Dark Puck

Soldier's Boy One

2008-08-27T13:26:31Z

Title: Soldier's Boy
Authors: Eleanor and Puck
Rating: PGish for now, may rise due to language used.
Genre: AU, picking up right around the end of 1x09 (The Waterbending Scroll) and continues from there.
Summary: During an encounter with pirates, the gaang picks up two new allies: A swordsman named Lee and his younger earthbending brother, Jiro. The sons of a Fire Nation soldier and a woman of the Earth Kingdom, they both seem quite willing to help the Avatar and his friends - but both of them are hiding things, from the gaang and from each other.

Soldier's Boy

One

It had been about twenty minutes since Lee had told Jiro to hide, when he came back. "Freaking pirates," the older boy muttered to himself. "You okay?" he called a little louder.

A rustle, and then a small boy slipped partway out of an equally small hollow buried under a bush. Jiro grinned irrepressibly at him. "Yep, fine. Nobody came by this way." He wriggled the rest of the way out and casually collapsed his shelter before pushing himself into a crouch. "How about you?"

"I'm fine. The kids won, I think they're run—" He broke off with a small yelp, as an arrow shot through his shoulder from the back.

"Lee!" cried the younger boy, his grey eyes wide. He leaned out around Lee, face contorted in an angry snarl, and slammed one hand against the ground. Earth rumbled, and then a pillar shot up under the man who had shot his companion, sending the man flying.

The older boy spun as well, sidestepping in front of Jiro and drawing a sword with his uninjured arm, to try and disperse the rest of the pirates who'd followed him.

The wind picked up, strong and direct enough to knock the remaining men off their feet. It appeared to come from a boy about Jiro's age, perched on a large white animal. "Both of you, jump on!"

Lee didn't bother to look. "Jiro, get on the bison!"

"You too!" the younger boy retorted, but he'd already propelled himself into the air with a pillar under his own feet; a dark girl helped to steady him as he landed, then grabbed his belt to prevent him from falling off as he reached over so Lee could jump and grab his hand.

He backed towards the bison, covering his friend's retreat, then spun again and accepted the help up. The tattooed boy called something out, and the bison shot up out of range. Panting from exertion — he was only ten, and didn't often use his earthbending ability so much and so quickly — Jiro clung tightly to Lee's waist.

Lee didn't hug back. He bowed slightly, as much as he could, at the other passengers. "Thank you."

"Least we could do, after earlier," one of the boys — not the pilot, the other one, the one as dark as the girl — said, shrugging.

Jiro looked up at him with sad grey eyes. "Lee, you're hurt…"

"I noticed," the older boy said, a little dryly. "Can you break off the feathers? I need to pull it the rest of the way through."

He swallowed but nodded, obediently releasing Lee and crawling behind him, where one by one he plucked the feathers from the arrow shaft. "Okay, I've got them."

"Thanks." Lee reached up and pulled the arrow the rest of the way through, as quick as he could. He sagged back a bit, seeing stars. Without the shaft to block it, the hole started leaking blood faster. Jiro let out a small cry and tried to staunch the flow.

"Supplies in my bag..." Lee mumbled.

The smaller boy looked around until he saw the bag, then dragged it over to him with one foot. Then groaned as he realised he only had two hands and both of them were being used to keep Lee from bleeding out. "Help…?" he pleaded to the three older children.

The girl crawled over the saddle quickly, and rooted around in the bag. After a minute, she'd found the bandages. Using water from a flask she was carrying she cleaned the hole and wrapped it, quickly.

"Th-thank you," Jiro stammered, moving his hands and wiping them on the bottom of his tunic.

"No problem" she replied, smiling, then frowned. Lee had taken some other hits — though none nearly as severe — during the retreat, and she'd used all of his bandages on his shoulder. "Sokka, toss me my bag?" The dark boy shoved a blue bag over at her, and she dug in it for her own supply of bandages, and started cleaning and wrapping the other injuries.

Shyly Jiro helped her, settling in front of Lee when it was all over and worriedly speaking his name.

"M'okay, Jiro," he insisted.

"He says with numerous wounds," the ten-year-old pointed out dryly.

The older boy managed a small smile. "Not hurt that bad."

