Games
Rating: K+
Warnings: Character Death
Genre: Angst
Timeline: Just after Lake Laogai
Characters: Smellerbee, Longshot, Jet
Spoilers: Lake Laogai
Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. If I did the ending of Lake Laogai would not have been so ambiguous.
He nocks an arrow, string tightening under his fingers. It feels good. He almost smiles but that's a little too much for him to express. He can hear them, all those green-clad warriors wielding the earth when they should be wielding heat and flame. His hand shakes in anticipation and maybe fear but he will never say so.
She watches this other man who lies still the way he never did in life. She watches the blood stain his clothes and the way he smiles despite the light she can see fading from his eyes. She cries, cries for the first time since the blaze took her family and her life, cries because she knows it's the end, cries because she outlasted their stupid reckless leader, cries because she only kissed him once and that just really wasn't enough.
He lets the tension out of his arms and helps her up when this other man goes limp after smiling too much for the wounds he's suffered. He tugs her tight and lets her know with his eyes that he loves her.
She nods and they kiss for just a second, maybe a couple seconds, before he is tight and ready again and she is brushing the second second of his kiss onto this other man's still warm, too warm, lips. She pulls daggers from their sheaths and guards the body of this precious man.
They face the door opening too slowly and time is warped around them. The first arrow is loosed. The first dagger finds its mark. They fight knowing there are only more on their way or already here, that this is a losing battle, that, no matter what they said, they are still Freedom Fighters and that this is the wrong enemy.
But these warriors in green and brown and gold will not touch them or their grand fool of a leader. Not until they are dead on the ground.
It's just a game of keep away, like they played when they were naïve children and not vigilantes in treetops. A game of keep away and keep your life, as futile as Russian Roulette played against yourself.
While she races between their too many bodies, drawing splashes of blood and screams as she goes, she can only think they are getting close to the poison.
When he shoots his last arrow and feels that third, or fifth, -he's so numb he can't tell- stone dagger thud into his back, he knows he's already found the poison, taken the wrong pill, eaten off the wrong plate.
He can only think it was delicious while it lasted.
She screams his name, but the place he's falling to is warm and he can hear so many calling louder then her.
She stops because she is tired and the last one left, lets her arms drop limp and lets these enemies who shouldn't be their enemies overwhelm her. She doesn't cry, this is not a time for tears, but she does let her shoulders shake and murmurs the most important names she's ever heard again and again and again.
Until she is falling.
Falling.
Falling.
She has never lost a game of keep away.
Written in one sitting in, like, a half hour. Interpret the relationship as you will.