Avatar- "No One Cares About This Story" (2/2)
Title: No One Cares About This Story (Or the Stuff That Happened to Xin Fu and Master Yu After They Got Written Out of All the Important Parts of History)
Universe: Avatar the Last Airbender
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG for violence and mild swearing on Xin Fu’s part
Character/Pairing/s: lightly Xin FuxMaster Yu (mentions of Toph and other series personalities)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers from season two to the end of the series. Probably OOC because I don’t remember much about either of these characters except that they are hilarious.
Word Count: 14,250
Summary: Xin Fu and Master Yu do many pointless and idiotic things while the world moves on.
Dedication: a mini-bang style encouragement fic for gaisce as she nears the end of her big bang fic! YOU CAN DO IT! Also, special thanks to mousapelli for the lightning quick beta. <3
A/N: Yeah I don’t know. Avatar fic is hard.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
(Previous)
“We will be on this side of the clearing,” Master Yu declares haughtily before they bed down for the night. “Yuiko requests that you please remain on that side of the fire. Which I can’t say is really very surprising, given your awful behavior today.”
“Good idea,” Xin Fu shoots back. “The farther away I am, the less I’ll have to listen to your snoring.”
“I don’t snore!”
Xin Fu makes a rude gesture at the other earth bender before turning his back to the two lovebirds and laying his bed roll out as far as he can from the fire.
He hopes she snores worse than Master Yu does.
~~~~~
She doesn’t snore.
It’s not because she’s a dainty pretty thing either.
It probably has more to do with the fact that she isn’t asleep.
Ironically it’s the nervous shuffling of the ostrich horses nearby that alerts him to her movements; as he groggily becomes aware of his surroundings he blinks his eyes open and sees a shadow moving through the dim firelight, using quick, sure steps that make very little sound on the ground at all for how fast they’re moving.
He blinks and slowly gets up to follow.
He watches her as she edges quietly out of the clearing, weight light and balanced on her toes. At that pace she makes it back to the main road before long, navigating through the dark skillfully. Watching her like this, Xin Fu thinks that her agility might mean she’d be fairly proficient on the trapeze, but if asked, he feels her skills seem much better suited for something more sinister than the circus.
At the side of the road she starts looking around in the moonlight, squinting her eyes and keeping them low to the ground until she comes across a rock about the size of her palm, with a sharp edge on one side.
Xin Fu thinks she’s going to use it to try and brain that idiot Yu in his sleep.
He steps forward to intercept, except then she’s moving again, scuttling a little further back down the way they’d come, stopping only at a small gathering of trees.
She pulls the fist with the sharp-edged rock on it back and slams it into the tree.
Bark chips off as she does it again, and again, and again.
Xin Fu scowls and strides forward.
He grabs her arm.
She screams.
~~~~~
Okay he maybe should have expected some misunderstandings and some general nighttime stupidity given the whole situation.
What he did not expect was for his partner on this whole lousy mission to nearly brain him with a homemade boulder to his skull.
“What the hell?!” he demands, trying to blink through the stars he sees as he clutches his bleeding head in disbelief.
Beside him, Master Yu looks equally disbelieving, except more so for the finger-shaped bruises on Yuiko’s arm from where Xin Fu had grabbed her. “Have you lost your mind?!” he demands, and Xin Fu wants to kick him in the teeth for looking at him like that. “What could possibly provoke you to attack an unarmed girl?!”
“She’s… leaving signals! For someone to follow us! She’s marking the trees!” Xin Fu exclaims, pointing to the tree that she’d been slamming her rock against. “Clearly she’s a scam artist or something, trying to lull us into trusting her so that she and whoever she’s working with can rob us blind.”
“No!” Yuiko insists, when she hears, face streaked with tears. “No, I was just…” she motions to the tree, where a glistening trail of sticky-looking liquid bleeds from the wound she’d made. “Sap,” she admits, sheepishly. “I thought…I thought I’d surprise Yucchi and Xin Fu-sshi with it over breakfast. It’s really sweet and goes good with apples. My grandma used to make this for us when we were grumpy.”
Xin Fu blinks. “Uh…what?”
The look Yu gives him when they hear that almost, almost makes him cringe. “Sap,” he repeats, and makes the word sound poisonous.
Xin Fu scowls, rubbing his head. “It was suspicious, is all,” he manages, after a beat. “Anyone with half a brain would have thought…”
“Enough,” Master Yu interrupts, looking tired. “We’re going back to sleep. Yuiko, that was very thoughtful of you, but wasted on men like Xin Fu.”
Xin Fu sputters. “What the hell’s that supposed to me…”
“Good night, Xin Fu,” Master Yu says, in a tone that almost sounds dangerous.
He takes Yuiko by the hand and leads her back to their camp without another word.
Xin Fu watches them fade into the dark and tells himself he’s not sorry and everyone sucks.
~~~~~
If he wakes up extra early the following morning to collect some goddamn tree sap and to cut some goddamned apples, it’s because he feels like it and nothing else.
They finish breakfast before the sun is fully up and break camp in record time.
Master Yu doesn’t say a single word to him the entire time.
And it’s awesome.
Xin Fu steers their wagon back onto the road and wishes every day was as quiet as today.
~~~~~
Xin Fu thinks the silent treatment is some dirty pool.
He is pretty sure there are torture techniques more humane than this.
It’s not his fault that he’s a much more seasoned warrior than Master Yu, that he’s more alert and suspicious and full of survivor instincts.
Tree sap. Who the hell eats tree sap with breakfast? That was disgusting. Possibly even morally wrong.
He eyes Yuiko in the back, where she’s got her knees tucked up against her chest and is, for the most part, doing her best to look sad and pathetic while she keeps quiet.
Dirty fucking pool.
Xin Fu holds out until midday, as they’re pulling up to the foot of Hodoli Mountain, in search of her stupid damned circus dream.
“Uh,” he starts, and no one hears it over the creak of the wheels or the snuffling of the ostrich horses.
He scowls and sits up a little straighter in the driver’s seat. “Uh,” he tries again, louder this time.
No one says anything, but two sets of eyes turn to look at him. Master Yu still has that prissy look on his face that says Xin Fu reminds him of something he once had a maid empty from his chamber pot.
“So about last night,” Xin Fu pushes on, because clearly no one is going to throw him a goddamned bone here. “I might have…”
Yuiko perks up from the back just as they go over a particularly big bump in the road; he can see her out of the corner of her eye as she inches just a little bit forward in the wagon bed, like she’s anticipating something mind blowing is going to happen any second now.
“Yes?” Master Yu prompts, after Xin Fu trails off. He gives him a pointed look.
Xin Fu swallows the bad taste in his mouth and pushes on. “I might have jumped to some conclusions about stuff that was going on.”
Yuiko looks downright excited at this point, go figure.
“So yeah. I guess what I mean is I’m so…”
An arrow whizzes through the air and imbeds itself in Xin Fu’s thigh.
“…Ow,” he finishes instead, and curses as several figures surround the wagon from all sides. “Shit.”
“Yuiko, stay down,” Master Yu begins, as Xin Fu snaps the end of the arrow off with a muffled grunt. He turns to address the robbers, struggling to keep his voice even. “Gentlemen, I assure you, we have no money with us at the…”
Yuiko kicks him in the head.
Master Yu falls sideways, against Xin Fu’s shoulder. Xin Fu hisses when it jostles his bleeding leg.
“I knew it!” Xin Fu shouts, before shoving Master Yu off him.
Yuiko grins. “But c’mon, I had you fooled last night.”
Master Yu looks stricken. “Yuiko? Why?”
She pulls a bounty poster out of her back pocket and throws it at them. When Master Yu unrolls it and examines it, Xin Fu isn’t surprised to see a wildly inaccurate facsimile of their faces on it. “The Fire Nation high command is offering big money for two renegade earth benders that took out a contingent of soldiers last week. Thought I saw a resemblance there.”
Xin Fu is insulted. “That looks nothing like us.”
Yuiko shrugs. “Kinda? In the eyes maybe. I wasn’t sure at first either, but then Yucchi there confirmed it for me when he told me all about your exploits in Chosun Village.”
Master Yu pales. “So then…everything… you were marking the path for your men?”
She snorts and jumps gracefully from the wagon bed. “Nothing that simple. It was a message, Yucchi. About when and how to strike. Clever, right?”
“Ha,” Xin Fu feels the need to emphasize, even if it jostles his leg and makes it hurt. “Just… ha. Tree sap for breakfast. Like hell.”
Yuiko laughs at him. “Enjoy your victories while you can, I guess,” she confirms, before nodding to her men, who pull the notches on their bows back. The points of twenty arrows are aimed at their throats light up on her cue. Xin Fu grins at that, because it means he gets to kick the crap out of some fire benders today.
Master Yu seems less thrilled. “Yuiko, are you really? Just…just like this?”
She shrugs. “The poster does say dead or alive. Dead is just easier.”
She pauses to filch the last apple from their stores before getting out of the line of fire and joining her men on the ground. She bites into it cheerfully.
Xin Fu eyes Master Yu, who is starting to look less and less stricken and a little more something else the more he sees the evil that is Yuiko. Xin Fu feels himself grin a little bit. “Odds are ten to one, Yu.”