Everybody else stared at him for a very long moment, then Jiro sighed and affectionately said, "Idiot."

Lee just sighed, and sank back, closing his eyes. After a few minutes, Jiro crawled to the edge of the saddle and leaned over it, looking at the ground far below in delight. Apparently Lee wasn't quite as far out as he'd thought; he reached out and grabbed the back of Jiro's shirt, pulling him back a little. "Gonna fall."

"Am not!" Jiro pouted at him, but he settled down next to the older boy regardless. Lee just looked worried, and very dizzy. Sighing, Jiro nestled gently against Lee's uninjured side and turned his attention over to the three other children.

"So, you're Lee and Jiro, then?" the younger boy, the one flying the bison, called back, looking over his shoulder.

"Yeah," affirmed Jiro with a slight smile. "What about you?"

The three of them introduced themselves in quick succession — the pilot was Aang, the girl Katara, and her brother was Sokka. "And this is Appa," Aang finished, patting the bison, who rumbled.

"Thanks for the ride, Appa," Jiro said obediently, laughing a little bit.

Aang laughed, too. "Well, like Sokka said earlier, least we could do after all the help Lee gave us earlier."

"He has this thing about kids getting hurt," Jiro replied, looking up at his bigger companion. He'd apparently drifted off to sleep at some point, which explained why he hadn't said anything in the last few minutes. The young boy frowned, then slipped off his slightly overlarge tunic and tried to cover Lee with it.

Katara gasped a little in horror, seeing the scars decorating the ten-year-old's chest. "What happened?"

Startled, Jiro looked down, then his face closed off and he turned so the scars weren't visible. "Nothing."

Katara opened her mouth to say something else, but her brother hit her. "Drop it."

Jiro spent a few moments fussing over the sleeping Lee, always moving so that his back was to the others. He seemed rather self-conscious about his disfigured chest. Clearly, all three of them wanted to know more, but they didn't ask. Aang even helpfully changed the subject, telling him bizarre stories about penguinsledding and surfing on sea serpents. This served to lighten Jiro's mood, and the boy laughed as he nestled close to Lee once more under a blanket Sokka had tossed at him.

Lee woke up around the time they brought the bison in for a landing to set up camp. Jiro gratefully pulled his shirt back on then tried to help the others set up, somewhat ineptly. The older boy climbed down and, wobbly as he was, helped out as well.

Once Jiro had been settled where his enthusiasm would do no damage, things went a bit more smoothly.

"Hey, you guys want to stick with us?" Aang said, suddenly.

Startled, the younger boy looked over at him. "Huh?"

"I mean, you guys'll both be really helpful, and you're an earthbender, and I need to learn earthbending — well, I'm supposed to learn water first, but… maybe after, you could teach me what you know?"

Lee got a very odd, closed look on his face, hearing this, but it quickly vanished, helped along by Sokka chiming in enthusiastically and asking for sword lessons. Jiro looked surprised — well, tattoos, only Air Nomads had those, and for there to be an Air Nomad boy after a century, the boy could only be the Avatar rumour whispered had returned — but hesitated. "I… I'm not very good," he said carefully. "I've never had a teacher."

"Well, anything you can show me will help," he said, eagerly, raising his voice slightly to be heard over Sokka badgering Lee about swords. "And we have to go to the North Pole first so me and Katara can learn waterbending right, so it'll be awhile."

"I… I guess so….," Jiro conceded.

"Thanks!" the Avatar said, with a big grin.

Hesitantly, the smaller boy smiled back.

The twelve-year-old then turned his focus to Lee, rescuing him from Sokka to ask where the two of them had come from. The older boy tensed a little, and gave a series of bitter, evasive non-answers. When he turned to Jiro, he only shrugged and said that Lee knew the land better than he did. Finally, the tattooed boy subsided, though he was more curious than ever. Clearly, neither Jiro nor Lee wanted to speak of where they came from or why they were travelling.

Over the next few days of tedious travel, Aang kept trying to spring the question on them when they were thinking about other things, but neither boy fell for it. Finally, utterly frustrated, Jiro turned on the Avatar. "Look," he said hotly. "We don't want to talk about it. Just let it lie. Please!"

