AN:
Here's the second POV for the fic :) Poor Jee.
Jee's not a big fan of royalty, really.
General Iroh's alright. Jee served under him during the siege on Ba Sing Se; he's a good man. Honourable. Humble when it suits him, which is good enough for Jee. He likes tea and board games and women, and he's a half-decent musician too.
Yeah, General Iroh's alright. But his boy Lu Ten was a cocky little shit with a fondness for practical jokes though, and his little brother, Fire Lord Ozai – first of his name, one of the many descendants of Agni, current holder of the Dragon Throne, and The Cowardly Usurper, blah blah blah – is a horrible waste of space and air with an undeserved ego the size of the Earth Kingdom. The Late Fire Lord Azulon, may Agni hold him in eternal rest, Jee assumes to have been equally as bad.
And Prince Zuko…
He looks like a spoilt brat.
Jee observes his Crown Prince with narrowed eyes. He's a little shorter than the General, and he's dressed in finery, and his mouth has the same cocky tilt as the late Prince Lu Ten. He stands like a soldier despite not having seen a battlefield even once in his life. His eyes are the same sharp dragon-colour as his father's, still round with youth.
Arrogance spills off Prince Zuko in waves, from the solid positioning of his feet to his stiffly crossed arms. The top of the royal brat's head ends a few fingers below Jee's armpit and the dual swords strapped to his back are too big for him. He's dressed in squeaky clean armour and his hair is shiny and healthy.
"What's the Dao even for," Jee grumbles, as Prince Zuko greets each of the crew personally with a shallow incline of his head and a smarmy smile. "He's a great firebender, isn't he? Defeated his old man and everything—"
"Not a defeat," Junior Lieutenant Sana whispers in Jee's ear. "The Fire Lord let his son win out of the goodness of his heart."
Goodness shmoodness. Jee's heard that the Fire Lord got half his face burnt off by a boy barely heavier than three mildly damp Komodo-Chickens – in other words, the illustrious Prince Zuko himself – and spent two royal, unconscious weeks in the royal infirmary. It's an embarrassment to the Crown. He probably just needed the kid out of the way in the least treasonous way possible.
"Just because we know that doesn't mean we ought to say it." She pinches his side and ignores his growl. "Be nice, Jee. He's a kid."
"He's a spoilt brat who probably refuses to eat anything if his chopsticks aren't made of gold." Jee clenches his jaw, watching as Prince Zuko adjusts his top-knot. Vanity has no place on a navy vessel. "I bet he's unable to even wipe his own arse—"
"Jee," Sana says in a low, chiding voice.
"Sana," he copies her, scowling. "He's royalty. Just a little high-born milksop who got unofficially kicked out of his own home for embarrassing his daddy. And now we're stuck with that fancy little turd."
Sana rolls her eyes and mutters something about 'at least we have a job'—which, to be fair, is the reason Jee accepted the position; that, and some undoubtedly misplaced loyalty towards General Iroh. It was either this or the factories in the Outer Islands, and Jee will choose drowning in the sea over drowning in his own blackened mucus, thank you very much.
But that doesn't mean Jee can't complain about his new job. Continuously. At length. He'd rather serve under Captain Zhao than under royalty, and Captain Zhao has a tendency to throw people he doesn't like the look of overboard.
"General Iroh assured us he's a good boy, Jee," says Sana. "Don't be such a pessimist. You'll give me bad skin."
Jee sends her a look. Sana smirks back, puts her hand beneath her chin and turns her face to show off her sun-weathered, wrinkled skin.
"See? It's starting and will get worse if you don't fuckin' can it. I can feel pimples coming up already."
"You're exhausting," he tells her. "Go bother the animals."
"Their reactions are far less entertaining than yours."
"Sana."
"Whatever." She grins again and punches his bicep. "The Princeling will be a decent boss, Lieutenant. You'll see."
His Royal Brattishness orders Jee to order Helmsman Ichiro to set course for the Western Air Temple, because, and he quotes, "perhaps we'll find something previously missed."
