Chapter Text
By the time someone comes to kill him, Zuko has begun to wonder if there truly are no capable assassins left in the Earth Kingdom after his fathers war.
There have been attempts of course– many in the time since he took the throne– but Suki and her Kyoshi guards had easily handled the vast majority of them, and those that she had not caught, the Fire Lords royal guard had been more than capable of containing.
Then one night he returns to his chambers, intent on crawling into bed and sleeping for at least four hours– or until the scribes have finished preparing Minister Illang’s treatise on a new police force– and comes to an abrupt halt in his tracks.
The window is open, just cracked– gently– but still open. Zuko hadn’t left it that way and none of his guards would dare to tamper with the Fire Lord’s chambers.
The door has already swung shut behind him, and though he knows that the hall is lined with his guards, he can’t risk turning back to it without knowing what sort of weapon the intruder wields. A bow or darts, and he could be dead before his hand ever reaches the handle.
No.
The only way to handle this is to continue as if in ignorance.
He lets out a quiet sigh, as if he had only been pausing at the end of a long and tired day, and starts for the sitting table across from him. Its top drawer is already open, but unlike the window, Zuko had left it this way.
He shrugs out of the thin silk haori draped loosely across his shoulders and folds it on top of the table. Adjusting it would be too conspicuous but it’s too loose to fight in without snagging his arms and restricting his katas.
Inside the sitting table drawer, his fingers find the whale tooth comb that Katara had gifted him on her last visit, its tines still slick with fire lily oil from this morning, and he slowly tugs the curtain of his hair over his shoulder as if to tend to it, intentionally concealing his face. The moment that his hair falls before his face, Zuko flicks his wrist, removing the narrow blade that Toph had crafted out of her own metal bending from the hilt of Katara’s comb.
It had been more of a gag gift at the time, and Katara had handed it to Zuko with a wry smile and a “ Toph says in case you want to follow in her footsteps and just cut the whole mess off ,” but Zuko finds himself grateful for it’s existence now. He continues to move his arm as if he’s combing, knuckles white around the dagger's grip, and narrows his eyes, listening carefully.
Whoever is in the room with him is skilled– unusually so– because it is not an expectant breath nor the scuff of a foot over the floor that gives them away but the almost imperceptible waver of heat in a candle as they pass it by. If it weren’t for his bending, Zuko never would have known that they moved.
The thought causes a thin tendril of apprehension in his gut even as he whirls about to face his would-be attacker.
The world goes still and quiet.
Not even Zuko’s breath punctures the silence, and while that might be because he’s not even breathing, it seems that the intruder's own breath has left him as well.
Zuko is staring at a ghost.
Zuko is staring at a ghost, and from the stricken lines of Jet’s face, he might find Zuko just as phantasmal as Zuko finds him.
Despite himself– despite the history, the memory, the knowledge that Jet is most certainly here to do what he’d always known a armed intruder in his chambers would be attempting to do– Zuko’s hand drops, Toph’s gleaming metal dagger hidden in the loose folds of his pants.
It will cost him a precious few seconds to raise it, but he knows Jet, remembers what it was like to cross blades with him and even now, Zuko knows that with the motion alone, he’s practically surrendered.
“Li?”
Jet’s voice has changed. It’s deeper now. Rougher, but still, somehow, familiar. The sound of it makes something warm in Zuko’s chest, and he doesn’t think that he could stop it even if he tried.
“What are you doing here?”
There’s a tinge of suspicion in Jet’s question, but mostly just something unnameable yet familiar. Something that Zuko, too, feels yet can’t quite put into words.
Relief would be too simple a term.
“You–” Zuko manages, “you– they said you were dead.”
Jet’s face is different too. It had been hard back then, sharp, bladed– and it still is– only now his jaw has widened and his light brown eyes darkened to the hue of black tea and there's an old scar cutting through his brow.
That same brow quirks, as if amused, but Zuko has seen true amusement on that face, and this is not it.
“That would have been too easy,” Jet says.
His shuang gao are out, bronze hued blades flickering under the candlelight and Zuko’s eyes run across them, noting nicks and scratches where none used to be.
Wherever he has been for these past years, Jet’s been fighting.
“Why are you here?” Zuko asks, and though he already knows the answer to that question with absolute, perfect certainty, he still holds out the palest flicker of hope that it will be anything else.
“Why do you think?” Jet responds, not missing a beat and Zuko– he knows, he does, but still he can’t–
“The better question,” Jet says, taking a step closer, “is what are you doing here, Li?”