The older boy blinked, surprised at this outburst. Then the look of shock faded, replaced by one that looked remarkably like a kicked puppy. He looked away. "I'm sorry..." Guiltily, Jiro looked away from him as well, and moved slightly faster to catch up with Lee. Then, with Sokka in the lead, they broke through a screen of underbrush and walked right into where a Fire Nation army patrol was camped. Jiro squeaked and hid behind Lee. The children and the soldiers stared at each other for a few moments, then the men advanced—

Only to have their leader cut down by a sudden unexpected arrow from the trees.

That was all the cue the melee needed.

Surprisingly, there was no earthbending backup from Jiro — the youngest of their group crouched close to the ground, arms clasped tightly around his head as he whimpered in stark terror nobody had seen from him before. Lee stayed close in front of him, oddly reticent to do much damage to the soldiers.

The reinforcements from the trees made this unnecessary. In short order, the battle was done, and introductions were made, but still Jiro did not uncurl. Lee bent down and gently picked him up, ignoring the fact that this ripped open the half-healed hole in his shoulder. Whimpering, Jiro clung tightly to him; the one who had been introduced as Smellerbee gave the boy an incredulous look. "What's with your brother?" she asked Lee.

He shot her a brief glare. "He's scared," he snapped.

"This I can see. What of? Fight's over."

"Just drop it."

The girl glared at him and stalked ahead to walk with the archer — Longshot, that's what he was called. A short while later, they stopped in a clearing that looked much like every other clearing they'd passed through. The tree-people's leader — Jet, he'd said his name was (Sokka didn't like him. Lee didn't, either) — told their guests to hold on to ropes that dropped down from the trees.

Fortunately, Jiro had come out of his near-catatonia. He was still trembling, but he was no longer frozen and unresponsive. Hesitantly, he reached for one of the ropes, wrapping it around his forearm to make it easier to hold on to. Lee grabbed onto the same rope, clearly not willing to be far from his brother until he was calmed further.

Without warning, they were pulled up into the trees; Jiro let out a startled cry, but he smiled as he watched the ground drop away from him. Lee wasn't nearly so pleased with this. It only increased is already-significant mistrust of Jet.

By the time dinner rolled around, Jiro had completely recovered from his earlier fright, and Katara was watching Jet as though he was some great god of beauty, come to walk among mortals.

Lee and Sokka, for once actually agreeing on something, hung around close to the edge of the group, watching Jet suspiciously. To nobody's great surprise, Jiro remained close to Lee, though he didn't seem to have the same misgivings about the leader of the Freedom Fighters as his brother and Sokka.

When Sokka tried to insist that their group was leaving early the next morning, Jet was rather convincingly disappointed and told Sokka that they had something important they wanted him to help with. While still suspicious, the teenager was obviously flattered and agreed to stick around to help out.

Curious, Jiro asked if he, too, could go along. Lee, of course, would be going if Jiro was, and Jet sized both brothers up before shrugging and agreeing. Jiro cheered up immensely after that; he'd been ashamed by his paralysing fear before and refused to say what had caused him to freeze.

And so, early the next morning, Jet, Lee, Jiro, Sokka, and a few of the other Freedom Fighters headed off into the woods. Surprisingly for a boy of ten, Jiro remained completely silent as they travelled, seeming to understand instinctively the need to sneak around. Lee was even better at sneaking, moving with an eerie quiet that hinted he'd had to hide more than once before, for significant amounts of time.

Jiro crouched lightly on his part of the tree branch, watching the road eagerly to see what would happen. Sokka slammed his knife into the treetrunk, pressing his ear against it to see if he could hear anyone coming. "There's someone coming! Just one person, I think."

"One person can be more than enough," Jiro said, so quietly only those closest to him heard.

"False alarm," Sokka finally said. "It's just an old man."

Regardless of what Sokka had said, Jet and his followers jumped down from the trees. Confused, the other three followed, to find Jet holding the old man up, insisting he was a spy.

"Jet," Lee snapped, but the older boy ignored him.

Jiro's eyes narrowed, and he pushed Jet away from the old man with surprising strength. "Lay off!" the boy snarled, standing between the two. Jet snarled back and Lee, sensing trouble, got between the two before Jet could fly off the handle in his brother's direction.
The old man fled while the teenaged boys were fighting. When they finally got back to Jet's tree fortress, nobody was happy. Katara was still besotted, and took Jet's side, particularly when he claimed the old man had been carrying a poisoned dagger.

