[Avatar Fic] Broken Promises
Been sitting on this for pretty much a month before turning it over to a few other people to look over. It's as ready as I'm going to make it and does everything I want it to do. So. Up it goes.
Title: Broken Promises
Characters: Jeong Jeong, Zhao, Torao (OC), Osamu (OC), Piandao, Iroh
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4900+
Summary: Jeong Jeong does not enjoy teaching, but he does what he can to make it worthwhile for both his students and himself. Unfortunately, his failures are more spectacular than his successes.
Author's Notes: This begins twenty-three years pre-canon. Jeong Jeong is on the long slide towards his lowest points and ultimately his desertion.
---
They sent him two students, both boys barely nineteen-years-old, both only a year out of training. Surely, Commodore Jeong Jeong thought, there were other firebending masters to train them.
But they were here, and there was nothing much he could do about it.
Torao was a willowy young man, black hair pulled up into a soldier's topknot. Li Zhao was broader and more muscular, auburn hair also pulled up into a soldier's topknot. They stood next to each other comfortably - they had known each other since at least Basic, according to the dossiers he'd been given with this assignment. A daimyo's second-son and one of the rare firebending members of the Li clan both deserved a firebending master to make the most of them.
Jeong Jeong didn't see why it had to be him. Training pulled him away from his ship for indefinite periods. Battles were lost that he was certain he could have won.
He looked at both of the young men silently. This is not going to be a waste of my time, he promised himself. I will make them firebenders like the world has never seen.
"We will start with concentration," he decided. Utterly basic work, but if they did not have the proper foundations, they could never achieve the kind of greatness they should.
Both of their faces fell, and Jeong Jeong wondered if he had ever been this young and stupid.
"Basic stance!" He barked out, and the young men dropped into it automatically. "Wider!"
Their legs slid out wider, and Torao shifted himself back so he and Zhao weren't in a line anymore. It kept their legs from touching and, more interestingly to Jeong-Jeong, put the daimyo's son behind the Li.
"Concentrate," he commanded. "The flame in the void."
A sharp nod from the two young men, and their expressions tightened as they entered the most basic meditation taught to all firebenders in the military. A flame, their own fire, surrounded by an emptiness. If anything intruded upon that emptiness, it was to be fed into the fire.
Jeong Jeong turned and walked away.
"Sir?" Zhao called after him.
"Concentrate!"
***
It took him three weeks to evaluate them. He wasted the first week and a half on them together. All that told him was that they shored up each other's weaknesses. Obviously they had known each other since well before Basic to firebend so well together with no formal training in those tactics.
It told him nothing useful to their training.
Jeong Jeong split them up over the next week and a half, working them both to exhaustion to find the flaws. Then he ordered them back to concentration exercises.
If looks could kill, he would be so much smoldering ash, he thought wryly.
All things considered, Torao was barely a hearth-fire. Jeong Jeong could teach him how to find more power for his flames, but he would never be more than mediocre at best. Except he had the same nasty trick all the firebenders of his bloodline did - white-hot flames. They were small, little more than darts, but they were devastating if used well.
Jeong Jeong would have to train him to use them well.
It was a pity the young man did not have more power. He had an innate sense of control that put him on par to learn lightning. Without the raw power, though, it was worthless to teach him.
Zhao was a forest fire - powerful and wildly uncontrolled. At least he did not have an especial fascination with fire. One less thing for Jeong Jeong to worry about. He would have to give the bulk of his attention to Zhao, break the young man of his carelessness, force him under control. If he could manage that, he could learn lightning.
If Jeong Jeong could train them both out of their individual flaws, he could begin training them both together. Torao would likely always be in Zhao's shadow, but there was little that could be done about that.
***
If Zhao did not stop asking when they were going to learn how to actually firebend, Jeong Jeong was going to give him a pair of burn scars to match the cuts on his own face.
Three months of training in a navy port had finally worn on his nerves enough, and he'd dragged both young men off on a month-long wilderness expedition. It would do them all some good to get out in the field and have to actually work.
They were a week in the field now, far enough from the front that they were unlikely to encounter enemies. Not impossible, however, which was why Jeong Jeong had dragged them out to these abandoned rice-paddies.
Torao held a dart of white fire on each fingertip, joining and separating them into a greater blaze in time with his breathing. He took to control practice like a turtleduck to water, slipping so easily into concentration these days that Jeong Jeong planned to move up to recitations when they returned to the port. Maintaining his fire and breathing while reciting fairy tales ought to neatly divide his concentration.
Zhao held a smoldering leaf between his hands, expression clearly irritated. But he stood in the proper stance and he breathed in the proper manner, so Jeong Jeong saw no reason to correct him.
A hunting bird cried above, and all three of them looked up to see a messenger-hawk stoop in a dive. Zhao's leaf burst into flame. The hawk alighted on Torao's shoulder, and the young man visibly cringed as the heavy claws dug through the cloth of his tunic. His white flames flickered, and almost died, then settled at a lower level.
"You have a message," Zhao drawled at his friend, his leaf burning merrily but not being totally consumed.
It was, Jeong Jeong supposed, better than where he'd been when they first started doing this exercise.
He went to get the hawk-handlers' gloves out of his supplies, pulled them on, then called to the bird. Torao shot him a pathetically grateful look as the hawk flitted over to land on his glove.
Blood oozed from Torao's shoulder, and he extinguished his flames and pressed the heel of his hand to the wounds. "I would have worn a padded shirt if I thought anyone was going to send me a message by hawk."
"The world rarely acts as you expect," Jeong Jeong admonished him as he took the message from the hawk. "Here."
Torao unrolled the small length of paper and read it quickly. His shoulders slumped. "My brother is dead. Fever."
"Well," Zhao said softly, and his leaf puffed into ash. "That means you inherit, doesn't it?"
***
Torao's fire guttered.
"It's normal after a death," Jeong Jeong said after the young man cracked Zhao across the face in frustration. "Give it a week or two and your fire will come back."
A week became a month. A month became four. No red fire sparked between Torao's hands, only white fire, and that was barely a candle-flame. Jeong Jeong focused his attention on the young man, forcing him through power and breathing exercises that left Torao dizzy and dazed. That was all the effect it had on Torao, and if Jeong Jeong did not know the young man was doing the exercises exactly as told, he would have thought Torao was wasting their time.
