"Zuko? What is it?" Hua asks, cracking open her eyes.
"I thought I heard something splash." He eyes the river with suspicion.
"It was just the wind. Or the rain. Or whatever. It's cold out there. Come back here by the fire."
"No. I heard something." He starts moving. "Stay put."
A limp little body lays trapped between two large stones, close to their side of the swollen river.
It repeatedly bumps up against the rocks, not moving to swim or pull itself out of the water.
Zuko swallows a lump in his throat. Poor kid.
The body coughs a bit, lifts an arm to look at it, starts thrashing, trying to get under the water.
Zuko can see it's a little boy now, and he doesn't look all there. He seems to think he's on fire.
Hypothermia. He never had to deal with it himself, having learned the Breath of Fire from Uncle early on, but he's heard stories.
Judging by the boy's lack of any clothing except for a thin pair of shorts, he's probably close to the last stage.
A muted, gurgly groan pulls him out of his shocked reverie and he charges into the water. It's not deep, only up to his knees, but the cold instantly numbs his feet.
He reaches to pull him out of the water and...
"Lee?!"
The boy's glassy eyes turn to look at him.
At least he recognizes his name.
He hauls him out of the water and stands him upright, holding him steady by his shoulders. The boy just looks straight through him, dazed and confused.
"Lee, are you alright?" That's a stupid question!
No response, just the blank look and swaying stance.
A surge of either anger or panic seizes Zuko, he isn't sure which and he shakes Lee by the shoulders.
"Snap out of it!" He orders.
"Zuko! Stop!" Hua calls out. She coughs from the effort of raising her voice.
Zuko glances back, concerned. Lee takes this opportunity to faint dead away.
Zuko catches him just in time and carries him back to the fire. Rumaging through his saddlebag, he finds an extra shirt and long pants.
Hua vacates her sleeping bag and tucks Lee into it, she lays close beside him and pulls him close, trying to rub warmth into his back and arms.
"What was he thinking?!" Zuko whispered, angrily.
"We'll find out when he wakes up. Don't be too mad at him. He's probably just scared, living with all those strangers. Or maybe he fell in." Hua tries to get him to calm down.
"We'll figure out what to do in the morning." He grunts, tossing his sleeping bag to her.
"I don't need that..." She starts, but he holds up his hand.
"You're still sick, and I don't think I can save you again tonight. I'm still barely awake. Take it. I still have the breathing technique I showed you in the field. The cold will wake me if I need to use it. And wake me up if he," He jabs a thumb in Lee's direction, "tries to wander off."
Once he's sure that Hua and Lee are both settled and sleeping, he does a quick sweep around the outside of their little rocky overhang to make absolutely sure there will be no further surprises.
He settles himself on the ground next to the fire, tosses another small log on it and stirs up the coals. He's warm enough, surprisingly, but he's going to have a long night on the hard ground.
~0o0~
It's already long past dawn when he wakes up, the air still crisp and chilly. A light breeze has replaced the howling wind of the night before and the sun has chased away the clouds.
The river is still over it's normal banks. Hua is trying carefully to get some water from it's edge.
"I'll do that." Zuko says, stumbling up from his position on the ground. His limbs stiff and sore, he wobbles over to her.
"I'm alright, just need one more potful for breakfast." She says.
"Where's Lee?"
"Using the bushes. He's only been gone a minute."
"A minute is all it takes with him. Evidently." He takes the full pot up the embankment to their fire, which is still burning cheerfully.
Lee comes tumbling out of the underbrush, a cat snake on his tail.
Zuko sighs, rolls his eyes, and shoots a flame at it. The critter scrambles off.
"Decided to learn how to swim last night?" He asks, trying to quell his temper.
"I fell in. The wind pushed me." Lee shrugs and starts playing with some sticks, building the beginnings of a mini cabin out of twigs on the ground.
"Uh huh. Why don't you tell me the sky is green while you're at it." He huffs.
"Well, sometimes it is. Depends on the clouds and the sun and,"
"What were you thinking, Lee?!" He yells, interrupting whatever nonsense the boy is about to spout.
Lee stands up and pouts.
"You were half drowned last night. And frozen. Do you realize you could have died, Lee?!"
"Not like it was your problem, Cinderman. You left me behind." He glares and kicks a rock. It goes skittering down the embankment and into the river with a quiet plop.
