A/N: *shows up a month late with fireflakes* yo
Fight
At Zuko's kick the table scrapes across the stone floor, and the jarring noise feels so right. The guards' swords are hot in his hands, but not enough to ignite, just thrumming with the fight that's been on the horizon for weeks now, like a storm that's finally decided to break.
Clang-clang-crash. Why does Jet have to slice through the table? Zuko can't afford for that to come out of his paycheck—
No. Right now he doesn't have to think about money, or serving tea, or anything but keeping his head attached to his body. It brings a clarity that he's been aching for.
Jet should have tried to kill him sooner.
He couldn't take out his simmering anger, the pressure cooker of frustration and hopelessness and humiliation, on the tea shop's patrons. But Jet? Jet, with his cocky smirk and stupid grass hanging from between his teeth and *the arch of his furrowed eyebrows screaming hate?
Oh, Zuko's been dying to get a hit on that face.
For those few wonderful, satisfying moments, he imagines Jet as Zhao, as Azula, as the soldiers from Lee's village, as everyone who's stood between himself and home. The swords hum through the air, striking metal again and again, carving dents into their polished blades.
But even now, he can't release everything. He's still on the defensive. He won't strike Jet's dirt-smeared skin—where has the boy been living, has he had a shower since they rode the ferry over? Does he have somewhere to shower?
No, he's not going to feel sympathy for the idiot who's been trying to land him in prison.
That's why he pulls his strikes—because he doesn't intend on rotting in some Lower Ring jail cell. Not because he actually cares if he hurts Jet.
(He's not weak, he doesn't care for Earth Kingdom peasants—
—at least not this one.)
He wouldn't have had time to do any real damage, anyway. The fight is over practically before it's begun, with the Dai Li dragging Jet away behind bars.
(That could've been him. One stray spark, and it would've been.)
The warmth of the blades in his fists suddenly feels scalding. Adrenaline drains out of him like water through a cracked gutter—leaving behind nothing but soggy debris.
He finally got to fight someone. So what? Now he just has to go back to work and deal with more questions from strangers that he doesn't want to answer. For all Pao's talk of giving Uncle a raise, nothing is going to change. He'll wear tracks in the stone floor before he makes enough money to get out of this place.
He presses the hilts of the swords into their owner's hand and trudges back inside.