Chapter 28

The afternoon passed slowly. Even though Zuko was now bending again, he was not completely recovered as Katara reminded him. He had to continue to heal and especially to work the damaged muscles and nerves of his leg.

"This is just the first part of rehab," she informed him. "Once you get enough strength back, you can begin working that leg. Otherwise it will stay weak."

There was no chance of that, Zuko thought to himself privately. Now that he was bending again, he felt much, much stronger. So much so that he could really tell how weak his injured leg had become.

"Don't worry about me," Zuko assured her. "My sparring partner at home is a real punisher. He 'll whip me into shape."

"We can't go back home right away," Toph reminded him. "We've still got to finish up with King Bumi. Jet's got to pass muster with him."

"Aang can teach me," Jet offered.

"Nope," Toph replied. "I'm under orders from the swamp chick. If I don't come through on my promise to deliver a new king of Omashu, she might decide to turn me into a philodandelion or something."

"She wouldn't do that," Zuko chided. "Lady Lian Shen was really nice."

"To you maybe," Toph answered, giving him a little cuddle on the arm. "Oh, firebenders—I just love firebenders," she teased in her sultriest swamp diva voice.

Aang laughed. "She's got a point, Zuko. You might want to just let Toph finish up before heading back. Lady Lian Shen was pretty clear on that point," he said. "We'll pull out first thing in the morning. It'll take two trips anyway for all of us to get back."

"I vote we put the kids on the first bison home," Sokka said as he wrestled with a very crabby little Toma. "Afternoon naptime is sacred." Then he got up to put the toddler in bed.

Katara picked up Bumi as well. "I agree," she said as they headed back into the cave.

"Hey, Jet," Sokka called back. "Keep an eye on dinner, will you?"

Jet nodded and went to keep the spit turning. The turkey was looking pretty good if he did say so himself.

Soon, Sokka was back, giving the air an appreciative smell. "We couldn't leave before dinner anyway," he sighed. "I love prairie turkey."

"That reminds me," Jet said, rising to his feet. "I need to go check those snares. No need to trap anything else if we're out of here tomorrow."

"I'll go with you," Mai offered. "Sokka has been telling all kinds of stories about where you set those things. I'd like to see for myself."

"You guys go ahead," Sokka said as he relaxed by the fire with Suki at his side. "I'll be interested to see if you actually caught anything."

They walked off away from camp, Jet leading the way. Soon, however, he paused to help her cross a dry creek bed, offering his hand as she jumped a little ditch. Once on the other side, he didn't let go.

After they'd walked a while, they came to the first of his snares. Mai had to agree with Sokka. What had the boy been thinking to climb down there in the first place? The snare was still empty, and Jet worked his way back up to her. He slung the snare over his shoulder and kept walking, taking her hand once again in his.

The second snare was in an even more inaccessible place. He had to cross a fallen log down onto a ledge and then hop down a pair of huge boulders before sliding onto the grass of a little valley far below. To her surprise, he'd actually snared a turkey this time.

She watched as he knelt by the snare, placing his hand on the bird and apparently talking to it before releasing it from the snare. The turkey took a few tentative steps, then half ran, half flew away. Jet slung the snare over his shoulder and began to crawl back up the rock face.

She had a very nervous moment as the fallen log gave an unstable roll beneath his feet, but he managed to keep his footing and walked back up it to stand beside her, a little out of breath from the long steep climb.

"Be sure to tell Sokka that we caught one here," Jet said with a grin. "He told me I was insane for bothering with that one."

"I want to know what you were telling that turkey," she stated curiously.

Jet gave her a sheepish grin. "I was apologizing," he admitted.

"Apologizing to dinner?" she asked with a smile of her own.

"I always apologize, especially if it really is dinner," he answered as he took her hand and began to walk back. "They're giving their life so I can live. I'm always grateful."

Mai considered her own attitude. In the city the meat came to the kitchen already butchered and ready to cook. She never really thought about the fact that she should be grateful to it.

"Maybe you should be a vegetarian like Aang," she said.

"I tried for a while—mostly because I was sick of death. I didn't want to take a life even to survive," he said as he pushed past a scrubby bush, holding the prickly branches out of the way for her. "But I eventually made peace with the fact that I personally need meat to live. But I'm always grateful and always careful to take no more than I need and to be merciful. Life's too valuable not to."

They walked through the woods quietly, enjoying the time together. Mai thought about what he'd said and then she remembered that the king of Omashu was supposed to be a protector of life, of the swamp, of the earth.

