Smellerbee and Longshot both stopped and did a double-take at the sight of them when they stopped in for lunch. "Wow, you two look terrible."

"Long night," he explained, over Zuko's prairie-dry 'Thanks.'

Zuko threw his apron down, motioned outside to him, and, when he followed, asked, "Spar with me?"

"Gladly."

Jet groaned into the dirt under him as Zuko's fingers danced against his back and shoulders like he couldn't stop himself. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap until he lost all rhythm to desperate little flutters of motion, rapid and soft like bumble-moth wings on his skin.

Eventually, he rolled over, covered his head with his free arm and tried breathing again. His mind was a mess and his emotions were still raw and painful. "I think I'm going to pass out," he warned.

Jet had no idea how they were arranged, except that he was fairly certain the thing his face was pressed against was Zuko's chest. But he also thought maybe the thing digging into his chest was Zuko's knee and that didn't make sense because he was pretty sure two bodies couldn't occupy the same space like that.

Neither of them spoke. Just as well. ( The entire point, even. )

x

The second day was just as silent as the one before, and twice as tense and awkward with words left unsaid. The night came both too fast and entirely too slow.

It was becoming clear that they'd avoided and ignored this for far too long, and if they didn't want to lose anything more, the only choice was to gouge out the rot until the blood flowed clear and clean.

But spirits, it was going to be bad.

Tender and scarred, Jet was nonetheless ready to prod at the wound again.

He tapped his finger against the floor twice.

They'd gotten little and terrible sleep the last two nights and Zuko was probably already out. It'd just have to wait until morn—

Tap-tap.

...dammit. He opened his mouth but was beaten to the punch before he got a single word out.

"Uncle ordered me not to speak," Zuko said, soft and quiet and damning.

Not ' told me' not ' warned me' but ' ordered me'.

"And I didn't listen," he condemned, with all the grim finality of a death writ.

Jet sucked in a fast breath through his teeth, not wanting to prod, not wanting to know . Because he had a terrible feeling he knew where this conversation was going.

He asked anyway. "So?"

"So… so stop being mad at him for looking away?" Zuko smiled, small but genuine. So fucking painfully genuine. "It was my fault," he concluded.

He couldn't have carved Jet's heart from his chest more thoroughly had he used his dao to do it.

The issue—

One of the many , many, innumerable issues, was Zuko's capacity for care and forgiveness. He had no problem whatsoever holding the simultaneous thoughts that his father loved him and wanted him home, and that his father thought he was a disappointment and would kill him with his own hands. In Zuko's mind, the presence of one didn't negate the other.

In Zuko's mind, love and care and safety were all mutually exclusive concepts.

That was so much the issue. Because it meant Iroh could declare his familial love and honestly say he'd stay by Zuko's side, and it didn't even slightly diminish the possibility in Zuko's mind that Iroh might betray him or eventually even kill him. And still those options would hurt him less than Iroh saying he was disappointed in him.

And Jet just—

Zuko. Zuko, no . No.

Zuko loved his people so much it hurt. He still expected betrayal from every single one of them.

Jet covered his face with his hands, laughing. Sharp, jarring, uncomfortable laughter.

And then, behind the safety of his fingers, he cried. He cried because Zuko didn't— because Zuko couldn't. Zuko had no idea how to cry for himself. How to grieve.

Jet had been grieving since he was eight. Not always well. Not always healthy. But he'd never held it back, he'd never had it pushed down and smothered into nonexistence.

Zuko hadn't cried when his mother left, when his grandfather died. He hadn't cried when he lay burned, when he read his banishment. He hadn't cried when the bandages came off and he saw what would be of his face for the rest of his life. Zuko lashed out, he flared, too-bright and too-hot. He smirked, sharp and hot. He smiled, sometimes, gentle and warm. But Zuko didn't cry. (He'd cried on his knees for mercy, tears tracking down his face the last time it would ever be whole and unmarked. But he hadn't cried since.)

No, he drowned.

Zuko felt so much, too much, got caught in the riptide of his own emotions until they pulled him under, silent and screaming, filled his throat and choked his lungs until he couldn't breathe. And Jet saw the rising tide of it in his eyes when Zuko looked out over the atrocities the Fire Nation committed, when he choked out 'My people. My people, why? ' He saw it when he found Zuko staring out over the turtleduck pond in Ursa's absence. He saw it when the bandages had come off. He saw it when he'd put his hand to an open candle in Zuko's sickroom just days after the Agni Kai, when Zuko had wrenched the fire from existence to protect him.

Zuko had laughed only a handful of times in the three years since his banishment, and all of them in the last six months.

"…Jet?" The Fire prince's voice should never be that small and uncertain.

He wanted to fix it—it was what he did. Jet was a problem solver. But Zuko was a person and he couldn't fix that. Zuko was hurt, hurt and wounded and tired and beaten, but he wasn't broken and Jet couldn't fix him. Zuko was trouble and troublesome and problematic, but he wasn't a problem and Jet couldn't solve him.

He wanted to protect him, even from the evidence that Jet was hurting because of him, because it wasn't fair and it wasn't Zuko's fault but that was just the story of his life, evidently. He wanted to keep him safe, and he couldn't do that, either.

It was weird, being in Ba Sing Se. Jet never anticipated how stressful things could be here but they were. They were so, so stressful and he didn't understand quite how. They hadn't had these problems back on the Wani. Or maybe they had but they'd never talked about them.

Three years afloat a fucking sardine-squid can and no one saying anything about their problems ever.

Jet just wanted him to please stop talking. Agni, please. How was it possible for it to be this bad without him really noticing? It'd been three years. How had this managed to slip by him so thoroughly for so long ?

HOW was it even possible for it to be this much worse than he thought? How was it possible for it to keep getting worse every time Zuko opened his mouth? How did it keep getting worse?

Zuko's father burning him was bad enough. (It was so much worse than bad enough but he didn't have room didn't have words for the horror of how much worse it was and somehow it just kept mounting higher and higher.) Ozai actually doing it for control while claiming respect was bad enough. Zuko believing it was bad enough.

Zuko twisting the lesson until the deaths of an entire regiment rested crushingly on his thin, thin shoulders was worse-than-bad-enough. Zuko thinking it was because he didn't fight his own father was worse-than-bad-enough. Zuko thinking it his fault casually because of Iroh's pearl dagger was worse-than-bad-enough.

But Zuko thinking Iroh actively approved his burning was—

Jet didn't have words for the level of horror, here. Because Azula watched and Azula smiled and Jet watched and Jet cried but Iroh—

Iroh had turned away. Because he couldn't stand to watch. (Because he was ashamed of him, Zuko had apparently concluded and then carried in his heart for the three years since and Agni help him what the fuck, Zuko please. Please stop thinking. You're killing yourself.)

He had been wrong, Jet realized. That day at the top of the cliff when Iroh had tried to teach Zuko lightning. He hadn't known anything about the shame Zuko felt then. Still felt now. Was only just beginning to share, shy and tentative.

Damn Ozai to the fiery depths of Agni's own hell.

It was minutes later when Zuko cleared his throat. "'They held me back,' you said."

"Iroh," he answered the not-question. "Held me back. Knocked me out. Probably—" 'saved my life.' And that burned almost as much as his memory of the Agni Kai.

He would die before he thanked Iroh for it. He hadn't wanted—

"I'm glad you're alive."

Jet's breath caught in his throat. That was— It—

"I'm glad you're alive, too," he rasped back. It wasn't the forgiveness or absolution that Zuko wanted, Jet didn't have that to give to him. But it was something.

And maybe, just maybe, for them, it was enough.

X