Chapter 12: Return

"Where's your girl?" Smellerbee asked as she walked into the lower ring headquarters. "I've got a present for her."

Lee looked up from the map he was studying. "Is it something gruesome?"

"Of course."

"I don't think she needs any more dead bearded-cats."

"Haha" she deadpanned. "This is something way better."

"Platypus-bear?"

"It's not a dead animal, you sick freak."

"… It's not a dead person, is it?"

"No."

"… Just so we're clear, it's not part of a dead person either."

"Ugg. I'll find her myself."

The present turned out to be a pair of tiger hooks. More specifically, they were Jet's tiger hooks. Longshot handed them over with a solemn expression.

"We know that you've been training with duel swords, but you don't have any of your own." Smellerbee spoke as if she had practiced this speech a few times. "These were Jet's and he was the leader of the Freedom Fighters. He took care of us and we would have followed him anywhere. Now you're the leader of the Freedom Fighters and we think you should have these."

Jin didn't exactly know what to say besides an inadequate "Thank you."

When the occupation began, they could no longer train in the park. They took to moving the furniture out of the way and sparing in Lee's living room. Mushi generally sat in a chair with a good view of the lesson, out of the way, eating noodles, watching with an amused smirk, and making comments about how well Jin was doing. "You could learn from her patience, nephew."

She was a natural with the tiger hooks. She treated them as two different parts of the same whole, and an extension of her arms. She would spin and dodge with grace and slash with power and determination. She fought smart, taking advantage of weaknesses and using her environment (which was most often just the couch.)

"I love Longshot. I need to get him a present or something to thank him."

"What about Smellerbee?"

"I think she has everything she wants in life."

"By that you mean that she's hard to shop for."

"You would think so. You're a lousy shopper."

"That's fine with me."

"You're just being grumpy because I have awesome swords that can trip you. And they make my reach almost as long as yours."

He scoffed.

"She has a point" his uncle chimed in. "Her range has greatly improved recently."

"Thank you, Mushi" Jin bent forward and kissed the old man on the cheek.

Lee rolled his eyes and grumbled. She reached out a hook and grabbed his leg to trip him.

Watching Lee sleep was like knowing some great secret. When he was unconscious and relaxed and oblivious to all the pressures of the world, he still frowned. This interested Jin a great deal. Was his sleep troubled by clandestine demons? Was it that underneath his irritated exterior, there was just more brooding? Surely not. He was a good guy: caring, shy, honorable. Was he so disturbed by the troubles of the world that he could never escape them, even in sleep?

He was an enigma – even to her – which was strange as she knew him better than anyone else in the whole world (or so told herself during moments of quiet). She was smart, and yet she could never completely figure him out.

During the light of day, this obscurity made him irritating. But at night, it made him mysterious and handsome and captivating.

She wanted to reach up and touch his frowning lips. She wanted to touch his scar, which was the most obvious symbol of the mystery that was Lee. He wore it large and strong across his face, telling her, "There is so much that you don't know about me."

She wanted to touch it, because if she did then she would be that much closer to him. They would be that much more intimate. It would be as if he was letting her in.

But then again, it was a bit too intimate. It was something forbidden – something she could see and never touch. But that made it that much more desirable.

The realization came to her as a surprise: he was asleep. He would never know. And how could it be any more intimate than the act they had preformed a few hours previously?

She readjusted her weight onto one elbow and reached out a tentative hand. Her fingers trailed along his bottom lip. She had touched his lips before. She knew their movements. She knew their shape.

She dragged a finger ever so tenderly towards his cheek, outlining the edge of the scared tissue, then gently brushed her fingertips over the side of his face. The skin was soft, much softer than the rest of his face. It surprised her as she had expected it to be tough and ridged. She moved on to his ruined ear, then up to where his eyebrow should be. She realized that he was lacking eyelashes. How strange that she had never noticed before.

His eyes snapped open then, and his frown quickly morphed into a glare.

"What are you doing?" he growled.

