This chapter shines light on Jet's motives and why he's so ardently on Zuko's side and why he isn't snapping at every Fire national when he has even more evidence of their bad sides from childhood.

Timeline layout: Without Jet and his freedom fighters, Team Avatar stay only shortly, refill the reservoir, and move on.

Reservoir gives out. Because when reservoirs are empty, they get maintenance to make sure they hold up. That didn't happen, and Jet wasn't there to forcibly blow it up. So so so.

[S1, Approaching Gaipan]

"Where is Prince Zuko?"

"Up on the deck taking out his anger on the kindling."

Iroh was not stupid. "And you have come to take yours out on me?" Old and dodgy and always snooping where he shouldn't and ignoring what he should snoop into, but definitely not stupid.

That was the thing about the Fire Nation, none of them were stupid. But they were all loyal.

'The heart of the hearth is forever faithful' ran the Fire Nation truism, about family homes, passed down through the generations.

"Do you not like me?"

Oh, he hated Iroh, no doubt. Because Iroh was Fire Nation and Iroh was fire royalty and Iroh was a firebender and Iroh was military and the Earth Kingdom had burned.

But that wasn't why he hated Iroh. It could have been. It so easily could have been. But it wasn't.

"You're the Dragon of the West," he answered. The expected answer. Left unsaid: And my village was burned to the ground. "You can see where there might be a conflict of interest."

"And yet you show no compunctions around my nephew."

Because Zuko was Zuko. But what he said was, "Equally conflicting." His lips twitched. "And twice as interesting."

No, the reason Jet hated Iroh above and beyond all other reasons was because Iroh was Fire Nation and Iroh was fire royalty and Iroh was a firebender and Zuko had burned.

And Iroh had held Jet back. He would never forget the old general's hands on his shoulders and the sharp pain at the back of his neck and then blackness.

And he would never forgive, either.

x

[S1, Gaipan]

He was speechless.

It was just ruin. It wasn't even the ruin of his childhood, with burned trees and houses and treehouses and falling ash sticking to his eyelashes like snow.

This was ruin how the Fire Nation knew ruin. Wet ruin from raging, angry water that nothing could hold back or hold at bay. He could track the destruction with his eyes, from the reservoir and broken dam all the way down to the shattered remain of the town that looked like children's toys picked up and tossed about in a fit of temper. Here, a wall, a coop, there, a toy soldier floating away, a doll tangled up in its own small dress.

The smell of wet rot was stomach-turning and terribly familiar. The only thing missing was the salt-tang of sea water mixed in with the mess, but the sea spray from the ship almost made up for it.

"What happened here?"

Well, that was a stupid question. Anyone with a net total of at least one eye could see very clearly that a flood had happened here. But that shouldn't have been possible, they were on the tail end of the dry season. The reservoir should have been empty.

Zuko loves his people, Jet thought again, with no less wonder this time than any previous. He loved them so much, that at thirteen , he'd stood up to an exalted general and put his life on the line in Agni Kai and hadn't so much as hesitated. It was only his insane family loyalty pitched against his devotion for his nation that had made him stumble and fall.

It was only after supplies were distributed and the repairs were well underway that he remembered and bothered to ask. "So," Jet cut straight to the point. "Can we be here? Legally?"

"Fire Nation colony on Earth Kingdom land. Fire Nation town, but Earth Kingdom port."

Disputed lands, he meant. "So it's a gray area."

"My life," Zuko summed up, succinct and depressing in equal measures.

They had a system, Jet and Zuko. The system worked like so:

Zuko, as was his prerogative as a prince of the blood of Agni, would not fucking tolerate soldiers of the Fire Nation getting out of hand. And Jet, as his personal guard, enforced Zuko's rulings.

(What it actually meant was that Zuko took it very fucking personally if his people didn't act with the honor he expected of them, and in his fury, allowed Jet to vent his spleen on them at will.

Jet had spleen to spare when dealing with the Fire Nation, and more with soldiers who didn't ascribe to Zuko's very specific brand of honor.)

x

It was easy to forget, sometimes, between the ship and the disrespect—on both sides—and the constant edge of repressed, and not-so-repressed, temper, exactly what Zuko was.

And then there were times like this one, where it was so obvious and in his face that Jet wondered how anyone ever forgot even for a breath.

Because the moment, the very moment, Zuko had someone to listen who wasn't insubordinate just on fucking principle, he was so blatantly a prince that it took the breath away.