Once, and only once, Zhao yelled at him, his arm around Torao's shoulders, a fan of flame in his other hand. Torao looked pale and drawn, his eyes not focusing, his head and hands twitching ever so slightly with little shakes.
"You can't keep doing this to him!" Zhao snarled. "He isn't some damn engine that just needs to be readjusted! I'm your student too, you bastard, and you're breaking him and ignoring me!"
Torao remained silent, eyes staring past Jeong Jeong's shoulder.
"Extinguish that," Jeong Jeong ordered.
"Make me."
Well. He wasn't going to tolerate that sort of behavior from a student.
After that night, Zhao didn't defy Jeong Jeong again over how he trained Torao.
Another messenger-hawk came for Torao a few weeks later. The young man read it, then stared off into the distance, the strip of paper between his fingers and the hawk perched on his padded shoulder.
Finally he said, "They moved up the wedding. Father wants me to return to the Fire Nation as soon as possible to marry Lady Ran of Red Chrysanthemum Island. To ensure there will be an heir."
Zhao made a questioning sound.
Torao glanced at him. "I'm not going to stop being a soldier just because it's inconvenient to the Firelord for a daimyo's heir to earn military glory. But I must take the risks as well. It would be very bad if I died with no children." He turned and offered a bow to Jeong Jeong. "Master, may I?"
"Of course," Jeong Jeong said brusquely. "Go and make yourself ready."
Torao came to see him that night, bowing once again. "Master," he said before Jeong Jeong could speak, "With all due respect, I will not be returning to train under you. Until I find my fire again, there is nothing you can teach me. I would be better served learning to use a sword."
Jeong Jeong stared at him and thought, I have failed this man. I have wasted what should have been a bright, deadly young firebender.
He fell back on the habits of a lifetime, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. "I know a swordmaster," he said in answer. "I will write you a letter of introduction."
"Thank you, Master Jeong Jeong."
***
"It's been eight months since I came here to study," Zhao said, anger tightening his voice. "We've worked on my control every day. I think I know what I'm doing by now."
Jeong Jeong sat in a ring of candles, meditating on the roll of a ship at sea. Or he had been until his student interrupted him. He cracked one eye open, the candle-flames flaring a bit higher. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, and he snarled at Zhao more than he meant to. "Prove it. Go away, and do not bother me with this question for a month."
Zhao's eyes narrowed, but the young man bowed and left.
Perhaps there was something to what he believed after all. Perhaps Jeong Jeong had accomplished something with this one, even though he had failed so badly with Torao.
The inside of his eyelids turned red as the candle-flames roared into pillars.
***
A month later, Zhao had not brought up the topic again and assiduously worked on his control-training without complaint. Jeong Jeong had to grudgingly admit the young man had finally learned self-control.
Technique in firebending was as much personal preference as actual technique. Training anyone in anything beyond basic fireblasts was an exercise in frustration even with the standardized groundwork Basic put into all soldiers. Jeong Jeong had endured it before, so he knew to expect it to make him gnash his teeth.
Zhao didn't.
Which was part of why this kind of training worked so well. It brought out power in firebenders they would never have believed they possessed.
Damn him, he should not have let Torao slip through his fingers!
Zhao struggled and mastered forms, and when he did not struggle, Jeong Jeong forced him to perfect those techniques. Great gouts of fire came easily to Zhao; it was refining and limiting them that Jeong Jeong had to break him into the habits of. He would not allow this young man to walk away as anything less than a firebending master in his own right.
"Fire is destruction," he admonished often. "Control it so you control what you destroy. Unnecessary destruction brings only pain and grief."
Zhao's control slipped. He snarled at other soldiers in the mess hall, his tea kept boiling over, and he leaked heat like a furnace.
A bit more violent than normal, but nothing Jeong Jeong wasted time worrying about.
Zhao was good. Not great, not yet, but Jeong Jeong saw the potential of it in him. As long as he could keep himself under control, with his innate power... Zhao could come to serve with Prince Lu Ten someday, just as Jeong Jeong himself served with Iroh whenever the prince took to the seas.
If Zhao and Lu Ten could stand each other.
Torao should have been here, he thought with some regret. The candles he meditated with flared and danced. With Torao, the two young men would have goaded each other to greatness, they would already fly, they would know lightning-
The candles erupted in pillars of fire, and he extinguished them with hardly a thought.
At least Piandao's letters spoke well of his swordsmanship.
What a waste.
***
One morning, Zhao's tea-cup cracked. Heat damage. Not a common problem with firebending soldiers, but not rare either.
If it had happened again the next day, Jeong Jeong would have worried. But it did not, and if his student and several of the other soldiers stationed in the port happened to have bruises and black eyes, well, brawling wasn't uncommon. Knowing Zhao, he'd invited it.
"Fire is a hungry thing," he said to Zhao as they worked on fire-whips. "It devours everything it can. We are firebenders, we carry fire in our souls. We hunger. Be aware of this. Listen to it. Never let it startle you."
Zhao nodded. "Yes, master."
"Do not have only one hunger in your spirit, Zhao. Take up other pursuits, strive for many things. Or you will find your fire consuming yourself."
Zhao gritted his teeth, eyes narrowing as he focused on his fire-whip. "Yes, master."
That night, a letter came for Zhao as it always did this time of week. Torao and he happily spent their pay on bribes to keep their letters going with the speediest couriers. Never, not once, had Jeong Jeong failed to see Zhao drop everything in favor of those letters.
Zhao had perhaps gotten a bit slower in answering them, but the young man was training hard.
Jeong Jeong read over battle-reports in the cramped office he'd laid claim to, ignoring Zhao as his student read the letter. Until the candles in the office billowed into pillars of flame, and the lanterns exploded in balls of fire. He lashed out automatically, extinguishing all the fires and plunging them into darkness. "Zhao!"
"She's pregnant," Zhao said, furious and hateful.
"I don't care," Jeong Jeong snapped. He had no tolerance for the jealousies and affairs of young fools, and he would not let Zhao set them both back by months. Bad enough to have wasted those four months on Torao. "Get yourself under control."
"Yes, master," Zhao snarled, and fire sprang in his hands. He cupped it and let himself out of the office.
His letter lay on the floor, burned beyond readability.
