Actions

Work Header

Zuko's Lost Days

Chapter 15

Notes:

hey again sorry about the delay (again)! Been really busy but my workload might be getting lighter from here on out, so hopefully i can get back on schedule. I was thinking of waiting for next Sunday to update, but I thought I'd make it a mid-week treat instead.

Also, this is where I decided the fic warranted a "graphic violence" warning. Content/trigger warnings are down in the end notes so you can go in blind if you want.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It took until he’d finished pitching his tent at Chameleon Bay for Soka to realize how unbelievably stressed out he’d been this past month. He was always stressed, of course, and he still was. But their plans were underway, the Dai Li was taken care of, and Aang was taking the chance to master his crazy Avatar powers. Compared to their usual pace, things are a breeze. For once he could put survival and reconnaissance on the backburner. He was trying not to think of Lee, too, because there was nothing Sokka could do for him right now except hurt; every time Lee’s shaking hands and sad eyes darted across his mind, he had to be satisfied with the promise that he would make things right when he got back.

Reuniting with his tribesmen was exactly what Sokka needed to distract himself from all that. Coming off of a streak of small victories and celebrating his arrival, they all seemed to be in high spirits. The atmosphere reminded him of hunting trips he tagged along on, when all he was really old enough to do was huddle at the campfire in between Dad and Bato while the men told exaggerated stories about their biggest catches.

But he was one of the men, now; they crowded in on him and slapped him on the back and offered him drinks and asked in booming voices if he'd managed to snag any girls yet. (That was the other thing: there was about ten times more masculine energy at camp than he was used to being around, even living with Toph and dating Lee. After all, there were no girls here, besides in the men’s stories of the ones back home and in Earth Kingdom ports.) It felt good to hang with other guys again, but he’d forgotten what slobs men could be when they didn’t have wives and sisters and daughters looking after them. The company reminded him of home, and so did the food (although it tasted just a bit off; the men rarely cooked before they left- women’s work- and some of the ingredients were Earth Kingdom substitutions).

None of those home comforts compared to seeing Dad again. He didn’t tower over Sokka the way he used to, but his smile was just as warm as it’d always been. There were so many things Sokka wanted to say to him and to hear in return, but he decided to start with what absolutely couldn’t wait.

Dad leaned back and listened carefully as Sokka layed out the plans for the Day of Black Sun. He was listening a bit too carefully, actually. His thoughtful silence through the entire thing ground on Sokka’s confidence until he sputtered his last, “So, yeah…” and rolled up his maps, afraid to glance up from the table.

A heavy hand on his shoulder had him looking up. Dad looked back at him, beaming like he might burst with pride. He’d almost forgotten how much that look meant to him.

“I missed you,” Sokka’s mouth blurted out without consulting his brain. Aang’s hammered it into him a million times that there was nothing bad or un-manly about feeling mushy or going red, but he felt stupid anyway.

Dad smiled and pulled him into another tight hug. He used to be able to press his face into Dad’s chest when they hugged, but now Sokka’s cheek bumped clumsily against his collarbone. It wasn’t any less nice

“Katara misses you, too.”

Dad squeezed him a little tighter, like that would get the message to Katara. “I’ve missed you both so much. Bato tells me she’s really been improving her waterbending,” he said, voice swollen with pride.

Mastered is probably a better word for it.” Sokka grinned. He was trying not to sound too boastful- it was Katara’s achievements, after all- but he oculdn’t mask how proud he was of Katara’s skill with her stupid magic water. “You should have seen her in the North! She fought this stuffy old master without any training.” Dad’s face fell into a grimace.

“I have to say I’m a little… apprehensive about you two being away from home. I know you’re all capable and looking out for each other, but I worry. It gets dangerous out here, and Katara’s only thirteen-”

“Fourteen,” Sokka corrected.

Dad groaned and sunk his face into one hand.(Didn’t his hands used to be bigger? Didn’t he?) “Fourteen? Tui and La, I’ve missed so much.” Sokka didn’t trust himself to reply without a note of bitterness in his voice, and that wasn’t the tone he wanted to set right now. “Still, fourteen is young, and she’s just a-”

“Just a what?”