For all that the crown had all but fallen in his lap, Zuko had been raised a prince. In some other life that wasn't this one, he'd have certainly been an advisor, possibly a minister. Prince Lu Ten's left hand, it was so easy to imagine.

He knew how to order people, and how to move people. And Zuko loved people. It was his love for his people that had gotten him his scar in the first place, and that devotion, as far as Jet could see, had never once wavered or faltered.

For just a little while, it didn't matter if they were on technically-Earth Kingdom land. It didn't matter if half the people here were Earth instead of Fire. If the children running around had 'mud' running through their veins.

They were Zuko's people , and he would help them.

These people didn't care if he was a banished prince. The Earth half of them didn't even seem to care he was a Fire prince. They cared that he was a prince, someone with noted authority. They cared that he cared. It damn sure wasn't every day that royalty came down from their hills and palaces and high walls and looked you in the eye and said to you personally that your life matters. You are mine you matter to me and I will help you for no greater reason than that.

Jet didn't blame them not one bit.

Zuko turned around with a shout. "Uncle! We need more tea!"

Jet honest to the spirits thought the old dragon was going to break down crying.

"A nation isn't just land, " Zuko ranted. He made a sweeping gesture at the ground around them. "This? This, isn't the Fire Nation. That— " He pointed at the village. "—is the Fire Nation. They are the Fire Nation," he finished, motioning to all the people, Earth and Fire alike, moving through the streets.

"I don't understand." That startled a laugh out of him.

"I'm not surprised," he replied. It earned him a glare and he held up his hands placatingly. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just that Zuko's brand of loyalty—" That being endless . "—is hard to understand the first time you experience it."

This was the same Fire prince who, at thirteen, read the entire Naval Code , with one eye, with half his face burned , either half-drugged or in extreme pain, out loud, to Jet.

With a banishment fresh on his shoulders, the lives of thirty-five people depending on him, and an impossible quest laid at his feet.

And Zuko had not once faltered.

(Damn idiot had gone climbing the southern Air Temple with a three-week old wound. )

x

It was strange just how polar opposite their lives were even though they'd grown up side-by-side. Funny, in that shitty Ember Island Players tragedy kind of way. But for everything he'd been in his life, Jet had never really been unwanted. His parents had loved him, he remembered well, soft and haloed like the memory of a good dream. And in their twisted way, even the Fire Nation had wanted him. For physical labor, but wanted him. And Zuko himself, with desperate reaching hands for the closest thing he had to a friend even when that friend left him bruised and bleeding more often than not.

But Zuko… not quite. Unwanted by his sister, his father—his father and grandfather who'd both been willing to kill him. Zuko could count the number of people who'd ever wanted him on one hand with fingers left over, and most of them too little or too late.

The prince in question stepped to his right, putting Jet on his left side in the position of highest trust that existed for him. Not asking or pushing, just offering the comfort of his presence and an ear to talk if it was wanted. It was a dance they'd played out again and again over the years, comfort in silence, in being, and a shoulder to lean on offered in strictest confidence in a world that abhorred anything but standing tall on your own.

Jet shook his head and let out a shaky breath, tilted his head out over Gaipan. "My life, years separate and a step to the left." Something about that thought niggled at him until he chased after it. "How old am I now?"

"Fifteen? Sixteen?" Zuko offered.

Zuko himself had seen his sixteenth turn on the winter solstice, though the Fire Nation counted summers and he'd still be seen as fifteen until then.

"Seventeen, maybe," Jet figured. Half his life, then, nearly. He'd spent almost more years with the Fire Nation than he'd been in the Earth Kingdom where he'd been born.

He didn't know what to do with that revelation. What would his life have been like if he'd slipped the round-up raid after his village had burned and not wound up with the Fire prince? If he'd stayed in the Earth Kingdom?

"This isn't far from my old village." Would he have wound up here in Gaipan just the same? How tight did the threads of destiny pull?

He blew out a harsh breath and turned away. It was giving him a headache and upsetting his stomach to consider and he didn't want to think about it any more.

x

Jet, sensibly, was helping with the Earth half of the equation.

"But what if there's a fire?"

Jet paused. He looked up. The townsfolk looked back. He looked pointedly at the crewmen. He looked back at the mixed townsfolk. "You live," he said, slowly, "with firebenders."

And they stared back at him in that unmistakable 'yesss, that would be the issue, yes' kind of way.

His headache, a general dull throbbing, abruptly gained extremely pointed teeth.