Master Yu adjusts his sleeves. “Is your leg okay?”
Xin Fu doesn’t deign to answer before he’ s gathering the dirt from the road into a hand and using it to crush the bolt tethering the ostrich horses to the wagon.
The sudden explosion of splintering wood sends the two nervous animals stampeding forward.
After today, Xin Fu thinks that Yuiko and her merry little band of bounty hunters will learn a very important lesson about trying to take down any earth bender at the foot of a fucking mountain.
~~~~~
Afterward, when Master Yu is preparing to pull the arrow head out of Xin Fu’s leg, he asks if this is really okay.
“Just do it,” Xin Fu grunts, his words hard to understand as he growls them out from around the piece of wood he’s biting on.
“Yes, of course.” Yu’s hands hover over his thigh for a few more moments, and Xin Fu has to fight back the urge to kick the idiot with his good leg. “Xin Fu,” he begins instead, and looks down at the ground. “I just wanted to say… I mean, for yelling at you earlier, and for not believing you… well, I just… I’m s…”
Xin Fu gives in to the urge and kicks him. Hard.
After that, Yu yelps and ends up ripping the arrow head out of his leg in retaliation.
Xin Fu screams a little, kicks him again, and spits the piece of wood in his mouth out at him just to hear him shriek about how disgusting that is.
As far as either of them is concerned, everything is back to normal.
~~~~~
4. What do you Noh
The last of their money runs out approximately three days after the solar eclipse that Master Yu had spent a good fifteen minutes marveling at for no good reason.
“What good is taking a bounty hunting gig if we use all the money we get from it trying to finish it?” Xin Fu mutters darkly to himself as he looks at his empty purse.
“Well, there’s still the other half that’s waiting for us once we bring Toph back,” Master Yu reminds him logically.
“Money we haven’t earned isn’t going to feed us today,” Xin Fu answers, and the dark aura sliding off of him as he walks through the busy market streets of Han Mi Village is enough to deter even the most seasoned looking bargain hunter from his or her path.
Master Yu scuttles along behind him, giving the occasional apologetic look for Xin Fu’s frightening behavior to frightened young women and wide-eyed children as they pass. His stomach rumbles occasionally as well, particularly whenever they encounter all the good smells from various food carts around the market. Before long, it feels like Xin Fu’s menacing aura is starting to dissolve into a more pathetic one in the face of all these meals they can’t currently afford.
Xin Fu stops in front of a display of barbequed fowl for a moment and looks truly mournful.
“We could send a messenger back to Gaoling and ask for an advance,” Master Yu offers tentatively after a beat.
Xin Fu bristles. “We can’t afford a messenger,” he grits out, before remembering himself and starting to walk again. He supposes they could rob some people, but given the fact that they’re currently wanted by the Fire Nation’s occupying troop probably means that they should shy away from drawing any unnecessary attention to themselves, or things like Yuiko or worse will be biting them in the ass every time they turn a corner.
“Well then maybe we should get a steady job for the time being,” Master Yu suggests next, like he thinks Xin Fu has ever had one.
Xin Fu snorts. “Where the hell did you get an idiotic idea like that?” he asks, right as Master Yu holds up a flier in front of his face. He frowns and swats it away instinctively.
“The local theater company is looking for help,” Master Yu informs him. “It’s just for a week, building sets for the premiere of their latest play.”
“That sounds stupid,” Xin Fu answers, just as they pass a vendor selling grilled fish skewers. He surreptitiously wipes at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It should be easy enough work, and I for one, would like to eat,” Master Yu sniffs. “Some of us have had honest work before, you know.”
“Bounty hunting is honest,” Xin Fu grunts. “Find someone worth something, kill them, and get the money. What’s not honest about that?”
“That,” Master Yu rejoins, “doesn’t always provide a full belly.” He straightens the flier a little, at the places it had become crumpled by Xin Fu’s hand. “And I for one, would like to eat sometime soon. Preferably with money that won’t land an entire platoon of Fire Nation soldiers on our front step.”
Before Xin Fu can tell him they don’t have a damned front step, he slips the flier into his sleeve and heads in the indicated direction of the town’s traditional theater.
The next batch of fish skewers comes off of the grill at exactly that moment.
Xin Fu grumbles to himself and grudgingly follows.
~~~~~
The Yes-Noh Players, from what Xin Fu can tell thus far, are a bunch of limp-wristed, delicate-looking pretty boys who like to affect long-suffering airs and spend too much time preening in front of the mirror and pretending they’re something better than they are.
“You’ll be working under our set designer Foo Yun and the director, Master Shoon. Just do what Foo Yun says; most of your job will be the heavy lifting parts and the like. Seems like something you two can handle,” the assistant who hires them explains later that afternoon, as he shows them around the inner workings of the humble theater, which is busy with the sounds of song rehearsals, idle chatter, and the occasional crash of choreographed fighting. “You might have to do some painting and a few artsy type things here and there, but nothing too complicated. The artists will handle the more intricate set pieces.”
“I’m a very good painter. I even had designs of being an actor once before as well,” Master Yu assures the man with one of those professionally obsequious smiles that had probably endeared him to the likes of Lao Bei Fong in the first place. Xin Fu thinks it makes him look even stupider than usual, but doesn’t say anything out loud because he suddenly smells food.
The assistant-his name is Chan or something- doesn’t notice that he’s lost Xin Fu’s attention completely. “Look, a quick word of advice, because I don’t want you to end up like the two guys we just lost yesterday. Just so long as you do what Foo Yun says and don’t talk back, you’ll be fine. We keep having people quit because they can’t take the abuse, but this is the theater, you know? Even if you’re not on stage, you have to expect that you’re going to get shit on a little bit.” Pause. “There’s also going to be quite a bit of overtime, consequently, since we’re so behind. Too many people quitting too fast. We’ll pay for the extra hours of course, and you two are welcome to sleep in the stands during your breaks.”
“Hmmm,” Xin Fu grunts, noncommittally. His nose twitches towards the stage, where all the good food smells are coming from.
“Crew’s on lunch right now,” Chan or something explains apologetically as they hit the backstage area proper, where two large buffet tables are piled high with inviting looking bamboo steamers, “but feel free to get something to eat with everyone else and afterward, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the group.”
“Lovely,” Master Yu declares, in high spirits as a crash in the background abruptly sends the man scurrying off to do damage control. Xin Fu stares at the lunch spread and surreptitiously wipes the corner of his mouth again.
He’s suddenly in such a good mood that he doesn’t even cuff his companion when Master Yu turns to him with an arched eyebrow and a smug little smile and says, “Wasn’t this a wonderful idea after all?”
“Dumplings,” Xin Fu answers inarticulately, and strides forward to the buffet tables with the air of a conqueror that has just discovered his army holds the high ground in a virgin land full of primitive natives.
He shoves a pale actor with shaggy hair out of the way and promptly proceeds to clean out an entire tower of steamed shrimp bao.
“I’ll take your drooling as a yes,” Master Yu declares from behind him, as he takes his own plate and begins picking through the noodles for all the seafood bits covered in sauce. Xin Fu takes his scallops.
The actors wonder who the hell they are. Some of them marvel at Xin Fu’s manliness; the shaggy-haired actor looks a little bit in love.
~~~~~
Foo Yun is crazy. Not as crazy as Master Shoon, but apparently directors are supposed to be the craziest of the crazies or they aren’t doing their job right. At least, that’s what everyone on set seems to take as the consensus, and Xin Fu figures they’d know crazy better than him because everything about theater seems loony and pointless.
“Bigger!” Master Shoon shouts at them, in hysterical tones that are growing as familiar to Xin Fu as the incredibly fruity dialogue he hears Min Ho and Jun Li, the actor playing the warrior prince, run in the background over and over again, hour after hour, during the past six days. “Everything must be bigger!” the art director demands hotly, stomping his feet like a child in the middle of a tantrum.
Xin fu sits in front of an unfinished piece of forest scenery and paints giant leaves on some giant bushes. The director throws his arms up in the air rapidly, like he’s having some sort of fit. “Nature is a major character in this play and must be represented on a scale comparable to its importance! It is the haven in which the couple’s love blooms! No matter the harsh environments they encounter, it is in amongst the elements in which their relationship is fostered and grows strong!”
“More color!” Foo Yun follows, arms careening in a similar, slightly less dramatic (but still dramatic) manner to Master Shoon’s movements. “I like red!”
Xin Fu sighs and turns back to the red paint. He paints a flower.
“Five petals!” Foo Yun shrieks, when Xin Fu only paints four. “Don’t be a simpleton, Xin Fu.”
“How about I kill you in the face?” Xin Fu answers, though it’s muffled through Master Yu’s hand suddenly being clamped over his mouth.
“Yes, five is a beautiful number,” Master Yu agrees with the director.
“It’s an ugly number!” Foo Yun snaps back. “But life isn’t always pretty. Sometimes life is jagged and cold and terrible. We have to paint realistically. Five petals! Nature is a capricious bitch!”
Xin Fu bites Master Yu’s finger.
