Chapter Text
He's tired. Just like everyone is this fucking city is tired.
He doesn't think it's the kind he can sleep off, even if he could sleep through the night.
He doesn’t understand how he can be the safest he's been in years, and how he's never felt more trapped. How he can feel like his soul is ripped from him, and how he can believe that the decisions that he is making now, are his own, for the first time, that he is not following any elusive carrot dangled in front of him, that this is all him.
How can he be both relieved and exhausted?
He doesn’t love the city, but he's living in it, his life, at least a portion of his life is embedded into this city, shaped by it.
He isn't sure if it's killing him or saving him.
He meets Jet on the ferry as they come into port. He's not quiet, but his voice has a particular levelness to it, calm in a way that settles Zuko's nerves like he's dousing a fire.
He doesn’t like it, he thinks. He’s seen that kind of person before. Still.
Zuko's disgusted by the soup. It's undercooked to the point he can't stomach it, and Zuko's eaten some rancid meals since his father - since his father. It tastes rotten in his mouth, and chucking the bowl overboard, as petty as it is, he’s finally doing something.
It's not hard to take Jet up on his offer. The prospect of real food makes his stomach hurt and Jet has swords strapped to his back and a look in his eye that tells Zuko that learning not to fight is going to be one of the hardest things he's ever done.
Zuko feels his own swords, burning against his skin, and maybe this is something he can understand.
Jet's wrong about a lot of things, makes a lot of assumptions about Zuko that are right and a lot that a wrong, but still, some of his words hit true.
Jet says that they’re different. They’re born with the war in their veins. Children of violence. He says that this is all they’ve ever known.
There's a disconnect between them and the other refugees on the ship.
It's as though they can see every scar that Zuko carries, that, while grateful, they are cautious. He is a predator. Survival is all he's ever known, but not like them. Zuko's fought, crawled and bit and tore his way through life to just keep his head above the water.
He is dangerous and broken, and they are grateful, and they are scared.
It reminds him of Sela and Gansu, watching him with careful eyes before they knew. Like he was a wild animal, and they were working out what was the best way to reach out without getting bitten.
They regard Jet and Smellerbee and Longshot the same way.
Zuko says nothing as he and the others distribute the food. Jet sticks by him, makes up for Zuko's blatant and sudden unwillingness to utter a word with grace and an expert tongue. Zuko thinks Jet could rally anyone together. Zuko understands that Jet too is dangerous.
A boy approaches him - Zuko - not Jet. He looks up at him, eyes big and bright. Zuko gives him a bowl, and if he heaped a little more to him than the adults, then no one needs to say anything.
"I wanna be like you one day," the boy says, whispers, like if he speaks any louder it won't come true.
Zuko knows his face must do something because the boy smiles, wide, and Jet is already dragging the kid's attention away from Zuko, back to him, saving him from trying to form a response through his voice that he doesn’t feel like using.
The boy never asks for his name, and he never offers one.
He finds himself standing away from the other refugees, standing at the bow. He can see the rough patterns of land staring to shape into something distinguishable. It doesn’t feel like he's going home, but it doesn't feel like he's going to his death either. He finds some bizarre middle ground, where the anger doesn't burn as hot as it once did. It's there, but it's not as easy to reach anymore. He doesn't have the energy for it.
He's angry, still angry. But mostly, he’s tired.
Jet walks up behind him, his steps purposely make noise as he approaches, coming up to Zuko's right.
"I knew who you were the second I saw your scar," Jet says. His tone is the same, steady and calm and un-fucking-shakeable in that way that makes Zuko want to stay and also wedge his fingers between the short strands of his hair and pull until he bleeds.
Zuko breathes. He doesn't react, forces himself to keep his eyes on the land slowly forming.
"You're an outcast, like me."
Zuko breathes, in, out, in and he holds.
"People like us, we've got no one else. Who else will watch our backs, except us?"
Zuko lets the breath out and forces his mouth to move around the words he wants. "I've realised lately that being alone isn’t always the best path."
Jet smiles at him, soft and tiny. He understands it's not a yes, but it's not a no either.
Jet is dangerous, but so is he.
Jet finds him in the city. Curfew is two hours away, and Zuko is perched, high. The local police here are everywhere, Zuko has realised. Sticking to the shadows, but they are watching. He'd normally just climb to the roof and sit up there, but it's too obvious, even if he's not doing anything in particular. He doesn't know what the police are looking for, what the line is here. The Lower Ring in filled with refugees, people who have lived and breathed war for as long as they have lived. Even so, Zuko thinks of himself, cowering away in a corner, still high but where he won't be seen, the people of the Lower Ring are desperate enough that they will not speak of the war, even it kills them.
Zuko is desperate. Zuko wonders if he's that desperate.
Jet is outside, dangerously alone, only a few hours off curfew.
Zuko moves, detangling himself from his hiding place, disappears down the side of the apartment building and lands on the uneven ground between that building and the next.