"Fire Prince!" Jet wailed, pinching the bridge of his nose until Zuko showed up. He leveled an arm at the townsfolk. "Your people," he started resentfully, "are stupid. Fix it."

"I've been trying that with the crew of the Wani for three years now," Zuko muttered. "What miracle do you expect me to pull off here?"

"I don't know. Just. Fix it. I saw you rip the flames from sconces when you were only thirteen years old. How high-level a skill was that, actually?"

It occurred to Jet, then, that juuuust maybe, he didn't have a great understanding of what exactly was 'normal' for firebenders, either.

"Kindling, front and center! How many of you are from the heartland?"

"Don't call us kindling, dirt-clod."

Jet snorted. It wasn't like insults were unusual. Especially back in the Fire Nation, where Jet had been very visibly Not Fire Nation. Dorodango had always been a popular one. Dirt pressed into shape and smoothed and polished until it turned into a shiny bauble.

Prettier, was the implication. But still useless.

"Until you know how to put out fires as easy as you start them, kindling is what you are, and kindling is what I'll call you. If you don't like it, learn fast. "

"Kindling?" one of the men asked, eventually, wisely away from any of the actual benders.

"Firebenders of low skill, or firebenders on the front line," Jet answered. Or firebenders who end up on the opposite side of tetchy royal firebenders, he added silently. "It amounts to the same thing."

x

Jet watched with the eyes of a stalking puma-panther. Finally, he inclined his head. "Are you familiar with the slaughter of the 41st division?"

The man winced. "Everyone's familiar with that. Nasty bit of business."

Jet snorted indelicately. "It was a military action. It was planned. Prince Zuko was in the room when it was put forth. He rather objected to it, as I'm sure you can imagine. He castigated the general that put it forth, and was ordered to fight an Agni Kai for doing so."

Carefully, carefully, Jet seeded the water with blood. He hoped all the tigersharks were waiting.

And the man nodded along, because everything up to that point made some slight sense—a disgraced general fighting to save face when deeply disgraced—if you just ignored the crown prince being thirteen at the time and not able to legally enlist much less fight for his life in an honor duel. But.

Details. Such trifling things.

And then Jet went for the throat.

"You see, the Fire Lord—may his light shine for a hundred years—took umbrage at having his general upbraided in his War Room." And the man's face froze. "And what more could a filial son do than submit to his father's discipline ?"

x

[Jet and Zuko taking a break from actively restoring Gaipan to go practice.]

In a way he never did during firebending practice, Zuko moved like fire when he had his dao in his hands. He flowed around hits and leapt forward when given the barest opening, hungry and bright.

In a way he never was during firebending practice, Zuko lit up with his dao in his hands. His movements were certain and sure the way they weren't at any other time, and in his face and eyes there was a fierce kind of joy that Jet saw no other time.

Their firebendingy/shuang-gou chases were spars, were practice. But this, with shuang-gou and dao in-hand, it was playing. Chase here was fast and fun and playful. Zuko had a grace he rarely showed any other time.

It looked like dancing, more than anything else.

It looked like dancing more than dancing did. Fluid and fire and grace.

"Aaaand… I'm done." He let his arms, and more importantly, his swords, fall out to his sides.

Zuko snorted at him, all derision. "Weak."

"Some of us don't have god-blood lighting our veins. Annoying as I'm sure you find it, I'm afraid some of us are just mere mortals."

And that made Zuko snarl , because if there was one thing that angered him more than people arguing with him, it was people agreeing with him.

What could Jet say? It always was fun to live down to his expectations.

x

[Getting ready to leave Gaipan, Zuko accidentally picking up a stowaway who saw them practicing in the forest]

The dirty, scruffy orphan girl looked at him with all but stars in her eyes. "Oniichan has swords…"

Jet covered his mouth with his hand, turned his head away, and snorted.

"Shut up," Zuko spat.

"I didn't say anything," Jet squeaked out, voice strained. Zuko gave him a jaundiced look for a long, tense moment before finally turning away. "Oniichan."

He leapt back out of the way even as Zuko swung, laughing outright as he avoided the sword.

"Come on, Oniichan, is that the best you can do?"

"Hold still so I can murder you, " Zuko snarled.

Jet stepped back from two more swings, waited, waited, then moved forward directly into Zuko's strike zone and didn't move. He saw the exact moment Zuko realized he was going to hold his ground instead of dodge, and the fire prince pulled back, twisted in a liquid feline motion that put his back to Jet and left his swords crossed in front of him.

