oneshot: Sin Too Deep [jet]
Title: Sin Too Deep
Rating: T-M
Warning: language, dark, no plot whatsoever.
Characters: Jet, minor oc's.
Timing: over season 2 to before boiling rock.
Summary: There in his chest-he felt it. Thick and swollen, that not so unfamiliar feeling boiling once again, back like a treacherous old friend. The Fire Nation ruined him.
a/n's: i wrote this, well, because. i don't know. because we never really knew about jet's end exactly. there is no plot. just...fiddling around with images.
.x.
The gallows of a hidden lake bleed a river.
Slowly, it spills and leaks and Jet can feel it all collapsing now. Right through the cracks of his fingers, settling between the lines and folds of tired hands. The two familiar souls he once knew are gone, torn from his side and hand. He could have sworn this place-Lake Laogai?- used to be green. Not this terrible red. And for the life of him, he just couldn’t figure out where it all went wrong.
There’s a kick to his side, and a wave crashes inside him-all the way out. “He’s just about dead,” they mutter, the ones decked in green (splattered in red). Vaguely, silhouettes creep blotchily, in then out, through his lungs and behind his head.
The last thing Jet remembered was swinging a punch-not quite dead yet.
(He’s alone, alone, dying.)
---
“Foolish boy,”
Long Feng dug his knuckles into the temples of his head, sighing under his breath. “This is the last thing I need to worry about,” The Dai Li are straight and stiff, eyes following, “Get rid of him. Get him away from my city and do whatever you want to him. He’s a criminal to this nation, to the Fire Nation, and I don’t care. I don’t need rebel scum in my prison.” His order was gruff and barely a breath. “Excuse me now, I have a Princess to deal with now.”
Tea in his hand, his pale eyes blinked down, and he hardly noticed the Dai Li’s eyes shift, and that was that.
---
When Jet woke up, he remembered nothing.
The pain that was all over his body ached. And that, as he groaned and swallowed it down, was something he remembered. He could still see it. (Knuckles and punches and lashes and guilty men.) Dark hair matted with sweat and blood framed his face, quick and hot gasps burning against a broken rib cage.
There in his chest-he felt it. Thick and swollen, that not so unfamiliar feeling boiling once again, back like a treacherous old friend. (Hate, hate, hate.) Weak fingers rolled, his heart clenching into a knot too tight to breathe.
His back stiffened against the cold metal of a rocking ship, his eyes narrowing shut, not missing home like he thought he would.
---
They dragged him, his head drunk with pain, as if he were trash.
Along the way, they knocked him against the walls, his red knees scraping against the floor, leaving a trail of red behind. Jet couldn’t think-he couldn’t move. Everything was a blur around him, his mind entirely on one thing. (That bubble in his chest, that ugly thorn in his heart getting deeper.) And he did look pathetic, like a boy who just had his first drink, choking on his own blood and spit, his head rolling around on his neck until they threw him into a cell. A vomit colored floor dug into his knees, laughing a growl as dark as the circles around his eyes.
Collapsed on the ground, they gave him another kick, a hot and sticky hiss in his ear-“You wanna keep fighting, you rat?” They laughed, walking out, shutting the door and leaving a mess of a boy with the remains of his life spilling out across the floor.
The man closing the door could have swore he heard the boy mutter something like a yes I do, but he could have heard wrong and there was the fact the boy’s brains were probably smashed against his skull.
“What a bloody shame,” the other whispered, “He ain’t gonna last long.”
---
“Where am I?”
Everything hurt. His head was throbbing, most likely from the loss of blood. An unholy light from the opening door had woken him up. But he sat in the corner, rubbing gritty fingers against his wounded chest, blinking back memories and digging for the truth. The light was dim, cracks from a roof of nothing that made the room bleak and dreadful. There was a voice, hoarse but shallow.
“Hell,” he spat, “Or prison. Same thing.”
He could see the walls, painfully red, and he wasn’t scared. Jet’s been in prisons before. But never for long. “No,” Jet painfully scooted closer to the wall, “Where is this place?” Some guard, at least he thinks it’s one, lurks between the wall and the almost closed door, “The Fire Nation, son. And before you do something stupid again, I suggest you stop trying to fight the guards, and just follow the rules and rest for a while, unless you want to die on some place like the Boiling Rock-”
He had stopped listening as soon as he began.
Fire Nation.
---
The first time was a warning.