***
They trained in a stone arena, because training firebenders around anything flammable was beyond foolish. Fire Nation soldiers built them as a matter of course in a base occupied for any extended length of time.
"Fire consumes," Jeong Jeong lectured. "It wants to lose control. But you are its master, not its slave."
Zhao raised his eyes to look at him, expression conflicted and then abruptly completely furious.
The dust in the air exploded.
Heat hit Jeong Jeong like an Earth soldier's hammer. He screwed his eyes shut and clamped his lips together tightly. His clothes and hair caught and ignited for just a heartbeat until his own firebending shoved the other fire away. It responded too easily, wild fire rather than a firebender's flames. That made Jeong Jeong's jaw tighten, and he had to drag himself back from the brink of providing more fuel for the fire.
It took longer than he wanted to extinguish the fire, and when he opened his eyes, Zhao stood untouched.
"Well," the young man said quietly. "That was impressive."
"You said you were under control," Jeong Jeong said, taking care with his tone.
Zhao shrugged. "Do you think I could do that again?"
"You lied to me." It was a bitter idea. He almost did not want to believe it, except for the proof shown by the scorched arena.
"You believed me." Zhao turned and walked away, fire dancing around his shoulders like a dragonlet.
***
Jeong Jeong returned to his ship.
"No more students," he told Prince Iroh.
"Perhaps one more...?"
"No!"
***
A year after Zhao, Jeong Jeong was forced to take on a new student.
Prince Iroh delivered the orders in person. "Osamu is a good young man," he commented as Jeong Jeong stared at him. "He needs proper training, and you have an excellent track record with students."
"He's not even a soldier. He's a daimyo's first-son, he can't be a soldier." His jaw hurt. Orders, actual orders, to train a student as a master firebender. From the Firelord himself.
"He won't be a soldier," Iroh corrected gently. "But his family is... important."
Politics. Jeong Jeong sat down slowly, staring at the prince. They were dragging him away from his command, from his ship, because of filthy, twisted politics and favors. Money. Politics involving the daimyos always came down to money.
"I will do my best," he gritted out, because it was expected of him.
***
Osamu of Buyou no Long Shima was a whip-thin young man, auburn hair pulled back in a nobleman's topknot. It looked much like a soldier's, as many of the soldierly traditions of the Fire Nation came from when the daimyos ruled as warlords. Eighteen if he was a day, and he was gratingly excited to see Jeong Jeong.
Talking with him about his previous training, Jeong Jeong received a picture of a powerful young firebender trained to exacting standards. His own evaluation did not measure up to that. Osamu was powerful, but his previous trainers had not disciplined him enough or taught him anything about the nature of fire.
Jeong Jeong went about fixing that damage before it got dangerously engrained. He couldn't help feeling he was too late to make Osamu actually safe to be around (hadn't Zhao come to him at this same age?), but he could at least minimize the amount of harm the young man would cause.
Osamu's parents gave Jeong Jeong a small mansion near the coast and free rein to train their first-son. Inland, the island rose up in mountains covered in wild rainforest and terraced farmland. When the wind came from that direction, the smell of spice filled the air. Actual clove trees grew in the gardens of the mansion, and small bright green rabbirds darted through their leaves.
They trained down on a beach of blinding white sand, even during the heat of the day. Then, Jeong Jeong allowed Osamu to shift his exercises out into knee-deep water.
If he had not been forced to come here, Jeong Jeong might have thought Buyou no Long Shima to be paradise.
Osamu performed his assigned exercises without complaint, though the work seemed to temper his enthusiasm after their initial meeting.
"What meditation do you use?" Jeong Jeong demanded one day as Osamu stood ankle-deep in the surf.
His student's eyes slid back into focus. "The flame in the void, master."
Jeong Jeong sucked in a deep breath, and Osamu winced. "Do not use that one!" He corrected the young man. "Have I not told you the nature of fire is to consume? Do you wish it to consume you? Do you think you will learn to control it ever if all you meditate on is feeding the fire?"
Osamu bowed his head and answered in a small voice, "No, master. I'm sorry. What should I be meditating on, master?"
That was a question Jeong Jeong had been asking himself for the last year. This island, however, gave him the answer in its bright beauty. "The sun. It is the greatest fire, and the only one in harmony with the world."
"Yes, master."
***
Osamu had the habit of sitting on the back porch after dinner and making tiny pinprick flames for the fireflies to chase. Or he had. Jeong Jeong wasn't entirely certain when, but sometime since he had begun training the young man, Osamu had stopped.
The young man had gotten lazy, Jeong Jeong noticed. Osamu dragged out breakfast and lunch, and always seemed so relieved when the sun set and they hiked back to the house. More times than he cared to count, he'd caught the young man checking the height of the sun above the horizon instead of concentrating on his training.
Summer came and brought its familiar, oppressive heat. It sunk into the bones as soon as you stepped out of the shade, and Jeong Jeong moved the entirety of Osamu's training into the water.
Storm clouds regularly swept through and dropped rain on them in brief squalls every afternoon. It was a relief to feel, and it made him slightly more indlugent towards Osamu.
One afternoon, storm clouds gathered over the island and rumbled with thunder. But no rain fell, and Osamu became increasingly antsy. Lightning flashed between clouds, and Jeong Jeong became snappish as the storm grated across his senses. The smell of ozone reminded him of uglier battles, and his skin prickled with increasing anticipation.
They both felt it when lightning lanced down, and Osamu dropped out of his stances entirely to turn where the newborn fire had kindled.
"It's wet," the young man murmured. "It's been raining for weeks. It can't burn far..."
"Hnh." Jeong Jeong stared in that direction, comparing what he remembered of the maps of Buyou no Long Shima with the fire-presence he felt. "Aren't there granaries in that area?"
"Sozin's balls," Osamu swore, then ran pell-mell out of the water. He made for the path above the beach and bolted as soon as his feet hit something less treacherous than sand.
Jeong Jeong followed at a more leisurely jog. Osamu was right about it being wet. That would limit how quickly the fire could spread. The loss of the granaries would hurt the locals, but it was unlikely they needed firebenders to fight the fire.
Fire exploded across his senses, then died.
Sozin's balls.
He took off at a dead run. Explosion. What in the Nine Freezing Hells could have exploded?
