Work Text:
Hindsight is Clear (Hindsight is Bitter).
By Emparra
It’s fanfiction, I don’t own it, it’s in the name. Moving on
In the afterlife or the spirit realm, or wherever the dead go, Jee would like to find the guy who coined the phrase “only hind-sight sees clearly” and buy him a drink, ‘cause that guy had absolutely been through the wringer. And he had been absolutely right.
Only in hind-sight did Jee realize that he’d come to at least respect Prince Zuko. Maybe even like him. He wouldn’t get the chance to figure it out.
Oh, at first Lieutenant Jee had not been the most pleased to learn that his ship was “hereby to take the Crown Prince in his banishment on mission to capture the Avatar” without so much as a “Do you want to stay on board?” Jee was in command of the Wani, and the Wani was going to take the Prince into banishment. Orders were orders.
After a couple weeks, Jee’s opinion of Prince Zuko had coalesced into not a very good one.
Only afterward, in bitter hindsight, he realized that boy that was carried on board his ship had been like a dog that’d been beaten just once too many times, and now all it was made up of was anger and fear, ready to snap at anything and anyone.
It didn’t help much that he was healing from a nasty burn over almost a third of his face, and that his hearing on the left wasn’t so great anymore under all those bandages, so he startled if something came up on that side. Prickly boys get pricklier when startled, so more than a few sailors get snapped at by the jumpy kid. Nobody knew if he’d be able to see at all out of that eye yet either, and the whole crew had been morbidly curious about it. Not within hearing of the General or the Prince, and they even tried to pipe down when Jee rounded a corner.
Still.
The fact that Prince Zuko had even survived such a burn was fodder for much hushed discussion. Was the burn very bad? He’d been fevered and insensate for days after boarding, but burns could just be that way, deep or no. Or was it very deep under those bandages? Did he even have an eye still? Did he still have an ear? Or had it melted off? Jee was certain that hadn’t happened, at least, because the bandage was uneven over Prince Zuko’s ear. He at least probably still had an ear, however much good it would do him.
One thing was certain though, Jee couldn’t wait for the day that burn stopped being the nasty side of painful, because that boy was one of the crabbiest rage-monsters he’d ever seen a burn patient exist as. And he wouldn’t act sane and rest in his cabin until he healed. No snowball’s chance in the heart of a volcano. As soon as his body stopped trying to burn itself out with fever long enough for him to drag himself up to the deck, Prince Zuko found his sea legs very quickly and used them to great effect. That boy had to stalk the whole ship, up and down, involved himself with the charting, involved himself with looking over rosters, peeking into every nook and cranny in the tiny ship that wasn’t someone’s personal footlocker, yet somehow never remembered to learn a dozen crewmen’s names. And he did it all with the air of a hurricane on the horizon; not quite spun up, but ready in an instant.
It seemed that some days, all General Iroh did was attempt to smooth away splintering tempers, put out proverbial fires (‘cause Agni knew that boy wasn’t bending), and try in vain to get the prince to rest or slow down, usually for tea.
With how the prince usually responded to the tea, Jee was willing to bet it wasn’t straight jasmine or some such, but an unholy concoction of herbs and willow bark for chipping away at pain and temper.
In a cycle of frustration, irritation, and concern for his own sanity, Jee looked on what had to be the most thankless tasks set to any man in the Nation, all contained on his ship. In the middle of his annoyance, Jee almost forgot to notice how quickly Prince Zuko took to ship life at thirteen years old, having never been on a ship for more than a few days at a time, and then only the luxury fleet of the royal family going to Ember Island, and he did it while adjusting to partial deafness and damaged eyesight. And Jee only knew that because General Iroh let it slip once, just once, the care he took not to come up quietly from the left.
Reflection was an unkind visit on the busy mind, and Jee didn’t really appreciate the death of a child throwing him into it unasked. But perhaps that’s what he was due for not taking a wounded young boy for what he was in the first place. Maybe he’d been at sea for too long, had a crew made up of the misfits of the Navy for too long to remember that children don’t spring back like adults do when hurt. Adults just coped differently. You had to be a more careful touch with children and animals.
Once when Jee was young, a mongrel took up residence under the house he grew up in.
It was a nasty piece of work, some sort of massive shepherd breed, obviously had been beaten and its fur had been singed, and had been badly used for some time before it sought its fate elsewhere. It growled and snapped at anyone who came near it or tried to force it out from under the house, which seemed to be the place it felt its destiny should be: as yet another pest under Jee’s family home. Then Mother had noticed at the end of the week that the rats weren’t showing up the pantry anymore, and that the dog must have been why. He seemed determined to bite and tear at anything he felt was bad or dangerous in the place he’d decided to claim as his own, so that was that.
They named him Khadan.
That dog was mean, suspicious, and growly to everyone. He wanted nothing to do with anyone. But he didn’t bite anyone who didn’t invade his space, he growled warning if anyone approached him too closely on purpose, he kept the turtle ducks corralled in the yard, and scared off trespassers, so they let him stay.