"He was just a colonist!" Jiro snapped angrily. "Probably afraid of people like you!"

"He was sent here to kill me!" Jet snapped back. Once again, Lee stepped between them, a little less quickly than he'd been able to before — he'd decidedly lost that fight. The odds might've been slightly more even were it not for the mess with the pirates less than a week before. Jiro subsided rather than see his brother fight the older boy again, but he did not stop glaring at Jet.

The next day, Sokka left with Pipsqueak and Smellerbee, and Aang and Katara left with Jet. "Something isn't right," Jiro said quietly. "And I don't just mean in Jet's head."

Lee nodded. "Think you're right." He dragged himself to his feet. "We should follow him. Figure out what's going on."

Jiro nodded and helped his brother get to the ground. Once there, though, he hesitated. "Maybe I should go find Sokka?"

Lee nodded, and slipped off after Aang, Katara, and Jet. Taking a deep breath, Jiro melted into the woods, following the path Pipsqueak couldn't help but make. "Sokka?" he called quietly.

Sokka had, by now, broken free of Pipsqueak and Smellerbee. "He ran off," the girl told him, a little sullenly.

"Where?" Jiro demanded, glaring up at the two. Obviously Sokka had managed to trick them into Fire Nation traps.

"He didn't say."

"Okay, then why did he run off and trap you two?"

"He found out about Jet's plan to flood the valley and get rid of the soldiers."

Silver eyes went wide. "The village," Jiro breathed, then he turned and plunged into the bushes, heading straight for it. If Sokka had gone to stop Jet, then the village needed to be warned—!

Sokka wasn't trying to stop Jet. He was already evacuating the village when Jiro got there. "Sokka!" cried the boy, running in to help him. "What do you need me to do?"

"Help me get the people out of the town," he said. "Where's Lee?"

"Went after Katara and Aang — and Jet." Jiro all but spat the name as he fell into helping people move along and carry things. Sokka frowned, but didn't say anything.

They'd barely gotten the last people out when the dam exploded and the water rushed in. Quickly, Jiro bent up a small barrier to make sure the evacuees would remain safe, then had to sit down. He leaned against the wall he'd made, breathing hard.

"You okay?" Sokka asked, worried.

Jiro gave him a weak smile. "I don't bend much."

The older boy nodded, and helped him up onto Appa. "C'mon. Let's go get the others."

"Yeah." Jiro sat on the head with Sokka, knowing perfectly well that Lee would have hauled him back into the saddle if he'd been there.

"Yip, yip."

When they got there, Jet was frozen to a tree, Aang was lying on top of his damaged glider, Lee was leaning against another tree, gripping his shoulder, and Katara was yelling at the rebel leader.

Jiro slid down from Appa's head and ran to his brother. "Lee, what happened?" he asked, worried.

"We fought," he mumbled. "You okay?"

"Yes, fine, see?" And he took Lee's hand and moved it to his face, so that the older boy could see that Jiro's only hurts were the fading bruises from yesterday.

He relaxed, obviously relieved, to find his brother not further hurt. "Can we leave now? I don't like this place..."

"Me either," was the fierce reply. Not relinquishing Lee's hand, he lead the other boy to Appa.

Katara, Aang, and Sokka joined them shortly after, and they took off. Jiro helped Katara wrap Lee up by holding his brother still, then curled up next to Lee and fell deeply asleep. Lee followed him there soon after. The others didn't make much conversation.

dark_puck @ 2008-08-26T09:59:00

2008-08-26T14:03:06Z

Hello, folks. This is just a friendly warning that there will be no update to Small Flame or to Roulette this week. I try to update on Saturdays, but not only is one beta on a brief hiatus from l'internet and the other has not appeared to me in weeks, I'm going to be at Dragon*Con this week. So, next updates will be in September.

However, before I leave, I'm going to post another co-author AU as a testing grounds. Yes, I know all I write are AUs. I like AUs. They're fun. And Co-Author and I like changing things and seeing what would happen. So be on the look out for chapter one of Soldier's Boy.

