Chapter Text
“I’m a bad luck charm.”
June sneaks a glance at her apprentice, who’s slumped over a pile of mail, brooding. Then she rolls her eyes. “You are not.”
Kuzon looks at her with pure teenage sarcasm.
(His sarcastic looks have gotten almost as good as hers. She’s awfully proud.)
“You know those little good-luck amulets you get at temples, to ward off spirit interference or whatever?” he says. “I am the opposite of that.”
Trouble is, he’s not totally wrong. They’ve done five jobs together, and each has managed to go horribly off-track. First came the catfight from hell. Next June got extorted by a nine-year-old. Then they went after a bank robber with a hefty price on her head, only to have Nyla bring them straight to a nearby prison where she’d already turned herself in. After that was the time near Mount Makapu, when they got beaten to their quarry by some random townsperson, who’d been acting entirely on a tip from a fortuneteller.
Finally, there was the Omashu Incident. They’d been hired by a prestigious auction house to track down a pile of expensive avant-garde art scrolls that went missing, the night before they were due to be sold. June and Kuzon successfully discovered the art thief right as he set all the scrolls on fire, declaring that he was the artist who painted the scrolls in the first place. When asked why he burned his own masterpieces, he began screeching that it was immoral of him to sell them to a nice auction house in the first place, because that represented selling out to the elitist establishment and tainting with his once-radical anti-art with the stench of paradoxical conformity.
June misses normal motives. Revenge. Greed. An unquenchable thirst for blood. They sure beat artistic integrity.
“It’s going to be a normal hunt this time,” June says, shuffling through her letters. “I’m going to make it a normal hunt if it kills me.”
He snorts and shoots his tea with a backwards jerk of the head, just like it’s liquor.
/
June coaxes Kuzon onto Nyla’s back and heads across the border, to an artisan in the Earth Kingdom named Suman. They specialize in making high-end animal care equipment- saddles, leashes, falconry gloves, that kind of thing. Apparently they got stiffed on a recent deal, and they want to get back the stolen goods. It’ll be straightforward.
Really.
“I don’t know what animal it was made for,” Suman says. “Only that the creature was large and long like an eel, yet they wanted something light enough for easy flight. I made the garment of this.”
They unlock a tiny box, small enough to fit in one palm, and draw out a massive bolt of fabric. It’s a gauzy muslin, delicate like gossamer and so light it’s almost transparent. Just in the box, there’s enough to wrap Nyla twice over.
“That’s beautiful,” Kuzon breathes, apparently awed by finery for once.
“Beautiful,” Suman agrees, “and terribly rare. My home village is the only place in the whole world that knows the secrets behind this fabric. Now these customers-“ they spit the word- “ordered yards and yards and swore they’d pay, but when the time came? They gave me nothing.”
June hums. “Why’d you give them anything?”
Their brow darkens. “They were firebenders.”
“So?” Kuzon challenges.
“So they threatened to set fire to my workshop if they didn’t get what they wanted,” they say like it’s obvious.
(It is rather obvious. June knew it even before they confirmed it. Kuzon opens his mouth one time to protest but then closes it, struck by the seriousness of Suman’s expression.)
“I’m not interested in getting payment,” Suman says, carefully folding the muslin and placing it back in its strongbox. There’s fire in their eyes as they add, “I want the cloth back, to be used for something else. Those brutes don’t deserve it.”
June purses her lips. “Those brutes have a name?”
They shake their head. “The order was placed by hawk; they claimed they were Earth Kingdom traders preparing a rare animal for sale in Ba Sing Se. It might’ve been a lie.”
“The ones who threatened you,” Kuzon asks, “what’d they look like?”
“Two men, I think. One middle-aged, one older. They both claimed they were firebenders, and the younger one proved it. He left a scorch mark right there.”
They point at a long, thin burn marking a clay pot in the corner. It looks almost like-
“A fire whip,” Kuzon mutters.
June stops breathing.
“These two men,” she hears herself say, “they didn’t have fancy facial hair, did they?”
Their eyes widen. “Yes, long, thin mustaches and short goatees, the both of them. The older one must’ve curled his mustache, it spiraled a little right past the chin…”
Kuzon says something she doesn’t catch, and then he starts inspecting the shop for any other traces they might’ve left behind. He’s only looked at half the floorboards when June announces, “Sorry we can’t help you. Come on, Kuzon.”