She was startled, both at being caught and at his fierce reaction. She thought of snatching her hand back, of begging his forgiveness, of pretending that nothing had happened.

Instead she cupped his face, pressing as much of her hand against it as possible, pressing her skin to his.

His eyes widened in shock, the narrowed again into blatant hostility. He grabbed her wrist and yanked it away.

For a moment they stared at one another in a silent and bitter argument. She glared at him. She was going to win. He was going to let her in.

She leaned forward, not breaking the link between their fiery eyes until she pressed her lips to his scar. He hissed and threw her back onto the bed. One hand grabbed her shoulder. The other held her wrist above her head. He hovered over her, seething.

She should be scared. She should be terrified. Instead she felt only anger, and met his scowl with her own.

Then he was kissing her, with a livid passion that she hadn't felt from him before. She pressed her hand against his scar and he held her tighter, kissed her harder. She was kissing his damaged eye. She was licking his wounded cheek. She sucked and nibbled at his marred ear.

He moaned in a sick union of arousal and disgust.

Jin returned home after work tired, just wanting to hide in her room and read.

"Hello, dear."

She nearly jumped out of her skin. Her throat was dry and she couldn't seem to swallow. Her voice came out as a mere whisper.

"Momma?"

Her mother smiled before turning back to her stew. "How was your day?"

Jin stood frozen for several heartbeats before throwing her arms around her mother's neck.

"Momma!"

"Goodness, Jin. I was only away a few days."

"You were gone three weeks!"

Her mother looked exasperated. "You exaggerate too much. I don't know where you get that."

Jin didn't understand, and stood gaping as the woman turned to the table and began chopping onions. "You are acting so strange. Did you really miss me that much?"

"I… I didn't know if you were ok."

Her mother sighed, "I told your father that I would be gone. Honestly, you can't trust that man to take care of anything."

"No! You didn't tell him. The Dai Li took you during the night! They broke into the house!"

"What? My spirits, Jin. You must have had a bad dream."

"It wasn't a dream."

"I went away on holiday."

"Holiday?!"

"Yes. I went to the lake. It was lovely. Very relaxing."

"Wh-what were you doing there?"

"Oh, not much. I met some nice people." She looked up from her chopping and gave Jin a pleased half-smile. "We were in group one."

"What? What does that mean?"

"Nothing. It's just the group we were in." Her mother began to hum along to the beat of her chopping. Jin stared at her, biting down her panic and confusion.

"Momma?"

"Yes, dear?"

"What's that on your hand?"

Her mother stopped chopping to inspect the back of her right hand. She narrowed her eyes and rubbed the mark as if it would wipe off. "Hmmm. How odd. Can you stir that? I think it's boiling."

As Jin stirred, she wasn't seeing the stew. The mark on the back of her mother's hand was ingrained in her vision: a tattoo of the symbol of an earth bender.

Over the course of the next few days, more and more earth benders returned home. They were mostly unconcerned about their disappearance and all had similar stories about going on vacation or winning a trip. Many mentioned a lake. When confronted with the fact that their memories were patchy at best, they attributed their gaps in recollection to "well, we didn't do much" or "Heh, I must have drank more than I thought" or "oh, who remembers that kind of stuff?"

They all had new tattoos with the same symbol that Jin's mother now sported. One man said, "At least if I got a tattoo, I got a nice one."

Jin and Lee heard story after story of similar experiences, and they were beginning to grow tired of it. They kept hoping that someone would say something new – something surprising that would blow the whole case open. But it didn't seem as though there was much to blow open. The earth benders had been taken, marked, brainwashed, and released.

The one thing that every one of the abductees mentioned without fail was their group. They would announce what group they had been placed in with pride. Some mentioned competitions between groups. Some stated that their group was obviously the best, but could never give justifiable reasons as to why this was so.

Everyone that had returned so far identified themselves as group one, two, or three. Lee quickly noticed that their group number corresponded to their bending ability. Jin quickly noticed that people in group three were slightly more befuddled and confused. They sometimes had difficulty remembering how to do basic things like sewing or combing their hair or using clasps.

