loud at their evident suffering at being in each other’s presence. A nasty little part of her felt a teeny smidge of satisfaction at their discomfort. Serves them right for treating me like a five year old who doesn’t know her way home, she thought to herself.
Zuko whirled and prepared to leap to Katara’s aid when they reached her apartment door and she turned the key in the knob and suddenly gasped.
“Oh my--!”
“What? What is it?” he demanded, pushing her away from the doorway and putting himself directly between her and the panels. Suki automatically took up station between them and the nearest exit.
Is she covering our flank, wondered Katara incredulously? But she’d had enough.
“I see overreacting people,” she stage-whispered, and rolled her eyes again. “Really, would you two quit it? It’s getting old…”
With that she turned the key completely, nudged past Zuko and walked into the apartment, leaving her bodyguards in the hall.
Zuko and Suki exchanged another look of suffering, though its cause had veered slightly from the original trigger…
“Entryway, fine!” called Katara as they walked through the apartment. And it was. The pair behind her were more cautious and observant as they followed her through.
“Kitchen’s clear!” she called next, slightly sarcastically.
“Living room & dining room - heavily infested with nothing!”
“Den, just peachy!” Her tone took a slightly pissed-off edge, but they’d been expecting her to lose her temper at the babysitting by this point and weren’t surprised.
“Spare bedroom / office, absolutely great!”
“Main bedroom,” she declared with finality, approaching it in angry stomps, “wanna come see the main event with me?” she called in irritation, pausing with her hand on the door. The other two were still peeking into each room making sure nothing had been (obviously) disturbed. They were two rooms away from Katara when Suki’s phone went off.
Annoyed at the disturbance, the slayer answered it impatiently, “Hey, this is not a good-.”
Zuko could already hear the caller’s panicked tone, though, and was already flying down the hallway to stop Katara.
“DON’T LET HER IN THAT ROOM-THE WARDS HAVE BEEN TAMPERED WI-“
Suki’s eyes went wide as Toph’s warning connected, and she was running to join Zuko - until the explosion jolted the suite, ignited the walls surrounding her, separating her from the other two and turning the entire hallway into an inferno.
“Zuko!” she called, already tying a handkerchief around her face to protect herself from the fumes. The phonecall was completely forgotten. There was no answer to her call. “Zu-ko!” she screamed louder, and tucked her head into her shoulder to keep from coughing on the inhale.
She thought she heard him call back to her, but the noise of the fire was too loud to tell for sure.
We need to get her out of here. We need to get out of here. Thinking rationally, Suki remembered the exits and decided on an escape route before starting forward, an inch at a time to try and help collect Katara-she wasn’t surprised to find the flames were enchanted, and rose higher and towards her as she approached the fire’s ignition point. As she fell back, the flames receded. She reached forward and the tongues of fire leapt fiercely up her forearm towards her face. Definitely enchanted flames. This fire isn’t meant to hurt Katara, she realized, it is meant to isolate her.
It isn’t to kill her, it’s a trap.
Her rapidly firing neurons then realized that if it was a trap, someone was coming to collect the prey. Someone like…
Long Feng.
SHIT.
“Why hasn’t the alarm started yet?” she mumbled, and backed away to the door to keep a look out. The fire was real enough even if it was enchanted - some of the hallway carpet had melted already and the walls were going black.
And then she saw the smoke detectors’ wires were hanging limply from the ceiling, their units completely removed. How they’d missed them, she’d never know, but it made sense now.
The rest of the tenants, she realized again. The innocent people…
Smoke stung Suki’s dark eyes and she felt the dampness on her cheeks as she grit her teeth and came to a decision.
Zuko would have to protect Katara.
She had to evacuate the building.
With a final glance back towards the hallway to Katara’s room, the slayer put her faith in a disgraced vampire prince and plunged through the apartment door in search of a fire alarm she could pull to physically summon the fire department. She was dialing 9-1-1 on her phone at the same time, but wasn’t sure which would get through first. Finally, her call made it through to the dispatch and she told them what was happening before hearing a crash from the apartment. There was no more time. She flipped the phone shut and knew the brigade wouldn’t get there in time if the tenants didn’t start moving now.
“Come on, Zuko, Katara…” she prayed, and yanked the first bright-red metal fire-alarm she found. The raucous clamour erupted and filled her with relief, but she knew her job wasn’t finished yet. Ripping her make-shift mask from her face, Suki ran down the hall pounding on the doors on either side of Katara’s apartment.