Ridiculous. Arrogant. The Air Temples have been combed out by numerous people – including royalty – and nothing has been found. The Avatar, if he even is an Air Nomad, would never hide in a place so obvious if he's managed to elude the Fire Nation for a near-century. The sheer stupidity of the order proves to Jee that the Prince has no idea what he's doing.
And ordering Jee to order the rest of the crew around? Really? What, does he think himself too good for speaking directly to his men?
"And women," Sana coughs.
"And women," Jee acquiesces, grumbling. "You can't tell me it isn't real rude, though."
"He's a boy," Seaman Keiji says, with half a smile on his face. He cranes his neck to look at the boy-Prince, currently taking tea with the General. "He's still getting used to having a whole ship under his command."
"But do you like him?"
"Like and respect aren't synonyms," Keiji replies loftily. His smile widens, stretching the scar across his face almost grotesquely. "But he seems to respect us, so I'll likely give him mine in due time. And to like him? Well, I usually don't like teenagers, but he's yet to throw a tantrum…"
"The bar is on the floor, I see," Petty-Officer Jiro cuts in, sauntering closer. "You talkin' about Prince Zuko?"
"Not as loudly as you are, Jiro," Sana says. "But yes, we're discussing him."
Jiro beams. "He's adorable, isn't he?"
"Oh, absolutely," Keiji replies. "Did you see him, greeting us all soldier-like? And he barely comes up to my elbow—"
"He looks so dapper!" Sana grins widely, her functional phoenix tail swinging as she sways. "And his cheeks are just like mochi. I never understood why my aunties kept pinching my cheeks when I was little, but I get it now…"
"He's a spoilt brat," Jee snaps, glaring daggers at the lot of them. "A spoilt brat who's our boss right now, which means we're not going to discuss how cute he is or how mochi-like his cheeks are, and—"
"Your cuteness-aggression results in genuine aggression, doesn't it, Lieutenant?" Sana says smugly. "It's okay, we're not judging you. Big strong men like you always have a hard time with emotions."
Jee will not be disrespected like this. He is their superior, third only to the Prince and the General, and they ought to offer him the regard he is due. Prince Zuko is not cute, and that is an order.
He tells them this with an appropriate amount of cussing.
"Of course, Lieutenant." Seaman Hina pops up out of nowhere and pats the crook of his elbow. She's holding a broom the same way one would hold a two-handed jian at rest. "Whatever you say."
The gathered company sniggers. Jee orders the lot of them to shove a mop up their lazy arses and storms off in a huff.
In the week-long journey to the Air Temple, Prince Brat proves himself to be a diligently hard worker to the surprise of everyone on board.
He feeds the animals and mucks out their stables. He helps Engineer Akito with the steam engine. He always scrubs the deck after his training, a training happens under the diligent tutelage of the General and should leave the brat exhausted and aching.
"My nephew likes to keep busy," General Iroh tells Jee, as the young Prince dances his way through an advanced kata and Seaman Keiji stands at the ready with a bucket and a hard-bristle broom. "He has a hard time sitting still whilst others wait on him hand and foot."
Jee doesn't want to believe it. A Crown Prince getting his hands dirty is unheard of, save for only the General next to him—and even on the battlefield, General Iroh rarely participated in the cleanup. But Prince Zuko finishes the kata with an extravagant roar of multicoloured fire, waits for his uncle's satisfied nod, and hops off to Keiji with his hands already outstretched.
"Well," Jee says, tone scathing in spite of his wavering resolve, "I'll wait a little longer if you don't mind, General Iroh."
"Retired General," says the General, but he's smiling and doesn't say anything else.
The Prince is a stealthy little turd.
He's incredibly agile and strong enough to muffle his footfalls. He's swift and he knows how to keep quiet. He nicks the sweet buns from Jee's plate and is halfway across the mess before Jee realises. He sneaks up on people just blow a gust of hot air against their neck, scare the ever-living-shit out of his victim, and then stand there with a smug little grin as they recover from their near death.