“It is our last day! There will be clay pot rice for lunch and then we will be given our paychecks,” Master Yu hisses in his ear before he can throw his hammer at the sighing art director’s head. Xin Fu grumbles and paints an extra petal on his stupid red flower.
In the background, his eyes narrow when Min Ho, the actor for the fairy princess (go figure), peeks shyly around a corner to watch.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Xin Fu barks at him, and startles him into disappearing behind the scaffolding with a yelp. “Get back to work, fairy!”
“He admires you,” Master Yu shushes him, as he paints great, messy streaks of green through their forest scene. “You should have more patience.”
“He looks like a woman,” Xin Fu shoots back, one eye closed as he attempts to paint a yellow center in his five-petal red flower without smudging things.
“This is an all male theater troupe,” Yu reminds him. “Someone has to look like a woman.”
Xin Fu smirks. “You mean, someone other than you?” Too easy.
Master Yu just makes an unimpressed expression back at him and tells him his flower looks like a bunch of balloons. Xin Fu jabs him with the painted end of his brush.
In the background, he thinks he hears Min Ho sigh.
~~~~~
When Foo Yun returns from instructing the crafts people about how he wants the boat design to look for the fairy princess’s funeral a little while later, he sees Xin Fu and Master Yu’s finished forest piece and throws a tantrum.
“All wrong!” he screams, tearing at his hair. He kicks the base of the set piece as if the image depicted on it has personally offended him and his entire bloodline somehow. “We want impressionism, not romanticism! Weren’t you listening to me?!”
The other sounds of the stage cease abruptly, as artisans and actors pause to peer curiously from their activities to watch the art director in his latest fit of creative hysterics.
Min Ho peeks out from behind the curtain, while an annoyed looking Jun Li does the same, hand resting on Min Ho’s shoulder.
Xin Fu is confused. “Five petals,” he points out to Foo Yun, gesturing to the red flowers scattered about the forest floor. “That’s what you wanted.”
“Five ugly petals are as useless as four!” Foo Yun looks even more enraged at the thought; he kicks the base of the piece again. “Useless!”
The scenery gives a pathetic sort of groan.
Min Ho darts forward, looking at the enraged set designer fretfully. “I…I think they did a very good job, Master Foo Yun,” he begins, in that soft, tremulous voice of his. “It’s a very um, hip…new style?”
“You’re a moron!” Foo Yun shouts back, still kicking at the base of the piece like he wants to beat it out of its ugly, horrible existence. “The only reason no one’s killed you for your uselessness is because your face looks pretty in a wig and dress!”
“Hey now,” Jun Li growls, striding forward in an impressive attempt to back up the man playing his lover, “that’s uncalled for.” For a moment, he really does look like a fearsome warrior prince.
“You’re even worse, muscle-head!” Foo Yun yells, the vehemence and frequency of his kicks increasing the more he’s questioned. “I am an artist!”
The scaffolding wobbles.
Xin Fu sees it and thinks that he probably shouldn’t have let Master Yu do the hammering earlier.
“Um,” he begins, while Master Yu attempts to go forth and intervene.
Xin Fu automatically grabs the back of Master Yu’s collar, just as the scenery finally gives a last, protesting groan and tips forward.
People scream.
~~~~~
“How did this happen? What are we going to do?!” Director Shoon wails some hours later, when Min Ho hobbles back to the stage with a broken leg and Jun Li returns with a similarly broken arm.
The bandages wrapped around Foo Yun’s head don’t seem to be holding him back.
“This is what happens when we work with amateurs!” the set designer raves.
“We’re opening tomorrow!!” the director shrieks back, going octaves higher than Foo Yun could ever hope to reach.
“We’ll just have to open with the understudies,” Chan or something suggests, tentatively. “Just for the first few weeks.”
“I fired them, imbecile,” Director Shoon snaps at him. “They didn’t understand the characters at all, so I sent them back to their podunk village’s dinner theater hall across the water.” Pause. “Plus we couldn’t afford to keep them on anyway. We’re over budget!”
“That’s because no one wants to see your hack work!” Foo Yun snipes.
“It’s because we keep having to redo set pieces!” Shoon howls in reply.
“I hate you!”
“I hate you more!”
Shoon slaps Foo Yun. Foo Yun swipes back at him by hitting him in the chest a few times.
About five seconds later they’re making out against the wall.
Xin Fu and Master Yu look confused. Xin Fu is also kind of grossed out.
Chan or something throws his hands up in the air as if this sort of stuff happens all the time. “No understudies and our two leads are out for the entire opening month. What are we supposed to do? We’ve already sold tickets.”
Xin Fu snorts. “Can’t be difficult to give those five people back their money.”
“We’ve sold more than five tickets,” Chan or something snaps back a bit testily. “In fact, the mayor is showing up for opening night.” He looks distraught. “This isn’t going to go over well.”
Xin Fu shrugs. “Just go find a couple of gay-looking schmucks with good memory. Not like this stuff is hard. ‘My father wishes to use the power of your kingdom to conquer his enemies but I love you too much to watch you fade away’ blah, blah, blah. Anyone here’s heard the whole stupid play so many times they can probably recite it backwards by now.”
Everyone is looking at him funny at this point, even Master Yu. He glares. “What?”
Even Foo Yun and Director Shoon have stopped making out.
“Well,” Min Ho offers after a moment, weakly, “He does look like he’d fit into Jun Li’s costume.”
~~~~~
Director Shoon offers them a lot of money out of his own pocket to just do the opening night show. “It’ll take at least a day and a half to go and fetch the understudies from the island,” Chan or something assures them, “but you definitely won’t have to do more than one show.”
Director Shoon dangles the money in front of them. It clanks in a happy, money-filled kind of way, and Xin Fu and Master Yu both realize that there’s a lot of potential hot meals in that bag.
Xin Fu eventually snatches the pouch from Director Shoon’s hands. “Alright, but we order barbeque for lunch too.”
“Deal!” the director agrees, looking incredibly relieved.
Xin Fu pockets the money while Master Yu kind of just gapes at him. He shrugs. “How hard can this be?”
~~~~~
“I’m not gay enough for this!” Xin Fu protests seven minutes later, as a war helmet decorated in fake jewels gets shoved onto his head.
Master Yu just glares at him as he gets wrapped in his shimmery fairy princess costume. “I am very mad at you right now,” is all he says.
Xin Fu scoffs. “Thought you wanted to be an actor once. Isn’t this your dream?”
“It was not,” Master Yu sniffs, “to be a fairy princess.”
Xin Fu manages a grin, somewhere from under his ridiculous armor. “But you sparkle so bright in your pretty dress.”
Master Yu ignores him.
“They have good chemistry,” Foo Yun and Director Shoon both say in the background, and it is the first thing they have agreed on in months.
~~~~~
Xin Fu’s eyes go really big about halfway through the first dress rehearsal. “This script has kissing.”
“Oh so he can read,” Master Yu huffs, in his pretty, pretty princess clothes.
Xin Fu looks at the rest of the cast very carefully. “I’m not kissing him.”
Min Ho frowns. “But…didn’t you say you already knew most of the story by heart?”
Xin Fu glares, making the young actor jerk backwards and blush all at once. “Yeah because we could hear you rehearsing from the back. It wasn’t like I was watching this crap.”
Min Ho blushes brighter. “Oh.”
Chan or something looks like he’s on the verge of having an aneurism. “What if we change it to a passionate embrace?”
Both Director Shoon and Foo Yun look scandalized. “It’s a love story!”
“With all due respect, Director,” Master Yu begins, “it’s not going to look very much like one if I have to pretend to enjoy kissing Xin Fu.”
“I…think it would be lovely,” Min Ho pipes up, tremulously.
“This is why you disgust me,” Xin Fu tells him, making him look comically heartbroken before he apologizes to Xin Fu instinctively.
“Just… try,” Director Shoon insists. Pause. “We’ll order extra ribs.”
They do try, except by then, everyone’s already lost their appetites from watching Xin Fu and Master Yu make horrible, stuttered kissy-face attempts to get their mouths within five inches of one another’s and not reflexively strike out with a fist.
“Why the hell would you have a kissing scene in a play and only have men in the play?” Xin Fu demands around a stack of short ribs and a tall mug of beer. “Doesn’t make sense.”
Min Ho sighs.
~~~~~
“Pretend he’s money,” Director Shoon suggests.
“Or shumai,” Min Ho adds, trying to be helpful.
“This is impossible,” Jun Li mutters, as Master Yu sighs dreamily in Xin Fu’s arms while somehow managing to wince all at the same time.
“I can see why you never did end up becoming an actor,” Chan or something tells Master Yu as he starts to sweat more and more under the collar the closer it gets to curtain call.
“And here I thought you two were already together,” Foo Yun sighs, hands on his hips. “Weird.”
A moment.
“That’s it!” Chan or something shouts suddenly, face lighting up with the relief of epiphany.
Everyone stares at him.
“UST!” he says, clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “The only way to make this love story even more gripping is to force the audience to imagine what we aren’t showing them!”
Director Shoon looks at him skeptically. “Aren’t you just supposed to pick up my laundry?”
“What does UST stand for?” Foo Yun adds.