“There’s a fire in the unit beside yours! Get out!” she screamed, repeating it at every door.
As some heads started peeking out she pointed the tenants in the direction of the stairwells and ran to the floor above to do the same…
“No more innocents,” she repeated the mantra to herself as her legs pumped up the stairs of their own freewill, “no more innocents…”
“Katara!” Zuko yelled angrily, furious with himself he hadn’t followed her more closely. She’d gone down this hallway, her room must be just around the corner. He wasn’t sure what he’d find once he got to her. She’d been closest to the blast’s point of origin. His stomach curled faintly at his imagination and he stopped the images cold. “Katara, where are you?”
He came across the door to her room and found her boot. But no sign of her yet.
She had crossed the threshold.
Growling deep in his throat, he kicked what was left of the door out of his way and rushed in, hunched over to stay below the smoke in order to see as clearly as he could.
He found her unconscious near the window, her hand reaching towards the bookcase by her nightstand.
It only took a moment and a thought to crack the window, and then smash out the top pane to let the smoke exit the room; in the next moment he scooped the immobile woman into his arms and started carrying her bridal-style towards the apartment door. Katara’s eyes flickered and she moaned at the motion, uncomfortable.
“It’s Zuko,” he said after a moment. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Book…”
“No time.”
“… book…. Legends…” she insisted, and started struggling, half-consciously in his grasp. “… need the book…”
Grunting viciously, he leapt back to the bookcase in a single bound and held her upright, balancing her on his knee as he kneeled in front of it. “Where’s the book, we don’t have much time,” he demanded, and gave her a quick shake to revive her as much as he dared. He wasn’t lying, either - he could hear the roar and hiss and popping of the flames as they licked ever closer.
“Very old book… Hardcover…” she coughed, her words breaking up to the point he could barely make out what she said.
She’s losing, she needs fresh air fast, he noted, and also took in her bruised temple and the way one of her arms was held at a funny angle. She couldn’t seem to open her eyes enough to look for the book, however.
Useless. A bitter taste filled his mouth.
With a jerk of his head, Zuko looked at the first shelf and with the precision and speed of a supercomputer read every book’s title, condition, and placement. Some had been knocked loose on to the floor, leaving gaps. He moved on to the second shelf when he didn’t find a tome matching her description. Still no luck. On to the bottom, last shelf. Not there. With a frustrated noise he shifted Katara in his arms and gave a last-ditch examination of the floor - and saw a tattered page peeking out from beneath a stack of romance novels that had tumbled out of their shelves, probably from the blast.
“Is it this one?” he asked, yanking the book of Water Tribe Legends from the stack. But Katara was completely out.
Taking her silence as agreement he pulled her athletic frame tightly against him and tucked her head into his shoulder.
“Hold on tight,” he said, in case she could hear, and, gathering himself, he took a quick crouch to ready and then launched himself into the hellish hallway.
“We’ll be out soon,” he promised into her ear, and raced into the main living room of the apartment to the doorway. The flames had started into this room now, too.
“We’ll be out soon.”.
The parking lot was a mess of people when he emerged, but try as he might, he couldn’t find Suki.
Stopping briefly by his car for a moment, he beeped the doors open and lay Katara down in the passenger seat to pull out his phone; he glanced at her, at the car, at the people milling about, always scanning the crowd for an unfortunately familiar face.
“Zuko, what happened?” Aang’s voice was calm, but tightly controlled when he answered on the first ring.
“Katara’s apartment blew up,” admitted Zuko unhappily. “They knew we were coming. The wards had been breached. How did Toph not know?” he demanded.
“How’s Katara?”
“She’s fine. How could they have breached the wards?” he insisted. Witchcraft wasn’t his specialty; they needed Toph’s input on this one. She had set the original wards; she was the only one attuned-enough to figure out why they had failed. “And where should I bring Katara? I think she has smoke inhalation; her arm doesn’t look right… and she has a bump on her head,” he recited, and glanced at her a moment to see if he’d forgotten anything.
Which was when he noticed, after a moment or two, that she wasn’t breathing.
“Katara,” he said, and leaned down to give her (good) arm a shake. “Katara, wake up. Aang’s on the phone,” he said tersely, and could hear the other man getting panicky.