“Y’know.” Dad said quietly, rubbing at the back of his neck. He probably hadn’t meant anything by it, and Sokka didn’t want to be too harsh on him- he was always encouraging of both of them, growing up, but he couldn’t let it rest. Even without that same rigid, borderline-malicious attitude that they had in the North, it was clear that their tribe had different expectations for boys and girls.
“Look, I’ve travelled a lot. There’s nothing only about it. Dad, all the girls I know could kick my ass twice over. Probably yours, too.” “And even when I thought they couldn’t, Katara didn’t leave much room for argument. I left with her because I wanted to be there to keep her safe, but also because earlier that day I watched her split a hundred-foot glacier clean down the middle because she was tired of being told what to do.

Dad stuck his hands up in acquiescence. “You're right, you’re right. It’s wrong to underestimate her. It’s just hard to wrap my head around how fast everything’s changing. I mean, the Avatar’s back, for Tui’s sake! I have trouble believing it sometimes.”

“You better start believing. He’s a strong contender for your future son-in-law.”

Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? You and the Avatar?”

Sokka choked on his own spit and took a good minute to recover amid Dad’s heavy thumps on his back. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” he wheezed, waving frantically. “I meant Katara, Dad. She and Aang are always making heart eyes at each other. It’s exhausting.”

“My little girl and the Avatar!” Dad laughed warmly. “Suppose I can’t complain. And what about you, Sokka? Have you found anyone special since you set out? Some lucky girl?” Sokka bit the inside of his cheek. “Lucky boy?”

“Look, it’s complicated.” He tangled his hands in his lap and took a deep breath, wondering if he was only imagining the faint scent of jasmine on his clothes. “Really complicated.”

“Love always is. Look, I don’t know what you and your special person-”

“Dad.”

“-Are going through, but I’m going to give you some advice that my father gave me when I was your age.” His dramatic pause was practically an invitation for interruption; within a second the tent flap opened, and one of the men rushed in with news of the Fire Nation fleet. In the space behind him, Sokka could see everybody prepping their armor and weapons, rushing to their positions.

His heart sank. Who knew how long a mission like that would take? He only had until Aang finished his time with the Guru, and that kid was like a sponge, which meant he’d probably get back here before the men did. Was that all he’d get- one hour, after three years? But Dad just looked back at his mopey face and laughed. “Aren’t you coming, soldier?”

It almost felt right when things began to go wrong.

Aang touched down just as just as he finished steeling himself to go on a real mission as a man, but like dad said: Sokka was a warrior now, and he had to be where he’s needed. And apparently that was back in Appa’s saddle, fidgeting with the straps of his bag as they hurtled back towards Ba Sing Se.


It’d been a lie, when the man had asked him his name, and he had said Lee. He had been lying.

He’d been afraid before Katara tried to heal him. It hadn’t mattered, though, since he was afraid already. He was still afraid, barely noticing when Katara took her brother’s still-folded coat from his lap and draped it over his shoulders.

There wasn’t anything so unpleasant about the healing process. That was- he didn’t know how to describe the sensation. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt before. It might not have even been a physical feeling, just his brain filling in the blanks as it was stimulated. It was like a water pump operating inside his head, sweeping around his head until he felt like his whole mind was in motion. There was the feeling, though, that something was stuck, refusing to be pulled from the muck.

And then something did unlodge itself and let itself float upwards back into his mind. It was… murky at best, like the water had slowed to dredge it from the depths of his mind before it thrust the memory at him and regained its momentum.

He sits in a dark room. A man asks his name, and he answers.

And he’d answered Lee, but now that he could remember it, he could also remember the moment of hesitation where he had to catch himself before his mouth went to form the sound of another name. He knew what it had to mean. There were a couple other things that stuck out in the scene: a hard pressure on his wrists, a cold smile and a smug voice, the feeling of relief and satisfaction when he was believed. The lie, however, was what he fixated on for its terrible implication: he’d gone into that room as someone else, some not-Lee person. And somehow he’d left without any memory of them. Himself. Whoever.

“I can try again,” Katara offered. “It might help if I kept it up longer.” There was this quiet little huffing emphasis she always seemed to put on that word, “help”.

It hit him suddenly that she might not have known her methods were effective, even if they worsened his worry. “It um, it did work, actually. A little bit.”

“Did you remember something?” she asked, eyes narrowing with suspicion or curiosity. He wished he could tell which.