Zuko’s jaw clenches but he doesn’t answer because Jet hasn't realized yet, but all it will take is one word, one weak lie. Jet has always been uncommonly gifted at reading people and Zuko has never been a good liar.
He doesn’t want to fight, doesn’t know if he could, or if it would be a fight he would win judging from the new width of Jet’s shoulders and the old grace with which he moves. Even worse, Zuko doesn’t know if it is a fight that he would want to win.
Jet takes another step and Zuko forces his body to respond, shifting a step back in turn, and carelessly cornering himself against the sitting table behind him. He can’t hide the wince that crosses his face at his own thoughtlessness.
“Well?” Jet asks, shifting slightly on his feet, and Zuko is about to answer, about to scrape together some weak attempt at an explanation that won’t end in his blood painting the too lush carpets underneath his bare feet when he sees Jet’s piercing eyes finally shift away from his own.
That’s all it takes for Jet to reach his own conclusions. Zuko remembers this about the other boy– well, man , now. He did that a lot back then, and every time, it spelled his own downfall. It seems that he hasn’t learned any better.
Jet’s eyes shift down as he takes in Zuko’s garb. The loose silk sleeping pants, by no means the most modest of attire– it’s not as though Zuko had planned on entertaining guests in them. The unbound fall of his hair over his bare shoulders and then the rest of it– the part that always draws eyes.
The scars.
The faded pink starburst of Azula’s lightning strike, spidering over his sternum. The dappled old imprints of his father’s scorching fingertips into the skin of his shoulders. The patch of burn that never healed quite like the rest over his right side from when Zhao had blown up the Wani. There’s more too– there’s nicks and cuts and gashes– but Zuko knows that theses, the burns, are what people really notice.
Jet’s eyes narrow in something that could be pity, or maybe even disgust, but is most likely a blend of the two, aided by a healthy dose of his most present emotion.
Anger.
“What are you?” He spits. “His whore ?”
Zuko barely flinches at the vehemence of his tone, and with it, the briefest flash of a memory.
It’s not a new one, or particularly painful, just simply old and almost forgotten until Jet’s angry voice brought it back to life. Zuko remembers a night when he was young and his mother, drunk on too much plum wine, woke beside him from a nightmare in his bed and laid still, thinking him asleep, before murmuring quietly to herself “ nothing but his whore .”
Of course Jet, the ferociously perceptive fool that he is, takes the motion as confirmation.
Zuko supposes he can understand how Jet reached that conclusion. Coming to slay the Fire Lord late at night and instead finding a half dressed man that you already know and are quite certain isn’t the Fire Lord– well– it’s an understandable assumption, even without the very unkingly mess of scars over Zuko’s torso.
What’s not understandable– what’s not even comprehensible– is the way that Jet’s shuang gao fall out of their fighting stance, curved edges brushing against the carpet.
“What are you doing?” Zuko asks, but Jet has already started towards him, expression intent, and Zuko goes to take another step back before remembering the sitting table behind him, but then it’s too late and the entire structure bangs against the wall.
Jet stops in his tracks, head tilted for the door, and Zuko freezes to, digging his teeth into the soft flesh of his cheek that conceals the sigh of relief that wants to burst past his lips at the pounding of feet outside.
Jet notes it at the same time that Zuko does, and starts forward again, face equally determined and he’s close enough now, eyes intent and swords unprepared, and Zuko’s hand tightens around around Toph’s knife before he raises it in single swift swipe and rests it’s sharpest edge against Jet’s throat.
“No closer.”
Jet’s dark eyes go wide. If Zuko was an utter hopeless fool, he might even say that they seemed a bit betrayed.
“You’re here to kill the Fire Lord,” Zuko states, and he must hate himself because he forces himself to watch as hate fills Jet’s face at even the mention of the title.
“You already know that,” Jet says, impatient clearly, yet already slipping back into that well worn mask of persuasive charisma, “but I can get you out of here, too. You can leave–”
He’s still talking– as if Zuko were a prisoner– still making a far too convincing case with silken words and passionate eyes, but Zuko is suddenly struck by how much he truly does wish for that. To leave. To lift this mantle, this burden that he has taken on– that he more than deserves– from his shoulders and leave it to someone else.
To run away.
For a heartbeat he stares at Jet and wonders if he could.
But he can’t.
It would never work.
