The journey home is a long one.

Jermaine spends the first thirty minutes of the flight absolutely terrified, clinging on to Dojo's back as tight as he can with his hands and his knees because they're up so high and Dojo keeps twisting and moving and there's nothing keeping him up there, nothing but a thousand feet of open air between Jermaine and the ground.

He's pretty glad he didn't take Omi up on that offer to become a Xiaolin warrior the first time. It'd be pretty hard to do this kind of thing every single day.

But after the first long, terrifying ascent, once they reach a cruising altitude and Dojo's flight smooths out into a steadier rhythm, it stops being so scary. It's warmer than it should be considering that they're so high, but he figures it's some kind of magic. Probably the same magic that lets Dojo go from tiny to gigantic in the blink of an eye, and fly without any kind of wings or, like, rocket boosters.

They're moving fast, too. Like, really fast. Jermaine got a B in World Geography, but he's pretty sure that the country below them right now isn't China anymore.

"Yo, Dojo," he calls up to the dragon, "How long is this gonna take?" and Dojo shouldn't be able to hear him over the wind but he does anyway.

"Eh," the dragon shrugs, rolling his whole body up and down, and Jermaine grabs on to his back again. "A few hours? Maybe four? Give or take. I don't know, we don't usually time these trips."

"Four hours," Jermaine repeats. He doesn't really know how long flights from China to New York usually are, but he's pretty sure that traveling halfway around the world is supposed to take a lot longer than four hours. Magic is so weird.

"Yeah," Dojo says, "so you might as well get comfy."

Jermaine scoots up Dojo's neck a little bit, until he's nestled right at the end of one of his big yellow…back fin things. There's probably some kind of proper name for it, but he doesn't really know much about dragons.

He doesn't know much about anything when it comes to this kung fu magic stuff. If he had, maybe…maybe he wouldn't have fallen for that Chase guy and his training scam.

It seems so obvious in retrospect, with the scary-looking armor and the creepy lair full of lava and tigers. Jermaine's watched enough cartoons, read enough comic books - he should know a villain when he sees one. And maybe he did, a little bit. Maybe there'd been part of him holding back the whole time, sensing that something was just plain not right about the whole deal.

But he'd been so excited, at first, about getting to train as a real Xiaolin warrior, doing the stuff that Omi'd told him about. About being good at it, and maybe that was all a lie too. Maybe all that stuff Chase had said about him being a fast learner, and improving more quickly than any other warrior he'd seen, and becoming a Dragon some day…maybe that was just another part of the scam.

Except that he had been good. Good enough to go toe to toe with Omi, who'd been training at this stuff for his whole life. Good enough that Jermaine had almost beaten him. Could have beaten him. Could have hurt him.

He had let that armor-plated punk get inside his head and play him like a violin, and Omi'd almost ended up paying the price. The coolest kid Jermaine had ever met, and he'd been ready to - to harm him. To cause some real damage. Maybe even kill him, and all because Omi had gotten a little jealous. Sure, his jealousy had been annoying, and maybe a little degrading, but it wasn't like…like, Omi's kind of arrogant and gets jealous easily but he's still a good kid at heart, and Jermaine knew all that and he'd still fought him like Omi was the bad guy and not the other way around.

"Some Xiaolin warrior I'd make," he mutters to himself.

"What was that, kid?" Dojo calls back to him.

"Nothing," Jermaine says, a little louder. He glances down. Somehow, without his notice, his hands have found the leathery edge of Dojo's frill/spine/whatever it is, and they're clutching it tight, like he's still afraid that he'll fall off even though they've been flying smooth for a while now.

"Hmm," says Dojo, a noncommittal sound, and doesn't say anything else.

They fly in silence for a bit. The land below them flattens out slowly, from big mountains to smaller ones to hills. He can see rivers and thick, dense jungles, and every so often there's the sprawl of human civilization, all laid out beneath them as they slither through the air.

When Dojo finally speaks again, the world below them is taking on the bleached-out brown tones of an enormous desert, and Jermaine's trying to figure out whether they're flying over Pakistan or the Arabian Peninsula.

"It's not your fault, y'know."

"Huh?"

"That whole thing with Chase. It wasn't your fault."

Jermaine snorts. "Yeah, sure."

"No, I'm serious," and Dojo's tone is serious, which is kind of weird for him. Jermaine's been getting a kind of goofball uncle vibe from him, not a lecturing mentor deal. "You're not exactly the first guy to fall for his tricks. He's really good at those."

"Yeah," Jermaine says, and stares down at Dojo's scales.

"He tells you what you want to hear, and gives you what you think you want, and then you just go along with it until it's too late to stop. That's not your fault."

Dojo's scales are really green and a little shiny, and Jermaine can kind of see his own face reflected in them. He studies his reflection and doesn't say a word.

"This is as much our fault as it is anyone else's," Dojo continues. "You didn't know who he was, and we should've told you. We should've warned you to watch out for him when he first showed up."

"Like that woulda made a difference," Jermaine mutters.

"I think it would have. You're a good kid. You wouldn't have tried to hurt Omi if you'd known that Chase was a bad guy. And, come on, it's not like doing bad things automatically makes you a bad person. If that were true, we wouldn't have any Xiaolin warriors to fight evil in the first place."

That gets Jermaine's attention, and he looks up. "What d'you mean by that?"

"Well," and Dojo shrugs again, "we all mess up sometimes. Like I said, you're not the only guy to fall for an evil trick or make a mistake. All those kids have made plenty. Heck, I've made mistakes. I almost got myself eaten a couple months ago, and then there was the time I, er. Uh. Ever hear about Atlantis?"

Jermaine blinks. "Uh, yeah?"

"Yeah. That was me." Dojo coughs. "But yeah, anyway, my point is…it's just part of life, okay? Everyone messes up. Doing something bad doesn't define you. What defines you is what you do after you mess up."

"You sound like my mom." They're flying over water now, clear and blue and sparkling in the sunlight, which has been getting progressively brighter as they fly west. He thinks it might be the Mediterranean.

"So what are you going to do?"

Jermaine looks down at the water. He shrugs. "I dunno, man. Uh. Just go home, I guess. I got a lot to think about."

"No evil rampages? No messy revenge? No angry internet forum trolling?"

"What? No! You kiddin' me? Why would I do any of that?"

"Hey, if you were evil, you wouldn't need a reason. I told you, you're a good kid. You'll be fine."

"Sure, whatever." But Jermaine does feel a little better. A little less scared, maybe. Like maybe he will be okay. He's still feeling kind of messed up about all this, still going to need some time to work through it, but…Dojo's words have helped. Even if only a little bit, he feels more settled.

I'll be okay, he repeats silently to himself, and by the time they finally crest the horizon and see the shining skyscrapers of Manhattan in the distance, he's finally beginning to believe it.

There really needs to be more Jermaine in this fandom. I'm trying to get practice writing him so please let me know how I did!

Also, this whole fic was my friend Dragonnutt's suggestion so you can thank her for it.