“Sort of. Not a lot, it’s more like… like I’ve realized I’ve forgotten something. A lot… Everything. I don’t know what, I just know it’s gone.” Katara nodded silently. He couldn’t blame her for not knowing what to say; he didn’t even understand it, and he was the one saying it. “But you…. I guess you already knew that. I mean, since you offered.”

Katara chewed on her cheek for a moment as his word-vomit concluded. “Right. That means your memories are probably intact. It’s just a matter of getting to them.” She pulled the water back from the jug, and when it came immediately he got the sense that she’d never really let go of it. Did he scare her? Was she guarding against him, too, under that cold face when they shared dinner a week or two prior? Why would she be scared of him, unless-

He drew a nervous breath. “Did you know me, before?” The ugly, quiet little question fell flat in the space between them and writhed around, daring them to touch it. Katara was avoiding his eyes now. As gently as he could, he reached for her hands; she got the message (he would find out soon enough, wouldn’t he?) and let him lead them back to his temples, encompassed by the glow of her element. That water-pump feeling began to creep up on him again, but before anything came to him, Katara took her hands away. She was staring at the water jug, which had begun to rattle in place.

“Are we having an earthquake?” Lee asked.

“No. Stay behind me,” Katara answered in a suddenly steely voice that left no room for arguments. She fell easily into some sort of combat stance facing the door- he recognized it from when Sokka had first brought him home. Maybe she really is just like this with everyone.

Katara, but when he spared a glance away, he noticed that the jug had stopped shaking. Only the furniture toward the back of the room was moving. He barely got in his “Um, Katara?” before a space opened in the back wall just as easily as if it were a sheet of wet clay. Half a dozen men filed through the new entrance in neat lines. They were earthbenders, no doubt, but they stalked towards him and Katara with an imposing silence. One of the men that faced him now looked strikingly familiar, but they were all so similar that it was hard to single him out.

Whoever they were, the men didn’t waste any time talking. Neither did Katara, who immediately went to strike at the three men closest to them. One was knocked back, but the other two dodged behind a hasty shield of stone and clay pulled from the floor. Katara repeated the attack with an intensity he hadn’t expected from her. Even if she’d been frosty at times, he hadn’t expected her to be so fierce.

He stumbled to his feet behind her. If he knew Katara… before, he hoped he hadn’t been on her bad side. She was kind of scary.

The men began to close in again. He cast about for something to throw or swing so she wasn’t pulling all their weight, but no sooner had his hand found the rim of a vase then a swift kick swept his legs out from under him and he found his arms in a vice grip behind his back. The vase shattered into pale shards at his feet.

“Don’t resist,” said the officer behind him, as if that was going to calm him down. He shoved an elbow backwards into the man’s rings, but all it got him was a tighter hold on his arms. Another agent caught him by the scruff of his neck; it was the one he thought he recognized when they stormed in.

The familiar officer leaned in to whisper to him, breath hot against the shell of his good ear. “Lee, the Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai.” His vision went black around the edges. Katara was yelling something, but he only really heard the sound of waves in his mind.

His body stilled and his mind raced. He didn’t want to accept, but still he was going limp in the agent’s tight hold. “I’m honored to accept his invitation,” said his mouth.

“Don’t resist,” repeated the officer, and he didn’t. Black crept in around the edges of his vision, and the last thing he saw was Katara hitting the ground beside him.

He came to on his back, staring up into a grey sky dotted with blue stars. He could still hear the water moving in his mind; it kept up, even as his vision cleared and the throbbing in his head began to fade. Sitting up, he saw why: neatly irrigated pits wound around him, routing away from an impossibly high waterfall a good length away. It stretched to the sky- no, he realized, the ceiling. They were in some kind of enormous cave. There were scores of large, crumbling structures carved into the walls- primitive houses, maybe? The “stars” he’d seen before were just clusters of jagged, luminescent crystals that weren’t just above him but stuck out from the walls and floor. There was one just next to the spot where his head had been resting and he thanked the spirits that, if nothing else, they hadn’t let him get impaled on the way down. It would have breathtakingly beautiful, under different circumstances. Now, though, all Lee felt was fear. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

Wisps of red ran by in the water, and he looked up to see Katara performing her own healing on the side of her head. “All good,” she said when she caught his eye, but her smile was shaky at best, and her clothes were dirty and tattered in places. His had fared better on the way down; glancing over, he saw that Sokka’s anorak lay in the spot where he’d been, looking worse for wear. He went to reach for it, then paused.

