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They were surrounded, hemmed in by walls of flame that licked ever closer; soon there would be no space left at all. Hoseok did his best to bend a cushion of air around himself and Yoongi, at the very least just to protect them from the searing heat, but air never had been the best defense against fire.
Hoseok would know.
He couldn’t put it out- it was far too big for a lone airbender- only push it back: an exercise in futility because it was all around them, and he just had to be careful that his gusts weren’t strong enough to send droplets of flame back into his and Yoongi’s faces. Poor Yoongi, he had never wanted to be involved in any of this, but war, like fire, didn’t care who or what it swept up and devoured and spat out a charred husk of what they’d once been.
“My side,” Yoongi called, and he ducked so Hoseok could turn around and blow out a tendril of fire that tried to race along the ground toward them ahead of the main mass. “Are you making progress?”
“Not really,” said Hoseok. “I’m just trying to wait it out and hope they assume it got us and leave.”
“Ah.” The fire roared ever closer. “How is that going?”
“Well, it’s a fire, and I’m throwing air at it.”
As if to illustrate Hoseok’s point, the greedy flames snapped at his toes, and he summoned a too-large gust of air to beat them back, only for them to roar up in front of him. He might have shrieked, or maybe he just wanted to, and pressed himself flush against Yoongi’s back, as far from the searing heat as he could get. Yoongi shuffled forward to aid his escape, just a half-step, and just like that, they’d lost ground again.
“I need you to trust me,” said Yoongi.
“Why?” said Hoseok, quite mistrustfully, because usually when someone asked you to trust them, it was a surefire way to know they were about to do something crazy.
“I can get us out of here.”
There was an unusual heat at Hoseok’s back, Yoongi breathed deeply like he might secretly be an airbender himself, and whoosh - Hoseok caught the rush of flames from the corner of his eye. Not coming toward them, but away from them, from Yoongi . Hoseok almost lost his balance on solid ground.
“Stay close,” Yoongi grunted.
A firebender.
Yoongi was a firebender. And Hoseok hadn’t known, but he should have, probably, by how warm Yoongi always was, how quickly he could get a fire going on cold nights, the way he carried himself like a bender of some kind or another despite claiming to have no affinity for any element whatsoever-
“Hoseok.” Yoongi’s slightly sharper voice snapped him from his thoughts. “I need your help.”
Right. Impending incineration.
“Stay close to me and keep the flames back behind us. I’ll keep a pocket open ahead and to the sides.”
Hoseok should absolutely still be processing “Yoongi is a firebender”, and he was, but some baser, more instinctive part of him knew he still had to act, so he did. Yoongi shuffled forward again, and Hoseok followed: one step, another, and the flames filled up his peripheral vision and seared at his back even through his cushion of carefully regulated air. Yoongi moved again, but Hoseok couldn’t bring himself to step any closer to the roaring, billowing wall of destruction, even when Yoongi stepped far enough to separate them and he was alone.
“Hobah,” said Yoongi, and then he was there again, and the press of his back was so comforting that Hoseok almost forgot what he was doing. “Come on.”
Hoseok shook his head vehemently.
“I won’t let you get burned.”
‘ Again ’ went unsaid.
It was a ridiculous promise for a firebender to make, and Hoseok would have said as much, but a strained squeak was the only thing he could force out.
“Let’s move now, slowly. Keep the bubble up around us, and be ready to push the fire back on your side. I’ll get us through.”
Yoongi moved again, and this time, Hoseok followed. Flames swallowed him up on either side, and it was like watching himself bend from somewhere far away when he pushed to keep the fire from closing back together right on his nose.
“Good,” said Yoongi, a little strained over the crackle of dead and dying things and the louder rush of Hoseok’s breath in his own ears. “Hurry.”
And Hoseok knew he had to hurry, because he couldn’t airbend at this level for very long, and Yoongi probably couldn’t firebend at this level for very long, but his feet weren’t part of him anymore and he couldn’t make them move any faster.
“I’ve got you,” murmured Yoongi at his shoulder.
Hoseok stuttered on. He held the bubble of air close around them, and drew scalding hot air from around to beat back the ever-chasing flames, and it was hard, constant work that drove him back into his own body again, no matter how much he might have liked to stay distant. He couldn’t see what Yoongi was doing, for which he was grateful, but the part of him that loved the art and the technique of bending wished he could anyway, no matter what it was.
“Is this something you firebenders practice?” he asked, sparing a tiny puff of air to cool the sweat between their backs.
“Of course,” Yoongi grunted. “What kind of bender are you if you can’t even withstand your own natural element?” He pressed hard at the flames, so hard that Hoseok was almost burned by the heat of his back. “Just, not usually this intense.”
“I had to hold out against mountain storms, or try to keep myself hovering as long as I could.” Hoseok shoved viciously at the fire behind them and almost lost his grip on their cooler air. “But never holding another person.”
“That does make it harder.”
“That might be easier than this,” Hoseok panted, digging metaphorical fingernails into the exhausted air. “I’d hold you up with me any day.”