Small Flame Ten

2008-08-24T13:51:48Z

Title: Small Flame
Authors: Eleanor and Puck
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: PG?
Summary: A retelling of the tv-series with one major difference: A boy named Kouji is added to Zuko's retinue, and the story is largely told from his point of view. And if anyone can come up with a better summary, PLEASE. Do so.

The sandstorm died down after about ten minutes. It took Iroh a further twenty minutes to calm Zuko down enough to avoid getting themselves or anyone else killed. They had no luck finding a trail — the storm had covered it — so decided to head back for the town they'd just left to see if anyone had seen him, or the sandbenders who'd taken him.

Nobody had. The sandbenders had completely vanished, and Kouji with them.

Zuko, furious, ran off into the desert before Iroh could stop him.

This was not, perhaps, the wisest decision Zuko could have made — especially as he didn't think to grab any supplies before he ran. Fortunately, the sun set quickly, enabling the fugitive prince to keep up his search far longer than he would have been able to in the day.

Still, he found nothing. Grimly, he kept going, melting the sand behind him into glass to mark his path so he wouldn't get lost. After hours of searching and no sign of Kouji or sandbenders anywhere, the sun began to rise, and with it the temperature.

The heat didn't bother him nearly as much as it might've another person — he was, after all, a firebender — but as the day went on and he grew more tired, having to expend more effort to make his glass trail, he started seeing things.

Around noon, he fell. He managed to drag himself up this time, but he fell again an hour later, then about a half hour after that. The fifth time he fell, he didn't get up. As he lay there, the sun beat down mercilessly on him, giving him plenty of time to think — relatively speaking, anyway.

Why would they take him? Blackmail? No, can't be, they don't value anything Uncle and I have, and they'd've left a message in that town. Slavery, then. Has to be. Lots of people would pay good money for a ten-year-old. These thoughts gave him enough fury and adrenaline to drag himself up and stagger on another hour.

By now it was late afternoon, so the sun had relented just a little bit. This did not alter the fact that Zuko was exhausted, dehydrated, badly sunburned, and was coming dangerously close to heat stroke.

He tried to drag himself up, and managed to make it to his knees, looked up, and froze.

"…Dad? What're you…?" He stood up, and reeled, seeing stars. When his vision cleared, the image had moved, to the left. He hesitated, swaying. I don't know where I'm going anyway… He turned to head towards the image instead of blindly the way he'd been going, not really noticing when his trailblazer died.

The sun was setting when he fell yet again. Kouji had been missing for just over a day.

The vision faded with the sun, and it took its disappearance to let him know that it had been just that — a mirage. He just lay there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Find Kouji. Before they sell him. He dragged himself back to his feet, reeled, and fell to his knees again, retching.

A whisper of sound, a cry — Kouji? — a thud, and then the sounds of someone trying to run on sand. And managing it fairly well, actually. He turned — a mistake, he realized when he threw up again — to see if it had, in fact, been Kouji. If he's here and able to run, they weren't going to sell him… A few things began to click into place. He pushed them to the back of his mind to go over some other time.

"Lee, you idiot!"

Yes, it was Kouji, and now one of the boy's cool hands was touching Zuko's forehead lightly.

"Came t'find you," he mumbled, trying to stand up again.

Other hands caught him now, forcing him down and turning him onto his side. An unfamiliar voice said, "Sunstroke," and then called for a number of items even as Zuko's chin was tilted up.

Instinctively, he resisted, not trusting these strangers and wanting to get Kouji back to Iroh and back on the road as quickly as possible. "It's okay, Lee," Kouji said, touching Zuko's shoulder. "Shā Zi knows how to deal with this."

A few more pieces fell into place, giving him almost the full picture. He ignored them. He shook his head, and threw up again. "Need t'get out of here," he said, when he was done.

"You need aid," Shā Zi replied seriously. "Or the sunstroke could kill you." A canteen was put to Zuko's lips.

He refused to swallow — he'd been poisoned by accident when he was little, and didn't trust these people not to poison him on purpose.

Shā Zi made an exasperated noise, and a small hand — it could only be Kouji's — came into Zuko's line of sight, taking the canteen. Seeing Kouji drink the water willingly with no ill-effects, he decided to accept the water.