It took three years before the mutt would come near any of them, but it had chased off innumerable trespassers, caught hundreds of rats, and eventually attached itself to the little flock of turtle ducks, and they realized they hadn’t lost one to a viper or to vermin in over a year.
One night, that nasty old dog erupted into the biggest, most horrible-sounding ruckus they’d ever heard. There was barking and screaming and growling, and when Mother opened the door, she saw that dog in the middle of three thieves between the house and the duck coop, tearing into any limb he could bite, and catching all the fists and feet those men could hit him with. Jee had grabbed the poker and run out right behind mother with her broom handle, and they beat off the thieves, who had apparently decided their duck coop was too much trouble. And then they turned back to the dog.
He looked awful. His fur was slick with blood, he had swollen bumps all over him, his jowls were split in a few places, and all the fight he had before was drained right out of him as he lay in the dirt. The horrid dog just laid there, exhausted and bleeding, his eyes tracked them sluggishly. He didn’t even snap when Mother pulled him onto a sack, and they carried him up to the house.
They stitched him up, fed him willow bark tea, fed him scraps, and waited for him to die or get better.
Over the next week, it was all stepping around him carefully on the porch, never getting too close to his head if you didn’t have to, listening for his low rumbles, because he didn’t growl at them anymore.
He just slept, watched them move around, ate a little, and drank a little.
Then one day he got up and moved into the sun. The ducks came to investigate, and he laid there more quietly than he ever had before, letting them waddle all around him and peep away.
He healed up, let Mother take out the stitches in his jowls and his sides.
He was never really nasty again. Still stand-offish of course, but not so aggressive to the people of the house. He chased away strangers, guarded the ducks, prowled around the house when they were working outside, barked when Jee and his siblings came home from school, and they almost never saw a rat or snake in the vicinity of the house or yard in all the years he lived there. Khadan was never a sweet dog, but it seemed that he’d learned to trust Jee’s family, and he had purpose in guarding the house and the creatures that lived there. He started accepting a pat in the morning from Mother, tolerated company outside on hot and muggy evenings when inside was too close and hot, so everyone was out on the porch to catch the breeze. And always, always, he was fiercely loyal to the people of the house. And he learned to be nice around the family along the way. When he got hurt, he would find Mother to patch him up. If a snake had gotten somewhere he couldn’t reach, he’d find Jee to help him out.
And by the time that dog got old and slow, his days were calm and peaceful. They traded for a shepherd puppy, and he trained that one to do his job. They named that one Jebe, and he was a sweet and attentive little fellow, never been misused a moment in his little life. Then Jee stepped out the door in the morning, and Khadan didn’t pick up his head in greeting. He lay curled up in his last sleep, the first rays of morning sun rested on his old, brown nose, still and cold.
Zuko reminded him of that old dog a little, with all his growling and snapping at anyone that got too close. Only the General seemed permitted to get close, and even then it could get rocky. Something bad had happened to that kid, for him to be afraid of fire, for him to have to relearn bending under the General’s instruction, for him to have been banished to a wild goose-chase for a guy who’d probably died over the last century.
Abrasive and proud as he was, with a fried-out voice to match (and Jee really avoided thinking about how vocal chords could get fried, and about a voice that hadn’t even begun to crack before he got tossed onto the Wani), Prince Zuko chased phantoms like a shirshu on the scent. And he did so without the self-preservation of a decent hound, but the desperation of a mongrel chewing its leg off to escape a trap. Two years and one attempted mutiny went by, and a light in the heavens changed the atmosphere of the whole ship.
“Set a course for the light” indeed.
A little later, more pieces than Jee had ever wanted to know existed, began to fall into place with Iroh’s insight. The Prince was a burned dog, loyalty abused and tossed aside, a once-good nature stomped on, and given the impossible task of a lifetime as a nail of humiliation in the coffin of his destiny.
And just like that ill-tempered dog had burrowed his surly way into Jee’s family because they hadn’t been successful at chasing it out from under their house, Prince Zuko morphed into the angriest sixteen-year-old boy Jee had ever had the misfortune of being mildly fond of on board his rickety ship. His obsession warred with loyalty to the crew. For all his shrieking about nothing being more important than the mission, Jee’d never actually seen anyone so thoughtlessly throw their life headlong into peril the way Prince Zuko had to keep the helmsman from falling off the boat. Mavi had bruises from where that kid had clamped down on his wrist to keep him from falling for a week afterward. And Prince Zuko had never been trained with “leave no man behind” ringing in his ears for months. His rage warred with his honor- and Jee would fight anybody who said that boy had no honor. He’d also fight the boy himself, teach him a thing or two about respect, but that was beside the point.
A shipload of luck-cursed marines found themselves begrudgingly attached to the irritating child thrown into their mix. Marines respected toughness, and a literal child who survived a wound that could have easily been fatal, who threw himself into relearning how to bend, who led every expedition out for information, and who worked in the tireless way of teenagers to learn and do everything they shouldn’t have to yet- well. The navy was full of assholes, so what’s one more? At least this one had a shred of honor to him, and he’d gotten a little bit more bearable with time and healing from that truly gnarly injury.
