Chapter 22

"I thought you said it was dangerous to try to get out of here without a light," Mai said as Jet led them through the pitch blackness of the cave.

"It is," Jet replied. "But right this minute I think it might be more dangerous to stay." She could hear the teasing note in his voice. Right that moment, she wanted nothing more than to just cast caution to the winds and live dangerously.

But the reasonable part of her brain forced her to keep walking, to admit that he was right, to just enjoy the touch of his hand on hers.

But the other part of her brain really wanted to touch more than just his hand.

She blushed.

What was happening to her? She was losing all sense of perspective. She didn't know anything about this guy—this mercenary, this former bandit. Then she upbraided herself—they weren't concerned with each other's past, only the present counted with them.

In that case, she continued to reason with herself, she didn't know this mercenary, this cave explorer, this ordinary guy that Aang and Toph had picked for the next king of Omashu.

"I wish I had my sword," he grumbled under his breath as he stopped to put down the kettle and kneel on the ground.

"Why?" she asked. "What are you doing?"

Jet placed her hand on his shoulder for safekeeping, then reached down to press his palms against the floor of the cave. "I've never tried to do this without it. I don't know if it will work," he half-explained.

"If what will work? What are you doing?" she asked again in confusion, grabbing up a handful of his shirt. She tried to tell herself she wasn't nervous—she just felt better with a secure grip on him in the utter darkness.

"I'm listening to the earth," he said. "I'm going to try to feel our way back out of here."

As Jet knelt there with his hands pressed against the ground, Mai remembered everything they'd discussed about the king of Omashu. She remembered King Bumi's pronouncement when he'd declared that only the one who could hear the voice of the earth could be king.

She'd never truly understood all the things Toph and Aang in particular had discussed about earthbending and the kind of skill this was, but she'd come away understanding one fact at least. The skill that Bumi demanded was rare—rare enough that they hadn't found a soul among all the powerful earthbenders of Omashu who possessed the ability.

Maybe Jet really was the one.

After a minute or two, he stood up again, kettle in hand and began to lead her unerringly down the pitch black, winding tunnel. It was a bit unnerving, Mai thought to herself as she stumbled along against the rough floor. Jet never seemed to miss a step, but she had to feel for her footing in the complete darkness with only his sure grip on her hand for company.

They walked on a bit further and he stopped and knelt again, as if consulting a map. When he rose this time, he took the lamp from her and set it on the ground, then took both her hands in his.

"Before we get back to camp, I want to tell you something," he began quietly. For some reason, her heart gave a little skip. "I feel like I took advantage of you again," he continued. "I want you to know I'm very sorry. I didn't mean any disrespect."

Mai was a little taken aback. Where was he coming from with this? This was the second time he'd apologized to her for being disrespectful.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "Are you sorry you kissed me?"

"No!" he replied urgently. "It's just that when I'm with you, I forget who you are. You're the Fire Nation representative and I'm acting like you're just some regular girl off the street," he explained.

"So, you're treating me like a streetwalker?" she teased.

"No!" he cried again, this time in obvious distress. "That's not what I meant!" Then she laughed and she could feel his grip on her hands tighten convulsively. She wished so badly she could see him—she needed to be able to read his expression, to see what was going on in his head.

She tried to put her arms around him, but he wouldn't let go of her hands. So instead, she stepped forward as close to him as he would let her get.

"I don't know what kind of idea you have about me," she began softly, "but trust me, I am just a regular girl with a regular job. It pays pretty well, but that's mostly because King Bumi and his council are such interesting people to work with. Jun calls them a bunch of crazy old men."

He began to relax his grip, so she moved a little closer. "And you never know," she said softly, pulling her hands free to reach up to his face, "maybe I'm the one taking advantage of you." Then she pulled him in to her once again, living dangerously, her lips meeting his softly but insistently.

He returned the kiss just as insistently, and she felt his arms reaching around her again, but instead of resuming their earlier passion, he just held her quietly.

"Back in Omashu--" he began seriously, pulling away a little.

"I don't see any reason we won't be friends back in Omashu," Mai assured him, twisting her fingers into his hair where it brushed the back of his neck to be sure he didn't move any further away from her. "Just like we are here."

"So we're friends?" he half-asked, half-stated.

"I hope so," she responded.

"Just friends?" he half-asked, half-stated.

"Well, technically you're still my employee," she teased. Then before he could get his feathers ruffled, she pulled him close and kissed him again. "But I'm willing to let that go if you are."

They stood there in the darkness, her arms still around his neck, his encircling her waist. He leaned forward to rest his forehead against hers. After a long moment, he spoke.