…well, whatever it was, it was more than water. There was a sweet taste to the drink — passionfruit, perhaps? — that almost covered the slightly salty aftertaste. And Shā Zi was giving Kouji quiet instructions that Zuko couldn't quite make out.

He was more interested in staying conscious, anyway; he was on the edge of blacking out. "We can take you to the edge of the desert," one of the other sand-people said, "but no further. You'll have to take care of him from there."

"I can do it," said Kouji softly.

Zuko tried to get to his feet again, since these people seemed to be planning on letting them go now. Instead, a group of men picked him up and carried him over to a strange wooden boat of some kind, laying him back down on his side. Kouji was lifted up next to him. "You need to stay like that right now," the boy told him.

He started to argue, then figured if he opened his mouth again, he's just throw up, so he stayed silent. Kouji offered him a little more of the liquid from the canteen; they were making him drink slowly. He knew better to ask for more than they were giving him, focusing on trying to stay conscious so that, when they were let off, he wouldn't have to be dragged.

Zuko must have blacked out at one point, for when he came to again he and Kouji were in a small shed, and alone. He sat up, groaning inwardly when his head pounded harder. "Need to go back in to the town, s'where I left Uncle."

"You can't go out in the desert again, Zuko," Kouji replied. "You'll die."

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "We need to find Uncle and get moving again." He pushed himself the rest of the way to his feet. "Let's go."

"No, Zuko," Kouji insisted, sounding worried. "You can't abuse your body the way you did and then expect to keep going with no ill effects. You have to stay here, out of the sun."

"I can handle it. Don't worry. We need to find Uncle." He leaned against the wall, dizzy and nauseous again.

"No, Zuko, you can't!" Kouji stood in front of the door. "I'll go find him. You need to stay here and recover. Firebender or not, you almost died yesterday!"

"I'm not letting you out there alone again," he said, shortly.

"Then we both stay here." Grey eyes met gold stubbornly.

"We need to find—"

"You won't let me go," Kouji pointed out. "Therefore neither of us goes." He crossed his arms over his chest.

"Or we both go. Just not letting you go alone." He swallowed the urge to vomit again.

"Your going at all is not an option," the boy replied. "You need to recover. Sit down."

He dropped the subject, for now, but he didn't sit down. "How long was I out?"

"A long time. It isn't easy to keep track in here. The sand-people dropped us off here a few hours before dawn."

"What time is it now?"

"I don't know," Kouji admitted.

Zuko moved to the door. "Not going anywhere, just checking the time. Can you move?"

The boy eyed him suspiciously, then stepped to one side.

True to his word, all Zuko did was stick his head out to check the position of the sun. He pulled back in. "'Bout noon. Okay. We'll wait 'til sunset, then go look for Uncle."

Kouji frowned, clearly thinking, then slowly nodded. "Fine. But if we don't find him before dawn, we take shelter."

"Fine. Okay."

The boy made him sit down again and pushed the canteen into Zuko's hand, then settled in a corner.

Zuko gratefully drank from the canteen, then leaned against the wall. The mostly-finished puzzle tried to creep into the front of his brain again. He sternly pushed it back — Find Uncle and get the three of us somewhere safe first.

"…Zuko?"

"Hmm?"

"Why did you come after me?"

"Thought you needed rescuing."

"Yeah, but…" Kouji's voice trailed off, as if he wasn't sure how to voice his thoughts.

Zuko didn't offer any other commentary, drinking slowly from the canteen, waiting for sunset. As the afternoon wore on, Kouji suggested that they both get some sleep so they'd be ready to search for Iroh once night fell.

"You sleep. I'll keep watch. Slept long enough already."

Kouji sighed, but curled up in his corner and swiftly passed into sleep.

Zuko woke him up as soon as the sun had completely set. "Time to go."

"Okay," the boy replied, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Quickly he gathered the supplies they'd been left with and shouldered the bag they went in. Once Kouji was ready, Zuko firmly told himself to ignore the damned sunburn, and led the way outside.

The boy was very reluctant to go back into the desert, and he didn't bother to hide this. Fortunately, Iroh found them on the edge of the desert. "There you are," he said, obviously relieved.

"Uncle!" cried Kouji, throwing himself at the old man to hug him.