“He’s a jerk, but he’s our jerk.” Jee had overheard Mavi down in the engine room say one day, shutting up Huong, who was griping that mutiny could still be a good option.
Huong hadn’t said anything since the explosion.
Khadan may have been a nice dog once, a long time before he showed up under Jee’s porch. But by the time he took shelter there, he had been badly used for too long, and all he could do was the one job literally bred into him; protect little critters. He had no capacity to trust people. That had been burned out. But if he had a job he could do, you could bet it would be done. So he found the job he knew and began what he was made for.
Burned, trust broken, and thrown aside, Prince Zuko regained his feet and latched onto the task he knew; find the Avatar. He learned how to earn respect grain by grain, the hard way, but not once did he give up.
Many seasons ago, a young Jee’s instructor through initial training and conditioning for the Navy had said he could do more with tenacity than talent. Give him a simple man with drive over a talented quitter any day of the week. Jee figured Prince Zuko didn’t have the word ‘quit’ in his vocabulary. Never learned it. Didn’t know the concept existed. And he had made it everyone else’s problem.
Whether or not they realized it, most of the Marines could smell like-kind in him. Kama-inu, the rest of the Fire Nation military called them. Demon-dogs. And Demon-dogs don’t follow just anyone. And they don’t follow without testing, and all of them tested each other’s tolerance, every single day.
Prince Zuko wasn’t a very nice young boy like Jee’s younger brother had been last time he’d visited home.
But then again, Jho hadn’t had half his face burned off when he was thirteen for speaking out of turn.
And honestly, Jee never expected that he’d ever come to like Prince Zuko, the same as he never came to like Khadan.
But Jee was a lieutenant, and he knew how to shape sailors he didn’t like into decent crewmen, he could accept assholes into his crew and turn them out as something better than when they came, and he could appreciate a nasty person who simply won’t give up on improvement, even if it was like eating one grain of rice at a time. Even if mutiny and tossing the ill-tempered boy over the side of the ship seemed mighty tempting some days.
The day Zhao blew the Prince up, Jee felt as though someone had punched him in the sternum.
For the three years of slogging through the most unforgiving goose-chase known to man, keeping a ship of misfits together under a commander who shouldn’t have ever been in the place to command anything but his own homework, for the delicate balance they’d struck “on a course for the light”- in the span of moments, it went up in fire with the Wani.
It felt like insult piled upon injury and sprinkled in salt to know that fire had killed the boy who had survived it once before.
Of all the ingnoble and unfitting ends, Prince Zuko deserved to at least go out in a fight. Something just for a boy who didn’t know how to quit. Not to sabotage and trickery and fire.
It stuck in Jee’s craw.
Nearly three entire years of grinding his teeth over that unpleasant child, only a few months ago put in any kind of understandable context by the General- maybe it would have helped to know that the Firelord himself had burnt his own son’s face into a crisp earlier on. Maybe not. Now, knowing felt unjust in every way. Zuko had stuck his neck out for a whole division of brand new troops and gotten burned for it, exiled, and now blown up, and Jee was certain there was no justice to the world.
It seemed the same as with that horrible dog; they only came to a civil understanding just before it died.
It sat so badly in his guts, to know what Zuko had done as a literal child sitting in on a war council, a little boy who had known that lives shouldn’t be thrown away, and every adult around him had sat back with closed mouths or in loud support of sending rookie troops to the slaughter without a care for their lives- and that child had been thrown away for standing for the right thing.
No good deed goes unpunished, indeed.
Jee could see how that would turn any decent person into a nasty piece of work. Do the right thing and get banished. Do the honorable thing and get burned.
It was gross, and Jee pressed those embers into the dangerous coal-bed of his heart. Zhao could not know the treachery in Jee’s heart, the hatred in his soul. That sideburned fool burned a boy who had already survived fire, insulted his injury, and ordered his men to follow him north and away from the watery grave of the boy they were hard-by to tolerate, but tolerate him they did. Zhao wouldn’t know the rage of barely restrained agents of chaos, the catch-all of poor performers that the Wani had been.
Zhao presumed.
Jee would make it his business to make that man choke on it.
Somehow, some way, the crew of the Wani could manage unhelpfulness to the spirit. Perhaps explicitly countermanding orders wouldn’t do anyone any good, but malicious compliance could be the best form of retaliation. The Wani had not been a nice ship, and it did not have a nice crew. His crew had a nest of hornets up their bonnets, enough repressed frustration and anger to last a century, and just the screw-up reputation to maybe get away with spitting in the glory-soup Zhao seemed to be cooking up for himself.
Anything for a shred of justice for a boy who shouldn’t have died.
In a heartbeat, and for all of the hypocrite it made of him, Jee would take his spoiled-brat Prince over the “honorable Admiral Zhao” any day. Any Agni-damned day.
Too soon old, too late smart. Story of Jee’s life.
Damn.
Well, maybe Zuko found peace in the spirit world. A beaten dog deserved that, at the very least.
Finess.