Yoongi didn’t answer, too busy clearing a path for them through the inferno, and for a heart-stopping moment, the whoosh of his firebending that Hoseok had almost grown accustomed to by now stuttered. He was nearly spent, too.
“This is stupid, I can sit right in a fire and keep from getting burned,” he grumbled once he was steady again.
“You can?” Hoseok perked up, intrigued, even with sweat dripping into his eyes.
“Easy.”
“How do you do it?”
“Just keep my own fire around me. The tighter the better.”
“That’s it!” cried Hoseok. “Can you do that for both of us? Like I kept us warm, that time?”
Yoongi jolted, hopeful, Hoseok could feel it. “Not so easily, but… close your eyes.”
Hoseok only hesitated a moment before he squeezed his eyes shut. Arms grabbed him and pulled him to Yoongi’s chest, there was a strange rushing crackle all around him and it was hot, too hot, he was burning, but- Hoseok opened his eyes just a slit. Fire filled his vision, and he slammed them shut again and drew back against Yoongi with a cry.
“I’ve got you,” Yoongi murmured against his ear. “Walk with me.”
Keeping a small shield required much more control than pushing the fire back by force, but Hoseok could maintain it much longer. Yoongi must be doing something similar with his fire, Hoseok thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to look again. The embrace Yoongi kept him in meant they could only waddle forward, so this they did until Hoseok could feel the air beginning to change.
“Almost there. I don’t know if anyone’s over here, but get ready.”
Hoseok made himself open his eyes again. The fire surrounded them like water, but it still wasn’t burning him, stopping just ahead of where it would have met his skin. It seemed to actually touch Yoongi, but he wasn’t burning either, his own fire hidden but effective somewhere in between. Hoseok pressed down the panic that tried to rise to the surface the more he looked, and it was a good thing, too, because when they burst out into the dark, someone shouted, and there was the whoosh of firebending that didn’t come from Yoongi, and sudden heat again as Yoongi deflected it around them.
They were lucky: there was just one Fire Nation guard, and he had clearly not been expecting to see them, but more would be coming after hearing his shout. Yoongi engaged the first while Hoseok blew the reinforcements off their feet before they could get near, and then he scooped Yoongi up and ran with the wind speeding them along. He was too worn out to keep that going much longer than it took to get out of sight, so then he set Yoongi down and they just ran. Yoongi’s hand was warm and the night air was cold.
“We can hide there,” said Yoongi, and Hoseok trusted him because Yoongi knew these lands better than he did.
He bent an air current just strong enough to part the waterfall for them to slip through, and they both collapsed on the damp, chilly stone.
“We made it.”
Yoongi mumbled an agreement and dragged himself to sit upright against the back of the cave, and Hoseok watched little curls of steam go up from his damp clothes. He borrowed some of the warmer air to dry himself and held his own body heat close in the air around him. The stone was still freezing, but he set his back against the wall to steady himself while their panting breaths gradually slowed.
Yoongi stared at the waterfall, and Hoseok tried not to stare at Yoongi. He didn’t look like a firebender, dressed in the simple green and brown of an Earth Kingdom citizen, all small and soft-looking in the faint moonlight that filtered through the waterfall.
“Yoongi?”
Yoongi suddenly became very interested in his own fingers.
“Yoongi.”
He sighed. “Yes?”
Hoseok opened his mouth. You’re a firebender? seemed a stupid question after watching Yoongi bend fire not more than an hour ago. Hoseok closed his mouth again. Some other questions were beginning to form now, but he was afraid to hear their answers, or maybe he was afraid to risk offending Yoongi by asking them, or some combination of the two.
“I won’t hurt you.”
That was one of the first things he’d ever said to Hoseok, that day in the forest when Yoongi had found him half dead of dehydration and untended burns and so scared that he’d foolishly summoned a whirlwind to shield himself, weak as it had been. It sounded different now, less reassuring, more… resigned. Like he knew Hoseok wouldn’t believe him. But if he cared…
“Why?” Hoseok asked.
Yoongi exhaled an almost-snort. “I don’t like hurting people.”
“I’m an airbender,” said Hoseok, and it startled him, how quickly he said it like it was obvious, like he’d grown to believe the Fire Nation’s propaganda, too.
“I ran away when I learned what they wanted us to do,” said Yoongi. “That sounds cowardly, and I guess it was- maybe I should have stayed and tried to change people’s minds, but.” He slumped. “I knew I couldn’t stop it, and… well, I was scared; if you sympathize with the other nations, you might as well be one of them, people say. So I ran.”
Hoseok waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“Thanks for saving me. Again.”
“Of course.”
Water drip-dripped onto the cave floor. Hoseok was comfortably insulated with warm air around him, but it felt kind of like he’d sealed himself off inside a bubble.
“It’s freezing in here,” he muttered. “Is there any way you could… I don’t know how firebending works, can you make it warmer?”