“Unresolved Sexual Tension. It’s about the anticipation of the thing, rather than the actual thing.”
Director Shoon doesn’t seem impressed. “Did you pick up my laundry?”
Chan sighs. “Just… this is all we have time for, okay?!”
Director Shoon sighs. “Okay fine. Can you two at least give each other smoldering looks?”
“Yes, they can,” everyone on set confirms for them.
Xin Fu hates them all.
~~~~~
The love scene changes into an intense stare off from across the bridge between worlds.
Throughout the play Xin Fu finds himself getting strangely into the character of the prince, feeling annoyed when he is annoyed, feeling confused and torn and impatient when the character does.
It’s a strange experience, one that Min Ho had tried to explain in his halting ways during the rehearsals earlier, as Xin Fu had sneered at him and called him names for trying to share.
But that had been hours ago, under the scrutiny of the cast and crew, as the sounds of hammers and saws finishing the last of the set pieces had echoed around them as they’d practiced.
Now, with the lights down low in the auditorium and with all the props and effects in place, Xin Fu can see how this whole thing is actually kind of a rush after all, kind of like Earth Rumble VI had been, except with less blood and more shiny (if slightly less ridiculous) outfits.
“My father wishes to use the power of your kingdom to conquer his enemies but I refuse to watch you fade away,” Xin Fu as the prince tells a shackled, dress-wearing Master Yu gruffly, as he begins to slice through the princess’s bonds. “Get out of here, before he finds us. There’s no time.” His fingers feel tense as he saws through the ropes around Master Yu’s wrists, almost like he’s rushing, knowing that the man playing the king will appear any second now. It’s strange, the rush of telling the story, of becoming some haughty prince willing to sacrifice so much for one person.
“I don’t want to leave,” Master Yu answers for the princess, voice high-pitched and warbling slightly. He stands forward in those flowing gowns, looking determined, challenging. Xin Fu can almost feel his breath on his cheek. “Your father will punish you for betraying him.”
Xin Fu glares darkly and for some reason, it feels like his heart is beating faster in his chest when he hears those words.
They drift closer together involuntarily then, breathing each other’s air, stubborn, heated glares between the two of them as Xin Fu takes the first step forward, as Master Yu takes the second. Xin Fu can see the bob of the other man’s throat when he swallows.
He can also hear it when the entire audience, as one, slips forward to the edges of their seats, holding their breaths as the prince and princess drift closer and closer together.
The baying of the king’s hounds erupts across the stage and makes everyone jump, prince and princess included. They stumble backwards, remembering themselves. Both look a little bit breathless.
And Xin Fu reaches out and pushes the princess backwards before she can say another word, urging her over the bridge and towards her kingdom. “Go,” he growls, voice gravely and half-wrecked.
The audience shivers.
The princess disappears in the mist.
Xin Fu feels kind of gay.
~~~~~
In the dressing room afterwards, while Director Shoon and Assistant Director Chan are receiving their accolades from the mayor, Xin Fu and Master Yu sit down to remove their makeup.
“That was… an interesting experience,” Master Yu begins after a moment, voice still slightly tremulous.
Xin Fu stares pointedly down at the washing bin he’s scrubbing his face over. “Uh,” he answers, and then dunks his face in the water again.
“You did surprisingly well, all things considered,” Yu pushes, sounding like he’s trying to act superior but really just coming off as kind of shy.
“Uh, you too, I guess,” Xin Fu answers, and wonders what the hell kind of scrubbing it’s going to take to get this black stuff lining his eyes off.
Master Yu beams. “Thank you.”
The silence gets kind of awkward again.
Master Yu hands Xin Fu the eye makeup remover. “Though I maintain that you should never endeavor to become a professional actor,” he finishes, after a beat.
Xin Fu grabs the bottle from him and glowers. “I’m not nearly gay enough,” he shoots back, and finally manages to successfully remove the black gunk from around his eyes.
Master Yu snorts in laughter, and the silence after that is the way it’s always supposed to be.
~~~~~
5. The Return
The end of a century long war also signifies the end of Xin Fu and Master Yu’s employment under the honorable (and very wealthy) Lao Bei Fong.
The news comes with a dragon hawk the morning after the town they’re staying in has held a particularly raucous freedom celebration, some days after the Fire Lord’s defeat.
Xin Fu is violently hung over from the rounds of free drinks the local tavern had passed out upon hearing the news of Fire Lord Zuko’s coronation but finds himself waking up to the light scratching against the window anyway; the groan Master Yu gives from the second bed tells him that he can’t count on the big whiner baby to answer it for him, even if he’s the one sleeping closer to the window.
Xin Fu rolls out of his bed and limps groggily across the room, throwing the shutters open. The dragon hawk squawks and flaps its wings once before Xin Fu reaches out and opens the carrying tube on its back.
He takes the neatly rolled piece of paper bearing the Bei Fong insignia and opens it.
He rubs his eyes tiredly and begins to read.
There is a bunch of formal random crap at the beginning, followed by one line that’s the only one that really matters.
‘Toph has come home. We will no longer be requiring you or Master Yu’s services.’
Xin Fu stares at it the words for a little while longer, as if he thinks that his vision is somehow still blurry from drinking the night before and that if he squints a little or changes the angle he’s reading a little, the words will fade and change before resolving themselves into something more appealing, something that has to do with a big fat bonus and the promise of double the wealth initially offered once the mission is accomplished.
“What are you standing there, staring like an idiot for?” Master Yu groans five minutes later, when the words on the paper are still the same despite Xin Fu’s steadily growing sobriety. “Shut the window. The light hurts my eyes.”
“Close them then,” Xin Fu snaps back on instinct, and the unsolicited vitriol in his voice when he says it actually gives Master Yu pause to sit up and regard him curiously.
“Is something the matter?” he asks after a moment, rubbing at gummy eyes and smacking his mouth against the foul tastes he finds there after a night of drinking this small town brewer’s homemade beer.
Xin Fu wordlessly tosses the letter to Master Yu on his way through the door and trudges outside to brush his teeth.
~~~~~
“I suppose,” Master Yu says over a late breakfast that morning, “that this means I should return to teaching.” He sips at his tea thoughtfully, looking better than he had earlier but still sporting a dazed sort of glazed-over look in his eye that suggests the hangover continues to linger.
Xin Fu shovels eggs into his mouth and says something incoherent about maybe investing in an Earth Rumble VII. “It’s gonna have an obstacle course. With crushing.”
Master Yu frowns and tells him to chew with his mouth closed. “You look like an animal.”
Xin Fu glowers at his constant nagging and declares, “I sure as hell won’t miss this.”
Master Yu agrees with a small huff and finishes his congee.
~~~~~
They pack their things in silence. Xin Fu can’t remember which food pack is his and which one is Yu’s so he doesn’t touch either of them, waiting for Yu to pick his up first.
They finish packing everything else before looking intently at the food packs laid out on the floor. After a moment of indecision Xin Fu decides to just take one.
Master Yu does at the same time, and of course they’re both reaching for the leftmost one, of course.
“It’s mine,” Xin Fu says.
Master Yu hesitates, before withdrawing his hand. “Oh.” He takes the pack on the right, shoulders it, and grabs his bed roll without another word.
Xin Fu isn’t sure why he expects an argument; he feels oddly disappointed when he doesn’t get one.
Master Yu just makes a few strange clucking noises and precedes him out the door.
~~~~~
“Stop following me.”
Master Yu’s ostrich horse is a few paces behind his on the road. “We live in the same town, Xin Fu.”
Xin Fu grumbles in embarrassment. “I know that! It’s still weird.”
“We’ve been traveling together for over a year. I don’t understand why this is strange.”
“Just…stop following me. I don’t know if I like the idea of an idiot like you at my back.”
Silence.
Xin Fu chances a look over his shoulder, thinking that Master Yu is pouting because now he’s horribly offended or something.
Instead, the former teacher looks thoughtful, in a hesitant sort of way. “If you’d like,” he offers, after a beat, “I could ride beside you.”
Xin Fu’s makes a weird noise in the back of his throat in response, one that he hadn’t meant to make at all, but that Master Yu interprets as “Yes,” anyway.
He pulls his ostrich horse up alongside Xin Fu’s, they ride together in silence a little while longer, and eventually, eventually, Master Yu turns to look at him out of the corner of his eye and say, “I am pretty certain you have my food pack.”
Xin Fu growls “Stuff it,” in response, and just like that, the weird uncomfortable atmosphere of the morning is suddenly gone.
~~~~~
Halfway back to Gaoling, they come across a sign post at a fork in the road. On it is a WANTED poster, for a General Shinu, formerly of Lord Ozai’s war council.
Xin Fu studies the likeness on the poster for a moment. “That’s the asshole who wanted to bring over more occupying troops, huh?”
Master Yu nods, looking a bit put out at the reminder the picture serves. “We should move on,” he reminds Xin Fu, as the daylight hours wane.
Xin Fu looks at the arrow pointing south toward Gaoling, and then to the poster, stating the General’s last known whereabouts as Chin Village, to the north and west.
“Well?” Master Yu asks, sounding hesitant, almost hopeful.
It’s enough.