Sokka had given that to Lee.

Maybe on some level he knew it was only a name. It wasn’t his name, though, and he wasn’t the person he- or Sokka- had thought he was. He could feel Katara’s eyes on him as he dropped his hand. The anorak didn’t move from its crumpled blue heap.

He descended into more practical worries: How long had they been down here? Had anyone noticed he was gone? He hadn’t said anything to Uncle before he left today. Was he worrying about him? Did- oh, spirits, Uncle knew. He’d known that Mushi- was he the only one lying about his name?- had figured out there was something wrong with him, but had he known the entire time what it was? If Uncle knew who he was before, why had he never said anything? Maybe Uncle preferred him to the person he was before. That was the only way he could really rationalize it. Spirits, he must’ve been terrible.

And Sokka. Sokka… How much did he know? Had he met him before, or was it just as new and terrifying? Either way, he didn’t think he could set things back to the way they had been if he came back. Sokka loved his sweet, docile Lee and all the easy smiles and laughs and blushes that came along with him. He didn’t know if he could ever be that again. How could he ever crawl back into Sokka’s lap after everything he’d said, after knowing that he might not be that person- that he never had been? (The answer was easily, gratefully.)

He felt ruined.

Katara stepped over the stream to sit beside him when he started to cry again. “Do you want to try again?” She asked, pursing her lips when he responded with something that was somehow both, and neither, a head shake and a nod. “Lee. I know you’re scared right now, but I think it might be better to face it head-on.”

“I don’t… I don’t think I was a good person, before.” She looked away. “If I go back…”

Katara gently pushed his hair back from his sweaty forehead with a soft sigh. “Will it matter? If you find something you don’t like about yourself, will it really change who you are now?”

“It is! It has!” he snapped. She flinched away. “Guess I’m no better like this.” Katara raised her eyebrows and he nodded back at her, and then her hands were back and his temples were wet again.

She was only at it for a second before she pulled away from him abruptly, again, and again he lost it before he could make much sense of it. All he managed to get a hold of was an angry voice (His? Whose?), something heavy in his hands, and force and adrenaline and intensity that didn’t fit at all with the life he’s been living. Up until now, at least. Images flashed behind his eyelids, barely-formed or blurred with motion, until he finally recognized the person standing across from him, and then rushing at him. He could hear the rustling of his layers and the sound of his heavy boots so clearly that he wondered if this was what a real, proper memory was like for everyone else. But even as he tried to tuck the memory away, the sounds seemed to get louder and closer.

When he looked up, Jet’s face was dark, just as handsome but far less friendly than he remembered it. “Hey, Katara. Who’s your friend?”


Oh, fuck off.


Katara was so much more vigilant than she’d been when they first met. Jet wondered if she’d grown out of her sweet, trusting nature, or if she just wasn’t the kind to trust twice.
She stepped toward him now, acting as a barrier between himself and Lee. Behind her, the little snake got to his feet and began to wipe away tears.

Must’ve been some performance he was putting on; Lee wasn’t the crying type. It was a good act, though, Jet could admit. The Lee in front of him didn’t much resemble the wiry, gruff boy from the ferryboat, or the quick-tempered, showy one he’d fought in the lower ring. His face was a little rounder, his muscles less well-defined. His good eye had a red, puffy ring beneath it, and the cheek below it was ruddy. He didn’t look like a fighter anymore, more like a deserted ingenue or an abandoned runt huddled. No wonder Sokka got hooked.

“What are you doing here?” Katara asked. Her voice was a little stiff, but at least she wasn’t hurling a tsunami at him this time.

“I’ve been here for… uh, I don’t actually know how long it’s been. No sunlight down here. The Dai Li busted in on me last night. I guess the bastards are just locking people up now, with the lake compromised.” Something cloudy flickered across Lee’s face.

“Okay,” Katara said, spreading her hands in front of her. She and Sokka shared their little I’m-making-a-very-important-plan face. “Do you remember where they left you?” Jet gestured vaguely to the part of the cavern they stood in. He’d been a little disoriented on the fall and honestly couldn’t tell where he’d been tossed down from.

Katara cast her eyes around the space and seemed to think for a minute. Beside her, Lee was fidgeting and looking between her and Jet with knit brows. Maybe he was expecting a confrontation, too. “Right. If this is about where they dropped all of us off, then they must have a specific spot they use as an access point. If we figure out where, we have a chance of getting out when they open it up again.”

