A/N: Over the course of writing this, the character of Ling-Ling grew from a sort of deus ex machine (that original "get out of jail free" card, into something more interesting, at least to me. I have no expectation of Zuko or Sokka ever figuring her out, but I think I finally did.
Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…
Chapter 14
The world has rarely been generous in the roles available to women, regardless of century or culture. Accidents of birth may decide the difference between wife, consort, or harlot. Gradations in fairness of form could rule out all but the last for some. Nurse, cook or drudge, invisible beyond the services they provide, fill out the ranks. In any case, too great an allotment of intellect was unlikely to bring much joy, regardless of role. For the girl-child born to a family of modest rank or substance, with no beauty to recommend her, there may be no role at all.
History does not often record the accommodations the intelligent, ugly girls of modest standing make to their aspirations, but it would be foolish to assume they would simply acquiesce to empty lives. Or that history owes nothing to them.
And this was another of Zuko's life lessons. As all his lessons seemed to be, he found it extremely unsettling. Not exactly…unpleasant, but definitely not comfortable. He had the distinct impression that he was experiencing a bizarre mingling of revenge and genuine tenderness in Ling-Ling's caresses. Her touch was soft, firm, and definitely knowledgeable. How many had there been before him? How had it started? Had she always been the one in control? And how would he reconcile his own response?
He honestly didn't know if he felt relief or frustration when she did not unfetter him.
He could have stopped her, if not by word or look, certainly he still had his breath of fire. But he didn't try. This was part of the deal. And if she helped them, well, surely it was right that she exact her payment. He was a man of honor. He did his best to keep his promises.
But nothing was as he expected it to be.
"Damn it! How long is she going to drag this out?" Sokka had not envisioned much opportunity for intimate exchanges when he first suggested to Zuko that he take advantage of Ling-Ling's apparent attraction to him. But then, he had not reckoned with her emergence as a master of manipulation either.
"We can hope she doesn't intend to take it up to my execution and then abandon me, I guess," Zuko's tone suggested that he believed this to be a definite possibility.
"Aagh, she wouldn't. We know she's helped others escape – why shouldn't she help you?"
"We're making it more difficult by bringing you into it," Zuko reminded him.
"Then take me out," Sokka growled. "She can't be sure I'll raise hell… I know. We'll start acting friendly. You don't rat on friends."
He was pacing. He had almost completely lost the air of easy acceptance that had so enraged Zuko a few short weeks ago. Now Zuko missed it.
"And you don't leave friends behind," Zuko said wearily. "Stop stewing. This was always the risk. You said so yourself."
"I don't do well with guilt. I avoid it whenever possible."
"A little late now to be worrying about it."
"I'm not. In any case, it won't come to that," Sokka forced himself to stop pacing. "No one is going to be executed. Zuko, you need to start getting concrete details from her as to her plan. We are not going to wait around."
Zuko smiled. Good. Sokka was thinking again, and giving him something to do that would require his active participation and concentration. He desperately wanted something different to concentrate on!
"The ideal time would probably be a few hours before dawn," said Sokka. "The guards on duty will be thinking of their beds and no one else will be stirring. Ling-Ling is always the first one in here in the mornings. Even then, for some reason she doesn't bring our breakfast until a good hour after sunrise."
"Right. She'll have to raise the alarm then. That would give us a good couple hours' head-start before they send out search-parties. We'll need as much lead time as we can get," Zuko agreed. "But any earlier and the guards will be more alert, and there's the chance of running into night revelers. Although in this area maybe that won't be an issue."
"I don't know. If I lived near a prison I would probably spend a lot of time carousing to try to forget about it. Of course, if I lived under the Fire Nation at all I would probably be consistently drunk, or just kill myself."
"Sokka, if you lived under the Fire Nation we would want to keep you drunk just to shut you up." Zuko pictured his father's officials trying to find ways to deal with the Water Tribe peasant short of killing him. He decided that Sokka would have been doomed even had he not followed the Avatar.
"Good thing for my health I don't plan to live under the Fire Nation then."
"Uh. You have noticed that the Fire Nation doesn't plan on it either, haven't you?"
"Now see? Even when we agree we can't agree. They want to kill me and I just want to leave."
"I can't believe we are even talking about it."
The door rattled at that point, signaling the arrival of Zuko's escort for his morning trip to the yard.
Either the bones had finally collapsed or his head was getting harder. Or maybe they weren't striking as hard. All things considered, this last was certainly a possibility. In any case, the obligatory blow to Zuko's head hardly fazed him as a second guard bent to release his wrist shackles. For appearance's sake, he bowed his head and stumbled as he was dragged to his feet, but he managed to catch Sokka's eye as he passed his cell. He wanted Sokka to know that even now he was not incapacitated.
At the yard's far point his guards stepped back, allowing him room to move. Each held weapons at ready – even now no one trusted him not to fire-bend – especially now, with execution eminent. But they did not interfere as he moved through his stances, his body falling into a natural rhythm and grace, without thought or conscious direction.