Suddenly Jet stopped in front of her, pulling her behind him. "Our big friend is back," he said quietly. "Are you armed?"

"Of course," she replied, looking around for the grizzly, but not seeing him. "Where is he?"

"He's wandering this way," Jet answered calmly. "I don't think he's scented us yet, but if the wind picks up, he probably will. Let's see if we can move upwind of him."

They walked off to one side, trying not to make any noise. Mai was a little confused. Jet had been so worried about her that morning. Now, he seemed completely at ease with the prospect of being pursued by a giant wild animal.

She decided to ask. "How can you be so calm about this?"

Jet looked back at her quizzically and replied, "It's just an animal. It wants to avoid us just as much as we want to avoid it. In fact, if he does come running, try not to kill him. At least not until you have to." Then he turned to face her fully, gripping her shoulders firmly before continuing, "But if you have to kill him to save your own life, you do it, do you hear me? No hesitation."

She could only nod in answer as he reached down to the ground to get a better feel of the animal's distance from them.

As he knelt there in quiet concentration, Mai felt the wind shift direction against her. Then Jet's eyes widened a little. "He's heading this way," he commented, then added, "fast," in a slightly more intense voice.

Jet cast around for a good spot for the two of them to make a stand. No good going up a tree—the trees around there were either scrubby little bushes the grizzly would just knock over or tall evergreens with no branches low enough to begin climbing with any speed at all, especially with Mai in a skirt.

The grizzly wolverine burst into view, running on all fours with incredible speed. Jet pushed Mai behind him again and reached reflexively for the sword that no longer hung on his hip. "I'm going to have to get a new sword," he commented to himself. Then he pulled his dagger, but kept it down by his side.

The animal stopped about twenty feet away and reared up on its hind legs with a roar of challenge.

"Hey," Jet began in a calm voice, "we didn't mean to intrude, big guy. We're just out here catching a few turkeys, taking a walk." He pulled the snares off his shoulder and held them out. "See, just doing a little hunting. You want to see?" He tossed the snares toward the wolverine and a bit to one side.

When the animal bent down to sniff and investigate, Jet took a few steps backward, keeping Mai firmly centered behind him. At his movement, however, the huge grizzly reared up again and growled.

"Sorry, sorry," Jet said quietly. "Didn't mean to spook you. Just giving you some breathing room, you know."

Then the grizzly bent again to investigate the snares once more, turning them over with a huge clawed forepaw. The size of it made Mai's stomach clench in anxiety.

Despite her resolve to remain calm, when the animal smashed one of the snares apart with a single lazy blow, she felt her breath quicken and her heart race.

"It's okay," Jet assured her. "Try to just stay calm. Don't let him know he's getting to you." Again Mai was taken completely aback by Jet's apparent ease. "If he begins to run this way, make sure it's not a false challenge before you throw at him. He may try to just fake us out, and I'd hate to turn a fake out into a real attack by hurting him."

"How will I know which is which?" Mai asked, her voice shaking a little.

"A fake attack is fast for a couple of steps, then slows and stops. A real attack is slow for a couple of steps, then picks up speed," he explained.

"I don't know fast from slow with this thing," she replied, growing steadily more anxious.

"I'll tell you when to throw then," Jet said coolly. "Just listen to me."

The grizzly continued to paw and disintegrate the snares Jet had tossed him, then turned to look off into the woods as if something new had captured his interest.

They both sighed in relief as the animal made a couple of steps as if to walk away again. Then without warning, it turned and ran a few loping steps in their direction.

"Hit him," he instructed firmly.

It took Mai a second to realize what he meant, the sight of the running mass of fur and bared teeth having taken all her attention. Then she cast all ten of her daggers directly into the now rapidly approaching animal. Unfortunately, she didn't have much chance to aim, considering that the grizzly was on the run, and none of them hit a spot sensitive enough to cause him to stop.

Then Jet pushed her to the ground and crouched over her. She could feel the ground shake as the grizzly ran over them, Jet's full bodyweight pressing her to the earth.

The grizzly turned at the end of its run, and Mai looked up from the ground to see it rear up and growl again. Something warm and wet ran down her neck. Jet lay still and heavy upon her.

Then the beast began that slow lope again and her blood froze in her veins. It was coming back.

She watched it approach, knowing that it would keep coming back to attack them until they were both dead. It began to speed up, pounding the earth, its teeth bared in a fierce growl.

Then without warning, a wall of stone shot up between them, dust falling all around her. She heard a powerful thud as the animal plowed headlong into the mass of rock.

