Travel Through, Together
They are charged with the maelstrom of adolescence and war and pain both monumental and trivial. They glow with their indignities, gleaming rage in the night, ragged ghosts hunting down revenge for the greater good - and when they hit it is with fire in the back of their minds and the specific smell of straw burning and the shade-memory of the tension of grief under their throats. It is also with mundane necessity - they hunger, thus they do what they must to eat. There are not many lines drawn, only an umbrella over their numbers - to hurt a fellow Freedom Fighter is unthinkable, a crime more readily punished than cold blood drawn from a soldier's throat (some things come naturally, after all).
The world is inconsequential. In the end, they are only children, fighting together by any means. No one dies under Jet's watch, not from the cold or from hunger or from anything he can help, and it is for that reason their loyalties are never a matter of choice.
-
The funny thing about it is that Jet didn't start them - just like any of the others, he was drawn in, hungry and weak and shaking from more than exhaustion. Maybe that's why they know to stand by his side - he is not so much a leader as a part of them, equal even as he organizes duties and works out punishments and barks commands. It's his strength, just like Smellerbee is excellent at finding the best stake-out spots and Longshot has the best eye for when food is still good to eat and the Duke has always, without fail, volunteered for spy missions and come away successful. They find ways to make life work.
There's a certain charm to it, too, especially in the heat of the ambush. They're doing what adults can't (too weakened by the tireless press of war), and they can sense the danger of it, but that's what makes it fun. It's transformed into a game - there are rules to follow and consequences for stepping out of line and rewards for success. It's easy to enjoy their lot when food is coming in and rain keeps the forest green (harder to burn) - especially easy when it's been a while since the last new child caught stealing from their resources with shining burns has appeared. Life is tedious and boring and exhilarating and, in the end, the life they carve is theirs. That is the most important part - the perpetual ownership of life, day after day. They are allowed to carry the dead on their own terms, and in that way the dead become lighter on their shoulders (and lighter, until they laugh fast and smile often).
-
It's Sneers who first finds Smellerbee, and it's only by unhappy circumstance. He and Pipsqueak are out on a supply run, stolen gold jingling on Pipsqueak's belt. The village they're traveling to has always been a safe spot, and no one's ever asked where they got the gold; but it's a three day trip on foot so it's a journey they put off for twice a year, if they have the funds. It's late in the winter, ice crunching underfoot and bending branches low; the Freedom Fighters are going hungry. There's no point holding it off anymore.
What they find is a village in ruins, a few chickenpigs wandering aimlessly through the rubble. The animals have almost all been killed; most of the houses are abandoned. There is a fortunate lack of human bodies, at least. It becomes a scavenging mission, which Pipsqueak points out is better than nothing; in the fifth hovel Sneers checks, there she is.
Her hair is long, stuck to her sooty neck and terribly tangled. She's not crying - doesn't even seem upset, not really - as she rifles through burnt cabinets. She can't be older than eight.
"Hey," Sneers says, as gentle and soothing as his voice can go. She doesn't look up or react at all, picking up a basket and shaking it. "Hey, kid. This your house?"
She looks up. Her face is filthy and she looks exhausted, so he's not really surprised when she just shakes her head at him and points vaguely in a direction, opening the basket with her other hand.
"Where are your parents?" he asks, kneeling beside her. There's a few stale-looking biscuits in the basket, which she begins to eat, mechanical, not invested in the act. All she does is shake her head again. She doesn't look at him. "Okay," he says. "Okay. Wanna come with us? We can take care of you."
There's not really a choice - he already knows her answer before she responds, knows that despite the flicker of fear and deep mistrust curling her shoulders in, she will come. He wonders what to call her.
In a couple weeks, she will cut her hair with one of Jet's knives and borrow some of Pipsqueak's old armor. Her real name, she tells them, does not matter. Jet assures her that he knows, that they all know, and within the month Smellerbee is talking to anyone who talks to her first and smiles (though, oddly, only at the Duke's worst jokes - but it's a start).
-
Longshot finds them, and the way Jet tells the story it's pretty funny. Apparently the kid had been messed up after his town was taken by the Fire Nation (there is a scar that Jet and Smellerbee have seen and do not mention, not ever). He'd armed himself with fury and his older brother's bow and set out to do what the Freedom Fighters do, alone and practicing on trees and animals with shaking hands.