"Because you said you were staying! And you didn't leave a whole lot of room for argument!" He slams down the pot he's carrying, and half the water sloshes out of it. He does his best to ignore Hua's disappointed face.
"Doesn't make it better." Lee pulls up an overlong sleeve.
"Lee," Hua tries, "I think what Zuko is trying to say, " she shoots the other firebender a pointed look, "is that we missed having you around and are very glad you're back."
"Well, I'm not. I just wanna find Sensu. If that means I have to put up with a few lying Ashmakers, then I will." He resumes building his twig cabin.
"Hua, a word." Zuko pulls her away.
"Before you say anything.." She starts, but he interrupts impatiently.
"Hua, he had no right to go running off on his own in a storm! He knows he can't swim. Why would he go anywhere near the water?!" He whisper shouts to avoid Lee's curious ears. He glances back over his shoulder and sure enough, Lee is listening and doing his absolute best to hide the fact.
"He was going to Gao Ling, Zuko. Alone. He's that determined to find his brother. He probably realized pretty quickly that nobody in the village had any intention of leaving it themselves. And it's a pretty boring place for someone like Lee." She makes no attempt to lower her voice and Zuko knows it's pointless to shush her.
"Ok, so he followed the river to get there. But a gust of wind? Really?" I mean, I guess he is kind of small...
"It could have happened. Or he tripped. Or both. The point is, he's here and probably going to get sick from being so cold. We need to get to Gao Ling as soon as possible. It's too cold out for him to last long." A sudden gust of wind illustrates her point.
"What I don't get is if he was willing to strike out on his own to find us, why doesn't he want to be here now?"
"Because he's looking for Sensu, not us. We should have been in Gao Ling already. He was probably thinking he wouldn't run into us."
"Lucky for him, he did." An image of Lee's limp body in the river jumps into his mind unbidden. Followed by one of the all the water the kid had coughed up.
"And I think he knows that. So, let's not chase him off again, ok? I'm pretty sure he'll stick around if we just don't yell at him."
"Fine." Zuko turns around to apologize to Lee, but finds the boy has vanished.
"Lee?!" He shouts, all anger forgotten. His eyes dart for the rock formation they have been sheltering under, looking for any crevice through which the skinny boy could disappear.
"Lee?" He calls again. Images from the night before spring back into his mind. He glances toward the river, but he's pretty sure the kid won't make that mistake twice. Ok, he hopes.
He walks over to a stand of trees to the right of the rocks, suddenly quite sure he knows where Lee is.
Sure enough, the kid's near the top of the tallest tree, swinging back and forth upside down.
"The wind feels great this morning!" He shouts.
Zuko sighs and facepalms, his worry turning to relief, and then to sheer exasperation.
"Lee, if you want breakfast, you'll need to come down to get it. Hua and I are too tired to bring it up there to you." He says, trying not to groan. Behind him, he hears something of a suppressed snort as Hua tries not to laugh.
"Who needs breakfast on a day like today?" Lee asks, completely unperturbed by the possible results of the conversation he'd earlier been so very interested in, and even less perturbed by the thought of something as simple as breakfast.
"Growing boys, sick girls, and a very, very tired and sore young man." Zuko grumbles. He hears the muffled snort behind him again.
"Come on, Zuko." Hua whispers, pulling his arm. "Let him do what he's going to do for now." They wander over to the fire and open up some jerky.
"But he's going to starve!"
"Not in one day, he won't. If Lee's going to travel with us, he needs to know who's in charge. You've been letting him do whatever he wants." She burrows back into her sleeping bag to eat.
"He's too skinny. And I've been too busy to keep an eye on him." Zuko frowns into the fire, trying not to follow the urge to make it leap with his frustration.
"You feel guilty. For his village, for his family. What's happened to him is not your fault, Zuko. But what happens next will be if you can't get him to listen to you for his own good. And he's not too skinny. He ate well enough in the village. He can always have lunch later."
"And just how am I supposed to get him to listen to me?! It's not like I can just hold him down every second of the day to keep him from climbing trees, or chasing seagulls off cliffs, or falling into a river, or whatever else he decides to do!"
"No, but there can be natural consequences."
He's annoyed by how calm and reasonable she's being.
"Explain." He huffs.