Something terrible was happening.

Mimi finished pouring three cups of ginseng before looking up at Lee. "Jin was looking for you while you were out getting supplies. You should go see her."

"Is it important?"

"How would I know?"

He rolled his eyes. "Can you do without me for a little bit?"

"You should just quit and let us hire someone who actually shows up to work."

"You would miss me too much if I did that."

"Hell no I wouldn't. I'd do a little dance. Like this."

"Attractive."

"Shove it." She stomped off to the next table and the men she was serving shot him amused smirks. He sighed.

His irritated state dropped immediately when he saw the serious expression on Genki's face as the man opened the door to the dance hall.

"What happened?"

Genki opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and looked over his shoulder towards a side room. Lee just nodded and stepped around him. As he approached the door, he could hear quiet discussion from inside, and as he nudged the door open, he saw several people standing around a body laid out on a table.

Jin turned when the door creaked, abruptly cutting off her conversation. Her face was a sobering sight. She moved towards him, and the small crowd returned to looking at the prone body.

"We found Roller." Her voice was hushed as if they were at someone's deathbed. Lee looked over her shoulder and recognized Roller's messy brown hair.

"He's dead?"

"No. He… they… they took away his bending."

Lee blinked at her, and then looked back towards where Roller lay.

"How?" This was bad. This was bad bad bad bad bad.

Jin swallowed and averted her eyes. "They put something in his back. We don't know if we can remove them without killing him. We think they're connected to his spine."

"Let me see."

She gestured towards Roller and Lee stepped forward slowly. The earth bender – no, former earth bender - was lying on his stomach, and now that he was close, Lee could see that he was breathing, although the act was labored. His torso was bare, revealing strips of metal attached at three points along his spine.

"They blocked his chi" Lee murmured.

Jin nodded, and then knelt down next to Roller's face. She raised her voice, "Roller? Can you hear me?"

He gave a weak grunt in response.

"Do you remember where you were?"

"V-vacation…"

"Vacation by a lake?"

"Mmm."

She exchanged a look with Lee and the other men in the room.

"What group were you in?"

There was a beat when Lee thought that the man had fallen unconscious again. He hoped that he was unconscious again so he wouldn't have to hear an answer that would make this all real.

Roller took a ragged breath and exhaled, "Seven."

Lee had to make a detour before he headed back to the tea shop, and he soon found himself at the doorway of a tenement, face to face with a displeased, tired woman. Once he made his way inside past her rolling eyes he crept into a small, dark bedroom without windows.

He crouched down next to the bed, and whispered soothingly.

"Hey, Suri."

She shifted slightly and her eyes fluttered open.

Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Lee.

Something twisted in his stomach, and he forced a smile onto his face. "How you feeling?"

Ok.

He smiled at her and rubbed her back. Under her thin night dress he could feel the metal plates against her spine. His hand paused for a moment, and then he continued to stoke her back as if nothing was wrong.

"You look sick. Kinda green."

Fever.

"You'll get better real soon. You have to get back to work. We couldn't find anyone plucky enough to replace you."

She gave him a tired smile, then closed her eyes again.

He stroked her hair. "Get some rest. I'll see you soon."

The second round of earth benders to return home all had the procedure. They were also significantly more confused than the earth benders who were simply marked. Some couldn't remember where they lived. Some couldn't remember their own name. The resistance worked constantly to try to find the poor dazed souls, identify them, and get them home.

No part of the process was enjoyable.

Eventually Suri returned to work, where she frequently became tired and was treated delicately as if she was made of fine china. Roller got better as well, and Jin sent him and two others to the Northern Water Tribe in secret. She had high hopes that their water bending healers could do something about the situation. She set them up with fake papers and a few supplies and the name of a man on the Northern Shore who owned a boat.

There were still several earth benders who were unaccounted for. Most of them were masters. The general belief was that they had either been killed outright, or there was a third round of earth bender releases approaching and it would soon be discovered that those unlucky people had an even worse fate.