"Jet! Mai!" a voice called—Toph, Mai realized in relief.

Toph ran up to them, out of breath from her desperate run to try to reach them. Sokka right behind her, they slid to where Jet lay unmoving, shielding Mai with his body. They eased him off her, careful not to jostle him too much.

"Are you okay?" Toph asked her.

"Yes," she managed to answer, then looked down at Jet. The warm wetness that covered her neck was blood. The grizzly had backhanded him as it passed, creating deep gashes across his upper back and neck. He wasn't moving. Mai began to panic.

Toph must have felt her heart race because she assured her, "He's alive—just unconscious. Sokka, do you think we can get him back to camp like this?"

Sokka looked over the wounds carefully. "The wounds look pretty nasty, but don't appear to have damaged his spine or anything. Can you see any sign of broken bones?"

Toph frowned in deep concentration as she placed her hands on Jet's back, neck, and head. "Nope, I think the blow just knocked him out," she said. "If we're going, we better go. Sleeping beauty over there is beginning to wake up himself."

"Maybe he'll just wander away to nurse his headache," Sokka suggested. Then he looked down at Jet. "This'll be easier if he can walk out of here on his own. Jet! Hey, Jet!" he called loudly. "Can you hear me? Can you get up, buddy?"

"Where's Appa when you need him?" Toph complained when Jet failed to stir.

"Gone after berries again," Sokka replied as he looked around, clearly in search of something. "At least supper will be good. I hope Zuko keeps the spit turning on the turkey."

Mai thought she would explode. "How can you talk about dinner? We've got to get Jet back to camp! Now!" she yelled in frustration.

"Yep, and this is how we'll do it," Sokka said, as he walked toward a couple of scrubby bushes.

Within a few minutes, Sokka's incredibly sharp sword had felled the trees with a single blow and he'd used strips of cloth torn from Mai's underskirt to lash them together in a sort of makeshift stretcher. The branches were a bit on the prickly side, so she pulled off her overtunic to stretch across it to protect his face.

Carefully they managed to get him rolled aboard face down, his gashes still bleeding more heavily than Mai would have liked, despite her attempt to stanch the blood using Toph's underskirt. "It's a good thing you girls come heavily clothed," Sokka commented wryly.

They headed back toward camp, Sokka dragging the litter behind him. Despite Toph's repeated assurances that Jet was not in danger, Mai couldn't help but worry. Every bump in the trail, every shift of the branches caused the terrible gashes to bleed anew. Plus, he hadn't regained consciousness yet.

They walked into camp, taking Jet straight back to bed. Suki brought Mai a handful of towels and clean water and she began to clean the gashes carefully. His shirt had to be cut away, the back of it shredded by the wolverine's claws.

Where was Katara? she kept asking herself as she worked. There was only so much she could do for him. She felt helpless. She wished he would wake up.

Within moments, Jet began to stir.

"Hey," she whispered to him, "just lie still, okay?"

"Ow, ow, ow," he replied, still attempting to move.

"Shhhh, be still," Mai repeated more firmly and placed a hand on his uninjured shoulder. "You've got some pretty bad cuts on your back. If you move, you'll open them again and I just got them to stop bleeding."

"Did I bleed through my shirt?" he asked with the tiniest of laughs.

"Yes," she answered. "Now be still."

"What happened?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she assured him. "You made sure of that."

"Then how's the grizzly?" he asked.

"He carried off all ten of my blades with him," Mai began wryly, "but it took a stone wall from Toph to stop him. I think he got away with only a headache for his troubles."

"I hate to think of him out there with your knives sticking in him," Jet sighed.

"The blades are only a couple of inches long," Mai replied with absolutely no sympathy at all. "He'll just rub them out against the nearest tree. They probably didn't even penetrate past that thick fur of his."

"Still," Jet stated, "I feel bad about it."

"You feel bad about him?" Mai repeated in disbelief. "What about you? Look at you! Getting yourself hurt again when I told you not to." She softened her words with a stroke of his hair and a kiss on his forehead. "You scared me to death, you know. You've been out at least twenty minutes."

"Twenty, huh?" he asked. "That's not bad for me. I've been knocked cold so many times over the years, it sometimes takes an hour before I know where I am again."

Mai looked at him in a mixture of shock and dismay. "You have got to take better care of yourself," she instructed. "That is so not good for you."

"Can I please sit up?" he asked plaintively. "I'm getting a crick in my neck lying here like this."