She began to trail along the walls of the cavern, poking her head into the tunnels by the light of the glowing water in her hand. Jet wasn’t really sure what she hoped to find- there probably was an access point, but it would never show after being closed. The Dai Li were the Earth Kingdom’s best, as well as its worst.

One tunnel tilted upward- he knew, he’d already spent hours looking for an exit- and Katara flicked her fingers towards him in an eyes-on-you motion before disappearing into it. It was probably a waste of their time and energy to let her go roving through the cavern like that, but it got him what he needed: a minute alone with Lee. Just a minute.

“Lee,” he said, “Come here and help me look.” Lee’s mouth fell open, maybe to protest, but Jet already had him by the arm and was dragging him towards one of the crumbling homes set into the cave wall. His expression went from uncertainty to panic when Jet’s shadow blocked off the doorway and he realized he was more or less trapped.

The main room was illuminated by a cluster of glowing white and blue crystals, but there was a smaller, darker room right behind it, so poorly lit that everything turned into shades of grey and he didn’t have to look at the sickening orange shade of Lee’s eyes as he backed him into the corner. Jet wasn’t planning on hurting him- or maybe he was. He hadn’t made up his mind yet. It wasn’t like Lee didn’t deserve it- he was a firebender, after all. If nothing else, he wanted Lee to know that he knew. And he wanted to know, in return, that he was right- that he hadn’t gone through all of this for nothing.

“You remember me, Lee?”

“Sort of. Sort of.” Jet wondered if that wasn’t true- he hadn’t remembered their little altercation either, until Katara helped him to clear his mind. Clearly he remembered enough, because his eyes darted between Jet, the blades on his back, and the doorway. It didn’t matter what Lee remembered- this wasn’t personal. He was a firebender whether he knew Jet or not.

“Doesn’t matter.” Not personal, he reminded himself, and tried to keep the smugness out of his voice. “I know who you are.”

“You do?” Lee asked, quiet and pleading, as if he expected Jet to fall for the innocent schtick. He didn’t want to lose his temper after how it’d gone last time (and not with Katara so close by), but he could feel himself getting more agitated with every soft little word Lee spoke. “You knew me?”

“Don’t play coy.” Lee’s brow furrowed, and he looked a little more like how Jet remembered him as leant forward into Jet’s space, strangely intense. The closeness reminded him of how close he had wanted to be to this boy on the ferry, how perfectly matched they’d seemed then. A new flash of anger and betrayal shot through him, and he grabbed a wide-eyed Lee by the front of his robe.

Lee narrowed his eyes, finally seeming to get the picture. “Who am I, Jet?” he asked. His voice was lower and softer than before, but Jet knew when he was being taunted.

“I’m asking the questions,” he growled, twisting the fabric in his hands until Lee’s breath hitched from the tightness at his collar. “Where are you from, Lee? Why are you really here?” Jet had him cornered now in between the half-collapsed stone bed and the shrine alcove in the wall.

“I-I don’t know,” Jet shoved him backwards and Lee made a panicked sound as his back hit the wall. Bits of brittle stone crumbled away behind him. Jet put a hand at his throat, not quite pressing down. It was nothing more than the implication of the act.

“Who are you, really?” he asked, and sunk his four fingers into the side of Lee’s slim neck. It was pale beneath his fingers, except for a fading lovebite just below the spot where the scar met his jawline. Jet pressed down on it hard with his pointer finger when Lee still hadn’t answered him, and was rewarded with a sharp gasp.

“I don’t know!” Lee repeated frantically. With some satisfaction Jet noted that his voice had started to take on its hard rasp again. He found the windpipe right there under the junction of his thumb and forefinger.

“Is that all you know how to say?”

“Please, Jet, I- ach!

He pressed down, hard.

It wasn’t the first time Jet had had to do it this way. When soldiers caught him unaware, when he’d been disarmed, when someone was on the trail of one of his fighters and he had to take them out quickly and quietly, it came in handy to know the right spots to squeeze. It was a nasty way to kill- not messy or overly gruesome, but too hands-on, too personal. He had to watch until it was done. Usually he bore it the same way he did any killing: he was doing it to protect the other kids, to keep them safe, and it meant one less fire nation maggot in their country.