- The dust in the air of a granary allowed to fall into a little unkemptness, because it was summer and first harvest wouldn't be for a month yet.
***
The stench of burnt meat filled Jeong Jeong's nose. He ignored it, knowing if he paid any heed to it, he wouldn't eat meat for a month. One of the granaries was barely a shell of charred wood, and several nearby showed fire damage. Smoke rose into the sky, but Jeong Jeong could not feel anything actually burning.
Osamu stood in front of the destroyed granary, knees locked and staring down at something next to him on the ground. When Jeong Jeong got closer, he realized it was a body.
He paused behind his student, then reached out to squeeze Osamu's shoulder. "Now you see what fire is for."
Osamu nodded mutely.
***
In the fall, Piandao came to Buyou no Long Shima. His unit had rotated back to the Fire Nation for respite from the fighting, and the Army captain had taken leave of his men to visit Jeong Jeong.
Jeong Jeong found him sitting on the veranda one evening when he and Osamu hiked back from the beach. Piandao had a sword strapped across his back, and he looked content as he stared out at the sea. He rose when Jeong-Jeong stepped onto the veranda and embraced his friend. "This is a lovely place."
"Hnh." Jeong Jeong waited until Piandao's arms loosened their hold, then shrugged lightly.
Piandao stepped back and looked at Osamu. His expression was unreadable, then he offered the young man a smile and a simple bow. "Daimyo's heir of Buyou no Long Shima. You don't see many islands still named in Old Fire."
Osamu inclined his head. "Grandmother insisted." He glanced at Jeong Jeong. "I'll leave you with your guest, master..."
"Go."
The young man left the two of them alone on the veranda, Piandao looking after him thoughtfully. He did not share his thoughts, however; instead turning back to Jeong-Jeong with a smile. "We've got a lot to catch up on, don't you think? I haven't seen you since the Battle of Jagedai, and you're still terrible about writing letters."
"I write letters," Jeong Jeong protested.
"Every six months, whether you need to or not," Piandao said agreeably.
***
Most nights, Jeong Jeong only managed to sleep a few hours. At sea, the fires creating steam for his ship's engines disturbed him. Out here, the hearth-fires lying banked all over the island had the same effect. Piandao's arrival did not change that, and the fourth night, Piandao found him meditating in the garden.
"You usually sleep the night through," Jeong Jeong said, opening his eyes as his friend stepped through the circle of candles.
"Your student is having nightmares."
"He's been having nightmares since this summer."
"And?" Piandao sat down cross-legged in front of Jeong Jeong. "What are you going to do about it?"
The candle-flames rose. "Do about it? He's an adult. He can handle his own nightmares."
Piandao frowned but said nothing more on the topic.
***
After dinner most evenings, Osamu curled up in the library with the account-books of the farms on the island under his care. The daimyo of Buyou no Long Shima expected his heir to rule well, which required far more than skilled firebending. Jeong Jeong approved - Osamu's diligence with the spice trade gave him some little hope for the young man.
Piandao usually joined him with his calligraphy supplies, laying out the sumi-e paintings he made during the day to brush poetry on. Which usually ended with Piandao feeding said painting to the fire, because his attempts at poetry never satisfied him.
In the last of the fading dusk-light, Jeong Jeong made tea for Piandao and Osamu.
"Osamu, could you get the lamps?" Piandao's voice drifted out into the hall as Jeong Jeong approached.
The room did not immediately light up with the glow of the lamps, and Jeong Jeong paused in the doorway. Surely, Osamu's expression was a trick of the shadows - Firefolk did not see at their best in the dark, after all.
"Master Jeong Jeong!" Osamu said, sounding relieved. "Could you get the lamps? I need to go fetch some maps from my trunk if I'm going to understand these reports."
Jeong Jeong raised fire in the lamps, and Osamu darted out of the room with hardly an acknowledgment to either of them. He was a daimyo's heir, however, and they were both common-born men. Yet the young man was usually more polite than that.
Piandao stared at the doorway, dark eyes intent. When he turned to look at Jeong Jeong, it was like staring into chips of flint. "What have you been doing to that boy?"
"Doing?" Jeong Jeong said irritably. "I've been training that young man."
"He's afraid to firebend." Piandao's words cut, and lamps flared around the room.
"He should be," Jeong Jeong hissed. "Fire is an ever-hungry destructive force, and if he doesn't have iron-clad control he's going to hurt far too many people."
Piandao's eyes slid from his to look at the lamps. "Hypocrite."
The lamps exploded. Glass shards flew across the room, and Piandao raised an arm to shield his eyes. The ones that got too close to Jeong Jeong ran like honey and dropped to the floor. Fire roared up in mushroom-capped pillars.
"First blood to me," Piandao said quietly.
The flames roared higher.
Piandao rose in one smooth motion and crossed over to Jeong Jeong, reaching out to grab his hands. His eyes tightened as smoke wafted from where their skin touched, but he only squeezed tighter. Then he leaned in, chest-to-chest, nose-to-nose, their mouths almost touching.
He breathed Jeong Jeong's breaths.
It was a firebending technique, a way for a stronger firebender to smother a weaker firebender's flames. Piandao had no firebending at all. It should not have worked - it did not work, not precisely.
The fires lowered to sullen red glows.
"You can't keep teaching him, Jeong Jeong." Piandao's hands squeezed his tighter, nails biting in. "He's a daimyo's heir. He has to firebend. Losing an Agni Kai is not an option for him. Daimyos have to be strong enough to protect their people. If he doesn't appear strong enough..."
"I must teach him. He needs discipline, control-"
"You can't teach him that. Not right now." Piandao's closeness did not soften the blow of his words. If anything, being able to feel the movements of air as he spoke made them strike all the harder.
The fires died.
***
"There is nothing more I can teach your son," Jeong Jeong said to the daimyo.
The old man nodded, and his wife smiled with benevolent pride. "Very well. I will make the necessary arrangements for you to return to your ship."
"Thank you." Jeong Jeong bowed his head to avoid meeting their eyes. He should tell them- That he failed their son, just like he failed Torao and Zhao. Worse than he failed those two.
He couldn't find it in himself to think he was wrong for teaching Osamu to fear fire, except that the young man needed to fight with it, use the barbarity of trial-by-combat to maintain civilization and peace for his people.