His voice was a growl of sound as he asked, " What are you doing?"

Jet was close enough to nearly whisper in his ear. "You did tell me to hold still. And your wish is my command, my prince."

"We're not keeping the child," Zuko said, with grim finality.

Jet knew that particular tone of voice, and he had to say, he wasn't convinced. "I know you say that now. And I know you think you mean it—"

"I do mean it."

But Jet also knew there was a komodo-rhino down in the cargo hold named Licorice Twist, and he also-also knew where Zuko disappeared to in those off-times when nobody could find him and he was off practicing his freaky ninja skills.

"It doesn't make sense to you. It doesn't have to. That kid has decided to trust you."

"A terrible decision, really," Zuko muttered. Tried to deflect, as he always tried to deflect. Because nothing scared the Fire Nation prince more than the thought of someone depending on him—and failing them.

Carefully deliberate, Jet shrugged. "It's worked out pretty well for me."

It was a small motion, Zuko pulling in his shoulders. "Why are you fighting so hard for her?"

"I've got a thing about protecting war orphans," he deadpanned.

And there was that flinch again. Because somehow, somehow, despite the war and Fire Nation and the Fire Lord taking Zuko's mother and childhood and family, he still didn't think he fell into that category.

Stupid prince.

"It's not safe here."

"It's not safe anywhere." Jet motioned grandly to the child's village that had washed away.

"We can't take her."

"But you will anyway."

Zuko rounded on him, face alight with fury. "What do you think you know—?!"

I know you , he thought. But, "You're the prince," is what came out of his mouth, cutting Zuko's rant off at the knees.

There was panic in those gold eyes. "I'm in exile— "

"You're the prince," he said again. "You're our prince, and that little girl is Fire Nation and she needs you. That's what I know, Fire Prince."

And much as Zuko would fret and worry and brood, he would never shirk responsibility. Would, Jet didn't doubt, put his body between that girl and anything that threatened her.

After all, at eight years old, he'd done no less for a ratty Earth Kingdom boy.

"And I know you never— never— turn your back on someone who needs you." Even when you should. "Even when you want to."

x

It had been an amazing thing to watch Zuko heal Gaipan, Earth and Fire alike.

They were both still so much their elements, their nations. Jet earth, hard and prone to cracks and quakes, Zuko fire that flared and spat sparks. And yet.

Earth was steady, earth was sturdy, earth remembered, and it didn't forgive. And above all, earth did not yield.

Ever.

But even earth, with heat enough, gave way to something else.

And Zuko had always been warm. Had always been heated. But more...

He burned.

In the War Room, with indignation and betrayal and righteous fury, he burned. In the Agni Kai chamber, with fierce determination and a dragon's pride scorned, he burned. And then with horror and fresh, fledgling shame, he burned.

Under the gaze of heaven in that chamber, with fire flickering in every corner, at his father's hand which spurned and knew no mercy—

He burned.

Ozai had set him alight, and Zuko hadn't once stopped burning since.

Even now, even with the fire and infections long since come and gone…

Zuko burned.

But Jet was earth, unchanging, and he never forgave anything. He'd never forgiven Zuko because Zuko hadn't done him a wrong. (Zuko had helped, when no one and nothing helped. Had put swords in his hands and given him a direction to point his grief and anger in, even if that direction was Zuko himself.)

Jet didn't forgive Iroh for letting Zuko into the War Room on his authority as prince and then not taking responsibility for his words. Iroh was a senior general. Iroh was a prince of the blood. Iroh was the Dragon of the West . Even under Agni's harsh rules, Zuko should not have been in that room, and whoever let him should have borne the weight of what he said. How had Zuko so depressingly once put it? 'Bartering with borrowed honor.' But no, Iroh had let him stand on his own. Fall on his own.

Burn on his own.

Jet wouldn't be forgiving Iroh any time soon.

And Jet sure as every spirit didn't forgive the Fire Nation. No, his revenge on that front was going to be beautiful , digging savage claws into the festering heart of the Fire and rip it open to bleed flame across the earth and sky.

Clay fired in a kiln was no longer malleable, was steady and strong. Fire sheltered in the kiln was protected and powerful.

They were both so still very much their elements.

Jet was Earth, but he was going to help Zuko burn out every trace of the infection, and by the time he was done, the Fire Nation would be unrecognizable to the thing that had burned his family-village-life down to cinders.

What more complete revenge could he have than that?

X