Lee didn’t give him that release. He didn’t even put up a fight. He was supposed to be fierce. He snarled when he spoke and was a good enough swordsman to kill most people twice over. Lee didn’t blush, he didn’t whimper, and he certainly didn’t beg.

He didn’t want to kill Lee- did he? No, he decided, he didn’t. But then, Jet never wanted to kill. He wasn’t like the fire nation, hunting his people for sport. (His hand closed in tighter on Lee’s pale neck, and the boy’s unscarred cheek began to darken.) The question was whether or not he would. He’d never hesitated, before. But it was different now. Every other time, Jet had been protecting his people from real threats. Urgent threats. Grown-ups and soldiers. Lee could be all of those things- or he could just be a closed-off boy, rough but innocent, and now Jet found himself trying to keep his hand from slipping as he bounced wildly between his choices. He could risk being wrong and hurting one of the people he’d sworn to protect- he’d come here to stop, he’d come here to be better- or the risk of being right and releasing a firebender back into the city.

Lee’s eyes were becoming cloudy and unfocused.

The tears that had been threatening earlier spilled out now, pooling in the divet where his fingers dug into Lee’s neck. His breaths became increasingly strained, each one a trial on his lungs. Lee bought one cold hand up to scrabble uselessly at Jet’s wrist, and Jet caught it in his free one. Lee curled his fingers around Jet’s.

“Come on, Lee. Don’t make me…” Jet squeezed for emphasis, but his hand was already so tight that there wasn’t much give left. Lee wheezed desperately, but the skin under Jet’s fingers remained cold. Something ran down Lee’s chin but in the dark room he wasn’t sure what it was. “You’re gonna make me?” he asked, but it didn’t come out smug like he wanted it to. It was more of a plea. Don’t make me. “Just bend. Just show me you can and I’ll let it go. I’ll let you go, just show me. I know you can. I need to know.”

Finally Lee raised one shaking hand and touched his calloused fingertips softly Jet’s face, and Jet readied himself to pull back from the inevitable burn. He just needed to feel the warmth, and he would know. It would be weak. Lee didn’t have much breath left. He would pull away and put Lee down and go from there.

The touch grew a little harder, but the heat never came. Lee’s desperate last resort was not to firebend, but to drag his nails down Jet’s cheek in a barely-there scratch.

Not so much as a spark.

He circled back to that same thought: Lee wasn’t putting up a fight, and Lee always put up a fight. What if he really couldn’t bend? Maybe his uncle was the only bender in their family, or the rest of Lee’s family was earth kingdom. That would make him one of Jet’s own, that he’s choking out in this dark little hovel. What if he was wrong entirely? What if he had been from the start?

No. He knew what he’d seen, and he had to act on it. But what he was seeing now… the confusion and terror in the boy’s cloudy eyes were unreal. Anything he could’ve done to save himself, he would’ve done by now- Lee was a fighter, or he had been, once. He wasn’t the way Jet remembered him. He wasn’t who he was supposed to be. He wasn’t a firebender.

And maybe it wasn’t definitive proof, but it was just the excuse he needed to loosen the hand on Lee’s neck. Lee sagged forward and he shifted the hand to cradle his head and brought his other up to press Lee’s shoulder to the wall, keeping him steady as he took his first gasping breaths.

Normally there wasn’t conversation after you choke someone out, so he wasn’t sure what to say. Sorry? Let’s have Katara check you out? Don’t mention this to Socks or the Kid? He wished his fighters were here. Longshot would’ve known what to say.

“Okay, Lee. Just breathe.” Contradictory fucking advice from the fucking Ba Sing Se Strangler. He couldn’t tell if Lee had processed the tone shift. His eyes were still dull, his breaths tiny. Still, he seemed to lean into the touch, bringing his hands up and brushing softly at Jet’s wrists with the backs of his fingers.

Jet gave a gentle squeeze to the side of Lee’s neck. He meant it as a ”There you go, it’s okay, let’s never do that again,” sort of squeeze, but halfway through he realized it was kind of tactless. And stupid.

Lee’s aimless, soft hands clamped like vices around his wrists before he could pull his fingers back. Underneath them, Lee’s neck suddenly seems to radiate heat- not just warmth or body heat but actual, burning heat. Jet didn’t get the chance to think about what it meant, and he certainly didn’t get the chance to pull away before flames ignited in the non-existent space between their skin.