She helped him adjust his position on the bed so he was more comfortable, but absolutely refused to allow him to sit up. "Not until Katara gets a look at these gashes. And while she's at it, she can heal up the rest of you from this morning," she stated firmly.

"I've been hurt a lot worse than this and got up and made my own way home," Jet retorted.

"Only because I wasn't there to take care of you," she answered just as tartly.

Soon, Katara and Aang had returned on Appa with a large basket full of berries. Toph immediately directed her in to Jet's side.

Mai recounted the story of the attack as the waterbender worked on him, Aang watching in concern. Katara healed all his gashes, cuts, and scrapes, then she swirled her waters around his head with a frown on her face.

"Jet, how many times have you been knocked out in your life?" Katara asked seriously.

"I lost count," he answered in a bored voice. "It's no big deal."

"It is too," Katara replied. "You don't need to treat this lightly. Too many concussions can cause permanent damage. Be careful from now on, do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," Jet replied dutifully, but Mai could tell he did not take her warning seriously.

"Mai, keep a close eye on him for signs that he's getting worse—dizziness, nausea, headache, blurred vision, okay?" Katara said, following Aang back out of the cave.

When they were alone again, Jet stood up, forcing down the rush of nausea that flooded his system. There was no way he was going to let Katara be right. He was fine. Absolutely fine. Never better.

Mai walked over to him as he pulled his last clean shirt out of his pack. She helped him ease it on over his stiff muscles and the tender places where the healing was still finishing up. Then she put her arms around him gently and pulled him into her embrace.

He held her for a few minutes, then he pulled away and looked down at her. "I'm fine," he said firmly. "All healed up and ready to go. It's supper time. Let's go get some of that turkey, okay?"

They walked out of the cave to join the rest of the group gathered around the fire.

Dinner was every bit as good as Sokka had promised. The turkey was tender and delicious—Zuko had made sure to keep the spit turning while they were gone. Aang had turned the gathered berries and fruits into some sort of cobbler type dish that was tartly sweet and delicious. Another cassavayam had been turned up during the morning and was perfectly baked with just the right touch of honey and butter.

At last, they all sat back, sated and content. Zuko was bending again, Jet and Mai had survived the grizzly wolverine attack with only minor injuries after Katara's healing, and they would all be headed back to Omashu tomorrow.

It was with pleasure that everyone turned in, ready for a good night's sleep and a nice flight out in the morning.

Jet and Mai crawled into bed together, curling up against one another without a thought. They lay there quietly, each pondering the day's events.

Finally, Mai spoke up. "I'll miss this when we get back home," she sighed.

"Miss what? The cave? The dark? The damp?" Jet asked with a laugh.

"No," she said quietly, "I'll miss this. Being here with you."

Jet lay there with his arm around her and considered what she was saying. She was right. Once they were back in Omashu, their lives would go back to normal. She'd be Fire Nation Representative with an apartment full of expensive treasures and he'd go back to find a bedroll in the storage room of the leather shop.

"What are we going to do?" she asked. "When will I see you?"

"I don't know," Jet admitted. "I guess I'll be around working with Toph and doing that king-in-training thing."

"Good," she said with a sigh. "But it won't be like this anymore."

"No, I guess not," he replied quietly, kissing her hair. He loved her. He knew that. He would have died protecting her. He would live to make her happy.

She rolled over to face him, tracing his cheek with her fingertips. He captured her hand and pressed a warm kiss into her palm.

She exhaled with pleasure at his touch, and he rolled up on his elbow and looked down at her, drinking in the sight of her. He reached out to touch her, feeling the soft warmth of the embroidered silk of her blouse against his skin, running his hand across the curves of her body.

She sighed again and he was nearly undone by the sound. He gathered her close to him and kissed her. She returned his embrace completely, holding nothing back.

"I love you," he whispered again into her ear as he kissed her throat.

She caught her breath and wound her fingers into his hair in reply. Her body molded itself to him and he could feel her breasts rise and fall with her breath. He wanted to be with her so badly. He wanted to be part of her. But something held him back. Something nagged at his mind until he finally pushed himself away, breathing heavily.

"No," he said, his voice soft but firm, "not like this." Somehow he managed to rearrange things so that she still lay in his arms, but with her back to him. They lay there together, their breathing finally slowing and calming. At last, he felt her relax into sleep.

Jet lay there, part of him still reeling with desire for her, wanting nothing more than to rouse her again, to take whatever she was willing to offer.

After all, he was no gentleman.

But the other part of him, the stronger, better part of him remembered another, more important truth.

She was a lady.

At last, he slept.