“But-“
“Now.”
For a second, she thinks he’ll rebel. But he gets up and trudges out of the shop after her.
“We can find it,” he grumbles. “I didn’t finish looking for clues, there has to be something. Maybe Nyla can find the cloth even if we can’t track the guys, Suman’s still got thread and stuff from-“
“Forget it,” June says. “We’ve got better stuff to do.”
“Like what?”
June panics. “How about we go after Miyuki again?”
He gives her another of his sarcastic looks. It’s less heartwarming this time.
But his voice is soft when he speaks. “We have to fix this. They’re firebenders, they’re probably Fire Nation, and this was wrong. I- I have to fix it.”
His visible eye is wide, beseeching her.
“You know something about these guys, don’t you?” he adds. “I mean, how’d you guess about the facial hair…”
She ignores the question. Ignores the twinge in her chest, instead turning away and hopping back on Nyla. “Come on.”
And with a sigh, he obeys.
/
There are rules, when it comes to tavern life. June drinks in moderation unless someone outright challenges her to a competition. The definition of moderation might’ve slipped over time, because it takes more and more sake to even feel it, but she can skip a drink just fine when she wants to, when she’s out of town working or stuck with, say, an early morning firebending lesson.
Still, alcohol’s some of the best social currency she’s got. June wins respect by buying other people alcohol. She also wins respect by buying herself alcohol, as long as she stops before the point of sloppiness.
She always stops.
Usually.
So she’s not sure when her second cup of sake turned to her fifth, even though she meant to wake up early tomorrow for Kuzon’s next fire whip lesson. She’s not sure when every damn noise in this chaotic tavern decided to assault her ears personally. She’s not sure when some new jerk lumbered in and kicked his legs up on the table, snapping at the waiters like he’s King Kuei himself. He’s got a prissy little queue and a green tunic that’s stiff with embroidery, marking him instantly as a traveler from Ba Sing Se, and not the Lower Ring. His attitude confirms it. He complains that his sake cup’s not filled high enough, and he whines that the service is too slow, and he lets the whole damn inn know that that the tofu’s not tough or hardy enough for his refined taste. Apparently it’s “slimy trash like silk” instead, which makes her remember the muslin, and wasn’t the whole point of the sake not to remember the muslin?
June has a rule. In this tavern, she finishes fights, but she never starts them.
“It’s the Fire Nation’s fault, of course. A shame, you colony folks wouldn’t know good liquor anymore if it hit you in the face-“
June’s sixth cup of sake hits him in the face. It’s a waste of liquor, perhaps, sake dripping down his cheeks while the blood drips from his nose. It’s a waste of a cup, because she’d been aiming for his skull.
He bends a pot from a nearby shelf and hurls it at her. June dodges, throwing herself sideways off her chair and onto the floor. She shoves all her hair out of her face on instinct before shoving some back over her right eye, and she pushes herself right back to her feet.
“Who the hell do you people think you are?” she hears herself roar. “You and Baohua and- you think ‘cause you’re from one place or another you’re better, but you’re not! Being from some fancy place-“ she sidesteps another pot- “isn’t a personality!”
“June!”
She spins around and snarls, “What?”
It’s just Kuzon.
It’s just Kuzon, and he flinches away from her like he hasn’t in longer than she can remember right now, and all June’s anger shatters to exhaustion.
“I just…” He looks around the tavern, clearly mortified. “Never mind.”
He flies up the steps. A second later, June realizes all the regulars are staring.
It takes too long to count out the coins for her dinner. Eventually she rounds up to make up for the cup, and she takes the steps two at a time. She tries knocking on his door, but there’s no answer. Though she considers calling for him, a raised voice might just make this worse.
Retreating to her own room, June collapses in bed and closes her eyes and waits for this to be over with.
/
When she gets up again, the tavern below has quieted for the night. Her head feels clearer, but she can’t shake the bone-deep wrongness. So she does what she’s always done.
Quietly, she slips into Nyla’s stable. “Hey, baby.”
Sound asleep, Nyla doesn’t hear her. But Kuzon does, curled up against his stomach with a little flame cupped in his hands.