The second hurt much more.
Backing away in the corner of his cell, the dog, the mutt, licked his yellow and purple and red wounds, not flinching quite as much as last time. His ribs were better, his chest still hurting, but at least everything was sealed up and healed (for the most part). “You shouldn’t try to threaten the guards,” that same old man tried to offer advice, “You have to be careful, son.”
“Don’t call me son.”
Jet snapped venomously, drops as red as rubies on his lips, shrugging his shoulder and eyes away from the Fire Nation man.
---
He can feel the shadows, crowding him, following him, watching, on his back.
But he doesn’t turn around, simply staring at the metal wall, blank and cold. The wounds are healing on their own-they have no choice-and the bleeding has stopped. His head is still light and somewhere else, his fingers tapping against the wall. In his head, deep and dark, he thinks and thinks and curses, planning for his escape.
Distantly, he could hear one of the other prisoners asking him to stop doing whatever he was doing. A fist banging against the wall, a voice threatening to kill him. A voice struggles from his throat, but he manages to glance back at the stares and grin weakly, stopping his tapping, “Don’t like my music, boys?” They laugh, and he somehow laughs with them.
Then the little glimpse of Jet is gone.
(He turns and stares, eyes narrowing and eyebrows knitting, and thinks, thinks, thinks.)
The feeling is consuming.
---
He’s running out of ideas-running out of things to possibly think about out as the days pass as nails scraping against the metal walls (screeching, screaming). It’s easy to get bored when the guards are tired of playing. It’s even worse now that he’s become predictable.
“Hey, good ‘ol buddy, did I ever tell youwhat I’m in here for?”
Jet likes to call them all his friends. Partly because it annoys them and amuses him. Partly because in his mind their all the same. They all leave the same mark-bloody patches of friendship.
But today, he decides to surprise his guard, and attempts to choke the man with the drawstring from his prison pants. He pretends the fraying ends are as sharp as a knife, splintering at his fingertips and cutting into the yellow skin that is shaking and moving too much. The man’s face is the shade of blue of a sky he wants to feel again.
“I’m here, pal,” he sat on top of his body, “Because you-ah, ho-killed my parents, when I was eight years old.”
Then he counts down from five, notices the shady violet color, and muses that it matches the one around his eyes.
“Mm,” he sighed, blinking, and hated the fact he knew the greasy ritual he has been following and believing and worshipping the last few days or months. Three… The guards rush in, holy and right, and he, the sinner in his fragile state of mind numbness is knocked to the side, and the mantra as religious as whatever god who set this doomed fate upon him is set.
When his good friend The Guard heaves a breath, Jet wonders why he didn’t try a little harder, why he didn’t push down a little more, why he didn’t just do it.
Life slurs down.
Is this game all he really has anymore? A reason for his veins to pump, his lungs to inhale, his eyes to open? Is it all he has? The blur of red turns to leaves that are the color of autumn and tree huts and the scabs from racing and chasing pig-monkeys. And for the first time in a long, long time, he wishes he never had to grow up, wishes he never even thought of being a Freedom Fighter. This time, he hates himself the most.
He barely notices the lash of hands and sticks.
---
“Now I’ll finally be free,” he had said while his fingers pulled the knot tight, “Bastards.”
Jet takes the step forward-his body doesn’t hit the ground, but his heart does.
His body should have been buried under the ground of Ba Sing Se, nobly, heroically, like he deserved. He should have been surrounded by his real friends, they should have been the last things he saw when he was alive. He should have died honorably, at least somewhere near the closest thing to love he knows, not hate. Anything but that.
Instead he’s hanging on a fucking rope like a coward.
He’s going straight to hell for this, for even thinking of making a rope out of ripped clothes, strings, the dingy mattress in his dingy cell, and absolutely anything he could find and shove in his pants to hide, for even thinking of putting it around his neck and stepping off the edge, at least not without killing a few men first. No matter what, he blames this war for ruining him.
He still dies with a smile though.
The other prisoners and guards block the sun with their hands as they look up. From the very top of one of the towers, splattered against the metal, there is the body of the one and true Freedom Fighter (a savior, a messiah, a sinner) dangling from a rope cutting into his neck for all to see and know. There is a Fire Nation flag tied to his hand, ripped, dirty, humiliated, and his blood stains it proudly (nobody said he would die quietly).
Two weeks later, Sozin’s Comet soars toward the earth.
.x.