He hugged him back. "Are you all right?" He knew better than to ask Zuko the same question — he could see very well that he wasn't, and that the teenager would insist he was regardless.

"Yes, I'm fine," Kouji said, pulling slightly back to grin up at him.

"Good," the old man said, smiling. "What happened?"

"Mistaken identity," the boy answered. "They thought I was one of theirs."

Iroh nodded. Zuko frowned a little, then chose to accept the half-truth for now, though the mostly-finished puzzle in his brain he was resolutely ignoring said this wasn't the whole story.

"They were bringing me back," Kouji went on, "and I saw Zuko. So they stopped to take care of him."

"How long were you searching?" Iroh asked, now turning to his nephew.

"About a day."

"You could've gotten lost," the old man pointed out.

"Left myself a trail. Glass."

Kouji scowled. "You still got heatstroke," he informed the prince.

"Yeah, well, I'm better now. Can we get moving?"

Kouji turned to Iroh questioningly.

The old man eyed the teenager. "We'll keep going for another couple hours, then stop for the day."

"Okay!" the boy agreed, sounding and looking much happier.

Zuko didn't look pleased when Iroh insisted they stop two and a half hours later — he clearly wanted to keep going longer.

"I'm beat," announced Kouji, plopping onto the ground and rubbing the sole of one foot.

"Fine," Zuko said, reluctantly, sinking to the ground next to the younger boy.

Once he was done with his feet, Kouji unshouldered the bag of supplies the sand-people had given him and took out the canteen, by now almost empty, to pass to Zuko. He drank the rest of the liquid inside, then leaned back, drawing his swords to lay them across his lap and closing his eyes.

When he was reasonably sure that Zuko was asleep, Kouji looked over at the old General.

"Did they teach you control?"

The boy nodded, and drew a prettily-embroidered money-pouch from the bag. "And they gave me this, too, so I could keep my hand in. Dirt and sand are pretty different from each other."

"Good, good," Iroh said. "You should get some sleep, too. I'll wake you up in a few hours to take a watch."

"All right," the boy agreed. He tied the pouch to his belt on the opposite side to his bag of dirt, then curled up on the ground.

It wasn't Iroh who woke him up. Two hours later, give or take, he was woken up by screaming.

"Endothermic propulsion!" cried Kouji as his eyes snapped open, then his brain kicked in and he sat up and turned to Zuko. He was shaking like mad, not screaming anymore after that first yell. Worried, Kouji half-crawled to the older boy and hesitantly touched his shoulder.

He flinched a little — still sunburned, after all — but didn't jerk away.

"It's okay," Kouji told him, unsure of what else to say.

"It was just a dream, Zuko," Iroh added, quietly, from a few feet away.

"I know," the teenager said, roughly. "I know."

The boy let his hand fall from Zuko's shoulder, feeling a little awkward now. Zuko hugged his knees to his chest. "You two go back to sleep. I'll keep watch."

"All right," said Kouji softly.

Iroh gave Kouji a look that clearly said 'stay with him,' then lay back to fall asleep. The boy nodded and settled down beside the prince, curling up so that his back was pressed gently against Zuko's leg. The older boy didn't say anything further, just stared off into space, watching for danger. After awhile, Kouji, too, fell asleep.

When he woke, the two princes were talking quietly. "…when I go back, right?" Zuko trailed into his hearing. "Like it was before…

"You can hope for that," Iroh said, softly, neither confirming nor denying it.

"You don't think it's likely."

The old man didn't answer.

Kouji didn't move, wondering what they were talking about. Well, Zuko's exile, obviously, but Kouji had thought that their being fugitives now made that exile a little more permanent. Zuko's shoulders slumped a little, and he stared at the ground, falling silent as well.

No answers would be forthcoming. The boy opened his eyes and sat up, groaning a little bit.

"Are you all right?" the old man asked.

"Just that weird ache we talked about," Kouji replied, wincing a little. Granted, it was nowhere near as bad as it had been the first time.

"Right."

Zuko stood up. "Long's we're all up, we might as well keep moving."

"Okay," the boy agreed, pushing himself to his feet.

"Not yet," Iroh said. "We should all eat something first."

He's going to say he's not hungry, thought Kouji, glancing at Zuko.

Sure enough: "Not hungry," the older boy said, quietly.