The Fire Nation too often reverted to barbarity.
-End-
Title: Broken Promises
Characters: Jeong Jeong, Zhao, Torao (OC), Osamu (OC), Piandao, Iroh
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4900+
Summary: Jeong Jeong does not enjoy teaching, but he does what he can to make it worthwhile for both his students and himself. Unfortunately, his failures are more spectacular than his successes.
Author's Notes: This begins twenty-three years pre-canon. Jeong Jeong is on the long slide towards his lowest points and ultimately his desertion.
---
They sent him two students, both boys barely nineteen-years-old, both only a year out of training. Surely, Commodore Jeong Jeong thought, there were other firebending masters to train them.
But they were here, and there was nothing much he could do about it.
Torao was a willowy young man, black hair pulled up into a soldier's topknot. Li Zhao was broader and more muscular, auburn hair also pulled up into a soldier's topknot. They stood next to each other comfortably - they had known each other since at least Basic, according to the dossiers he'd been given with this assignment. A daimyo's second-son and one of the rare firebending members of the Li clan both deserved a firebending master to make the most of them.
Jeong Jeong didn't see why it had to be him. Training pulled him away from his ship for indefinite periods. Battles were lost that he was certain he could have won.
He looked at both of the young men silently. This is not going to be a waste of my time, he promised himself. I will make them firebenders like the world has never seen.
"We will start with concentration," he decided. Utterly basic work, but if they did not have the proper foundations, they could never achieve the kind of greatness they should.
Both of their faces fell, and Jeong Jeong wondered if he had ever been this young and stupid.
"Basic stance!" He barked out, and the young men dropped into it automatically. "Wider!"
Their legs slid out wider, and Torao shifted himself back so he and Zhao weren't in a line anymore. It kept their legs from touching and, more interestingly to Jeong-Jeong, put the daimyo's son behind the Li.
"Concentrate," he commanded. "The flame in the void."
A sharp nod from the two young men, and their expressions tightened as they entered the most basic meditation taught to all firebenders in the military. A flame, their own fire, surrounded by an emptiness. If anything intruded upon that emptiness, it was to be fed into the fire.
Jeong Jeong turned and walked away.
"Sir?" Zhao called after him.
"Concentrate!"
***
It took him three weeks to evaluate them. He wasted the first week and a half on them together. All that told him was that they shored up each other's weaknesses. Obviously they had known each other since well before Basic to firebend so well together with no formal training in those tactics.
It told him nothing useful to their training.
Jeong Jeong split them up over the next week and a half, working them both to exhaustion to find the flaws. Then he ordered them back to concentration exercises.
If looks could kill, he would be so much smoldering ash, he thought wryly.
All things considered, Torao was barely a hearth-fire. Jeong Jeong could teach him how to find more power for his flames, but he would never be more than mediocre at best. Except he had the same nasty trick all the firebenders of his bloodline did - white-hot flames. They were small, little more than darts, but they were devastating if used well.
Jeong Jeong would have to train him to use them well.
It was a pity the young man did not have more power. He had an innate sense of control that put him on par to learn lightning. Without the raw power, though, it was worthless to teach him.
Zhao was a forest fire - powerful and wildly uncontrolled. At least he did not have an especial fascination with fire. One less thing for Jeong Jeong to worry about. He would have to give the bulk of his attention to Zhao, break the young man of his carelessness, force him under control. If he could manage that, he could learn lightning.
If Jeong Jeong could train them both out of their individual flaws, he could begin training them both together. Torao would likely always be in Zhao's shadow, but there was little that could be done about that.
***
If Zhao did not stop asking when they were going to learn how to actually firebend, Jeong Jeong was going to give him a pair of burn scars to match the cuts on his own face.
Three months of training in a navy port had finally worn on his nerves enough, and he'd dragged both young men off on a month-long wilderness expedition. It would do them all some good to get out in the field and have to actually work.
They were a week in the field now, far enough from the front that they were unlikely to encounter enemies. Not impossible, however, which was why Jeong Jeong had dragged them out to these abandoned rice-paddies.
Torao held a dart of white fire on each fingertip, joining and separating them into a greater blaze in time with his breathing. He took to control practice like a turtleduck to water, slipping so easily into concentration these days that Jeong Jeong planned to move up to recitations when they returned to the port. Maintaining his fire and breathing while reciting fairy tales ought to neatly divide his concentration.
Zhao held a smoldering leaf between his hands, expression clearly irritated. But he stood in the proper stance and he breathed in the proper manner, so Jeong Jeong saw no reason to correct him.
A hunting bird cried above, and all three of them looked up to see a messenger-hawk stoop in a dive. Zhao's leaf burst into flame. The hawk alighted on Torao's shoulder, and the young man visibly cringed as the heavy claws dug through the cloth of his tunic. His white flames flickered, and almost died, then settled at a lower level.
"You have a message," Zhao drawled at his friend, his leaf burning merrily but not being totally consumed.
It was, Jeong Jeong supposed, better than where he'd been when they first started doing this exercise.
He went to get the hawk-handlers' gloves out of his supplies, pulled them on, then called to the bird. Torao shot him a pathetically grateful look as the hawk flitted over to land on his glove.
Blood oozed from Torao's shoulder, and he extinguished his flames and pressed the heel of his hand to the wounds. "I would have worn a padded shirt if I thought anyone was going to send me a message by hawk."
"The world rarely acts as you expect," Jeong Jeong admonished him as he took the message from the hawk. "Here."
Torao unrolled the small length of paper and read it quickly. His shoulders slumped. "My brother is dead. Fever."
"Well," Zhao said softly, and his leaf puffed into ash. "That means you inherit, doesn't it?"
***
Torao's fire guttered.
"It's normal after a death," Jeong Jeong said after the young man cracked Zhao across the face in frustration. "Give it a week or two and your fire will come back."
A week became a month. A month became four. No red fire sparked between Torao's hands, only white fire, and that was barely a candle-flame. Jeong Jeong focused his attention on the young man, forcing him through power and breathing exercises that left Torao dizzy and dazed. That was all the effect it had on Torao, and if Jeong Jeong did not know the young man was doing the exercises exactly as told, he would have thought Torao was wasting their time.