Jet spots him from the front of the building, a grin spreads across his face, wide but careful.
"Jet," Zuko hisses, he reaches out, grasps Jet's bicep with his hand and wrenches him into the shadow of the ally between the apartment blocks. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for you," He says. His voice is still the same level, like Zuko isn't bruising his arm, digging broken nails into his skin.
"That's fucking dangerous," Zuko says, and there's a movement somewhere back behind them, not a footstep, but it means they're not alone out here. Not that they ever were.
Zuko drags Jet into the building, bundles up into a corner where they're out of sight.
"As if I'd let anyone get the best of me," Jet says and he's grinning again, quietly, like he's just found something worth grabbing on to. "Especially having you with me."
Zuko meets his eyes, and he holds Jet there, pinning him to the wall.
"Getting into a brawl with the Ba Sing Se Military Police that stalk its own residents won't bode well with your new start."
Jet's grin widens, just enough that it's too big on him, too many teeth are showing.
"So, you've noticed them," Jet tries to pull away and Zuko changes position, moving, detangling himself from Jet's bicep to pinning him to the wall with his forearm. Zuko won't budge. He never has before, and he won't start now.
"Of course," Zuko says, his voice is raw in his throat, has been since he entered the city.
"Jet," Zuko says. "Be careful around here, or fuck off," because Jet's not the only one gunning for a new start, even if Zuko's heart isn't in it, even if the walls around him reek of something much darker than what darkness tints the surface, his Uncle has smiled more here than he has in longer than Zuko can remember. This won't be forever, but he won't let Jet's reckless abandon be the one to get them into trouble – get them killed.
Zuko has more at stake here than Jet could possibly imagine. Zuko is more dangerous than even Jet could imagine. His very existence is a threat.
He talks to Iroh a few nights later, about names and people and the person that he was. He thinks that he is different. His shoes that he once wore, no longer fit, the imprints of someone else's foot are there, and they no longer are for him. Iroh takes his words, every one of them, and listens, holds them to his chest.
Maybe Zuko will always be Zuko, a part of will always be that, but he cannot wear what he once did. Iroh refers to him as Zuko in private, and Zuko refers to himself as Li.
It’s better this way.
Part of him feels like it's a betrayal.
The other part of him breathes like it's the first one he's ever taken, like a drowning man reaching for air.
Maybe this city really will kill him.
Jin says that his new name suits him.
He flinches, hard enough that he breaks the spoon in his hand. It's wooden and has been used many times more than the money it was worth. He stares at the pieces in his hand, and of course Jin knew that Li wasn't the name he's always used, of course she did.
She comes to stand in front of him, makes her way over from his right, so he can see her, she gives him the chance to move away, even as she reaches out and takes the broken pieces from his hand.
"You don't need to tell me your old one," she says. Her hands are much smaller than his, but they are no less worn, even if it's from manual labour and not from fighting, it's all a battle in the end. She is pushing him, harder than she usually does.
"I didn't know that person, so I don't need to know," she pulls his hand to her mouth and presses her lips to the back of his hand, right on a scar that stretches across the surface, white and old.
"Okay," his voice breaks on the vowel, snapping like a bone under the weight of someone stronger.
"Okay," Jin says. She smiles, small and free. She's not timid, but she's quiet, like everyone is here. She knows how to survive in this city.
She is brave, he thinks. Brave to be so loud on such a quiet way, brave to hold his hand like she does.
Jin has read that scroll in the library. The one where the lovers die. She looks up the sky when she tells him.
"Terrible things happen sometimes," she is dirty from working, selling in the market all day. Her eyes are tired, and her bones are tired. They are all tired here.
"What if you could do something about it?" Li asks. His hands are stained with tea, the worst of them wedged into the cracks of his callouses.
"Then I would," Jin pulls her eyes from the sky, and looks at the bricks at their feet.
It's half an hour until curfew.
Jet comes back when Li is wondering back from the library. He looks tired. Li is tired too.
"Hey," he waves his hand listlessly through the air like it's something he saw someone else do and thought he'd copy it.
Li nods. Jet looks skinnier than before, he knows he looks no better.
Jet falls into step with him. It's late, and the sky rages above them, big and bright. It seems a little ridiculous to be coddled into a corner of the world, when he knows what else is out there.
He thinks of Sela and Gansu and the little boy every day. He tries to pretend he doesn't feel like he's hiding.
Jet doesn’t say anything as they walk, and Li lets him lead the way. It's past curfew, but they are good at sticking to the shadows.
It isn't until Jet starts to pick up his pace that Li realises that Jet has no destination. He would say something. He should, but the air on his skin is nothing he's ever felt before.
Running across broken rooftops, balancing on poorly fitted tiles and dodging the ever-present eyes of the police - he feels alive.
Maybe this city is killing him.
Maybe it's saving him.