“You okay there?”
“I’m fine,” he murmurs. “I was just...caught off-guard. But I shouldn’t have been. I mean, I’ve been in the tavern, I know people get angry sometimes when they drink-“
“Drink’s not an excuse.” She huffs in frustration, directed entirely at herself. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about all this…”
She waves her hand vaguely.
Kuzon gives her a curious look. “Are you okay?”
With a sigh, she crosses her arms and leans back against the stable wall. “Not as okay as I thought, apparently.”
“...Is this about the thieves?”
She snorts. “Yeah.”
“...And why you wanted me to master fire whips?”
“Two for two.”
With a groan, she rubs the sore spot in her neck and tries to think this through. She’s already put too much of her personal drama on this kid today. Kuzon’s got enough horrors in his own history, he shouldn’t have to deal with hers.
On the other hand, he deserves an explanation. The bare facts, even if she keeps the feelings to herself.
(Paradoxically, if she wants to handle all these inconvenient feelings herself, it might just help to talk about it. That’s what Yawen told her when she first turned up in this town, draping a sheet of hair over a freshly cut face.)
“You ever wondered how I ended up with a pet shirshu?”
“Not as much as I should have,” he admits.
“He’s from a circus. The Golden Dragon Circus Troupe,” she says, threading each syllable of the name with sarcasm. “They specialize in dangerous animals-“
(In diligently finding the most dangerous animals on the planet and diligently breaking them. There were leopard-hounds who forgot how to run and lion vultures who forgot how to roar. There’d been a baby shirshu who didn’t know better than to taste anything in reach, too young to understand why some tastes were fine but others got fire whips to the ear. Too young to get anything from the experience but hurt.
“- and they didn’t deserve him. So I stole him. And myself.”
“Sorry, what?”
“When I was a little older than you I ran away from the circus,” she deadpans. “How’s that for a strange childhood?”
“Not that strange.”
She tries to read his look. It doesn’t seem sarcastic this time, but it must be.
June walks over to Nyla’s snout and sits again to stroke the fur where a shirshu’s eyes aren’t, and he hums contentedly even in his sleep. She did this even when he was still a baby, drooling venom everywhere and whimpering from the scorch marks on his ears.
“Head of the circus is this man Shuzumu,” she mutters. Though she glances up briefly to see Kuzon watching her, she mostly keeps her gaze on Nyla. “White hair, but he’s still good for a fight. Spends half his income maintaining the curl of his mustache.”
Kuzon chuckles.
“He’s a firebender,” she says, her naturally low voice sinking deeper, turning hard and bitter. “Born in the ‘homeland.’ Biggest fan of the royal family you’ll meet anywhere. Seriously, if he got the chance, he’d be first in line to suck Ozai’s tiny, shriveled-“
“I’ve got the picture,” Kuzon interrupts, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t want to, but I’ve got it.”
“His best friend was the one other guy who grew up on the islands, Hikari,” June adds curtly. “Animal trainer. Firebender. Don’t know if he was a master, but he knew exactly how to land a fire whip for maximum hurt and minimum damage.”
Kuzon’s eye is wide in the darkness, and he’s looking at the right side of her face, veiled as always. “Did he…”
Blame it on the alcohol, but it takes her a second to realize what he’s implying.
“My eye? Nah, that wasn’t him. Not directly anyway.”
Nyla snuffles, in the midst of what June hopes is a happy dream, and she buries her other hand in his fur too. It pleases them both like it always did.
“I grew up at the circus. My mom was a performer like yours, an acrobat. And yeah, her dad was from Ba Sing Se-“ his lineage traced back to Kyoshi, if the stories were true, which they probably weren’t, so she doesn’t bother mentioning it- “but her mom was from Fire Fountain City. And who cares who my dad was, it doesn’t matter, I’m at least one quarter-Fire no matter how you slice it.”
She’d felt it, too, though the circus spent more time in the Earth Kingdom than the colonies. In her childhood she never once missed the Fire Days Festival, and her mom raised her on stories of dragons and badgermoles both, and she learned enough about the islands’ fashions to recognize Baohua Fang’s fire lily perfume after one whiff. June might’ve missed out on the duels and the honor and the spice tolerance, but there’s a reason the only color in her wardrobe besides black is red. There’s a reason the coiled tattoos on her shoulders are colored a deep maroon.