Crown Prince Zuko is a stealthy little turd, and he's awful, and no, Sana, Jee won't change his mind on that.
"I'm sure he just wants us to play with him," she says, horrifyingly amused. "We're all so much older than him, after all."
Jee is a Lieutenant. Jee has thirty years of active fighting experience under his belt. Jee is almost fifty years old. Jee hasn't participated in any form of play since he was fourteen and he's technically a peasant, and surely the Prince of the Fire Nation has to be Adult much earlier than peasants.
General Iroh and the Royal Brat eat with the rest of the crew in the mess hall. Prince Zuko is unwaveringly polite and says please and thank you, and the majority of the crew quietly coos about how pretty the Prince is, how cute and how kind, still tiny and bouncy and cheeky in that way children ought to be.
But Prince Zuko is not a child, he's a teenager and the Crown Prince at that. And Jee—
Well. He's unsure what the warring, confusing emotions in his body are, whenever he looks at the Prince. He thinks that it's largely annoyance, some defiance, the predictable outrage of why is a child giving me orders and why do I need to listen to them. He thinks the best way to describe the Prince is 'thirteen-year-old boy', by which he means that the Prince is a thirteen-year-old boy and thirteen-year-old boys are the most annoying people on this Spirits-forsaken ball of dirt; but Jee knows that doesn't quite cut it.
Jee remembers being a thirteen-year-old boy. Jee was once a thirteen-year-old boy, for an entire year. And he was a little shit, sure—stressed out his mother on the daily, so much that a good chunk of household funds was specifically set aside for her to send letters to his father at the front. The letters detailed all of the blood pressure-rising shit he got up to on a day-to-day basis, including but not limited to jumping off cliffs to impress girls, egging the local compound filled with dreadfully annoying soldiers, and stealing rice.
He did shit most thirteen-year-old-boys get up to. Normal things. He rarely said please-and-thank-you, wrangled himself out of affection with all the fury of burgeoning puberty, and he jumped off cliffs and egged houses and nicked rice. And the only thing – the genuine only thing – that Prince Zuko does that is on par with Jee's childhood shenanigans, are the death-defying stunts.
To be fair to thirteen-year-old Jee, the cliffs he jumped off were small cliffs, and his fall was always cushioned by water. Prince Zuko, the fucking brat, does not look before he jumps.
Of course, the Prince is kind, gentle, and caring. He writes to his little sister Princess Azula, firebending prodigy and alleged terror, because he promised her he'd write. He's just so damn unfailingly polite to everybody on board. Jee catches him cooing at one of the Eel-Hounds about a day after they've left Caldera behind them, calls her a pretty girl, beautiful girl, yes you are, despite the common knowledge that Eel-Hounds have faces even a mother has difficulty loving.
Jee knows that most thirteen-year-old boys are soft, deep down. He knows that the vast majority of thirteen-year-old boys are also quite stupid. And Prince Zuko is a thirteen-year-old-boy, and Jee knows what thirteen-year-old boys are like, and Prince Zuko therefore shouldn't stress Jee out on a day-to-day basis.
But Prince Zuko cleans his nails with his flint-sharp dual swords. But Prince Zuko regularly swims in the sea to practise his breath control. But Prince Zuko sticks his face in the engine when Engineer Akito thinks something is wrong with it, even when it's on and very hot, and Prince Zuko scales the side of the ship to reach the navigation tower, neglecting to use any of the available ladders, and Prince Zuko jumps off the navigation tower when he wishes to get back down to the deck, using his firebending to slow down his descent.
The General's supply of calming herbal tea is in need of replenishment before the week is out. The General prefers jasmine. Jee wonders how the General's blood pressure isn't through the fucking roof, considering Prince Zuko is his nephew and Jee's blood pressure reaches new heights every single day in spite of him not even being related to the awful kid.
"I love him," Jiro says in the mess one late evening. The bottles of hard liquor they're sharing are becoming bottles without hard liquor very quickly. "I love him already."
"It's barely been a week," Hina points out, but just this afternoon she had to take a five-minute breather when the Prince decided to practise juggling with his Dao swords.