Xin Fu grins and yanks the poster off the sign post.
They ride west.
END
(Previous)
Universe: Avatar the Last Airbender
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG for violence and mild swearing on Xin Fu’s part
Character/Pairing/s: lightly Xin FuxMaster Yu (mentions of Toph and other series personalities)
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers from season two to the end of the series. Probably OOC because I don’t remember much about either of these characters except that they are hilarious.
Word Count: 14,250
Summary: Xin Fu and Master Yu do many pointless and idiotic things while the world moves on.
Dedication: a mini-bang style encouragement fic for gaisce as she nears the end of her big bang fic! YOU CAN DO IT! Also, special thanks to mousapelli for the lightning quick beta. <3
A/N: Yeah I don’t know. Avatar fic is hard.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
(Previous)
“We will be on this side of the clearing,” Master Yu declares haughtily before they bed down for the night. “Yuiko requests that you please remain on that side of the fire. Which I can’t say is really very surprising, given your awful behavior today.”
“Good idea,” Xin Fu shoots back. “The farther away I am, the less I’ll have to listen to your snoring.”
“I don’t snore!”
Xin Fu makes a rude gesture at the other earth bender before turning his back to the two lovebirds and laying his bed roll out as far as he can from the fire.
He hopes she snores worse than Master Yu does.
~~~~~
She doesn’t snore.
It’s not because she’s a dainty pretty thing either.
It probably has more to do with the fact that she isn’t asleep.
Ironically it’s the nervous shuffling of the ostrich horses nearby that alerts him to her movements; as he groggily becomes aware of his surroundings he blinks his eyes open and sees a shadow moving through the dim firelight, using quick, sure steps that make very little sound on the ground at all for how fast they’re moving.
He blinks and slowly gets up to follow.
He watches her as she edges quietly out of the clearing, weight light and balanced on her toes. At that pace she makes it back to the main road before long, navigating through the dark skillfully. Watching her like this, Xin Fu thinks that her agility might mean she’d be fairly proficient on the trapeze, but if asked, he feels her skills seem much better suited for something more sinister than the circus.
At the side of the road she starts looking around in the moonlight, squinting her eyes and keeping them low to the ground until she comes across a rock about the size of her palm, with a sharp edge on one side.
Xin Fu thinks she’s going to use it to try and brain that idiot Yu in his sleep.
He steps forward to intercept, except then she’s moving again, scuttling a little further back down the way they’d come, stopping only at a small gathering of trees.
She pulls the fist with the sharp-edged rock on it back and slams it into the tree.
Bark chips off as she does it again, and again, and again.
Xin Fu scowls and strides forward.
He grabs her arm.
She screams.
~~~~~
Okay he maybe should have expected some misunderstandings and some general nighttime stupidity given the whole situation.
What he did not expect was for his partner on this whole lousy mission to nearly brain him with a homemade boulder to his skull.
“What the hell?!” he demands, trying to blink through the stars he sees as he clutches his bleeding head in disbelief.
Beside him, Master Yu looks equally disbelieving, except more so for the finger-shaped bruises on Yuiko’s arm from where Xin Fu had grabbed her. “Have you lost your mind?!” he demands, and Xin Fu wants to kick him in the teeth for looking at him like that. “What could possibly provoke you to attack an unarmed girl?!”
“She’s… leaving signals! For someone to follow us! She’s marking the trees!” Xin Fu exclaims, pointing to the tree that she’d been slamming her rock against. “Clearly she’s a scam artist or something, trying to lull us into trusting her so that she and whoever she’s working with can rob us blind.”
“No!” Yuiko insists, when she hears, face streaked with tears. “No, I was just…” she motions to the tree, where a glistening trail of sticky-looking liquid bleeds from the wound she’d made. “Sap,” she admits, sheepishly. “I thought…I thought I’d surprise Yucchi and Xin Fu-sshi with it over breakfast. It’s really sweet and goes good with apples. My grandma used to make this for us when we were grumpy.”
Xin Fu blinks. “Uh…what?”
The look Yu gives him when they hear that almost, almost makes him cringe. “Sap,” he repeats, and makes the word sound poisonous.
Xin Fu scowls, rubbing his head. “It was suspicious, is all,” he manages, after a beat. “Anyone with half a brain would have thought…”
“Enough,” Master Yu interrupts, looking tired. “We’re going back to sleep. Yuiko, that was very thoughtful of you, but wasted on men like Xin Fu.”
Xin Fu sputters. “What the hell’s that supposed to me…”
“Good night, Xin Fu,” Master Yu says, in a tone that almost sounds dangerous.
He takes Yuiko by the hand and leads her back to their camp without another word.
Xin Fu watches them fade into the dark and tells himself he’s not sorry and everyone sucks.
~~~~~
If he wakes up extra early the following morning to collect some goddamn tree sap and to cut some goddamned apples, it’s because he feels like it and nothing else.
They finish breakfast before the sun is fully up and break camp in record time.
Master Yu doesn’t say a single word to him the entire time.
And it’s awesome.
Xin Fu steers their wagon back onto the road and wishes every day was as quiet as today.
~~~~~
Xin Fu thinks the silent treatment is some dirty pool.
He is pretty sure there are torture techniques more humane than this.
It’s not his fault that he’s a much more seasoned warrior than Master Yu, that he’s more alert and suspicious and full of survivor instincts.
Tree sap. Who the hell eats tree sap with breakfast? That was disgusting. Possibly even morally wrong.
He eyes Yuiko in the back, where she’s got her knees tucked up against her chest and is, for the most part, doing her best to look sad and pathetic while she keeps quiet.
Dirty fucking pool.
Xin Fu holds out until midday, as they’re pulling up to the foot of Hodoli Mountain, in search of her stupid damned circus dream.
“Uh,” he starts, and no one hears it over the creak of the wheels or the snuffling of the ostrich horses.
He scowls and sits up a little straighter in the driver’s seat. “Uh,” he tries again, louder this time.
No one says anything, but two sets of eyes turn to look at him. Master Yu still has that prissy look on his face that says Xin Fu reminds him of something he once had a maid empty from his chamber pot.
“So about last night,” Xin Fu pushes on, because clearly no one is going to throw him a goddamned bone here. “I might have…”
Yuiko perks up from the back just as they go over a particularly big bump in the road; he can see her out of the corner of her eye as she inches just a little bit forward in the wagon bed, like she’s anticipating something mind blowing is going to happen any second now.
“Yes?” Master Yu prompts, after Xin Fu trails off. He gives him a pointed look.
Xin Fu swallows the bad taste in his mouth and pushes on. “I might have jumped to some conclusions about stuff that was going on.”
Yuiko looks downright excited at this point, go figure.
“So yeah. I guess what I mean is I’m so…”
An arrow whizzes through the air and imbeds itself in Xin Fu’s thigh.
“…Ow,” he finishes instead, and curses as several figures surround the wagon from all sides. “Shit.”
“Yuiko, stay down,” Master Yu begins, as Xin Fu snaps the end of the arrow off with a muffled grunt. He turns to address the robbers, struggling to keep his voice even. “Gentlemen, I assure you, we have no money with us at the…”
Yuiko kicks him in the head.
Master Yu falls sideways, against Xin Fu’s shoulder. Xin Fu hisses when it jostles his bleeding leg.
“I knew it!” Xin Fu shouts, before shoving Master Yu off him.
Yuiko grins. “But c’mon, I had you fooled last night.”
Master Yu looks stricken. “Yuiko? Why?”
She pulls a bounty poster out of her back pocket and throws it at them. When Master Yu unrolls it and examines it, Xin Fu isn’t surprised to see a wildly inaccurate facsimile of their faces on it. “The Fire Nation high command is offering big money for two renegade earth benders that took out a contingent of soldiers last week. Thought I saw a resemblance there.”
Xin Fu is insulted. “That looks nothing like us.”
Yuiko shrugs. “Kinda? In the eyes maybe. I wasn’t sure at first either, but then Yucchi there confirmed it for me when he told me all about your exploits in Chosun Village.”
Master Yu pales. “So then…everything… you were marking the path for your men?”
She snorts and jumps gracefully from the wagon bed. “Nothing that simple. It was a message, Yucchi. About when and how to strike. Clever, right?”
“Ha,” Xin Fu feels the need to emphasize, even if it jostles his leg and makes it hurt. “Just… ha. Tree sap for breakfast. Like hell.”
Yuiko laughs at him. “Enjoy your victories while you can, I guess,” she confirms, before nodding to her men, who pull the notches on their bows back. The points of twenty arrows are aimed at their throats light up on her cue. Xin Fu grins at that, because it means he gets to kick the crap out of some fire benders today.
Master Yu seems less thrilled. “Yuiko, are you really? Just…just like this?”
She shrugs. “The poster does say dead or alive. Dead is just easier.”
She pauses to filch the last apple from their stores before getting out of the line of fire and joining her men on the ground. She bites into it cheerfully.
Xin Fu eyes Master Yu, who is starting to look less and less stricken and a little more something else the more he sees the evil that is Yuiko. Xin Fu feels himself grin a little bit. “Odds are ten to one, Yu.”