It was monsters of his own blood that turned this world into a place where men like Jet were made, and it is Zuko’s duty to do everything in his power to right their wrongs, even if it really does end in his own blood pooling on the blackstone floors of the Fire Palace.
“Your Majesty?” A voice calls from the hallway. Zuko recognizes it. Not Suki– but one of her warriors, a younger girl with narrow green eyes named Sihyun.
Jet tenses but Zuko remains silent. It won’t be long now. For all of Jet’s self delusion, he isn’t actually an idiot. If he stays much longer he’ll put the pieces together, and then Zuko really will be forced to fight him.
“You should leave,” Zuko says, tired– resigned really. “Leave while you still can and don’t come back.”
Jet's voice is harsh, certain.
“I can’t do that.”
“You can ,” Zuko says, and though he manages to keep his voice even, he feels as if he is begging.
“Your Majesty?” Sihyun calls again.
Zuko doesn’t answer, eyes locked on Jet’s in a silent battle that he already knows he’s lost.
“We’re coming in,” warns a muffled voice from the hallway, and then Jet whirls, bringing up his shuang gao. The edge of Toph's knife leaves a shallow graze over his throat.
The door creaks open, revealing Sihyun and two other Kyoshi Warriors standing in the doorway. Zuko notes the way their eyes flick from Jet to the wicked curves of his blades to Zuko behind him, and Zuko shakes his head furiously when Sihyuns mouth falls open, doing his best to indicate “ he doesn’t know ” without actually uttering the damning words.
Sihyun’s eyes widen in realization, and Zuko seizes the opportunity of Jet’s distraction to slip sideways, out from the narrow gap between Jet’s back and the sitting table. The hilt of Toph’s knife digs into his hand.
“Jet,” he says, quietly, as steadily as is possible with all things considered, “go.”
Sihyun’s looking at him like he’s an idiot but he’s still the Fire Lord so it’s not like she can actually accuse him of that.
As expected, Jet’s answer is short, blunt.
“No.”
“You can still leave,” he tries, because, as established, Zuko is a weak, foolish man.
Just in time to continue to establish this, a familiar voice rings from the hallway behind Zuko’s guards.
“No he can’t.”
Zuko, still inching out of the range of Jet’s shuang gao, can’t help but sigh, and by the way Jet’s shoulders stiffen, he has noted Zuko’s changing position.
“Suki–”
The captain of his guard cuts him off, eyes sparking, “Are you a fool?” She asks, ignoring the way the other warriors around her eyes widen at the insult. “No. He can’t leave. No one who makes it this far gets to just walk out.”
“Good,” Jet snarls, hefting his blades, and Zuko feels the air itself go dense in a way the halls of this palace have long been accustomed to– in a way that means violence.
“Suki–” he tries, one last time, trying to get her to understand, to perhaps make an exception with his safety and of her duty just this once, and evidently, that is more than enough for her.
Her eyes narrow, the strips of red paint across their lids flickering as she takes a step past her girls and into the room, fans snapping open.
“As Captain of the Royal Guard, I am well within my rights and duty to disobey such orders under due circumstance,” she settles into a fighting stance, never taking her attention from Jet but still addressing him when she finally utters the damning words, the damning title, the thing that Zuko never wanted but never could escape– “Fire Lord Zuko.”
Zuko hears Jet’s blades splitting air before his eyes catch their gleam, but he’s already dropped to the floor, rolling out of their reach. When he springs back to his feet, his arm stings and he doesn’t have to spare it a glance to know that it’s bleeding, cut open on Toph’s knife where he rolled over it like an untrained idiot.
Jet’s eyes are black with fury and Zuko has been certain he was about to die many times by now, but in taking his eyes off of Suki, Jet has made a mistake that few men live to survive. He begins to lunge, air splitting under the razor edge of his swords, and Zuko throws himself backwards, slamming into the wall even as the Suki’s fans find Jet’s throat and he stills once again, hateful eyes still fixed on Zuko.
Zuko sees the moment Jet realizes it’s over, the moment he resigns himself to his fate, and the moment his gaze finds the gash in Zuko’s forearm and the tendril of red welling from it.
“Did I do that?” He asks, an ugly smile splitting his face.
Zuko shakes his head, jaw clenched.
“Too bad,” Jet hisses and then Suki is tugging him back, away, and then he’s gone and still Zuko stands, bare back to the chill of the wall.
His hand creeps slowly to the cut on his arm, and though it closes around it, crimson heat still slips between his fingers, and dapples the black stone floors.