A. N. : Last chapter was nice and quiet, but as we all know, Zuko and Jet don't do peace and quiet. Time for something I've been wanting to touch on for a while now. By which I mean, of course, Jet's back at it again with the uh, Jet-ness.

Night has fallen.

Jet wonders aloud what Smellerbee and Longshot are doing in Ba Sing Se, and Zuko smiles. Knowing them ? Probably liberating stuff right under the Fire Nation and the Dai Li's noses.

Jet smirks. Damn right, they are.

It's quiet, here, even if Zuko can hear the other talking around the campfire – not very loud, and not as animatedly as they sometimes do, but enough to feel just as alive as the insects crying out from the darkness.

The night is quiet and warm and Zuko can't help but ruin it.

He asks Jet about the village Sokka said he drowned. Did he really… ?

I did.

There's a beat, then Jet lets out a deep, tired sigh, scratches the back of his neck, and finally leans forward, raising his knees and putting his forearms on them. A whole village, he says, staring at his hands. Children and all.

Zuko remembers that afternoon in Ba Sing Se, what feels like an eternity ago, stuck in the flat with Lin and a bucket of water, telling each other stories of the past in veiled words and half-truths. Remembers Jet saying he forgot there were kids on both sides with that haunted look on his face.

There are as many things Zuko doesn't get about Jet as there are he does, but something he's come to understand is that Jet doesn't hurt kids, not if he's in full control of himself, not even when on the verge of losing it because a baby set fire to the stupid piece of wheat he used to chew on.

So for him to simply – forget about the children, not just in a moment of anger, but after what must have been weeks of planning –

What happened, Zuko asks, because he can't let Jet go down that path ever again, because they share the same bison's back and because Jet trusts him, and because they're the same and Zuko is terrified of becoming everything he stands against and if he could, maybe, simply understand –

They're way past half-truths, the both of them, and Zuko needs to know.

Jet is staring at him, and seems to see something on Zuko's face, because he looks away suddenly and smiles a painful imitation of his usual smirk. Alright, he says, straightening up and crossing his legs, fingers laced in his lap, like he's going to tell a simple story from the forest.

In a way, Zuko guesses that's the case.

He talks about losing one of his first kids to sickness, back when just being alive was their way of fighting. Talks about his first kill, a soldier from a patrol he attacked because they had medical supplies and he couldn't bear to look at them. Talks about stealing more – medicine and food and clothes and weapons – about killing more – soldiers, only soldiers at first, until even the sight of red clothing on a crumbling old man was enough to set him off – about losing more kids – he was the leader, they were his, that means it was his fault they died, his fault they were even fighting, and he couldn't bear to look at himself, needed to be useful, to keep them safe from the ashmakers, needed to do something –

It was easier, he says, to think him and his kids were good and the Fire Nation and everyone who associated with them were bad. That way it wasn't really his fault anyone died. It was easier to just hate and not think.

The forest – Jet mimes with his hands as he talks – was at the top a valley. There was a dam up there – he points somewhere in the imaginary floating map – and the river flowed down to Gaipan, and then to a Fire Nation military compound. That's where all the patrols came from.

Gaipan had been occupied for about as long as he'd lived in the forest, he thinks, and at first he used to pity them for being forced to live with ashmakers in their midst, but then – then he'd started seeing Earth folks hanging out with the Fire Nation soldiers, started seeing babies being born all while his kids kept dying, and he just –

He almost hated them more than the ashmakers, for daring to just live and not fight and not care and he – he –

He breathes.

They didn't deserve to live. That's what – what he felt, at the time. They were expendable in his righteous fight – he has a short, bitter laugh – so he stopped seeing them. Stopped bothering to think of them as people. Stopped thinking about the kids living there.

He forgot about them, because he wanted to. Because it was in the way.

After that, it was a simple matter of filling up the reservoir and then blowing up the dam.

Originally, he'd planned to wait for the rains, collect explosives in the meantime, slowly enough so as to not alert the Fire Nation that something big was coming. But then Katara and Aang came along and he just. Helped himself to their waterbending.

Jet goes on to explain how he knew they wouldn't get what he was trying to do, so he invented some lie about the soldiers planning on burning down the forest or something like that. How Sokka was suspicious of him, and how Jet got Smellerbee and Pipsqueak to take him for a walk – Zuko can't say if it's supposed to be literal, or a euphemism for something terrible, and he doesn't think he wants to know.

He explains how Katara froze him to a tree when she learned the truth and how Jet didn't let that stop him, how he whistled for Longshot to light the barrels of blasting jelly, made him bear just as much blood on his hands as Jet himself even though Longshot has always hated killing.

How the only reason no one died is that Sokka managed to escape in time to alert Gaipan and get everyone to evacuate.

How all of his Freedom Fighters left, except for Smellerbee and Longshot, now that they'd seen what, exactly, he made them do. What he'd become. How they were right to do so.

Zuko hears all of that, listens, and tries to absorb the immense horror of this – this everything.

He thinks back to when they were trapped under Ba Sing Se with Katara, how furious she was at Jet. Thinks about how Sokka still is constantly wary of everything Jet does. That's – fair, given what he's hearing now.

And… What Jet went through, what he thought was acceptable – it hits Zuko again, how similar they both are, how good they are at blinding themselves to the suffering they leave in their wake, until it just becomes impossible to deny.

He'll have to apologize to that Kyoshi Warrior girl, once he gets back to the camp. Will have to make amends to many people, in many places.

He asks Jet if he regrets doing what he did – Zuko thinks he does, from hearing the way he told his tale, but he still wants to hear Jet say it himself. It feels important, for some reason.

Jet's hands twitch in his lap as he looks at Zuko with an odd expression. He frowns, then – which part ?

The question takes Zuko aback. He doesn't – he – what –

And Jet just shakes his head, scratches his neck with a sigh. He took away Katara and Aang's choice, and twisted Longshot into doing something he hates – that, he regrets, and shouldn't have done. Same for trying to drown the kids in Gaipan.

But – he hesitates – even if he knows, now, that most of the soldiers probably didn't choose to come and ruin everyone's lives, knows that they're not monsters, can even sort of half-understand what could push Earth folks to just adapt to their new situation – the thing is, he knows that now. He didn't, back then.

He regrets the way he went about things, that's for sure. But if he'd found a way to get rid of Gaipan and its soldiers without harming the kids, without dirtying anyone's hands but his own ? Maybe…

It's probably not right, probably the kind of thought that would get Katara to turn him into an icicle again, but he thinks it wouldn't be fair of him to blame his old self for things he didn't always know.

He shrugs awkwardly. He'll do better, he says, but what's done is done. It's not like he can force himself to regret, anyway.

And there's just nothing Zuko can answer to that.