For an instant he just stared at the white flames licking out between Lee’s fingers and the way they dancered over his own skin. Then realization set in, and so did the pain, a thousandfold worse than anything he’d ever felt, and he was trying and failing to hold back a shriek of agony. Through his tears he saw Lee’s eyes illuminated by his own flame, but they were still glazed- he looked like he was barely conscious. Does he even know what he’s doing? Does he even understand? The flames got hotter, or maybe they’d reached down below his skin, and what parts of his skin didn’t feel like hellfire had gone scarily numb below Lee’s hands, which showed no signs of getting burnt, even for so long at such close range.

And he was just standing there. Oh! Oh! He was just- Jet tried to wrench his arms back, and to his amazement Lee yielded easily. His grip loosened enough for Jet to pull his wrists back with a sickening wet slide and a new wave of pain accompanied by a wildly dizzy feeling. He pulled back and kept going, going, going, until he was across the little room and pressed into the other corner, hand hovering erratically over the dark shining surface of his arm. The cool, damp air stung the wound and it took everything in him not to clutch at it.

Through bleary, weaving vision he thought to glance at Lee, who still wore that knocked-out expression and gasped in tiny, aborted breaths. Jet watched as he raised a hand to massage at his bruised neck. He seemed to realize at the same time as Jet did that his hands were hot and slick; what could’ve been blood or melted skin flew away from them as Lee thrust them away from himself. They were both hyperventilating now, which is not a great feeling if you've been recently burned or, if Jet had to guess, all but strangled.

Lee’s eyes had found him now, hunched on the floor with his fists balled up to keep him from grabbing at his burns. Did he look angry, or was Lee looking down at a pathetic cowering mess of a man? He wouldn’t give the firebender- any firebender- the satisfaction of seeing him like that, of even thinking of him that way. Jet tried to deepen his brows, tried to funnel every emotion that wasn’t pain and regret into a seething glare. He probably looked more like a snarling, wounded animal than anything. But maybe Lee caught it anyway, or maybe he was catching sight of the furious wash of red, white and black on Jet’s arms, because he gave a horrified rattle of a gasp that sent- oh spirits, fuck- sparks scattering from his lips, which sent his hands back to his throat. He repeated the cycle:

Throat. Blood. Jet. Burns. Gasp. Sparks. Throat. Blood. Jet. Burns. Gasp. Sparks.

In the tiny, scattered light from his bending, he could see Lee’s eyes again. Honey brown, he remembered thinking on the ferry, when he’d finally gotten Lee alone. Fire Nation gold, he’d realized before Lee turned from him at the station. The color is the same as it ever was now, but he could see the fear in his eyes, and beneath it, confusion. Shock. As if he hadn’t known.

As if he hadn’t known.

Lee’s words came back to him: Who am I, Jet?

He wasn’t being sarcastic. He'd wanted to know. Out in the cave, Jet could hear Katara yelling for them; he looked between the burns on his arm and the other boy passed out against the wall and wondered what she would do. Her footsteps came nearer, and when her shadow darkened the doorway he finally dropped to the ground next to Lee.

They both got what they wanted.

Notes:

CW for: General Violence, Strangulation, Burning, some light blood. Usual action chapter fare.

 
what if i strangled you and then you gave me severe burns and we were holding hands the whole time and we’re 👉👈 both boys 😳
-tried to keep jet's characterization simple in this one simple: desperate, angry, ✨fruity✨ jokes aside tho i feel like a lot of people either fall into seeing him as a saint/martyr (which i kinda get) or an irredeemable asshole/manipulator? And I really don't like either of those. I feel (and I don't want to be someone who goes deep into kids show lore but oh well) like he can't be soley defined as victim or villain, he's just a scared kid that turned into an angry teen and got stuck that way. Idk i think he's neat and I always like trying to get into his head.
-also (lots of notes huh) I know i like. teased a misogyny conversation with the SWT guys but I didn't go all that deep into it. I think it goes undiscussed a lot because what we see in the show is basically the same kind of casual, normalized misogyny we grew up with, and it gets talked about more in the Northern tribe because that kind of sexism is less familiar to us? idk
- I'm thinking of maybe sticking to every other Sunday? I've got a lot of material already written for the next couple chapters (only what? two, three left? holy SHIT) but there's also a Lot to write and a ton of loose threads i have to tie up so thank you for bearing with me!! Love u guys :)