Work Text:
Zuko doesn't know he's been itching for a fight until Jet's in the tea house, raging about how theyr're Fire and tearing the soldier's blades from his sheath is the easiest decision he's made since they arrived.
Jet forces the fight onto the street, and Zuko forces Jet to give up a blade. He sees Jet's neck in the pale light of the moon, sees something vulnerable, and he strikes. He wants the blade to make contact in that moment. He wants to slice Jet's neck open and watch the fucking blood spill over the stupid pavement. He wants him to shut up, he wants to punch him until he can't talk.
It nearly drowns him - the feeling of wanting to put an end to this, because how dare he. They’re just as fucked as Jet is, aren't they? Jet can fool himself all he wants with his fresh start nonsense, but what is there for them down here, really? The Lower Ring is just a hovel for people like them. It's dirty streets and sleepless nights and the police around every corner preaching their no war propaganda scheme to all these people, all these refugees who have only ever known war.
Jet and Zuko both can tell themselves they’re a changed person, that their not whoever they were before, but they both know that it's shit. That down here, in the shit and mud, it doesn’t fucking matter, because there is no second chance. They are what they are, and there's no saving them, not in this city. They came here to escape the war, and yet, they are consumed by it.
It's unlike anything he's ever felt before. Cold anger burning through him, he can feel it run through his veins, burn his stomach in a cold, calm way. He doesn't make a noise, even if he wants to scream, and scream, and scream until he is no longer able.
They're just as fucked as him, Fire Nation or not.
Jet bends himself over backwards to avoid the swing of Zuko’s blade aiming for something fatal, and he may be fast, and he may be good, but so is Zuko. Borrowed swords nick flesh, tearing sensitive skin, and the fight grinds to a halt.
There are people gathered all around them, eyes drifting between Zuko, the scar on his face and Jet, and blood on his neck - and really, they are the war. They are everything the Dai Li want to quash, because it's all they've ever known. And look, they've dragged their sorry corpses to this prison, and they're going to die here, broken and nameless and pathetic, brawling on the streets, and for what.
Look at their fall from grace. The crown prince of the Fire Nation getting into a street brawl over true accusations that will end with Zuko's head on a spike, displayed like a trophy. At Jet, grasping at the wound, choking out a sad little noise, all those kids he looked after, left.
He's not the old kind of furious, the kind that bursts out of his skin like agony, leaves him breathing shallow and throwing fire around like a toy. All that's left is this. Cold and sorry and raging in the bottom of his stomach. His hands don't shake and neither do Jet's.
There's a child, out the corner of his right eye, cowering behind a woman who's likely her mother; Iroh looking on at him with a stare that is deep, and raw in all the ways Zuko doesn't understand; an older man who watches with grim resignation, like this is all there are capable of.
Fighting is all they can do. No amount of tea stains can hide the callouses of the labour and violence Zuko has been through, will go through.
He is terrifying to them. He and Jet are terrifying to them.
Jet pulls himself to his feet, because of course he does. It's what Zuko would do. Blood or no blood, pain or no pain, there is no place for them here. The borrowed swords in Zuko's hands are the only things that feel right.
"My nephew," Iroh calls out. It's calmer than before, none of the act, no I am a harmless old man, and this is my poor harmless nephew . It’s an order, and it tightens up Zuko's shoulders quicker than anything else. Stand down.
Zuko doesn't look at him, and all he can do is freeze, arms gripped around the swords tight, tight like he'll never be able to let go.
Iroh steps up, not quite next to him, angling himself to address both boys. "Unless we want a death to occur on the streets tonight, let’s consider this fight over," he says. Zuko knows Iroh's gaze is on Jet's, he knows the look too. The one that he left behind.
"To first blood," he says, referring to the rules of a spar, like Zuko didn’t just try to kill him, like Jet didn’t just try to turn them both in.
Zuko sees Iroh gesture to the blood covering Jet's neck, his hands, his clothes.
Jet nods, slow and careful, eyes locked on Iroh's. He looks like a fly in a spider's web, and Zuko still can't bring himself to move.
Iroh steps back to come shoulder to shoulder with Zuko, a firm hand grabs him by the bicep, and he squeezes - and finally Zuko can move again. Sound that he didn't realise disappeared floods back in: the low, fearful muttering of civilians, the bold, eagle-eyed gaze of the Earth Kingdom soldiers and their low, carefully articulated words - one solider seeing another, even if neither Zuko nor Jet wear a uniform.
He sees the Dai Li lurking in the background, watching. He doesn’t know what that means. They could have interfered at any point and been well within their rights to, considering Zuko and Jet had just tried to kill each other in the middle of the street.
Did they hear Jet’s accusations? If they’re investigated, they’ll be found out. If they’re found out - Zuko would rather kill himself before he let them get to them, before they let Azula get to them. If he’s killed here in this country it will be a mercy, rather than what waits for a traitor on their home soil.
Iroh is dragging him back into the shop, trying to ease the swords out of his hands, giving them back to the man he took them from. His legs move, but awkwardly and stiff. He goes where he’s guided, out bast the counter and into the back rooms.
If Zuko had been a second quicker when he swung the sword at Jet’s neck, if Jet had been a second slower evading it, it would be Jet’s head rolling around on the cobbles, Jet’s blood on his hands.
Iroh sits him down on the ground, back against the wall like he’s worried Zuko will topple over without it and disappears somewhere else.
In that moment, more than anything, he wanted the blade to strike home, anything to get Jet to shut up. Anything for a moment where nothing is threatening to rip him and his uncle to pieces.
He hates this fucking city, and all the miles of sadness that stretch between him and the entire Lower Ring, worse than anything he’s seen before. It’s all misery and desperation. People willing to put their heads down and pretend that the war that didn’t tear their lives a part isn’t still raging just beyond the wall; even worse that he’s one of them.
Sure, he’s got Fire in his blood, in his skin, in his eyes. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that, and there’s nothing that Zuko can do to hide how gold his eyes are, but they’re here, in this city, trapped in the Lower Ring, working endless hours to get food on the table, stitching together clothes that don’t fit because it’s all they fucking have.
He lets his head fall between his knees, and doesn’t try to focus on Iroh’s and Pao’s voices to his right.
What difference does it make down here? Jet is much as a person as Zuko is, they’re both going to die down here, in the dirt and piss, because they’re both too stupid to know how to stop fighting.
It’s just how it is for people like them, in a place like this.