"I'm not sure I can just be your friend," he whispered, his voice rough. "And I don't think either of us are really up for anything more than that. Maybe we ought to let this go while we're ahead."

Then reached up to her hands to disentangle her fingers from his hair, picked up the kettle and led her unerringly back out of the cave until they could see the glow of the open cavern ahead.

Once in the light again, he let go of her hand and walked over to the fire without a backward glance. Mai just stood there, stunned, as he set the kettle onto the cooking grate and went back into the cave for his swordbelt.

He began to buckle it around his waist, when he suddenly stopped, his hand on the hilt of the strange black blade.

Without a word, he unbuckled it and slipped the sword, sheath and all, free of the belt then walked over to the fire where a sleepy looking Sokka sat, munching a piece of fruit.

"This isn't mine either," Jet explained as he passed the blade to Sokka.

"Meteor sword!" Sokka cried joyfully as he recognized his long lost blade. "You came back!"

Then Jet turned and walked out of camp.

It took a few minutes for what he'd said to sink in. He was breaking up with her. They hadn't even really started a relationship, and he was already breaking up. She was floored. She just stood there in shock.

To Mai's deep chagrin, the girls immediately realized something was very wrong, and it only Katara and Suki a few minutes to get the whole story out of her. Once Toph had gotten Zuko settled into his private sunbathing courtyard, even she joined in to add her two cents worth of analysis.

"He broke up with me," Mai could only repeat in angry disbelief. "We weren't even together yet and he broke up with me."

"It sounds to me like he doesn't feel worthy of you," Toph declared, "and he's trying to break it off while he still feels like he can." She sighed and gave them all a big grin. "Zuko tried to break up with me twice."

"Hey, I'll go you one better," Suki added, "Sokka tried to break up with me just over a week ago. He wanted to me to go back to the Kyoshi Warriors and use my gift instead of 'wasting it' with him."

"How sweet!" Katara gushed. "I never dreamed my brother was that sensitive."

"Only with me," Suki said with a grin. "But poor Jet. I thought he was handling all this really well. Apparently not."

"Handling what?" Mai asked. This kind of girl talk was something she hadn't been a part of in a long time. In fact, the kind of girl talk Azula allowed couldn't really be counted. Hers tended to center on things like how long a particular boy would hold up under interrogation. If she discounted all her Azula girl talk, that meant that she'd never been part of real girl talk.

"Mai, what do you know about Jet?" Katara asked.

"Not much," Mai admitted. It really bothered her that right on the heels of declaring that the past didn't matter to them, she was desperate to hear about his background.

Katara gave her a quick rundown of what she knew about him—how his parents were killed by Fire Nation soldiers when he was only a little boy, how he'd grown up in a group of underage Freedom Fighters, becoming their leader. How he'd been part hero, part thug. How he'd gone to Ba Sing Se to start over, only to end up brainwashed by the Dai Li.

Mai had already heard of the fight with Long Feng, but hearing it from the other perspective was chilling. He nearly died that day fighting for Aang—and at nearly the same exact time, she'd been helping Azula try to capture him.

"And Smellerbee said he'd turned bandit again after the war for a while. It's anybody's guess what was going on with him then," Katara finished.

"After all this time, after so much hardship, now we tell him that he's been chosen as king of Omashu. And besides that he's actually falling in love with the representative of the people he grew up hating," Toph added with a sigh as she picked up a bananachestnut from a bowl and began to peel the shell. "It would have to be confusing. Right now he probably has no idea who he is."

All Mai heard was the theory that Jet was falling in love with her.

Falling in love?

Was she falling in love?

She hadn't been in love in a very long time. Not since Zuko, she admitted to herself. She'd had a variety of escorts to a number of formal affairs, mostly the sons of Omashu nobles. Several of them had courted her pretty seriously, but she'd never been in love with any of them.

She'd never missed any of them after they'd left the room. But right that moment she missed Jet, and he'd only been gone a few minutes.

She missed his laugh, his easy assurances, the way he looked at her. Was that love?

Lounging in his private courtyard in the warmth of the sun, Zuko knew what love felt like. Ever so often, he'd notice Toph stop what she was doing to put her hand on her belly. Then she'd bow her head a little, and get that intent look on her face like she did when she was bending. Then she'd smile to herself.

Every time she did that, he thought his heart would explode with the love he felt for her and the baby. Katara said the baby probably wasn't even as big as a grain of rice, but it didn't matter to him. All he wanted to do was take care of them both, to bring her anything she needed, to make sure she got plenty of rest.

But he was useless.