"If he doesn't eat now, he'll be hungry in another hour or two, but we aren't stopping for lunch until later in the afternoon. As long as he has water, he'll be fine. Then, he won't refuse to eat again." She sits up, puts a hand on his shoulder.
"I know you're worried about him. But you can't help him if you keep making excuses for him. Every time you stop your trip for his lack of planning, you're teaching him that it's ok to rely on you for everything. He also won't get any more organized in his thinking. And what happens when you find his brother? Or if you don't? Whoever ends up taking care of Lee after this is going to have their hands full. He isn't going to be a little boy forever. You need to give him the tools to help himself."
She's right. About all of it. And Uncle has said similar things in his letters in response to his questions. But Zuko doesn't have it in him to comment at the moment.
He sees Lee chasing a squirrelrabbit through some bushes and sighs.
I have a lot of work to do.
~o0o~
As soon as they are packed up and Hua is seated comfortably on Rina's back, they're off.
Winding their way back up to the hot fields above isn't a fun prospect, with Hua still running a light fever, so they stick to following the river with some shade from the trees on the bank to keep them cool.
Lee largely ignores both of them, except to ask occasionally when they're stopping for lunch or if he can have a snack.
"Get your hands out of the saddlebag." Zuko tells him on more than one occasion.
"But I'm hungry!" Lee reaches around his stomach and squeezes. Although he's put on some weight during their stay in Chin Village, he's still painfully thin although his ribs no longer show through his clothes.
"That's your fault for not eating breakfast when we laid it out for you." He says firmly.
Lee scampers up the next available tree to look at a bird, seemingly forgetting his growling stomach.
Zuko shoots a glance at Hua.
"See? He's fine." She whispers to him.
"I still feel like a monster. Father used to take away meals as punishment for low grades in firebending forms." He mutters.
"That was different. He was being cruel. You're enforcing a boundary." Her tone is comforting, but it doesn't help.
"It still feels wrong."
"It's not. You'll see. He's fine."
A crash in the bushes off to the side near the water grabs their attention.
A startled squirrelrabbit bounds across the trail in front of them, spooking Rina.
Hua stays aboard but is thrown sideways, wincing as the movement aggravates her headache.
Lee's little arms poke out of the side of the bush, grasping for the long gone critter.
"Ouch!" He shouts. The bush shakes around as he tries to free himself from an apparent snag.
Zuko heaves a sigh and plunges his hands into the thorns. Finding a grip on the back of Lee's shirt, he pulls with all his might.
"OUCH!" Lee shouts again, next to Zuko's ear. Zuko drops him unceremoniously on the ground.
"You almost drowned, Lee. Twice. Stay away from the water." Zuko tells him, hurrying back towards Rina. The rhino is still dancing around unsettled and Hua's looking pretty worried that she'll bolt.
"I can't drown if I'm not in the water, Cinderman." Lee pouts. Then runs out of sight ahead on the trail, presumably exploring some new crevice.
"I'm not going after him." He says, glancing up at Hua.
She looks back at him in a way that clearly says, "yes you are."
"Lee!" He calls. "Come back where we can see you!"
Further up the trail a distant call comes back:
"Catch me first!"
Zuko looks how high the Sun has climbed in the sky and has decided that enough is enough.
A/N Okay, I know it's been a LONG time (a year and a quarter). I will admit I didn't work on this story as much as I thought I would (although some thought and work did go into it). It's been a very long, very busy year with A LOT of unexpected twists and turns. Some good and some bad. I've learned a lot about myself, my past, life in general and am much better off for it.
I apologize for the long wait. Life does have to come before writing, unfortunately. If I could, I'd probably sit and think, and sit and write all the time. lol
Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story so far! I was looking at the stat chart yesterday, and it looks like a lot of people keep checking back pretty regularly. Your dedication to this story is very much appreciated.
Shout out to my new followers/favoriters for this story: msScorpia, EmiyaSora97, lluvialpz, Nohamolait, eriaspamzzz, imannaeee, fantasy503.
I still cannot promise regular updates (real life is still insanely busy), but I do have some ideas that are getting jotted down on a semi regular basis now. And the live action tv series is out and I'm rewatching the original whenever I've the time. So new content should be sporadic, but certainly not another year for an update!
Hope everyone reading this is safe and well in this crazy world!
Thank you again for sticking with me! Let's see where this story goes. :)