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"It's going to be hard," Agam had told her, at the start of it all. "It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done. Do you understand this?"
Uki had nodded. She hadn't, not really, but she had been desperate enough that it hadn't mattered.
She thinks the Faceless Queen knew it, her eyes quiet and sharp and staring too deep into her own. The candlelight was low and flickering, the night late after another long patrol. Her whole body ached with exhaustion, but she kept her spine straight out of sheer habit. Like an ostrich horse, beaten down until it would take to the saddle.
It wasn't a comparison she liked.
But she liked this: the brutal honesty, being treated like a person with a choice. No one had told her, ten years under her belt and overwhelmed, that the Bending Brigade would be hard. They had told her about the honour of serving her haven, the duty she had to her people. They talked about finding community, people just like her. People who were special.
They hadn't talked about the endless bruises from endless training. Getting thrown down into the dirt and expected to pick yourself back up again. They hadn't talked about infractions and their consequences, how the patrols kept pushing longer and longer, how the early morning wake ups started to feel more like a cold and creeping death.
Agam, at least, didn't dress up the Faceless with pretty words, and Uki had decided that she could believe in something a little ugly as long as it was true. Camodillos come with the dung, and gardens come with the weeds. The world is not made up out of beautiful things.
"There's going to come a time," the Faceless Queen tells her, "when you're going to be thinking about the world you left behind. The people you said goodbye to. There's going to be temptation, and here is what you are going to remind yourself: you tried that life, and it didn't work. It didn't get you what you needed. You're chasing after something more than survival, and that is no bad thing. No apologies, Uki, and no regrets."
"I hear you. I won't let you down," Uki had said.
She still hadn't understood. Not yet.
Here, and now, and the Faceless show up, holding two young girls with obviously threatening intentions, and for a second Uki forgets. Jae is by her side, there are kids in danger, the Faceless are here, and-
And then she remembers which side she's on.
Jae doesn't hesitate for even a moment. He's immediately on his knees, hands on his head. It's a position Uki's asked bandits to take during arrest more than once, familiar in a way that runs slick and sick inside her veins. He says, voice tight, "I'm cooperating. You don't have to hurt them. I'll do whatever you say."
The little girl, dressed in blue and oddly familiar, stomps her foot. "Jae-" she hisses, stubborn and defiant despite the hand swallowing her shoulder. "We can-"
"Not right now, Nisha," Jae says, and his voice is calm in that way it gets when he can tell someone is panicking. Nisha doesn't look like she's panicking; she looks angry, but Jae's eyes flicker to the other girl and whatever other protests she has seem to die in her throat.
"Get him up," Chetan orders, and Uki complies with all the due diligence the Brigade has installed in her. Jae comes easily up, but he won't look at her, and shrugs her hands off his shoulder.
It stings. It shouldn't. It does anyway.
They get less than five paces down the hallway before Jae digs his heels in.
"Okay, okay- stop."
Somewhere inside of Uki, there is a small part of her that had been beyond relieved to see Jae. Jae is a familiar face from the world before she had purposefully turned her life upside down. In so many ways, they had grown up together: days of training, days of patrol, shared years of laughter and smiles and exhaustive, neverending shifts.
Jae is one of those guys that Uki can not help but admire and envy in turn: the work is endless, and Jae just keeps going and going and going. Always volunteering, always checking in with people, filling in the little forms that keep the bureaucracy of the Bending Brigade running. He checks in with the younger cadets and covers people's shifts and memorizes the codes and regulations for fun. When does he sleep? Uki never understood it. When does he have time to sleep?
Maybe, if the Brigade had been made out of a hundred Jae's, the whole system would have worked. Uki tries not to be bitter about it, and mostly fails.
Still…. Jae has eaten at her family's table, charming all of her aunties with his overwhelming politeness and entertaining her little cousins with airbending tricks. Her mom is- was. She was always asking when Jae will be coming back around. Fundamentally, Jae is just…a really good guy. He's her friend. His hug had been a little bit of home.
Another part of her, the part she is determinedly ignoring, misses it. Almost. The heavy, comforting weight of the uniform. Lan knocking their shoulders together over dinner, laughing over Daemin's latest inane comment. Complaining and frustrated about being forced to take another patrol, only for Jae to show up at her door equipped with apology jeon and a sheepish smile.
(She reminds herself: that weight could be suffocating, that more often than not pulling on the uniform felt like being buried alive. She reminds herself: she never wanted to be a fighter. She found her way out, and she took it. No apologies. No regrets. )
The loudest part of Uki, much louder in the current moment, wants to take Jae by his self-assured shoulders and shake him.
Here he is, standing in his Brigade uniform, straight spined and chin raised up. Here he is, surrounded by a bunch of angry Faceless members, representing everything they despise. It's an incredibly volatile situation, with two young kids at his side, and he just…. Does. Not. Know. When. To. Quit.
Uki half expects him to break into another spiel of propaganda. Jae's always believed so strongly that they're doing the right thing, that they're doing something good.