"Still," says Jiro, with feeling. He doesn't say anything else.
"He's got zero sense of safety," Ichiro grumbles. He takes a deep swallow from his cup, stares down at it, and reaches for the bottle for a refill. "I found him balancing on the railing the other day."
Jiro scoffs. "He'll land softly, at least."
"No," says Ichiro, "no, you don't understand. My railing. The navigation tower's railing. Balancin' on it. Like it's a tightrope."
"Oh."
They fall into quiet contemplation. Their few youngins – Ensigns Minato and Asami, Recruits Kazumi and Ohta – are in their early twenties, too old to understand Prince Zuko's recklessness and too young to be truly stressed out by it, and therefore have neglected to join the rest of the crew in this drinking session.
Jee reckons it must be nice, not having high blood pressure caused by a feral, thirteen-year-old Prince with a death wish.
"I think," Keiji says eventually, voice grumbling through a throat set alight by the spiced scotch, "that we're all just so concerned 'cause he's so kind and adorable."
There is muttered, intoxicated agreement. Jee sets his jaw and angrily lifts his head through the haze of liquor.
"He's a brat."
"Only you think that," Sana retorts. She reaches out and flicks his nose, grinning crookedly when his exhale of sparks barely tickles her fingers. "You're fond of him, though. Admit it."
"I'm not," he snarls. Any flush of warmth he feels whenever the Prince does something entirely stupid is mere annoyance. "He's horrible."
"He's cute," Jiro says, like a small protest. "He hasn't done anythin' to disrespect us. He's just… concerningly reckless."
Jee glares at his Petty-Officer, words to sharply retort with crawling slowly up his throat and sticking to his tongue. Said Petty-Officer stares back, one infuriatingly smug eyebrow raised.
"He's just reckless," Jee manages to say eventually. "Not concerningly."
"You had to lean your forehead against the bridge and breathe for ten minutes the last time he swung himself off the navigation tower, Lieutenant Jee, sir."
"Not in concern," he says tightly, "in mere fright 'n annoyance. That's all."
Jiro smirks. "Right, and I start my mornings by dancing the Flaming Chicken in my underclothes on the deck—"
"That is all, Jiro," Jee snaps.
Jiro continues to smirk smirkingly. Sana and Hina snigger drunkenly into their cups. Keiji has produced fire-flakes from some place or the other, and is sharing them with Ichiro—both are chewing obnoxiously loud.
Jee, briefly resigning himself to not being taken seriously, steals a handful of fireflakes and chows down on them in a fit of rage.
But the Prince is still a brat.
Land comes in the form of shouting and mild excitement.
"Your Highness?" Jee asks, through gritted teeth. Prince Zuko's dual swords have halted in a deadly movement, and the Prince himself is silent and still. "Where do you wish for us to moor?"
The Prince blinks, loosens his shoulders, and sheaths his swords in one quick, smooth movement.
"I believe the journey to the Temple is quite the climb," he says, slowly. "Try to moor as close as possible to a traversable area; we should bring climbing gear. I do not want anyone to fall."
Jee nods and forces himself to be bitter about the command to command. It takes more effort than it should.
Prince Zuko is an ignorant child. He is a child, and he is royalty, and so he must mean the slight, and he is a child—
The Western Air Temple is deserted, as expected.
It's also a mass grave.
There are bones everywhere, skeletons of children and adults alike scattered by animals and wind: nuns and acolytes, driven into corners. In a few of the closed off rooms they manage to pen, hidden in the Temple's depths, the skulls still have hair. The bones are held together by brittle, dried cartilage and tattered orange robes. It's always an adult skeleton guarding a handful of smaller ones.
I am so sorry, say the characters on the back of an opened scroll. They're written in blood, bleached with age. The Fire Nation army keeps waiting for us to emerge. I do not want them to be burned alive. They are children.