Master Yu adjusts his sleeves. “Is your leg okay?”
Xin Fu doesn’t deign to answer before he’ s gathering the dirt from the road into a hand and using it to crush the bolt tethering the ostrich horses to the wagon.
The sudden explosion of splintering wood sends the two nervous animals stampeding forward.
After today, Xin Fu thinks that Yuiko and her merry little band of bounty hunters will learn a very important lesson about trying to take down any earth bender at the foot of a fucking mountain.
~~~~~
Afterward, when Master Yu is preparing to pull the arrow head out of Xin Fu’s leg, he asks if this is really okay.
“Just do it,” Xin Fu grunts, his words hard to understand as he growls them out from around the piece of wood he’s biting on.
“Yes, of course.” Yu’s hands hover over his thigh for a few more moments, and Xin Fu has to fight back the urge to kick the idiot with his good leg. “Xin Fu,” he begins instead, and looks down at the ground. “I just wanted to say… I mean, for yelling at you earlier, and for not believing you… well, I just… I’m s…”
Xin Fu gives in to the urge and kicks him. Hard.
After that, Yu yelps and ends up ripping the arrow head out of his leg in retaliation.
Xin Fu screams a little, kicks him again, and spits the piece of wood in his mouth out at him just to hear him shriek about how disgusting that is.
As far as either of them is concerned, everything is back to normal.
~~~~~
4. What do you Noh
The last of their money runs out approximately three days after the solar eclipse that Master Yu had spent a good fifteen minutes marveling at for no good reason.
“What good is taking a bounty hunting gig if we use all the money we get from it trying to finish it?” Xin Fu mutters darkly to himself as he looks at his empty purse.
“Well, there’s still the other half that’s waiting for us once we bring Toph back,” Master Yu reminds him logically.
“Money we haven’t earned isn’t going to feed us today,” Xin Fu answers, and the dark aura sliding off of him as he walks through the busy market streets of Han Mi Village is enough to deter even the most seasoned looking bargain hunter from his or her path.
Master Yu scuttles along behind him, giving the occasional apologetic look for Xin Fu’s frightening behavior to frightened young women and wide-eyed children as they pass. His stomach rumbles occasionally as well, particularly whenever they encounter all the good smells from various food carts around the market. Before long, it feels like Xin Fu’s menacing aura is starting to dissolve into a more pathetic one in the face of all these meals they can’t currently afford.
Xin Fu stops in front of a display of barbequed fowl for a moment and looks truly mournful.
“We could send a messenger back to Gaoling and ask for an advance,” Master Yu offers tentatively after a beat.
Xin Fu bristles. “We can’t afford a messenger,” he grits out, before remembering himself and starting to walk again. He supposes they could rob some people, but given the fact that they’re currently wanted by the Fire Nation’s occupying troop probably means that they should shy away from drawing any unnecessary attention to themselves, or things like Yuiko or worse will be biting them in the ass every time they turn a corner.
“Well then maybe we should get a steady job for the time being,” Master Yu suggests next, like he thinks Xin Fu has ever had one.
Xin Fu snorts. “Where the hell did you get an idiotic idea like that?” he asks, right as Master Yu holds up a flier in front of his face. He frowns and swats it away instinctively.
“The local theater company is looking for help,” Master Yu informs him. “It’s just for a week, building sets for the premiere of their latest play.”
“That sounds stupid,” Xin Fu answers, just as they pass a vendor selling grilled fish skewers. He surreptitiously wipes at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
“It should be easy enough work, and I for one, would like to eat,” Master Yu sniffs. “Some of us have had honest work before, you know.”
“Bounty hunting is honest,” Xin Fu grunts. “Find someone worth something, kill them, and get the money. What’s not honest about that?”
“That,” Master Yu rejoins, “doesn’t always provide a full belly.” He straightens the flier a little, at the places it had become crumpled by Xin Fu’s hand. “And I for one, would like to eat sometime soon. Preferably with money that won’t land an entire platoon of Fire Nation soldiers on our front step.”
Before Xin Fu can tell him they don’t have a damned front step, he slips the flier into his sleeve and heads in the indicated direction of the town’s traditional theater.
The next batch of fish skewers comes off of the grill at exactly that moment.
Xin Fu grumbles to himself and grudgingly follows.
~~~~~
The Yes-Noh Players, from what Xin Fu can tell thus far, are a bunch of limp-wristed, delicate-looking pretty boys who like to affect long-suffering airs and spend too much time preening in front of the mirror and pretending they’re something better than they are.
“You’ll be working under our set designer Foo Yun and the director, Master Shoon. Just do what Foo Yun says; most of your job will be the heavy lifting parts and the like. Seems like something you two can handle,” the assistant who hires them explains later that afternoon, as he shows them around the inner workings of the humble theater, which is busy with the sounds of song rehearsals, idle chatter, and the occasional crash of choreographed fighting. “You might have to do some painting and a few artsy type things here and there, but nothing too complicated. The artists will handle the more intricate set pieces.”
“I’m a very good painter. I even had designs of being an actor once before as well,” Master Yu assures the man with one of those professionally obsequious smiles that had probably endeared him to the likes of Lao Bei Fong in the first place. Xin Fu thinks it makes him look even stupider than usual, but doesn’t say anything out loud because he suddenly smells food.
The assistant-his name is Chan or something- doesn’t notice that he’s lost Xin Fu’s attention completely. “Look, a quick word of advice, because I don’t want you to end up like the two guys we just lost yesterday. Just so long as you do what Foo Yun says and don’t talk back, you’ll be fine. We keep having people quit because they can’t take the abuse, but this is the theater, you know? Even if you’re not on stage, you have to expect that you’re going to get shit on a little bit.” Pause. “There’s also going to be quite a bit of overtime, consequently, since we’re so behind. Too many people quitting too fast. We’ll pay for the extra hours of course, and you two are welcome to sleep in the stands during your breaks.”
“Hmmm,” Xin Fu grunts, noncommittally. His nose twitches towards the stage, where all the good food smells are coming from.
“Crew’s on lunch right now,” Chan or something explains apologetically as they hit the backstage area proper, where two large buffet tables are piled high with inviting looking bamboo steamers, “but feel free to get something to eat with everyone else and afterward, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the group.”
“Lovely,” Master Yu declares, in high spirits as a crash in the background abruptly sends the man scurrying off to do damage control. Xin Fu stares at the lunch spread and surreptitiously wipes the corner of his mouth again.
He’s suddenly in such a good mood that he doesn’t even cuff his companion when Master Yu turns to him with an arched eyebrow and a smug little smile and says, “Wasn’t this a wonderful idea after all?”
“Dumplings,” Xin Fu answers inarticulately, and strides forward to the buffet tables with the air of a conqueror that has just discovered his army holds the high ground in a virgin land full of primitive natives.
He shoves a pale actor with shaggy hair out of the way and promptly proceeds to clean out an entire tower of steamed shrimp bao.
“I’ll take your drooling as a yes,” Master Yu declares from behind him, as he takes his own plate and begins picking through the noodles for all the seafood bits covered in sauce. Xin Fu takes his scallops.
The actors wonder who the hell they are. Some of them marvel at Xin Fu’s manliness; the shaggy-haired actor looks a little bit in love.
~~~~~
Foo Yun is crazy. Not as crazy as Master Shoon, but apparently directors are supposed to be the craziest of the crazies or they aren’t doing their job right. At least, that’s what everyone on set seems to take as the consensus, and Xin Fu figures they’d know crazy better than him because everything about theater seems loony and pointless.
“Bigger!” Master Shoon shouts at them, in hysterical tones that are growing as familiar to Xin Fu as the incredibly fruity dialogue he hears Min Ho and Jun Li, the actor playing the warrior prince, run in the background over and over again, hour after hour, during the past six days. “Everything must be bigger!” the art director demands hotly, stomping his feet like a child in the middle of a tantrum.
Xin fu sits in front of an unfinished piece of forest scenery and paints giant leaves on some giant bushes. The director throws his arms up in the air rapidly, like he’s having some sort of fit. “Nature is a major character in this play and must be represented on a scale comparable to its importance! It is the haven in which the couple’s love blooms! No matter the harsh environments they encounter, it is in amongst the elements in which their relationship is fostered and grows strong!”
“More color!” Foo Yun follows, arms careening in a similar, slightly less dramatic (but still dramatic) manner to Master Shoon’s movements. “I like red!”
Xin Fu sighs and turns back to the red paint. He paints a flower.
“Five petals!” Foo Yun shrieks, when Xin Fu only paints four. “Don’t be a simpleton, Xin Fu.”
“How about I kill you in the face?” Xin Fu answers, though it’s muffled through Master Yu’s hand suddenly being clamped over his mouth.
“Yes, five is a beautiful number,” Master Yu agrees with the director.
“It’s an ugly number!” Foo Yun snaps back. “But life isn’t always pretty. Sometimes life is jagged and cold and terrible. We have to paint realistically. Five petals! Nature is a capricious bitch!”
Xin Fu bites Master Yu’s finger.
“It is our last day! There will be clay pot rice for lunch and then we will be given our paychecks,” Master Yu hisses in his ear before he can throw his hammer at the sighing art director’s head. Xin Fu grumbles and paints an extra petal on his stupid red flower.