Iroh didn't miss a beat. "You didn't bring any food into the desert, either. Whether or not you want to, you need to eat."

"He's right," Kouji said quietly. "Especially since by now you should be able to keep it down."

Zuko didn't argue any further.

Once they were all fed, the boy glanced over at Iroh. "Are we still heading to Ba Sing Se?"

"Yes," Iroh said.

Nodding, Kouji packed quickly and shouldered his share of the burden, surreptiously patting the bags on either hip to be sure they were still there. The three of them set off towards the city, none of them making much conversation. Finally, they made it to the great city — or at least, to the body of water bordering it, the Eastern Lake.

"We'll take the ferry from here," Iroh said, leading them to a building hidden from view in a protected cove.

Their fake passports were accepted — Kouji, being under twelve and with a guardian, didn't need one of his own — and they boarded one of the ferryboats and left last that night. Fortunately, the boy had thought ahead and managed to get hold of a seasickness remedy, though he refused to say how. He still looked a little green, but was holding on to the contents of his stomach.

Zuko started to ask, stopped, thought for a minute, then just shook his head and boarded the boat. Kouji followed him, and Iroh brought up the rear. The boat was full to capacity, just like the dock had been. There were so many refugees that Kouji felt oddly guilty for taking a spot these desperate folk could have used. Then again, the three of them were just as desperate, and Zuko was rather hard to hide. Kouji sighed and leaned lightly into the older teen to remind himself of that.

Zuko glanced down at him. "Something wrong?" he asked in an undertone.

Kouji craned his head to meet Zuko's eyes and shook his head. "Nothing. Just had to get my head straight." The teenager nodded, unwilling to press the issue. He still wasn't happy about hiding in Ba Sing Se, but he'd accepted the fact that it was the best option for them. Kouji turned his eyes to the water, wondering what the future would bring. An hour or so later, a crewmember brought around food for the refugees — some sort of thin, slimy-looking gruel.

"Who would have thought," Iroh mused, staring into the water, "after all these years, I'd return to the scene of my greatest military disgrace… as a tourist!" He pulled on a silly hat, grinning at the boys.

"Look around," Zuko said, sharply. "We're not tourists. We're refugees." He tried some of the so-called food, more to have something to do with himself that was not having this conversation than because it was particularly appetizing. He spat it right back out. "I'm sick of eating rotten food, and sleeping in the dirt. I'm tired of living like this." He slumped down on the railing, staring into the water.

Kouji bit his lip and leaned into Zuko again, trying to cheer him up, just a little. Truth be told, he really didn't mind the travel, and while sometimes they had bad luck with the food…

A new voice interrupted his thoughts. "Aren't we all?" The voice belonged to a boy about Zuko's age, with shaggy, unkempt hair, chewing on a piece of grass. "My name's Jet. And these are my Freedom Fighters, Smellerbee and Longshot," he said, pointing to two other kids, one of them a lean boy between Zuko and Kouji in age, and the other maybe a year or two younger. It was hard to tell if that one — Smellerbee — was a boy or a girl.

Kouji tensed, looking at the three. Freedom Fighters? Jet? He knew those names.

"Hey," said Smellerbee, while Longshot simply nodded a greeting.

Zuko, too, knew these names, and stiffened a little, and looked away to keep Jet from reading his face. "Hello."

"Here's the deal," the other teenager said, coming closer. "I hear the captain's eating like a king while us refugees have to feed off his scraps. Doesn't seem fair, does it?"

Put that way… Kouji glanced up at Zuko, and remembered what meals had been like that winter, even in the frozen poles of the world. No. It wasn't fair at all.

"What sort of king is he eating like?" Iroh asked, watching Jet.

"The fat, happy kind." Kouji and Zuko weren't looking at the old man, but neither one had any difficulty imagining the look on his face at hearing that. Jet ignored iroh and watched Zuko's back. "You want to help us… liberate some food?"

Kouji had no difficulty translating what Jet truly meant. No more did Zuko, who stared into his bowl for a few seconds, then threw it into the water and turned around. "I'm in."

"Me too," said Kouji firmly.

Zuko started to object, but Jet cut him off, grinning in an almost feral way. "Excellent."

Kouji smiled a little.