When the clouds in the canyon below part, Jee can see the shiny white remains of hundreds more. Thrown, or jumped willingly—it doesn't matter. Emotion burrows itself in his throat and won't leave. His heart beats steady yet slow deep inside his chest, pulsing cold blood to his extremities.
Jee has spent the majority of his service in the Navy, barring the few years he served under General Iroh in the Earth Kingdom. And in the navy, you don't see many dead bodies. The slaughter is always from a distance: burning projectiles sink ships, and sometimes the screaming is obscured by rolling waves and vicious wind. It is rarely up close, rarely personal.
Jee has sent many to the grave that is the ocean floor, nearly emotionless as ships sank down under the waves. During the Siege it was easy to view the ferocious earthbenders of the Earth Kingdom army as inhuman—the cries of battle obscured the sizzle and squelch of flesh, and the adrenaline made his enemies no more than malicious spirits.
It is silent here, in the Western Air Temple. The empty eye sockets stare.
If the experienced members of the crew are pale, then their young members are paler still; turning green, shaking, biting their lips until they bleed. Ensign Minato and Recruit Ohta throw up. Prince Zuko calls them all to him and stands there, thirteen winter solstices old, feet steady beneath him and hands clasped behind his back and shoulders straight. He looks drawn and grave.
"Let us give them their final rites," he says, young voice wavering only slightly. There are bones behind him that his predecessors have never deemed worthy of a proper goodbye. The General has a hand on his shoulder. "They were human beings. We ought to treat them with respect."
"Yes, Your Highness," says Jee. The words come out thick and hoarse. "Let us put them to rest."
Nobody moves until the Prince moves. It's not out of disrespect, Jee knows: they're all just frozen, shocked into stillness by the remains of a massacre in front of them. But their Crown Prince, thirteen years of age, is the first to shake himself loose in order to gather the bodies. He kneels, hesitating before his fingers brush a skull.
"If you can manage, try to find a scroll on Air Nomad funerals," Prince Zuko announces thickly. "I know some details, as I've studied Air Nomad culture, but the information is incomplete. Fire Nation rites will be disrespectful."
Jee, armed with climbing rope and anchors, sets off to find the scrolls. He pretends very hard he isn't trembling.
It takes them three days to prepare for the funerals. Three days of work, of searching and carrying, of reading and gathering. On the evening of the first day they return to the Wanyi, but that next morning Prince Zuko commands they take supplies – food, incense, parchment; clothes and bedrolls, bedsheets and emptied travel chests – back with them to the Temple, because the climb up and down is exhausting and inconvenient and he does not want anyone to fall.
The entire crew acquiesces, because it is a sensible order and they like sensible orders. General Iroh then insists on taking tea and pastries, if not for them then for the souls still lingering in the Temple—left to roam forever. Prince Zuko agrees.
So they stay, laying out their bedrolls just next to the entrance with a cooking set in the middle. It's tiring and painful work: they spend daylight carrying human remains and gathering knowledge and trying not to gag when the thickness of the atrocity becomes too much. Their ancestors are guilty; to collapse will not do.
During the first evening meal spent in the Temple, Jee informs Prince Zuko and General Iroh that he found scrolls stating the Air Nomads generally preferred a sky burial, but that the Air Nomads of the Western Air Temple were more inclined to cremation. And it's too late for a sky burial anyway, Jee tells them. There is nothing left for scavenging animals to clean up.
"Cremation, then," General Iroh says slowly. "Well, we know how to build pyres."
He accepts the bowl of stew that their Cook, Take, hands him with a nod and a smile. No meat: Prince Zuko insisted on vegetarian meals whilst they stayed here, in spite of protests. The Prince wouldn't budge, though. According to him, to prepare meat in the Air Temples is to desecrate them even further. We've done enough harm.
Take dutifully broke out their stores of tempeh and fresh edamame and lentils. Nobody is complaining.
"I found the appropriate scrolls just before being called back for dinner," Jee says, accepting his own bowl. "I'll look into the rites tomorrow."
"I'll join you, if you allow me to," says the Prince quietly. "Two sets of eyes look quicker than one."
