Chapter Text
If somebody had asked Zuko a mere… what was it? Months? A year?
However much time between categorizing life in terms of home vs hunting the Avatar and helping. Between anger and hope, in such a way that it would have been inconceivable to the incensed person that had been upheaved between banished, barred, hated, and even welcomed. Through all that turmoil, if by some miracle he was aware what he was doing just then- breaking out the father of somebody he had both threatened and sacrificed what he thought at the time was his only ever chance to return to the fiery capitol of his nation- he would have been too lost to even react. And if he had an inkling of what to even respond with, he could admit to himself it would have been volatile anger.
So the Water Tribe Chief as his ally would have shocked his past self, maybe filled him with some sense of burning fear, the prince and the chief on one side would have only meant one real option, and it would have come with a violent price. Looking at the man across the courtyard, Zuko was sure that price had been paid for years, regardless of the enemy, because of the enemy.
Sokka, of course, got to work as soon as they touched the ground, changed plans when he really did find his father.
Sokka, even more surprised, when another recognizable face made it's appearance with the deliverance of his father. Not as surprised, as he'd come to find out in the moment in which the man (man? how old really was he?) ripped his hand to Zuko's shirt so fiercely that not even his father registered it.
"Jet," Zuko breathed, not quite angry as he used to be when he was bald headed and inaccessible, yet not the severe, almost regretful voice he used to talk to their rag-tag group. It was on the cusp of afraid and fond. The name stuck in his mouth, hesitant like he didn't actually want to voice it, just keep it in his chest to keep for himself.
For a second, Jet wasn't the scorned soldier he used to be, nor the softly dying tragedy Sokka really thought he had died as.
Both of them before Hakoda, Suki, and any other member of their private audience wouldn't see the inexorable difference of Jet and Zuko, and both of them together. They were some sort of blend of each version that Sokka had known, angry and regretful, both of them ironically on the same sides of the same spectrum.
"You left me, to die." he hissed with his knuckles turning white where they gripped the sparsely threaded prison garb, the waists too loose on Zuko's lean frame and the sleeves unraveling with each harsh push of the prison against it.
"No," Zuku whispered. "I didn't."
"No? That's all you have to say!" Jet fumed, his sharp eyebrows twisted up his face in a matching scowl, but his face was unblemished, unfettered, smooth skin that didn't stretch with thick epithelial bunches.
If somebody had told him- while he was running around with his sister again, being the Prince and being the pretender- that he would want to reach out and touch the other boy he met through crushing displacement, he would have denied it. He'd have spit so much smoke and hatred from his mouth that he'd be breathing in embers for weeks.
Even in the very midst of being in the Earth Kingdom, he maybe would have denied it, but it would never make it less true that the steps they exchanged on rooftops and cracked streets grew into something less ugly than both their skin and their hearts.
"Jet." Zuko hissed, eyeing the crowd one by one that had sensed blood about to spill over. Gaurds lurked in the corners, eager to have the chance to sink their teeth into the fray.
"No need." he sneered, face contorted in deep lines that made his face seem closer to a message than an expression. He twisted the dull fabric of Zuko's shirt forward just to shove him away twice as hard as he had grabbed him. "We're done here." Jet spoke to the audience, both already half way to leaving.
Zuko stood where he was, shoulders taught and his feet already braced to the ground for a fight. No part of him save for his eyes made any move to follow Jet, not even the slightest tilt of his head.
When they all got out, Jet didn't spare one touch to Zuko until the quiet space between them and the open sky they were floating on seemed to pulse with no noise to fill it.
In the tender moments between Sokka and two people that equally cherished him, both boys stood to the side. Jet's arms were folded but loose where he was positioned more toward the wall than the family in front of them. Zuko stood near enough to touch, his body angled toward Jet despite the wall he bodily leaned on.
Despite the animosity, the barest hint of Jet's dirty finger tips brushed the pads of his own. Cold remandments of the freezer stiffened the air in his lungs, sharp, strained inhales locking up his chest with every breath, and even though he already couldn't afford to lose any more air than the chill stole form him, Zuko couldn't help the teeny, imperceptible hitch that escaped him. Jet was unlikely to even hear it at all, his hate didn't supercharge his senses, let alone his hearing.
"Cold," Jet started, abrupt and non-sequitur in the way that it pierced their lonely perimeter.
Zuko fumbled quickly, confusion coloring his thoughts and tone alike. "Wh..What?"
"Your hands." He scoffed. Eyes never left the act of pretending to uncaringly wander around the room. Zuko turned to meet his sharp gaze, seemingly accidental when Jet flit his away not one moment after.
"Yeah?" And really, what did Jet want from him? To suffer? To notice his skin's biting temperature?
"Nothing." Jet sneered in an answer, his tone just falling short of convincing Zuko of his harshness.
(Missing the cusp of it all together)
And they touched again- soles of their feet barley off the cold metal ramp and onto the tile of the Air Temple- in the form of knobby knuckles curled up in a fist to Zuko's face. Zuko took a quick step back, light on his feet and graceful. His shoulder pulling back smoothly with the arc of his body weight shifting to his back leg.
Briefly, Jet considered reaching out to touch his face, if only to stop half deliriously expecting to feel the smooth texture of blue memories in a city that hated them on principle. Zuko's prison outfit fluttered while he moved, the collar shifting on his thin shoulders. He was falling out of it, tight skin over collar bone on display; the notch at the base of his neck that Jet used to press a thumb into to feel warm proof of life framed by bony edges. Not wanting to notice it, not even needing to, he still did, magnetically drawn to the exposed parts of Zuko.