Once, and only once, Zhao yelled at him, his arm around Torao's shoulders, a fan of flame in his other hand. Torao looked pale and drawn, his eyes not focusing, his head and hands twitching ever so slightly with little shakes.
"You can't keep doing this to him!" Zhao snarled. "He isn't some damn engine that just needs to be readjusted! I'm your student too, you bastard, and you're breaking him and ignoring me!"
Torao remained silent, eyes staring past Jeong Jeong's shoulder.
"Extinguish that," Jeong Jeong ordered.
"Make me."
Well. He wasn't going to tolerate that sort of behavior from a student.
After that night, Zhao didn't defy Jeong Jeong again over how he trained Torao.
Another messenger-hawk came for Torao a few weeks later. The young man read it, then stared off into the distance, the strip of paper between his fingers and the hawk perched on his padded shoulder.
Finally he said, "They moved up the wedding. Father wants me to return to the Fire Nation as soon as possible to marry Lady Ran of Red Chrysanthemum Island. To ensure there will be an heir."
Zhao made a questioning sound.
Torao glanced at him. "I'm not going to stop being a soldier just because it's inconvenient to the Firelord for a daimyo's heir to earn military glory. But I must take the risks as well. It would be very bad if I died with no children." He turned and offered a bow to Jeong Jeong. "Master, may I?"
"Of course," Jeong Jeong said brusquely. "Go and make yourself ready."
Torao came to see him that night, bowing once again. "Master," he said before Jeong Jeong could speak, "With all due respect, I will not be returning to train under you. Until I find my fire again, there is nothing you can teach me. I would be better served learning to use a sword."
Jeong Jeong stared at him and thought, I have failed this man. I have wasted what should have been a bright, deadly young firebender.
He fell back on the habits of a lifetime, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. "I know a swordmaster," he said in answer. "I will write you a letter of introduction."
"Thank you, Master Jeong Jeong."
***
"It's been eight months since I came here to study," Zhao said, anger tightening his voice. "We've worked on my control every day. I think I know what I'm doing by now."
Jeong Jeong sat in a ring of candles, meditating on the roll of a ship at sea. Or he had been until his student interrupted him. He cracked one eye open, the candle-flames flaring a bit higher. His jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, and he snarled at Zhao more than he meant to. "Prove it. Go away, and do not bother me with this question for a month."
Zhao's eyes narrowed, but the young man bowed and left.
Perhaps there was something to what he believed after all. Perhaps Jeong Jeong had accomplished something with this one, even though he had failed so badly with Torao.
The inside of his eyelids turned red as the candle-flames roared into pillars.
***
A month later, Zhao had not brought up the topic again and assiduously worked on his control-training without complaint. Jeong Jeong had to grudgingly admit the young man had finally learned self-control.
Technique in firebending was as much personal preference as actual technique. Training anyone in anything beyond basic fireblasts was an exercise in frustration even with the standardized groundwork Basic put into all soldiers. Jeong Jeong had endured it before, so he knew to expect it to make him gnash his teeth.
Zhao didn't.
Which was part of why this kind of training worked so well. It brought out power in firebenders they would never have believed they possessed.
Damn him, he should not have let Torao slip through his fingers!
Zhao struggled and mastered forms, and when he did not struggle, Jeong Jeong forced him to perfect those techniques. Great gouts of fire came easily to Zhao; it was refining and limiting them that Jeong Jeong had to break him into the habits of. He would not allow this young man to walk away as anything less than a firebending master in his own right.
"Fire is destruction," he admonished often. "Control it so you control what you destroy. Unnecessary destruction brings only pain and grief."
Zhao's control slipped. He snarled at other soldiers in the mess hall, his tea kept boiling over, and he leaked heat like a furnace.
A bit more violent than normal, but nothing Jeong Jeong wasted time worrying about.
Zhao was good. Not great, not yet, but Jeong Jeong saw the potential of it in him. As long as he could keep himself under control, with his innate power... Zhao could come to serve with Prince Lu Ten someday, just as Jeong Jeong himself served with Iroh whenever the prince took to the seas.
If Zhao and Lu Ten could stand each other.
Torao should have been here, he thought with some regret. The candles he meditated with flared and danced. With Torao, the two young men would have goaded each other to greatness, they would already fly, they would know lightning-
The candles erupted in pillars of fire, and he extinguished them with hardly a thought.
At least Piandao's letters spoke well of his swordsmanship.
What a waste.
***
One morning, Zhao's tea-cup cracked. Heat damage. Not a common problem with firebending soldiers, but not rare either.
If it had happened again the next day, Jeong Jeong would have worried. But it did not, and if his student and several of the other soldiers stationed in the port happened to have bruises and black eyes, well, brawling wasn't uncommon. Knowing Zhao, he'd invited it.
"Fire is a hungry thing," he said to Zhao as they worked on fire-whips. "It devours everything it can. We are firebenders, we carry fire in our souls. We hunger. Be aware of this. Listen to it. Never let it startle you."
Zhao nodded. "Yes, master."
"Do not have only one hunger in your spirit, Zhao. Take up other pursuits, strive for many things. Or you will find your fire consuming yourself."
Zhao gritted his teeth, eyes narrowing as he focused on his fire-whip. "Yes, master."
That night, a letter came for Zhao as it always did this time of week. Torao and he happily spent their pay on bribes to keep their letters going with the speediest couriers. Never, not once, had Jeong Jeong failed to see Zhao drop everything in favor of those letters.
Zhao had perhaps gotten a bit slower in answering them, but the young man was training hard.
Jeong Jeong read over battle-reports in the cramped office he'd laid claim to, ignoring Zhao as his student read the letter. Until the candles in the office billowed into pillars of flame, and the lanterns exploded in balls of fire. He lashed out automatically, extinguishing all the fires and plunging them into darkness. "Zhao!"
"She's pregnant," Zhao said, furious and hateful.
"I don't care," Jeong Jeong snapped. He had no tolerance for the jealousies and affairs of young fools, and he would not let Zhao set them both back by months. Bad enough to have wasted those four months on Torao. "Get yourself under control."
"Yes, master," Zhao snarled, and fire sprang in his hands. He cupped it and let himself out of the office.
His letter lay on the floor, burned beyond readability.