In the background, his eyes narrow when Min Ho, the actor for the fairy princess (go figure), peeks shyly around a corner to watch.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” Xin Fu barks at him, and startles him into disappearing behind the scaffolding with a yelp. “Get back to work, fairy!”
“He admires you,” Master Yu shushes him, as he paints great, messy streaks of green through their forest scene. “You should have more patience.”
“He looks like a woman,” Xin Fu shoots back, one eye closed as he attempts to paint a yellow center in his five-petal red flower without smudging things.
“This is an all male theater troupe,” Yu reminds him. “Someone has to look like a woman.”
Xin Fu smirks. “You mean, someone other than you?” Too easy.
Master Yu just makes an unimpressed expression back at him and tells him his flower looks like a bunch of balloons. Xin Fu jabs him with the painted end of his brush.
In the background, he thinks he hears Min Ho sigh.
~~~~~
When Foo Yun returns from instructing the crafts people about how he wants the boat design to look for the fairy princess’s funeral a little while later, he sees Xin Fu and Master Yu’s finished forest piece and throws a tantrum.
“All wrong!” he screams, tearing at his hair. He kicks the base of the set piece as if the image depicted on it has personally offended him and his entire bloodline somehow. “We want impressionism, not romanticism! Weren’t you listening to me?!”
The other sounds of the stage cease abruptly, as artisans and actors pause to peer curiously from their activities to watch the art director in his latest fit of creative hysterics.
Min Ho peeks out from behind the curtain, while an annoyed looking Jun Li does the same, hand resting on Min Ho’s shoulder.
Xin Fu is confused. “Five petals,” he points out to Foo Yun, gesturing to the red flowers scattered about the forest floor. “That’s what you wanted.”
“Five ugly petals are as useless as four!” Foo Yun looks even more enraged at the thought; he kicks the base of the piece again. “Useless!”
The scenery gives a pathetic sort of groan.
Min Ho darts forward, looking at the enraged set designer fretfully. “I…I think they did a very good job, Master Foo Yun,” he begins, in that soft, tremulous voice of his. “It’s a very um, hip…new style?”
“You’re a moron!” Foo Yun shouts back, still kicking at the base of the piece like he wants to beat it out of its ugly, horrible existence. “The only reason no one’s killed you for your uselessness is because your face looks pretty in a wig and dress!”
“Hey now,” Jun Li growls, striding forward in an impressive attempt to back up the man playing his lover, “that’s uncalled for.” For a moment, he really does look like a fearsome warrior prince.
“You’re even worse, muscle-head!” Foo Yun yells, the vehemence and frequency of his kicks increasing the more he’s questioned. “I am an artist!”
The scaffolding wobbles.
Xin Fu sees it and thinks that he probably shouldn’t have let Master Yu do the hammering earlier.
“Um,” he begins, while Master Yu attempts to go forth and intervene.
Xin Fu automatically grabs the back of Master Yu’s collar, just as the scenery finally gives a last, protesting groan and tips forward.
People scream.
~~~~~
“How did this happen? What are we going to do?!” Director Shoon wails some hours later, when Min Ho hobbles back to the stage with a broken leg and Jun Li returns with a similarly broken arm.
The bandages wrapped around Foo Yun’s head don’t seem to be holding him back.
“This is what happens when we work with amateurs!” the set designer raves.
“We’re opening tomorrow!!” the director shrieks back, going octaves higher than Foo Yun could ever hope to reach.
“We’ll just have to open with the understudies,” Chan or something suggests, tentatively. “Just for the first few weeks.”
“I fired them, imbecile,” Director Shoon snaps at him. “They didn’t understand the characters at all, so I sent them back to their podunk village’s dinner theater hall across the water.” Pause. “Plus we couldn’t afford to keep them on anyway. We’re over budget!”
“That’s because no one wants to see your hack work!” Foo Yun snipes.
“It’s because we keep having to redo set pieces!” Shoon howls in reply.
“I hate you!”
“I hate you more!”
Shoon slaps Foo Yun. Foo Yun swipes back at him by hitting him in the chest a few times.
About five seconds later they’re making out against the wall.
Xin Fu and Master Yu look confused. Xin Fu is also kind of grossed out.
Chan or something throws his hands up in the air as if this sort of stuff happens all the time. “No understudies and our two leads are out for the entire opening month. What are we supposed to do? We’ve already sold tickets.”
Xin Fu snorts. “Can’t be difficult to give those five people back their money.”
“We’ve sold more than five tickets,” Chan or something snaps back a bit testily. “In fact, the mayor is showing up for opening night.” He looks distraught. “This isn’t going to go over well.”
Xin Fu shrugs. “Just go find a couple of gay-looking schmucks with good memory. Not like this stuff is hard. ‘My father wishes to use the power of your kingdom to conquer his enemies but I love you too much to watch you fade away’ blah, blah, blah. Anyone here’s heard the whole stupid play so many times they can probably recite it backwards by now.”
Everyone is looking at him funny at this point, even Master Yu. He glares. “What?”
Even Foo Yun and Director Shoon have stopped making out.
“Well,” Min Ho offers after a moment, weakly, “He does look like he’d fit into Jun Li’s costume.”
~~~~~
Director Shoon offers them a lot of money out of his own pocket to just do the opening night show. “It’ll take at least a day and a half to go and fetch the understudies from the island,” Chan or something assures them, “but you definitely won’t have to do more than one show.”
Director Shoon dangles the money in front of them. It clanks in a happy, money-filled kind of way, and Xin Fu and Master Yu both realize that there’s a lot of potential hot meals in that bag.
Xin Fu eventually snatches the pouch from Director Shoon’s hands. “Alright, but we order barbeque for lunch too.”
“Deal!” the director agrees, looking incredibly relieved.
Xin Fu pockets the money while Master Yu kind of just gapes at him. He shrugs. “How hard can this be?”
~~~~~
“I’m not gay enough for this!” Xin Fu protests seven minutes later, as a war helmet decorated in fake jewels gets shoved onto his head.
Master Yu just glares at him as he gets wrapped in his shimmery fairy princess costume. “I am very mad at you right now,” is all he says.
Xin Fu scoffs. “Thought you wanted to be an actor once. Isn’t this your dream?”
“It was not,” Master Yu sniffs, “to be a fairy princess.”
Xin Fu manages a grin, somewhere from under his ridiculous armor. “But you sparkle so bright in your pretty dress.”
Master Yu ignores him.
“They have good chemistry,” Foo Yun and Director Shoon both say in the background, and it is the first thing they have agreed on in months.
~~~~~
Xin Fu’s eyes go really big about halfway through the first dress rehearsal. “This script has kissing.”
“Oh so he can read,” Master Yu huffs, in his pretty, pretty princess clothes.
Xin Fu looks at the rest of the cast very carefully. “I’m not kissing him.”
Min Ho frowns. “But…didn’t you say you already knew most of the story by heart?”
Xin Fu glares, making the young actor jerk backwards and blush all at once. “Yeah because we could hear you rehearsing from the back. It wasn’t like I was watching this crap.”
Min Ho blushes brighter. “Oh.”
Chan or something looks like he’s on the verge of having an aneurism. “What if we change it to a passionate embrace?”
Both Director Shoon and Foo Yun look scandalized. “It’s a love story!”
“With all due respect, Director,” Master Yu begins, “it’s not going to look very much like one if I have to pretend to enjoy kissing Xin Fu.”
“I…think it would be lovely,” Min Ho pipes up, tremulously.
“This is why you disgust me,” Xin Fu tells him, making him look comically heartbroken before he apologizes to Xin Fu instinctively.
“Just… try,” Director Shoon insists. Pause. “We’ll order extra ribs.”
They do try, except by then, everyone’s already lost their appetites from watching Xin Fu and Master Yu make horrible, stuttered kissy-face attempts to get their mouths within five inches of one another’s and not reflexively strike out with a fist.
“Why the hell would you have a kissing scene in a play and only have men in the play?” Xin Fu demands around a stack of short ribs and a tall mug of beer. “Doesn’t make sense.”
Min Ho sighs.
~~~~~
“Pretend he’s money,” Director Shoon suggests.
“Or shumai,” Min Ho adds, trying to be helpful.
“This is impossible,” Jun Li mutters, as Master Yu sighs dreamily in Xin Fu’s arms while somehow managing to wince all at the same time.
“I can see why you never did end up becoming an actor,” Chan or something tells Master Yu as he starts to sweat more and more under the collar the closer it gets to curtain call.
“And here I thought you two were already together,” Foo Yun sighs, hands on his hips. “Weird.”
A moment.
“That’s it!” Chan or something shouts suddenly, face lighting up with the relief of epiphany.
Everyone stares at him.
“UST!” he says, clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “The only way to make this love story even more gripping is to force the audience to imagine what we aren’t showing them!”
Director Shoon looks at him skeptically. “Aren’t you just supposed to pick up my laundry?”
“What does UST stand for?” Foo Yun adds.
“Unresolved Sexual Tension. It’s about the anticipation of the thing, rather than the actual thing.”