Jee accepts the offer with some trepidation. The next morning, Prince Zuko climbs up after him into one of the hanging store rooms, golden eyes wide with wonder as he takes in the small library.
His awe is enough for any hesitancy Jee felt on working with the royal brat to vanish. They set to work immediately, careful not to tear the ancient scrolls with priceless knowledge. It's a miracle Sozin hadn't had all of this burnt to ashes.
The rest of the crew, including General Iroh, is busy preparing the other parts of the funeral: collecting bodies, assembling the pyres. The bones are numerous, and they know they cannot gather them all, so the scent of incense hangs heavy in the air and carries mumbled prayers and apologies. There is no joy in finding anything interesting, only solemn duty tainted with grief for people they have never known.
That evening, Ensign Asami dares to step close to Prince Zuko, goes down to her knees, and presents him with a children's doll. It is of a female Air Nomad, a Master, tattoos visible with painstakingly neat, light blue embroidery. Her dark hair is made of wool.
"It is one of the few salvageable things we've managed to find," she says, and then she hesitates visibly. "Your Highness, Seamen Keiji and Hikaru and Recruit Kazumi and I believe that we should not burn these with the bodies."
Prince Zuko tilts his head and Asami carefully hands him the doll. He brings it closer to him and smooths his thumb over the faded fabric, mouth tight.
"We took chests with us for a reason," he says slowly. "Those chests will stay here, and we shall fill them with all that can be saved. Robes, necklaces, artefacts… and knowledge." He pauses, swallows. "Those who can draw well, and those whose handwriting is neat and legible: you shall copy scrolls for us to keep. They originals ought to remain here."
Everybody nods. Some start to whisper, discussing the additional tasks. Asami smiles a pained, relieved smile, then scoots over to her crewmates and answers questions on what else she's found.
Prince Zuko plays, head bowed, with the doll's fragile hand and leans against his uncle, ignoring the quiet ruckus. The atmosphere is not joyful, merely curious and quiet, lingering with strengthened respect. Their Crown Prince, their Captain, doles it out like it's candy—to them, to souls, to the area. It's so incredibly easy to give it back.
And he's a boy.
Jee, eyes carefully trained on the long-fingered pre-teen hands of his Prince, on the ancient doll cradled in work-roughened palms, feels himself waver.
The chests they've brought, emptied of personal belongings, come from the crew and the two royals. They're stamped with names and the Fire Nation insignia—the latter, Sana and Prince Zuko neatly scratch out with their knives. Asami, Keiji, Hikaru and Kazami carefully gather all material goods they've found and search for more — necklaces and robes, toys and stuffed animals, grooming brushes and cloaks made from shed air bison fur — and place them in the chests. Small icons of Avatar Yangchen, Kuruk, Kyoshi, Roku, made of whittled wood or cut out of glass, get wrapped up in clean rags and are hidden away with the other things.
Ensign Minato and Helmsman Ichiro are on cultural scroll-copying duty, because their handwriting is the most legible out of all of the crew; Petty-Officer Jiro and Seaman Hina copy the bending scrolls, because they can draw. When the four are finished, they roll the ancient scrolls up with care and place them in a chest that too will be closed and locked away inside the temple, because the fragile wealth of knowledge may be destroyed otherwise. The copies are for the off-chance that it will anyway.
"They were pacifists," Ichiro announces, when they take lunch. His fingers are covered in ink. "They did not have an army."
"Be careful what you say, Ichiro," Keiji snaps. His cheeks are still blotchy; he found something he won't talk about, but carried a child's skeleton to the pyres, to be put at rest with their family. "That implication is dangerous."
"I'm not implying anything," Ichiro replies harshly. "I'm just sharing what I've found."
Prince Zuko, Jee finds, doesn't say anything. He just eats his fried rice with a distant look in his eyes. General Iroh's arm is pressed to his.
The gathering continues, though the pyres are done. Those with the worst handwriting and drawing skills help find material goods; the others help with reading scrolls, with copying them. They finish long after nightfall, exhausted, but they do not sleep. They eat, and tidy, and carry chests full of scrolls and dolls and robes and all that proves the Air Nomads were human, were there, were real into the depths of the Temple, locked behind doors to never be looted.
