A/N: I wrote this for my friend rainbowishprincess because I finally got her hooked on Avatar and then she immediately goes for the crackships! Here's my version of Jet and Azula, during his time under Lake Laogai.

Disclaimer: characters etc belong to nickelodeon (or whatever).

Fifteen Times

Jet saw her once. Maybe twice. Just always outside of that tiny slot in the metal door, in the metal room where he was locked in. All metal. No air, no trees, nothing to feel but stale air. He felt like the earth was collapsing around him sometimes.

Not that he knew what was going on. Jet was always in a confused state, a dizzy sensation throughout his body. He couldn't remember his name half of the time; where he came from; what he was doing here; how he had gotten here was even a question.

The only time he ever remembered talking was the third time he saw her walk by through the tiny space in the door, where usually dark eyes glared through before opening the door and taking him away and then—he wouldn't remember anything else.

"Hey," he whispered once, and his voice was husky and cracking due to disuse. He thought she wouldn't hear, but the second he spoke the girl stopped in her tracks; turned around to face him. Jet was even more astonished by how perfect that face was: chiselled like a doll. The red lips, the large eyes, the perfect hair that was straight and dark. The first word that ran through his mind was beautiful. The second was untrustworthy. Although Jet was missing chunks of what he assumed was his memory, he knew a face used to lying when he saw one. After all, his was the same. He thought. Maybe. He hadn't seen it in awhile.

"You are?" she asked in a silky smooth voice, taking two steps closer. She walked like an authority figure: hands behind her back, her legs wide apart, her stride purposeful.

"Uh—" Jet struggled to reply, struggled to stay something in front of the luminous girl, but his memory was—rather obviously—drawing a huge blank. "I can't really remember." He smiled weakly, but she wouldn't be able to see anyway. Stupid.

She watched him silently for only a second, studying him. "Oh." Like she had just understood something.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked with a hint of panic. He hadn't meant to add it in, but really. He was desperate for some sort of ally.

"I know that you hate the Avatar," she said in a quiet voice, sidling up to the door. Jet blinked. Really? He'd never really thought much about the Avatar. Didn't even know they were back.

"Oh." Maybe she was right. But still, that look in her eyes… "All right, then."

She didn't move, and continued to stand just outside his door. "Will… you let me out?" he asked in a quiet voice, the voice he remembered (maybe) using to get his way when he was younger. Finally, a smile appeared on her face: small and cold, but Jet wasn't turned away by it. Anyone was good company at the moment.

"Trust me, I want to." She walked closer, the smile vanishing and turning into a little puckered frown. "But the rules are rules for a reason, you know."

Jet felt tears of frustration at the back of his eyes. "What rules?" he asked darkly. "I don't even know where I am."

Suddenly something in the door clunked out of place. Jet stared through the slot as the girl pulled the door open, taking a long key out of the lock and sliding it back into her shirt. "You're in a better place. We help here," she informed him, patting his arm but staying a safe distance away. Jet wondered who down here could possibly have power like that: to open a door whenever they pleased. To carry the key around with them.

"Who are you?" he asked in wonderment, taking a hesitant step out. The girl pulled him out gently, closing the door firmly behind him. Jet took it in: the hall lit by dim green crystalline lights, all the doors similar to his own, blank eyes peeking out through the slots. "Seriously," he added in a stern voice, surveying the small puddle of groundwater on the floor. It smelled like dirt down there.

"My name is Azula," she told him, wrapping an arm through his like a young girl would with an older boy. She patted his hand with hers as if to reassure him. "We'll just go on a little walk, shall we?"

Jet smiled feebly. Seemed like he hadn't lost all of his charm yet. "You're beautiful," he told her seriously as they took calm, slow steps through the hall. "Really."

Azula smiled again, looking straight ahead. "Thank you" was all she spoke, in a quiet voice. Jet smiled sleepily and looked ahead too. He followed her just the littlest bit. She seemed to know where she was going.

"Are we going to figure out what's happened to me?"

"Yes. That's what we're here for, after all," she promised him. Jet smiled warmly at her.

"Thank you for this."

She looked up at him and finally an expression that seemed real—but painful—flitted across her face. "You say that everytime," she whispered, just as they stopped outside of a huge stone door. Jet blinked at her, confused by her words, but her sharp knock on the door resulted in someone on the other side grinding it open with something like Earthbending.

"Fix him up," Azula grunted to the man, passing Jet over him. Jet looked over at her, perplexed. Confused. She didn't sound too happy to be healing him. "Make him forget more. He's still not good." She stared darkly at Jet. He felt the cold of her gaze and shivered. Somehow this all felt familiar, something he had yet to experience in this new life of his. "I want him completely and utterly gone." She turned to the big man holding Jet's arms together. "And if you go lightly again, I will kill you."

And then she was gone, and Jet was covered in the darkness. He was forced to sit, tied down with rocks, and watched a light spiral dizzyingly around him as poisonous words seeped into his brain.

Three days later Jet was staring out the slot in his door, everything blank, everything dull, everything forgotten.

And then he saw a girl walk down the hall, in front of his door, and he wondered why he felt a compulsion to talk to her. "Hey," he whispered out, his voice cracking, and she stopped, turned around, and stared at him with dark eyes. She was intoxicatingly stunning.

And it happened all over again, for the fifteenth time.