***
They trained in a stone arena, because training firebenders around anything flammable was beyond foolish. Fire Nation soldiers built them as a matter of course in a base occupied for any extended length of time.
"Fire consumes," Jeong Jeong lectured. "It wants to lose control. But you are its master, not its slave."
Zhao raised his eyes to look at him, expression conflicted and then abruptly completely furious.
The dust in the air exploded.
Heat hit Jeong Jeong like an Earth soldier's hammer. He screwed his eyes shut and clamped his lips together tightly. His clothes and hair caught and ignited for just a heartbeat until his own firebending shoved the other fire away. It responded too easily, wild fire rather than a firebender's flames. That made Jeong Jeong's jaw tighten, and he had to drag himself back from the brink of providing more fuel for the fire.
It took longer than he wanted to extinguish the fire, and when he opened his eyes, Zhao stood untouched.
"Well," the young man said quietly. "That was impressive."
"You said you were under control," Jeong Jeong said, taking care with his tone.
Zhao shrugged. "Do you think I could do that again?"
"You lied to me." It was a bitter idea. He almost did not want to believe it, except for the proof shown by the scorched arena.
"You believed me." Zhao turned and walked away, fire dancing around his shoulders like a dragonlet.
***
Jeong Jeong returned to his ship.
"No more students," he told Prince Iroh.
"Perhaps one more...?"
"No!"
***
A year after Zhao, Jeong Jeong was forced to take on a new student.
Prince Iroh delivered the orders in person. "Osamu is a good young man," he commented as Jeong Jeong stared at him. "He needs proper training, and you have an excellent track record with students."
"He's not even a soldier. He's a daimyo's first-son, he can't be a soldier." His jaw hurt. Orders, actual orders, to train a student as a master firebender. From the Firelord himself.
"He won't be a soldier," Iroh corrected gently. "But his family is... important."
Politics. Jeong Jeong sat down slowly, staring at the prince. They were dragging him away from his command, from his ship, because of filthy, twisted politics and favors. Money. Politics involving the daimyos always came down to money.
"I will do my best," he gritted out, because it was expected of him.
***
Osamu of Buyou no Long Shima was a whip-thin young man, auburn hair pulled back in a nobleman's topknot. It looked much like a soldier's, as many of the soldierly traditions of the Fire Nation came from when the daimyos ruled as warlords. Eighteen if he was a day, and he was gratingly excited to see Jeong Jeong.
Talking with him about his previous training, Jeong Jeong received a picture of a powerful young firebender trained to exacting standards. His own evaluation did not measure up to that. Osamu was powerful, but his previous trainers had not disciplined him enough or taught him anything about the nature of fire.
Jeong Jeong went about fixing that damage before it got dangerously engrained. He couldn't help feeling he was too late to make Osamu actually safe to be around (hadn't Zhao come to him at this same age?), but he could at least minimize the amount of harm the young man would cause.
Osamu's parents gave Jeong Jeong a small mansion near the coast and free rein to train their first-son. Inland, the island rose up in mountains covered in wild rainforest and terraced farmland. When the wind came from that direction, the smell of spice filled the air. Actual clove trees grew in the gardens of the mansion, and small bright green rabbirds darted through their leaves.
They trained down on a beach of blinding white sand, even during the heat of the day. Then, Jeong Jeong allowed Osamu to shift his exercises out into knee-deep water.
If he had not been forced to come here, Jeong Jeong might have thought Buyou no Long Shima to be paradise.
Osamu performed his assigned exercises without complaint, though the work seemed to temper his enthusiasm after their initial meeting.
"What meditation do you use?" Jeong Jeong demanded one day as Osamu stood ankle-deep in the surf.
His student's eyes slid back into focus. "The flame in the void, master."
Jeong Jeong sucked in a deep breath, and Osamu winced. "Do not use that one!" He corrected the young man. "Have I not told you the nature of fire is to consume? Do you wish it to consume you? Do you think you will learn to control it ever if all you meditate on is feeding the fire?"
Osamu bowed his head and answered in a small voice, "No, master. I'm sorry. What should I be meditating on, master?"
That was a question Jeong Jeong had been asking himself for the last year. This island, however, gave him the answer in its bright beauty. "The sun. It is the greatest fire, and the only one in harmony with the world."
"Yes, master."
***
Osamu had the habit of sitting on the back porch after dinner and making tiny pinprick flames for the fireflies to chase. Or he had. Jeong Jeong wasn't entirely certain when, but sometime since he had begun training the young man, Osamu had stopped.
The young man had gotten lazy, Jeong Jeong noticed. Osamu dragged out breakfast and lunch, and always seemed so relieved when the sun set and they hiked back to the house. More times than he cared to count, he'd caught the young man checking the height of the sun above the horizon instead of concentrating on his training.
Summer came and brought its familiar, oppressive heat. It sunk into the bones as soon as you stepped out of the shade, and Jeong Jeong moved the entirety of Osamu's training into the water.
Storm clouds regularly swept through and dropped rain on them in brief squalls every afternoon. It was a relief to feel, and it made him slightly more indlugent towards Osamu.
One afternoon, storm clouds gathered over the island and rumbled with thunder. But no rain fell, and Osamu became increasingly antsy. Lightning flashed between clouds, and Jeong Jeong became snappish as the storm grated across his senses. The smell of ozone reminded him of uglier battles, and his skin prickled with increasing anticipation.
They both felt it when lightning lanced down, and Osamu dropped out of his stances entirely to turn where the newborn fire had kindled.
"It's wet," the young man murmured. "It's been raining for weeks. It can't burn far..."
"Hnh." Jeong Jeong stared in that direction, comparing what he remembered of the maps of Buyou no Long Shima with the fire-presence he felt. "Aren't there granaries in that area?"
"Sozin's balls," Osamu swore, then ran pell-mell out of the water. He made for the path above the beach and bolted as soon as his feet hit something less treacherous than sand.
Jeong Jeong followed at a more leisurely jog. Osamu was right about it being wet. That would limit how quickly the fire could spread. The loss of the granaries would hurt the locals, but it was unlikely they needed firebenders to fight the fire.
Fire exploded across his senses, then died.
Sozin's balls.
He took off at a dead run. Explosion. What in the Nine Freezing Hells could have exploded?
- The dust in the air of a granary allowed to fall into a little unkemptness, because it was summer and first harvest wouldn't be for a month yet.