When they are ready, when the Temple is tidied and its material stuff is safely stored away, when the Nomads' remains have been gathered and placed on the pyres and wrapped in spare bedsheets because the Air Nomads wore red in mourning and the crew had nothing else to use—
When they are ready, their firebenders go down on one knee, thrust out their palms with bowed heads, and set the wood alight.
Prince Zuko and General Iroh murmur the rites in low tones, partially from memory and partially from the copies of the scrolls Jee found on Air Nomad funerals. Some parts are familiar, of returning to the source, but it is not Agni's embrace that the Air Nomads believed in. It is not the earth the Air Nomads wished to be at rest in. It is not Tui's pull or La's push that the Air Nomads longed for.
It was the wind. The air. The element of freedom, a part of nature that will always be even long after humans will have inevitably killed one another off. It brushes through his short hair, stokes the fire enough for it to engulf the sheets and the bones they hold. Jee believes in the Spirits but can't pronounce the name of the one the Air Nomads prayed to. It curls foreign around his tongue, comes out harsh and stilted where he assumes it should sound smooth and song-like. He clumsily whispers the name of the mother — Chuī De Tā — and hopes it's enough. And perhaps it is.
They are exhausted. They do not sleep. Agni chases Tui out of the sky of dark silk and burns it red, orange, yellow, light blue, rising and rising and rising—and they sit vigil, only moving to light new incense. Jee's knees burn and his stomach aches, but he remains. They all do.
They stay until the bones have turned to ash, until Agni has sunk below the horizon again and Tui has taken their place. Until a gust of wind, sudden and almost unnatural, sends the black and grey powder that was once bodies down into the valley below, yanking at any and all loose clothing. Sana's phoenix tail beats in the wind like a flag.
The stone floor of the square is clean. No blackened stain baked into the earth, no evidence of the cremation; it's as if the goodbye was a long time ago already, as if it was a long time coming.
Prince Zuko bows low, forehead pressed to the ground, murmuring prayers. They all follow suit, so tired, so exhausted. The stone is rough against Jee's forehead, the warmth of the pyres lingering deep within, and the wind is a soothing press against his back.
Later, when they've finally eaten and quelled the hunger, ceased to fast—later, when their cooking fire has gone down to embers and the crew has crawled into their bedrolls, curled up—later, when everybody is sleeping, Jee is still awake and the Prince is as well.
He is thirteen. He is an ignorant, kind, curious and remarkably wise boy. He is a child with a death wish and a kind of compassion that not even Fire Lord Ozai managed to beat out of him. He carries bones with the reverence one uses for baby animals, careful and gentle, and he demands righteously to respect victims of a genocide that happened nearly a century ago.
Jee whispers, harsher than he intended, that the awful kid ought to close his eyes and sleep. Take care of yourself for once, he doesn't say.
Prince Zuko smiles weakly. And he listens.
The journey back to the Wanyi is quiet. So is their cast off: the commands aren't shouted, only said. A handful of the crew vanishes into their cabins and reappears in white.
"Makes you wonder, doesn't it," Prince Zuko murmurs from somewhere around Jee's elbow.
Jee glances down and finds the Prince looking contemplative, tired. The cocky tilt of his mouth is gone. Jee recalls the gentleness with which the Prince carried the bones, recalls the solemnity in his expression and his movements; something appropriate for so much death but not made, not faked, simply genuine.
"About what, Your Highness?" he asks.
Prince Zuko looks at him, that dragon-yellow colour of his eyes, of royalty, smouldering with a purpose Jee can't pinpoint just yet.
"Whether everything else we've been taught is also a lie."
Jee exhales sparks. The warmth in his chest remains. The sky is clear and the breeze is stiff, cold, fresh.
"Yes," he says honestly. "It does make one wonder, my Prince."
End Note:
Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to leave a review, but please don't be too harsh :)