“I can radiate a little, but I don’t have the energy to keep much else going. You might have to sit closer.”
Hoseok halved the distance between them, and they now sat about an arm’s reach apart. It was subtle, like the heat in front of a stove, and Hoseok inched just a bit closer to feel the warmth radiating from Yoongi like a bunnycat crawling into a sunbeam.
“Not too hot?”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.”
Yoongi hummed and said nothing more.
“You seem pretty powerful,” Hoseok ventured.
“I guess I am.” Yoongi chuckled lowly.
“You’ll have to show me some more of what you can do,” said Hoseok. He could feel Yoongi eyeing him while trying to look like he wasn’t, the way he just did at times. “I like watching other bending techniques and trying to adapt them to air. It’s interesting.”
“You’ll have to show me what you can do, too, then,” said Yoongi. “I’ve never gotten to watch an airbender in action before.”
Hoseok had been too afraid to practice his bending, even in front of his rescuer, out of some strange worry that Yoongi might be a Fire Nation sympathizer whose memory would be jogged, even though he knew full well that Hoseok was an airbender already. It opened up the ache that he’d tried to fill in with dirt and seal off to think of practicing comfortably with a friend again.
“I’m sorry for what my nation did to yours,” said Yoongi, like it had been straining to burst out of him and finally couldn’t be held any more.
“It’s not your fault,” said Hoseok thoughtlessly, for fear of what he might say if he did think.
“I know.” Yoongi shrugged like he was adjusting the straps of a heavy pack. “I’m still sorry. Sorry I lied to you, too.”
It was Hoseok’s turn to shrug. “I get why you did.”
“Yeah?”
“I mean, you’re not really safe anywhere. Either you’re a traitor, or you’re Fire Nation , and either way, someone probably wants your head on a spike.”
“Exactly.” Yoongi deflated a little against the wall. “I was afraid you’d be too scared to let me help you if you knew, too.”
“I probably would have been.” Hoseok huddled a little closer to the warmth. It was nothing like the heat of the flames they’d just been through, or the ones he still bore the scars from that he’d so narrowly escaped being entirely consumed by. This was only a comfortable warmth, the kind that seeped inside and coaxed the tension out of muscles too accustomed to being ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Yoongi was so warm. Hoseok thought about leaning against him and wondered if he’d mind.
“Do you think the Avatar’s still out there somewhere?”
Hoseok sat up straight again.
“Sorry, I shouldn’t ask you that. Pretend I didn’t.”
Now Hoseok was torn, really torn, for the first time that night.
“But if it’s you,” Yoongi went on. “I’ll teach you everything I know, when you’re ready. It won’t be enough to go against the Fire Lord, but it’s a head start.”
“ Me?? ” Hoseok cackled. “Imagine me as the Avatar!”
“You’d make a good one,” said Yoongi.
“Well, thankfully, we don’t get to find out if you’re right.” Hoseok smirked at himself and quickly stopped smirking. “I don’t know if he’s alive.”
“Do you know him?”
“Yes,” said Hoseok simply, and he meant to leave it at that, but then his mouth just kept talking. “He was so little when he first came to the temple, but you should see him now. And he’s a good kid- a good person. I don’t envy his job, but if anyone can end this war, it’s him. We got separated when the attack happened, but he’s already so strong, and he’s smart; if I was able to get away, surely he could.”
“Surely,” said Yoongi.
“Well find him, and you can teach him,” said Hoseok. He gave himself a little shake. “I’m only a little jealous that he gets to actually learn the other elements. If you could bend something else, in addition to fire, what would you pick?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” said Yoongi. “What would you pick?”
“Water,” said Hoseok. “Maybe fire. Earth looks so difficult, but that would make it interesting, I suppose.”
Yoongi stifled a yawn as he nodded.
“I’ll take first watch,” said Hoseok.
“Are you sure?”
“You’ve worked hard. It’s my turn to keep safe now.”
“Thank you.” Yoongi did look worn out as he took off his outer cloak and rolled it up for a pillow. The air got a little warmer.
“You don’t have to keep doing that if you’re tired.”
“It’s not much work. Wake me when it’s my turn.” Yoongi curled himself up to sleep.
There wasn’t much to watch or listen for when you were in a cave behind a waterfall. That was why Hoseok kept himself on high alert, secluded though they were, since the only warning they’d likely have would be the sight of someone actually coming in. It was hard to stay focused, with the moving water playing tricks with his vision if he stared too long in one place, and his mind often wandering to less than welcome places that seemed to act themselves out in shadow play behind the curtain of water. Yoongi cooled as he slept, curled in a tiny ball, and Hoseok pressed close to his back to absorb the warmth that was still there like a turtleduck on a rock that had been in the sun. Yoongi got just a little bit warmer again.
When Hoseok didn’t think he could keep his eyes open and trained on the waterfall any longer, he gently shook Yoongi awake and snuggled down himself. Yoongi sat right at his back like Hoseok had done, and any worries that he might not be able to sleep after all melted away.