Director Shoon doesn’t seem impressed. “Did you pick up my laundry?”
Chan sighs. “Just… this is all we have time for, okay?!”
Director Shoon sighs. “Okay fine. Can you two at least give each other smoldering looks?”
“Yes, they can,” everyone on set confirms for them.
Xin Fu hates them all.
~~~~~
The love scene changes into an intense stare off from across the bridge between worlds.
Throughout the play Xin Fu finds himself getting strangely into the character of the prince, feeling annoyed when he is annoyed, feeling confused and torn and impatient when the character does.
It’s a strange experience, one that Min Ho had tried to explain in his halting ways during the rehearsals earlier, as Xin Fu had sneered at him and called him names for trying to share.
But that had been hours ago, under the scrutiny of the cast and crew, as the sounds of hammers and saws finishing the last of the set pieces had echoed around them as they’d practiced.
Now, with the lights down low in the auditorium and with all the props and effects in place, Xin Fu can see how this whole thing is actually kind of a rush after all, kind of like Earth Rumble VI had been, except with less blood and more shiny (if slightly less ridiculous) outfits.
“My father wishes to use the power of your kingdom to conquer his enemies but I refuse to watch you fade away,” Xin Fu as the prince tells a shackled, dress-wearing Master Yu gruffly, as he begins to slice through the princess’s bonds. “Get out of here, before he finds us. There’s no time.” His fingers feel tense as he saws through the ropes around Master Yu’s wrists, almost like he’s rushing, knowing that the man playing the king will appear any second now. It’s strange, the rush of telling the story, of becoming some haughty prince willing to sacrifice so much for one person.
“I don’t want to leave,” Master Yu answers for the princess, voice high-pitched and warbling slightly. He stands forward in those flowing gowns, looking determined, challenging. Xin Fu can almost feel his breath on his cheek. “Your father will punish you for betraying him.”
Xin Fu glares darkly and for some reason, it feels like his heart is beating faster in his chest when he hears those words.
They drift closer together involuntarily then, breathing each other’s air, stubborn, heated glares between the two of them as Xin Fu takes the first step forward, as Master Yu takes the second. Xin Fu can see the bob of the other man’s throat when he swallows.
He can also hear it when the entire audience, as one, slips forward to the edges of their seats, holding their breaths as the prince and princess drift closer and closer together.
The baying of the king’s hounds erupts across the stage and makes everyone jump, prince and princess included. They stumble backwards, remembering themselves. Both look a little bit breathless.
And Xin Fu reaches out and pushes the princess backwards before she can say another word, urging her over the bridge and towards her kingdom. “Go,” he growls, voice gravely and half-wrecked.
The audience shivers.
The princess disappears in the mist.
Xin Fu feels kind of gay.
~~~~~
In the dressing room afterwards, while Director Shoon and Assistant Director Chan are receiving their accolades from the mayor, Xin Fu and Master Yu sit down to remove their makeup.
“That was… an interesting experience,” Master Yu begins after a moment, voice still slightly tremulous.
Xin Fu stares pointedly down at the washing bin he’s scrubbing his face over. “Uh,” he answers, and then dunks his face in the water again.
“You did surprisingly well, all things considered,” Yu pushes, sounding like he’s trying to act superior but really just coming off as kind of shy.
“Uh, you too, I guess,” Xin Fu answers, and wonders what the hell kind of scrubbing it’s going to take to get this black stuff lining his eyes off.
Master Yu beams. “Thank you.”
The silence gets kind of awkward again.
Master Yu hands Xin Fu the eye makeup remover. “Though I maintain that you should never endeavor to become a professional actor,” he finishes, after a beat.
Xin Fu grabs the bottle from him and glowers. “I’m not nearly gay enough,” he shoots back, and finally manages to successfully remove the black gunk from around his eyes.
Master Yu snorts in laughter, and the silence after that is the way it’s always supposed to be.
~~~~~
5. The Return
The end of a century long war also signifies the end of Xin Fu and Master Yu’s employment under the honorable (and very wealthy) Lao Bei Fong.
The news comes with a dragon hawk the morning after the town they’re staying in has held a particularly raucous freedom celebration, some days after the Fire Lord’s defeat.
Xin Fu is violently hung over from the rounds of free drinks the local tavern had passed out upon hearing the news of Fire Lord Zuko’s coronation but finds himself waking up to the light scratching against the window anyway; the groan Master Yu gives from the second bed tells him that he can’t count on the big whiner baby to answer it for him, even if he’s the one sleeping closer to the window.
Xin Fu rolls out of his bed and limps groggily across the room, throwing the shutters open. The dragon hawk squawks and flaps its wings once before Xin Fu reaches out and opens the carrying tube on its back.
He takes the neatly rolled piece of paper bearing the Bei Fong insignia and opens it.
He rubs his eyes tiredly and begins to read.
There is a bunch of formal random crap at the beginning, followed by one line that’s the only one that really matters.
‘Toph has come home. We will no longer be requiring you or Master Yu’s services.’
Xin Fu stares at it the words for a little while longer, as if he thinks that his vision is somehow still blurry from drinking the night before and that if he squints a little or changes the angle he’s reading a little, the words will fade and change before resolving themselves into something more appealing, something that has to do with a big fat bonus and the promise of double the wealth initially offered once the mission is accomplished.
“What are you standing there, staring like an idiot for?” Master Yu groans five minutes later, when the words on the paper are still the same despite Xin Fu’s steadily growing sobriety. “Shut the window. The light hurts my eyes.”
“Close them then,” Xin Fu snaps back on instinct, and the unsolicited vitriol in his voice when he says it actually gives Master Yu pause to sit up and regard him curiously.
“Is something the matter?” he asks after a moment, rubbing at gummy eyes and smacking his mouth against the foul tastes he finds there after a night of drinking this small town brewer’s homemade beer.
Xin Fu wordlessly tosses the letter to Master Yu on his way through the door and trudges outside to brush his teeth.
~~~~~
“I suppose,” Master Yu says over a late breakfast that morning, “that this means I should return to teaching.” He sips at his tea thoughtfully, looking better than he had earlier but still sporting a dazed sort of glazed-over look in his eye that suggests the hangover continues to linger.
Xin Fu shovels eggs into his mouth and says something incoherent about maybe investing in an Earth Rumble VII. “It’s gonna have an obstacle course. With crushing.”
Master Yu frowns and tells him to chew with his mouth closed. “You look like an animal.”
Xin Fu glowers at his constant nagging and declares, “I sure as hell won’t miss this.”
Master Yu agrees with a small huff and finishes his congee.
~~~~~
They pack their things in silence. Xin Fu can’t remember which food pack is his and which one is Yu’s so he doesn’t touch either of them, waiting for Yu to pick his up first.
They finish packing everything else before looking intently at the food packs laid out on the floor. After a moment of indecision Xin Fu decides to just take one.
Master Yu does at the same time, and of course they’re both reaching for the leftmost one, of course.
“It’s mine,” Xin Fu says.
Master Yu hesitates, before withdrawing his hand. “Oh.” He takes the pack on the right, shoulders it, and grabs his bed roll without another word.
Xin Fu isn’t sure why he expects an argument; he feels oddly disappointed when he doesn’t get one.
Master Yu just makes a few strange clucking noises and precedes him out the door.
~~~~~
“Stop following me.”
Master Yu’s ostrich horse is a few paces behind his on the road. “We live in the same town, Xin Fu.”
Xin Fu grumbles in embarrassment. “I know that! It’s still weird.”
“We’ve been traveling together for over a year. I don’t understand why this is strange.”
“Just…stop following me. I don’t know if I like the idea of an idiot like you at my back.”
Silence.
Xin Fu chances a look over his shoulder, thinking that Master Yu is pouting because now he’s horribly offended or something.
Instead, the former teacher looks thoughtful, in a hesitant sort of way. “If you’d like,” he offers, after a beat, “I could ride beside you.”
Xin Fu’s makes a weird noise in the back of his throat in response, one that he hadn’t meant to make at all, but that Master Yu interprets as “Yes,” anyway.
He pulls his ostrich horse up alongside Xin Fu’s, they ride together in silence a little while longer, and eventually, eventually, Master Yu turns to look at him out of the corner of his eye and say, “I am pretty certain you have my food pack.”
Xin Fu growls “Stuff it,” in response, and just like that, the weird uncomfortable atmosphere of the morning is suddenly gone.
~~~~~
Halfway back to Gaoling, they come across a sign post at a fork in the road. On it is a WANTED poster, for a General Shinu, formerly of Lord Ozai’s war council.
Xin Fu studies the likeness on the poster for a moment. “That’s the asshole who wanted to bring over more occupying troops, huh?”
Master Yu nods, looking a bit put out at the reminder the picture serves. “We should move on,” he reminds Xin Fu, as the daylight hours wane.
Xin Fu looks at the arrow pointing south toward Gaoling, and then to the poster, stating the General’s last known whereabouts as Chin Village, to the north and west.
“Well?” Master Yu asks, sounding hesitant, almost hopeful.
It’s enough.
Xin Fu grins and yanks the poster off the sign post.
They ride west.
END
(Previous)