Someone- Parth, she thinks- tries to push Jae forward, but he leans back against the shove and refuses to budge an inch. An overwhelming part of Uki is swallowed by an urge to sigh. For an airbender, Jae can be incredibly stubborn.
"Wait-" he snaps, face painted in a scowl. It's not the-often exasperated, infuriatingly stubborn, smiling squad leader Uki knows. She doesn't know what he's planning, she doesn't know how to deescalate this if it comes to a fight-
It's a surprise, when he crouches down instead of saying anything else, or bursting into an attack.
Lightning fast, weapons whip into place, directed at him. Nisha tenses up, but Jae ignores them entirely. "Pavi," he whispers, and the littlest girl turns to him, wavering. Her eyes are dilated and distant, weight listing to one side. She's missing a leg; Uki isn't sure how she hadn't noticed.
Someone tries to kick him, and Jae leans away before it can make contact. "Pavi," he whispers again, and finally the girl's eyes lock onto his. He smiles, and it's so gentle, and it's only because Uki knows him so well she can see the tension in his shoulders. "There you are. Hi, Pavi. You okay? You up for a piggyback ride?"
She blinks at him, and then she hums something sing-songy and vague. Uki wouldn't have clocked it as an agreement, but Jae just nods and starts to shift.
But Parth yanks Jae back before he can get too far, a scowl smeared across his features. The hallway is too narrow for this many people, and Uki is knocked back a step, and then two. The monkey cat at her side yowls when someone trods on her tail, and Uki desperately tries to sooth her even as she hears Nisha yell in protest. Even as Parth snarls, "Hey, you don't get to make that call, bootlicker."
Jae, because he is so dumb, yanks his shoulder away. His body is a lean line of barely controlled anger. "They're little kids. Can't you see she's hurting? Let me carry her!"
If things don't calm down, there is going to be a fight. The fur on the monkey-cat is puffed all the way up, pupils pinpricks and reflective in the dark. Uki keeps a hold of the animal's scruff and licks her lips. "Parth," she says, and tries to sound steady. "Hey, he's right. We'll move faster if he carries her."
For a second, Uki worries it won't work. She's new here. A recent recruit who hasn't done much to prove her mettle. Her protest, as logical and reasonable as it is, might not be enough.
The moment seems to stretch forever.
Finally, Parth nods, and Jae is allowed to step forward and swing Pavi onto his back. It's an easy motion, well practised, and Uki wonders what else she's missed while she's been away, wonders when Jae got close to these two tiny kids.
Pavi wraps around Jae's neck and almost immediately goes limp, an exhausted dead weight. Jae doesn't protest, though, calmly adjusting his grip on her. Her sister reaches up and pats her foot worriedly, but when she goes to take Jae's hand, Chetan pulls her to the side and away.
Uki knows why he's doing it. The girls are leverage, and both of them right next to Jae means they lose it. It still doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel right. Uki bites her own tongue and says nothing.
"It's okay, Nisha," Jae tells her. "I got her."
Nisha just nods, fingers squeezing and releasing around her own wrist.
They begin walking, back through the corridors and out onto the platform overlooking her new home. At the top of the stairs, she catches a glimpse at Jae's expression, and she wishes she could tell him to stop it. He's supposed to be an optimist. Doesn't he know that Uki has herbs growing in her tent? That she tends to the animals in the early morning and it doesn't feel like dying? It's not much of a view, maybe, but she wants this. This is her way out. This is her way through. See the garden through the weeds, Jae, she wants to tell him, and doesn't.
(There will still be fighting, but not for too much longer. The Faceless Queen promised. Freedom is in her grasp, and Uki won't let go now when she's come so far.)
They make their way down the steps, heavy footfalls on corroding metal, and she tucks herself close behind Jae so no one gets at his back. The monkey-cat's ears are pressed flat against her head, body as low as it can get while still moving. Uki shushes her, and it doesn't do much to help. Pavi lets out a low moan.
Step by step by step, and Uki watches the back of Jae's head as he makes his careful way downwards. Occasionally, she sees him adjusting his position so he can keep his eyes on the other girl ahead of them still.
You could stay with us, she doesn't say, because she knows Jae, who never makes promises he can't keep. This could be your garden, too.
At last, they reach the base of the stairs, and their feet hit the sand that has been trickling inside these Old World ruins for hundreds of years. Uki jostles her way through the other members of the Faceless until she can slide up next to Jae, walking side by side again.
She doesn't know what to expect. Gratitude for stepping in, maybe. A strained smile, or confusion. Maybe she just wants him to bump his shoulders against hers again, like at the end of a long patrol.
But Jae doesn't even look at her. He just keeps walking, back straight, eyes forward.
Very quietly, in a sharp instant of something like heartbreak, she understands exactly what Agam had been talking about. She squeezes her fists together until her bones ache. She breathes, and breathes, and breathes. She slouches, just because she can, and does not cry.
Jae is not the only stubborn one.
Uki keeps walking.
No apologies. No regrets.