Long story short is, he mistook Jet for a Fire Nation soldier and would've shot him in the head if it weren't for the blunt terror of killing another human being. The arrow landed on the trunk of the tree three inches from Jet's ear, singing through the air in the second after it hit, stealing Jet's breath. The surprise of loosing the arrow stayed Longshot's hand, and before he could move to try again, Jet had him pinned against a tree, hissing furiously at him.
He didn't speak then and still doesn't speak, a force of habit that everyone is sure has nothing to do with trauma. Smellerbee - learning now to talk unprompted, grinning loosely at the mundane - takes up the empty space at his right. Their rapport comes smooth and easy and, admittedly, with a few bruised elbows and sides and more than a few heated debates on morality. Smellerbee likes having to pay attention to his body, likes having to map out each little tic and shift and quirk of expression - without the bog of useless words it is easy to set up intimacy. She's never been closer to someone than Longshot, just by nature of his passivity and her curiosity.
(When he speaks to her - when those rare words, gentle, pass his lips, it's like a secret gift. It's his voice that makes her go from loving him to falling in love - and when Jet points out the irony she tells him to mind his own business.)
-
"What I don't get," Smellerbee says, playing with Longshot's hat, "is why Ba Sing Se ain't sending out more troops. I mean, if they went full-force, we'd have the Fire Nation running." Longshot sits up on his elbows and tilts his head to the side; there's a frown that means he disagrees, a looseness in his fingertips that shows he cares.
"I agree with Longshot," Jet says, sipping some water from a leather canteen. "The Earth Kingdom has to have a safe spot for refugees, and it needs to be -"
"Yeah," Smellerbee interrupts, indignant at being out-numbered, "but they've got their walls."
" - right, but it needs to be protected by more than architecture, Bee."
She rolls her eyes and stuffs Longshot's hat on his face; when he lifts it off, he's smiling patiently. "Whatever," she says. "If we won the war nobody'd need protectin', that's all I'm saying."
-
Summer is waning, leaving the trees brittle and crisp, bringing cooler winds in as the world settles into autumn. The leaves are just starting to change, yellow and brown interrupting waves of green. Things are looking up for the Freedom Fighters - they've had two successful raids in as many months. Not just small raids, either - ones big enough to keep them going well into the winter, if they manage their resources well, which they will. Jet's capable of making a barrel of apples stretch out for eternity, rotting or not.
Which leaves Longshot wondering why Jet has been standoffish, restless, and moody the last two weeks. Smellerbee wonders, too, though she insists that Jet just needs some time; to let him be, let him work things out. As far as Longshot's concerned, two weeks is long enough to brood. He's careful with his planning; it's not easy to keep Smellerbee (who is terrible at keeping secrets) and Jet in the dark and operate something larger than a one-man plan. Still, everybody's used to Longshot by now - it's not impossible.
Two days later, Smellerbee and Jet are on a spy mission - there's two Fire Nation officers coming through with important information (or at least that's what their 'intelligence' says). The time it should take the two to investigate, find the information fake, and make it back should be just long enough to set up the party.
Longshot wavers between Pipsqueak cooking over a fire and standing watch, skilled eyes trained on the lengthening shadows. He'll catch sight of them before he hears their voices - and they've only been gone for a few hours but he knows that seeing the familiar shape and movements of their bodies will be relief, will feel a little more like coming home than welcoming home.
Right as everyone's patience is nearly broken, they show up - and it's more than the stolen fireworks that light up the night. Seeing Jet grin and step back into himself lets Longshot relax for the first time in what feels like ages.
(How small each moment is but how large it feels inside.)
-
That night - well, morning is probably more accurate - when they settle down in their huts, nestled against heavy bark and breathing the soothing musk of nature, Jet curls against Longshot's side, reaches over him to ruffle Smellerbee's hair. Longshot catches his wrist, firm, though he doesn't look back. If Jet wants, this is the time to talk, to confess to the pain that follows him still through cloudless days. He doesn't have to. They all know that. If he chooses not to, there won't be any worrying, no excess thought spent on it - it's enough to have him in the present, enough to have his warmth all along Longshot's back and fingers threaded through Smellerbee's hair.
He inhales deep against Longshot's neck. "Well-played, Longshot," he says, smiling, teeth not quite grazing at the skin of Longshot's neck. "Well-played."
Smellerbee laughs.
Outside, the moon travels on.