Where Jet couldn't stop noticing the space below Zuko's collar, Zuko kept his eyes trained above it. Eyes boring into Jet seemingly trying to extract some code from visage alone. Oh, he'd give Zuko a message. A clear one.
"Fuck you." Jet hissed, narrowed eyes finally finding the path to Zuko's excruciatingly unreadable face. With his pressed lips, his head turned one degree out of place, blinking in anticipation. He was waiting, just waiting. Even worse, it was always him as the perpetrator, always his temper that sparked tinder that was already waiting for a light. He got caught, he got thrown in prison, he started a fight that should have proved him right!
The Dai Li had dragged him away, Zuko unwilling to jeopardize his filthy fake life built on a lie. He must have watched them take him. Did he? Did his eyes trail after Jet's back as he struggled. Whatever he did or didn't do in a derelict outer ring district was dead. Everything in between seeing that pale face in the boat and
It took all his friends, it took him to a solid stone prison. It took his freedom. Zuko did, and it was worse than dying to be held by a nation that celebrated scorched earth and scorched wombs.
There was no crew to help, not even a knife in his belt.
He was going to wrap his hands around what took his freedom and choke it until he pressed his thumb into the spot where he used to find a drumming heart and find nothing it all.
Li. Li. This wasn't him. This was another fire bending puppet that masqueraded as a human. So, he lunged to do just that, throwing his whole body weight into the assault. Zuko as agile as he was, careened to the right in probably the easiest dodge of his life. His right hands coming up to push Jet's shoulder away from him, the other hand briefly holding Jet's to tug him down.
Stumbling for a moment, Jet could feel himself losing more thought to abject hate. It coiled around every thought until he could only think about brute strength. And he was angry, but he was uncoordinated with rage. He whipped back around to swing with his other hand, his knee driving up at the same time. And the absence of solid leg destabilized him, Zuko twisting away again, even spinning with enough force to swing a kick at Jet's middle at the end of his 180 maneuver.
Landing on his ass didn't stop much, in fact it angered him further. The presence of dull pain especially pissed him off; the Li he knew could hit harder. He'd seen the other boy take out a guard the size of a boulder with one of his bodily kicks. And since it wasn't the conviction of feeling active death he was feeling on the ground, he knew: knew that the boy above him watched with detached victory already.
"That's not the best you can do."
He scoffed above Jet, the fist that he used to wipe off the blood clenched tight enough to turn his knuckles white. "I didn't start this fight."
"What are you going to spout some crap about ending it? I see that scar on your face, Li," he seethed. "What? You do that to yourself? Garner sympathy?'
If it was anyone else, he truly would have turned on his heel and stormed away. He would have been ashamed of it, but Jet always brought something fierce out of him.
Jet's head was pulled back by a rough hand in his hair. "Say that to me again."
Jet pulled back harder, forced Zuko closer by his shirt, one elbow still holding up his splayed body on the dusty ground. "What? About that nasty looking scar on your face? You deserved it."
"You think I'm such a liar, Jet; I didn't lie about anything but my name."
"You lied about being piece of shit Fire Nation!"
He felt the stares of the group expectantly, eyes in the shadows waiting for a signal. Whatever shaking, growling beast was between Jet and himself wasn't for an audience, and anyway, he wanted to be different. Things had to be different with this group that wanted so desperately for the world to be better than it was. They didn't need this between two of their group members.
While there was no doubt in Zuko's mind that Katara would make good on her threat to kill him dead if he acted up, her nature was not to push and shove until she had a reason to hit somebody back twice as hard. Strong but reasonable for every second Jet was furious and justified for it. Whatever terribly angry thing inside Jet loved the horribly blazing thing inside of him, or at least it loved to hate it. Maybe Jet simply reveled in the fight, the chance to hit something solid enough to howl in pain. The war made everybody angry, even the soldiers fighting it, even the Fire Nation conscripts that were scorching the land, even the land itself.
The Avatar and his compatriots deserved to have some small piece of untainted life between them. Zuko was not untainted, not gentle enough to ever dull the truth in him. And he wasn't stupid or self-loathing enough to think, to know, it was just him, no, it was the boy he threw to the ground, the person whose tangled brown hair was still ensnared between his bony, searing fingers.
He would have taken Katara's hatred for the caves beneath Ba Sing Se, Sokka's distrust, even their father's skepticism.
Zuko tugged Jet back to release him, harsh enough to jostle him again. Jet was much too incensed to have the coordination to watch himself. "We were refugees! So were you!" he yelled with his palms up.
Without even looking at him, Jet got up, the tuffs of unruly hair swishing as he went, shouldered past Zuko while they stared straight ahead.
Neither of them looked back.
For the sole reason of fearing that they'd see the other had turned, too.
For the sole reason of fearing that they'd see the other hadn't.
(END CHAPTER)
"Jet! You ruined your own life!" Zuko shouted, gesturing with his empty palms up. "I looked for you, I didn't lie. I was trying to live, and you were going to get me killed."
"You're such a fucking liar! Live?" he spit, chest heaving. "You were in Ba Sing Se?! You were in a nation that you have been terrorizing for a hundred years."
Zuko stood quiet and unmoving. "I know," he said hoarsely. "but I'm… I wasn't Fire Nation. I'm not. They'll kill both of us." Why do it for them?