(They’re dragons. She calls them snakes when company demands and pretends they symbolize nothing but her skill with poison. Really, they’re dragons from the stories her mom used to spin.)
“I believe you,” Kuzon murmurs. It’s oddly validating.
“Mom and I could’ve played it up,” she scoffs. “Could’ve pretended we were in love with- well, Azulon back then. We would’ve fit right in with Shuzumu and Hikari and their little cult.”
“Cult?”
“Cult. Seriously, they gave Ba Sing Se a run for their money. And my mom always said that kind of blind patriotism just leads to heartache, doesn’t matter what country.”
Kuzon shifts uncomfortably, his flame guttering for a second.
“There was this one other woman. Half-Fire, born in the colonies, worst firebender I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure you could’ve beaten her when you were a toddler.” Her laugh turns to a sigh, and she shakes her head. “No athletic ability or hand-eye coordination to speak of, but she sucked up to the Fire Lord, and she sucked up to Shuzumu, so he kept her at the circus...as the main knife-thrower.”
“What?” Kuzon squawks.
“He took great pleasure in naming her the knife master, and me the target girl. As you might’ve guessed, I didn’t do well as the damsel in distress.”
She steels herself and pushes back the hair from her face for just one second. Just long enough for Kuzon to see a thin raised line, still running sharp down her right temple.
“...I’m sorry.”
June lets the hair fall back into place with a snort. “It’s hardly your fault.”
“No- it’s- I’m really sorry.”
His little fire’s steadied itself in his hand. In the dim light his expression’s tricky to make out, but it looks painfully sincere.
She shrugs and glances out the door. “My mom had passed by then, so I just grabbed Nyla and ran. But he wasn’t big enough to ride yet, and there were these inspectors on both sides of the border, stopping everyone who didn’t look filthy-rich.”
Kuzon winces. “Did they stop you?”
“Nah. I lured Nyla into a palanquin with a bucket of ocean kumquats soaked in a tranquilizer. Smoothest ride I’ve ever had.”
That startles a laugh out of Kuzon. June lets a sly smile creep onto her face, teeth no doubt gleaming under the full moon.
“Can I say something?”
“Have at it, kid.”
“I want to go after the cloth.”
“Ugh,” June grunts. “I don’t know how good Nyla’s memory is, but he might go berserk if he smells Hikari nearby. I know I would.”
“What if we don’t take Nyla? We can always hire ostrich horses to get to the circus.”
June’s first reaction is kneejerk terror. She opens her mouth to snap that no, she’s never going back there. For sixteen years that circus was her own waking nightmare, and she won’t go back. She can’t.
Her second reaction is rage. She’s a grown woman, part-Fire and part-Earth and entirely uninterested in either label’s constraints. She goes where she wants, she does what she wants, she’s not even scared of Fire Lord Ozai. Why the hell should a couple of jingoistic blowhards dictate what she can’t do?
Her third reaction is subtle. Just a dawning realization that if she’s going to walk back into her personal hell, the only person she’d want at her side is sitting right in front of her.
“I can go by myself,” he offers. “I know they’re firebenders, but I think I can take them-“
“I’m going with you. Promise not to beat anyone up unless I say so?” she says with a smirk.
He nods fervently, without a trace of irony. “I promise.”
June slowly exhales, hissing through gritted teeth. “It should be pretty easy to break in and find the cloth. Who knows, maybe this’ll be your first normal hunt.”
She snickers at the thought, but Kuzon doesn’t. He’s watching her again, suspended in pensive silence.
“...Can I ask something else?”
She nods.
He looks down, fussing with his sleeve. “Um. I pointed out one time that you spend a lot at the tavern, back when I started your taxes.”
Oh.
They’re having this conversation.
“Now,” he says, words flooding out like water from a leaking dam, “I can’t pretend I know about alcohol. There wasn’t much at home, it was just one fancy glass for the adults at parties, it just wasn’t there, but-“
“I got it.”
“It’s just sometimes I-“
“Which tea do you recommend here,” she cuts in, “the green or the brown?”
“...The water.”
They stare at each other and then both burst out laughing. Still fast asleep, Nyla rumbles along with them.