Hunter
By xannychan
Disclaimer:
Avatar: The Last Airbender belongs to Bryan Konietzko and Michael
Dante DiMartino. Thank the geniuses.
A/N: This was a hard chapter to write, for some reason…But anyways, NO, this is not the ending. It's just…a little twist. I actually have no idea where I want to take this, so any suggestions would be great.
Warnings: Stalker! Jet, mind-rape, and other stuff that will get me killed. Eh.
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Chapter Two
Absolutes
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Zuko had never led a life of certainty. Searching out a boy with a blue arrow on his forehead, running towards a future that holds no hope, running away from a past that bears no affection, stumbling only to find himself exactly where he was before. He was never safe.
What if someone found them out?
What if someone knows?
What if he spent the rest of his life living in this hellhole and never fulfilling his true purpose? What the hell was his purpose anyway?
What if…
There were so many things Zuko had to worry about. He had to worry about his honor, his family, his hope, his pride, his dreams and fears and nightmares and fire and burning and bleeding himself into a black mess of pain and terror and shame if he could never be the prince he was—or thought he was, for that matter. Zuko wasn't sure about anything these days.
Sometimes Zuko saw a blur of color, always at the edge of his sight. A flash of brown hair, earthen tones, tan skin. Was that a stem hanging from his lips? He could have sworn that was the flash of blades there. He could feel eyes scrutinizing his every move, every single twitch of muscle, every breath.
Li was not nearly so nervous.
Zuko would like to be Li.
He hissed, pulled his hand away from the hot teapot. "Shit," he whispered, sucking on his finger.
Fire burns, he thinks.
And the irony of it burned in a way that no bending could ever heal.
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"Jet, I'm worried about this…"
"Worried about what?"
"You! All you know is that the old man had a cup of hot tea—Ah!"
A wince, a clatter, a hand against her cheek, and then Smellerbee was on the dirt floor, her hand pressed against the scratch just missing her eye. Longshot steps between them, careful and cold, his lip just slightly lifted in contempt.
"They're people of the Fire Nation!"
"They're people, Jet! I thought we were coming here to start over and—Longshot, no!"
Longshot stops with the point of his arrow just above Jet's eye a moment after Jet moves to strike her again. His face is contorted in a rare show of rage.
Don't you dare touch her, his eyes say. Don't even think about it.
Jet almost spits in his face, but instead he just pushes him off and walks away.
They don't understand. They'll never understand.
Jet doesn't understand much himself.
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The moon was a strange shade of pale green that night.
Jet noticed that Li was especially attractive when his reflection was caught between his sickles and Li's broadswords, flashes of steel like the moon in gold eyes, and he forgets for a full second that there is a war, that there is fire in the other boy—man's—blood, that there is a reason why his sickles rest so easily in his palms. For a full second of hot breath, it is only the two of them, caught in a dance as deadly as poison on a knife poised above his heart.
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Two days later, the only thing Jet remembers is golden eyes, black hair, and the color of the moon.