***
The stench of burnt meat filled Jeong Jeong's nose. He ignored it, knowing if he paid any heed to it, he wouldn't eat meat for a month. One of the granaries was barely a shell of charred wood, and several nearby showed fire damage. Smoke rose into the sky, but Jeong Jeong could not feel anything actually burning.
Osamu stood in front of the destroyed granary, knees locked and staring down at something next to him on the ground. When Jeong Jeong got closer, he realized it was a body.
He paused behind his student, then reached out to squeeze Osamu's shoulder. "Now you see what fire is for."
Osamu nodded mutely.
***
In the fall, Piandao came to Buyou no Long Shima. His unit had rotated back to the Fire Nation for respite from the fighting, and the Army captain had taken leave of his men to visit Jeong Jeong.
Jeong Jeong found him sitting on the veranda one evening when he and Osamu hiked back from the beach. Piandao had a sword strapped across his back, and he looked content as he stared out at the sea. He rose when Jeong-Jeong stepped onto the veranda and embraced his friend. "This is a lovely place."
"Hnh." Jeong Jeong waited until Piandao's arms loosened their hold, then shrugged lightly.
Piandao stepped back and looked at Osamu. His expression was unreadable, then he offered the young man a smile and a simple bow. "Daimyo's heir of Buyou no Long Shima. You don't see many islands still named in Old Fire."
Osamu inclined his head. "Grandmother insisted." He glanced at Jeong Jeong. "I'll leave you with your guest, master..."
"Go."
The young man left the two of them alone on the veranda, Piandao looking after him thoughtfully. He did not share his thoughts, however; instead turning back to Jeong-Jeong with a smile. "We've got a lot to catch up on, don't you think? I haven't seen you since the Battle of Jagedai, and you're still terrible about writing letters."
"I write letters," Jeong Jeong protested.
"Every six months, whether you need to or not," Piandao said agreeably.
***
Most nights, Jeong Jeong only managed to sleep a few hours. At sea, the fires creating steam for his ship's engines disturbed him. Out here, the hearth-fires lying banked all over the island had the same effect. Piandao's arrival did not change that, and the fourth night, Piandao found him meditating in the garden.
"You usually sleep the night through," Jeong Jeong said, opening his eyes as his friend stepped through the circle of candles.
"Your student is having nightmares."
"He's been having nightmares since this summer."
"And?" Piandao sat down cross-legged in front of Jeong Jeong. "What are you going to do about it?"
The candle-flames rose. "Do about it? He's an adult. He can handle his own nightmares."
Piandao frowned but said nothing more on the topic.
***
After dinner most evenings, Osamu curled up in the library with the account-books of the farms on the island under his care. The daimyo of Buyou no Long Shima expected his heir to rule well, which required far more than skilled firebending. Jeong Jeong approved - Osamu's diligence with the spice trade gave him some little hope for the young man.
Piandao usually joined him with his calligraphy supplies, laying out the sumi-e paintings he made during the day to brush poetry on. Which usually ended with Piandao feeding said painting to the fire, because his attempts at poetry never satisfied him.
In the last of the fading dusk-light, Jeong Jeong made tea for Piandao and Osamu.
"Osamu, could you get the lamps?" Piandao's voice drifted out into the hall as Jeong Jeong approached.
The room did not immediately light up with the glow of the lamps, and Jeong Jeong paused in the doorway. Surely, Osamu's expression was a trick of the shadows - Firefolk did not see at their best in the dark, after all.
"Master Jeong Jeong!" Osamu said, sounding relieved. "Could you get the lamps? I need to go fetch some maps from my trunk if I'm going to understand these reports."
Jeong Jeong raised fire in the lamps, and Osamu darted out of the room with hardly an acknowledgment to either of them. He was a daimyo's heir, however, and they were both common-born men. Yet the young man was usually more polite than that.
Piandao stared at the doorway, dark eyes intent. When he turned to look at Jeong Jeong, it was like staring into chips of flint. "What have you been doing to that boy?"
"Doing?" Jeong Jeong said irritably. "I've been training that young man."
"He's afraid to firebend." Piandao's words cut, and lamps flared around the room.
"He should be," Jeong Jeong hissed. "Fire is an ever-hungry destructive force, and if he doesn't have iron-clad control he's going to hurt far too many people."
Piandao's eyes slid from his to look at the lamps. "Hypocrite."
The lamps exploded. Glass shards flew across the room, and Piandao raised an arm to shield his eyes. The ones that got too close to Jeong Jeong ran like honey and dropped to the floor. Fire roared up in mushroom-capped pillars.
"First blood to me," Piandao said quietly.
The flames roared higher.
Piandao rose in one smooth motion and crossed over to Jeong Jeong, reaching out to grab his hands. His eyes tightened as smoke wafted from where their skin touched, but he only squeezed tighter. Then he leaned in, chest-to-chest, nose-to-nose, their mouths almost touching.
He breathed Jeong Jeong's breaths.
It was a firebending technique, a way for a stronger firebender to smother a weaker firebender's flames. Piandao had no firebending at all. It should not have worked - it did not work, not precisely.
The fires lowered to sullen red glows.
"You can't keep teaching him, Jeong Jeong." Piandao's hands squeezed his tighter, nails biting in. "He's a daimyo's heir. He has to firebend. Losing an Agni Kai is not an option for him. Daimyos have to be strong enough to protect their people. If he doesn't appear strong enough..."
"I must teach him. He needs discipline, control-"
"You can't teach him that. Not right now." Piandao's closeness did not soften the blow of his words. If anything, being able to feel the movements of air as he spoke made them strike all the harder.
The fires died.
***
"There is nothing more I can teach your son," Jeong Jeong said to the daimyo.
The old man nodded, and his wife smiled with benevolent pride. "Very well. I will make the necessary arrangements for you to return to your ship."
"Thank you." Jeong Jeong bowed his head to avoid meeting their eyes. He should tell them- That he failed their son, just like he failed Torao and Zhao. Worse than he failed those two.
He couldn't find it in himself to think he was wrong for teaching Osamu to fear fire, except that the young man needed to fight with it, use the barbarity of trial-by-combat to maintain civilization and peace for his people.
The Fire Nation too often reverted to barbarity.
-End-