Weak and useless.

She was waiting on him instead. Taking care of him so carefully. Making sure he kept his dignity in front of everyone else. Making him look stronger than he really was.

If anger had ever fueled his firebending, he ought to be able to melt rock right then with the depth of the anger he felt at his predicament.

But he couldn't even generate a candle flame.

He lay there in the sun, willing the rays to penetrate his body, calling them into his system to fuel him. But they just seemed to bounce off.

His mind ran in circles as he lay there trying to work through basic firebending forms in his head. He had to beat this. He had to get better so he could take care of Toph, not the other way around. Fury and frustration beat at his spirit.

All his life he had to fight for things he wanted. He'd fought for his father's attention. He'd fought for his honor. He'd fought for the respect of the men he'd commanded.

And what good had all that fighting done? To regain his father's attention and his honor, he'd become someone he hated, someone who betrayed the ones he loved.

And he could never be free of it. Even here, in what was quite possibly the most remote area of the Earth Kingdom, he'd managed to meet up with the one person who'd been imprisoned and tortured for the crime of knowing the truth of what Zuko was, whose family had been murdered by Fire Nation soldiers.

He was heartily sorry for everything he and his family had done to Jet. He was heartily sorry for everything they'd done to the people of the world.

Every trade summit, every new treaty, every attempt to rectify the damages done by his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather—none of them were worth the paper they were written on when it came right down to it.

How could political maneuvering resolve the hurt people felt? How could a new treaty bring back Jet's parents? Aang's people? Sokka and Katara's mother?

Buildings could be rebuilt. Crops could be replanted. But the people who were lost forever in the devastation of war could not be replaced.

How could he justify living in the Fire Nation palace in peace and in comfort when so many lost their homes in the war? How could he accept the love of such a beautiful and gifted woman as Toph when so many lost those they loved?

How could he possibly bring a new life into the world when his people had ended so many innocent lives?

He was so ashamed. He was ashamed of what he was and what he'd done. He was ashamed of the very blood in his veins.

The sun seemed to move farther and farther away from him and his spirit grew cold. After a while, he slept because he didn't have the energy to do anything else.

When Toph came back to check on him, she put a hand on his forehead and was alarmed by how cool he was to the touch.

"Aang, Katara," she called worriedly, dropping the wall in its entirety in her concern.

As the young avatar came to her side, she called to Zuko. "Sparky, wake up," she begged. "Please, baby, wake up and talk to me." But her husband lay still and silent.

Aang entered the avatar state and began to scan Zuko's energy flow, seeking the place where Katara said there was a snag. Within seconds he'd found it. "His fire chakra is almost completely blocked," Aang said. "It's no wonder he's not able to bend."

Katara followed behind with her healing water, stopping as Aang did over Zuko's stomach. "It's much worse than it was last night," she commented seriously.

Sokka, Suki, and Mai stood at a distance, watching.

"Follow my lead," Aang said to her quietly. "Maybe we can help the physical and the spiritual at the same time."

His eyes and tattoos began to glow as he placed his hands over hers. Katara closed her eyes and allowed Aang's presence to fill her mind. It felt a little like falling at first, but she soon felt herself buoyed up by his warmth. They worked together several minutes to restore as much of the function of his fire chakra as possible, then she felt her awareness return to the world.

"We helped him some," Aang assured Toph with a pat on her hand. "But whatever is going on in that head of his has got to be worked out. He's got to confront the emotional side of this before the physical can truly heal."

"What can I do?" Toph asked in a whisper from her seat at Zuko's side.

"Just be there for him, I guess," Aang replied. "You know Zuko. He's a brooder. He needs to look this in the face and deal with it. He needs to talk." Then Aang rose and sighed deeply. "I sure wish Guru Pathik was here. He's so good at this kind of thing."

"As if Zuko would ever unburden his soul to a complete stranger," Toph replied with a sigh of her own. "Sometimes he has trouble even talking to me. I wish Iroh was here."

"That can be arranged," Aang said, rubbing his chin with his fingers. "But it'll take a couple of days at least to make the trip."

"We need to do something to help him now," Toph stated emphatically. Then she reached over to touch Zuko's forehead again. "Maybe he's a little warmer," she noted, running her hand down his cheek.

Leaving Zuko in Toph's care, Katara and Aang walked back to the rest of the group. "Maybe what we need is a group session," Katara thought out loud. "It's easier to talk about things when everybody is sharing."

"I don't know about this," Aang began uncomfortably.

"No, it'll work. We can all unburden our souls together," she concluded. Then she looked at Aang with a bright smile and added, "Over lunch."