“Zuko, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” The young man’s voice tightened.
“Katara,” he repeated, firmly this time. “Katara, answer me.” Long, sooty fingers reached out to gently palp the pulse-point in her wrist. Waited a moment. Let go. Her hand fell limply into her lap. She didn’t stir.
Growing more concerned, his fingers focused on her exposed throat. Waited. Moved to an inch in front of her nose and mouth.
Still nothing.
Aang was completely silent at this point, which surprised Zuko.
And he realized it was because he couldn’t hear anything.
He glanced over at the ambulances and fire engines. The throngs of people. The chaos. Not a single sound. Had the fire damaged his hearing?
And then he looked back at the woman who wasn’t breathing, who had no pulse, who wasn’t responding to anything he did.
How bad is she?... She can’t be gone yet, can she?...
A dread, desperate chill washed through the vampire.
Summoning a deep-rooted power, Zuko closed his eyes a moment and let his peripheral sense roam. Dangerous, yes. Leaving him vulnerable, absolutely. But he had to know for sure.
The sense extended, tuned out vision, touch, and taste; it reached outwards from his body like an echo to bounce against the lifeforce closest to him.
Come on, Katara, keep fighting…
Still nothing. He tuned out his own heartbeat, slowed the flow of his own internal states, and listened as hard as he could. He stopped breathing, and waited.
...A heartbeat.
Faint, and possibly just an echo of its last beats, but there it was. Relief flooded him, but only briefly.
Because, at the same time, he’d heard the approaching footsteps of a dozen vampire footsoldiers.
Long Feng was bringing his personal guard.
“Aang,” said Zuko, finally swinging the cellphone back to his ear again. “You need to get back-up for Suki. Right now. I can’t find her.” His voice was tense, but deadly calm. This had been a divide and conquer retrieval couldn't keep playing into it.
Aang didn’t answer.
“Aang,” he repeated angrily. “Did you hear me?”
“… please…” there was a muffled sound, and Zuko realized Aang had been covering the receiver. “Just tell me she’s ok,” he said hoarsely.
“She’s gonna be fine,” lied the vampire, “but Suki’s dead if you don’t get some help for her here within the next…” he thought again about the sound of the equal, methodical, military-precise footsteps of the guard. “Look, if she lasts five minutes against them she’s the greatest slayer in history. Make sure you write that on her tombstone,” he snapped, and hung up.
Really, the young man had completely let his personal feelings interfere with his job, he thought of Aang, and Zuko was now alone and knew he couldn’t take Katara to the trained medical professionals on the other side of the parking lot since that was where the foot’ were expecting her, preparing to abduct her, lying in wait for her. He wanted to scream and kick in frustration, but knew it was neither the time nor the place. Katara was his priority. He had to get her someplace safe... But no one had told him where Toph's compound was. He wasn't exactly a 'trusted' acquaintance yet.
At least Toph hadn’t let Aang join them that afternoon; the man would have been a total liability, he realized as he was already strapping Katara securely into her seatbelt. He slammed the door shut and vaulted overtop of the car to slide into the driver’s seat, ignoring the looks of surprise from a few stragglers who wandered past.
Jamming his key into the ignition, he ignored all rules of traffic safety and gunned the engine, tearing a strip out of the slushy parking lot as he burned away.
“Sorry Suki,” he mumbled, “but good luck.”
He didn’t notice the chopper flying in to land at the far end of the parking lot, or the other that hovered just on the horizon and sped full tilt to meet the first.
The sky itself had darkened further as Zuko steered onto the expressway and floored the accelerator in the direction of his home.
Aang’s (imagined) tortured face popped into his head again and he scoffed at the image.
Really, he, Zuko, was the one who should be upset, he talked to himself as he drove, weaving wildly between the cars that inconsiderately blocked the fast lane as he happened upon them at a casual 140 mph. He was the one who should be allowed to fall apart, or get sympathy. He was, not Aang.
Because he was the one who was about to lose his soulmate again if he didn't so something drastic very soon.
Prying his hand off the shift knob he started unbottoning his shirt. He prayed she'd make it to his place.
TBC.
AN: Thank you for reading!
AN: As always, I apologise for the delays -- new job, new car, new everything kind of had me hit the ground running through September!
/this chap first posted Oct 3 2008.