He would never understand it. Never know why his life had to be so damned hard! He knew he wasn't stupid. He knew how to work and oh! he knew all about disciplining his mind and body to achieving a goal. So, he wasn't brilliant, but his tutors had never been actually disappointed in him. And, in any other environment, his progress at 'bending would have been more than acceptable.
But he was prince of fire. He was expected to be exceptional. He knew he was good – he was better than good! But his birth had almost killed his mother, and he was lucky to be alive.
His sister – even girl that she was – had flowed from their mother's womb with ease, and that ease had been with her in everything since. And she excelled her brother at every step.
Ah, he hated girls.
He had been betrothed to some Fire Nation diplomat's daughter – he had only the vaguest memory of her, but she was his sister's friend. And that was enough to close his heart without thinking. It wouldn't have mattered. There would always have been the seraglio.
He had always assumed he would control his passions, choose his partners, and determine his pleasures. It was, after all, a man's prerogative and, as Fire Lord, he would have had the ultimate prerogative.
How humiliating for a girl to yet again take the prerogative away from him. He could not deny her. Honor required otherwise and, his soul admitted, Ling-Ling had the skill to command his body's acceptance of her will… He tried to close his memory off in the interests of more important exertions.
His guards watched, enthralled with a performance beyond their ken. Zuko's control was exquisite. Yet he could not prevent the tell-tale whispers of smoke that trailed from his limbs and from his breath. Luckily, in the prevailing haze, these whispers disappeared like a disappointed sigh.
Given the fact that the backup plan was still problematic - did he really think between the two of them they could overpower not just the guards actually with Zuko but others stationed around the prison who would be drawn to the fracas - Sokka also thought about Ling-Ling's plan.
It wasn't enough for her to leave the keys with Zuko. He didn't have enough play in his chains for one hand – or even his teeth – to reach the lock cuffing his other wrist. And he couldn't bend his hand sufficiently to manage the lock on that wrist.
The obvious answer was for her to leave the keys with Sokka, if she wasn't prepared to free him herself. But they weren't yet ready to reveal to Ling-Ling that Sokka was even aware of the possibility of escape. After all, Ling-Ling had not yet raised the option of including Sokka in her plan, despite Zuko's hints regarding his neighbor's potential as a trouble-maker. He did not push it. Despite his earlier comments, Sokka was far from trusting her with the knowledge that he and Zuko were working together. It would put them both completely at her mercy, and he didn't like it.
He also didn't like it that Zuko seemed to have lost some of his wariness regarding Ling-Ling.
He sluiced the last of his water jug over his face and through his hair. The sides and back itched where hair filled in areas he had not been able to shave in weeks. He suspected from similar irritation beneath his nose and across his chin, and from the faint shadow gracing his neighbor's visage, that adolescence was visiting both of them with yet more reminders as to the onset of adulthood.
And what would he be willing to do for a bath? Sokka shook himself. He would not go there, even in his mind.
"Will you go home after, if you can?" Zuko asked. He didn't want to think about Ling-Ling, the prison, or anything about himself. Sokka had been drumming his fingertips, knuckles and palms on the wall in a complicated rhythm Zuko guessed harkened from the Water Tribe. The metal wall yielded different tonal values that Sokka had mapped out in the days before Zuko started talking to him.
"I have to, don't I," Sokka didn't pause in his drumming. Zuko didn't expect him to. "Someone should be taking care of my village, and I don't know if any of the other men will be returning." He didn't voice the reality that those men were fighting against Zuko's people. That almost certainly some, at least, were already dead.
"But you left them on their own already. You must have assumed they could take care of themselves."
"That was different. I didn't think we'd be gone that long. We had to go help Aang, after what he'd done for the village. And then… we had to keep helping him. He needs us. And, I guess… he's more important than anyone else."
"I wonder if you're just kidding yourself. You were just looking for an excuse to leave," Zuko mused, picturing again the harsh landscape of Sokka's homeland. "I mean, what is there for you to do there?"
"Hunt, fish, cure meat and tan hides, build and repair boats, ice walls and tents, carve bone and haggle with traders for things we can't get at home and need. Always work to do. For fun, there's sailing, skating, ice-climbing, sledding and boarding down glaciers. Music and story-telling. Harassing my sister and the young kids. It's not a bad life, really. It's all I ever asked for," Sokka shrugged. "May not seem like much to you, but you knew where you stood, who you could trust, and that you were loved." He looked pointedly at Zuko, bringing his cadence to a sudden stop.
Zuko met his gaze, refusing to rise to the bait. "I don't believe it. You must have wanted more."
"Nope. Always more to learn. Can you navigate by the stars, Zuko? Do you know when the ice is rotten or how to tell when the krill are running? Do you understand whale-song?" He smiled. "Don't get me wrong. There's a lot to be said for seeing the world. And there are – people – I wouldn't have missed knowing for anything. But, yeah, I want to go home."
Zuko remained silent. Sokka took up another beat, then paused a moment.
"Not enough to do just anything to get there, though." His hands resumed their beat.