Chapter Text
Zuko ran as fast as his little legs possibly could; doing his best to not trip as he could only see out of one eye. He kept running, his feet slamming against the forest floor, no doubt alerting everyone in the forest of his presence. He didn’t care, he just had to get away; away from grandfather, away from that strange man who’d burned him; away from the strange people who’d brought him to these strange woods.
His foot snagged on a tree root sending him tumbling to the needle covered floor. He shoved himself back to his feet, ignoring the pain coursing throughout his whole body at the sudden movement. Zuko kept running, tears dripping down his face from his one good eye. He just wanted to go home .
The next time he fell to the ground, he didn’t have the strength to get back up. He stayed hunched over, sobbing on the forest floor. He didn’t know where to go. He was lost in this weird forest with no one he knew. His body hurt, his face hurt, he was hungry and tired; he was alone and he was scared. He just wanted to go home.
Home where everything made sense. Where he could play with Azula, where he could feed the turtleducks with Mom, drink tea with Uncle (even if he didn’t care for tea all that much), he could train with Dad, or he could practice with his sword against Lu Ten.
But Lu Ten was gone now. Lu Ten was gone, Uncle had disappeared, and grandfather was mad at Dad now and Azula said that Dad was going to kill him, but Azula always lies, so was Dad even going to kill him or was it something else? He didn’t know anymore.
He felt something small press into his leg. He curled tighter to himself, trying to hide away from whatever weird animal was near him in this scary forest. It poked him again and he still refused to lift his head. When the animal let out a little quack, that’s when he finally looked up.
Sat right next to him in the forest was a little turtleduck. It quacked at him again. He uncurled from his little ball and picked up the small creature, petting it. It leaned into his hand, happy with the attention from the warm, firebender boy. When he tried to stop petting it, the turtleduck lightly nipped at his fingers to get him to continue.
Not far away, Zuko saw a small pile of nuts and berries that would be the perfect treat for the little animal, though it wouldn’t be nearly as good as the bread that the chef at the palace always made for him and Mom when they’d go to feed the turtleducks. Plus if the duck didn’t like it, then he’d at least have a little bit of food before he went searching for another way out of this crazy forest.
Carefully, Zuko got to his feet, stumbling a bit over to the pile, leaving the little duck by a tree while he went to grab the food.
As soon as he was in close range to the pile, suddenly the ground lifted from around him, pulling him up higher and higher until he was strung up high above the ground. He screamed, once again alerting the whole forest full of weird creatures and people that he was there and had no idea where he was going.
He hung up there for a while, all the panic that had begun to fade away when he was with the turtleduck, returned at a tenfold. His breathing was picking up faster and faster until it got to the point that it hurt to breath. He didn’t know what to do. If he tried to burn the net he’d fall and get hurt, probably breaking something, but if he waited around for whoever put this trap here, they might kill him.
Before long, he heard footsteps approaching on the dried ground.
The person below him swore. “Just hang in there kid, I’ll get you down.”
Next thing he knew, he was lowered back to the ground, where a tall boy with crazy looking hair stood with a rope in his hands, odd looking swords attached to his belt, and a piece of wheat between his teeth. He crouched down to the ground and tried to reach a hand out towards Zuko.
All Zuko saw was a hand reaching towards his face and last time that happened, he ended up with this shoddy bandage on his face. He had to fight back. He pushed what little fire he could from his hand to get away from the boy with the traps.
The tall boy with a stick of wheat in his mouth jumped back at the fire, drawing his swords, giving Zuko just a couple of seconds to turn and start running. He had to get out of there before the boy attacked him. He saw the turtleduck still sitting by the tree and hoped that the boy would leave the little creature alone, it hadn’t hurt anyone.
Zuko did the best he could to run, but that all failed. He hadn’t been watching where he was going and tripped over a tree root, sending him once again colliding with the hard ground.
The tall boy’s footsteps got closer, so Zuko did the only thing he could think to do, which was curl up as small as possible and hope that the strange boy would let him live.
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Jet was jumping through the trees, making his usual rounds of his forest, keeping an eye out for any new Fire Nation camps being set up, checking Bee’s hunting traps, when he heard a scream from somewhere in the woods. Immediately, Jet changed directions, jumping through more of the trees towards the source of the noise. Once he got close enough, he dropped down to the ground to figure out what was going on.
Above him, a little kid- who couldn’t have been any older than The Duke -was caught up in one of their traps for Fire Nation soldiers. The kid was struggling like crazy and was minutes away from releasing the mechanisms and sending the whole thing crashing back to the ground.
Jet swore, louder than he meant to. The kid in the trap, flung around widely trying to find where the new voice had come from.
“Just hang in there kid, I’ll get you down,” He said, trying his best to calm the kid down before he hurt himself. Jet got the trap easily released and in a minute the kid from the net was on the ground.
Jet crouched down so he’d be closer to eye level to the kid he’d found. He’d reached out to rest a hand on the boy’s shoulder like he would any of his other kids up at the tree house. He only got a minute to look at the boy’s face, or at least what was uncovered. The whole left side of the boy’s face was covered in dirty rags, which couldn’t be good for whatever was underneath.
Once the boy noticed his hand though, fire shot from his hands at Jet. Panic flooded Jet, he’d just saved a firebender , he drew his swords ready to fight back, but when the fire dissipated, the boy was running away from him. So naturally he followed.
The kid tripped ahead of him over a root, sending him sprawling over the forest floor. He didn’t get up, rather curled up into a ball. Jet dropped his swords and stared at the scared child for a moment.
He’d seen his kids curl up like that after nightmares of their villages being destroyed, of losing their parents, of any sorts of attacks that they’d seen in their lives. Jet himself had woken up like that a number of times over the years.
The kid may have been a firebender, but he was still a kid. Who knows how far away from home the boy was, if he had any family left, what was under those rags. Despite every instinct in Jet, telling him that having a firebender around was dangerous, but he couldn’t just turn his back on a kid in need of help. He’d had too many people turn away from him, he couldn’t do that to someone else.
Slowly, he knelt down on the forest floor next to the firebending child. The kid curled in tighter on himself. Jet waited for a few minutes, trying to let the kid calm down a bit before talking to him. That however didn’t seem to be working. If anything the boy’s breathing was getting more and more hysterical as he was choking back cries.
Jet moved and rested a hand on the boy’s trembling side; he violently flinched underneath Jet’s touch. “It’s okay buddy,” Jet muttered, “It’s okay, I’m not here to hurt you, okay? I wanna help.” The kid’s head peeked out from behind his arms, he sent him a kind smile. “Hey, my name’s Jet, mind telling me yours?”
Carefully, the kid sat up, hugging his knees to his chest, he shook his head, refusing to meet Jet’s eyes.
“No? You gonna make me guess aren’t ya? Alright is it… Li?” The kid shook his head again. “Pao?” Another shake, “Shu? Rishen?” he paused for a moment “Momo?” That got a small giggle from the kid, “You just gonna leave me hanging here buddy?”
The kid rocked a little bit in place, but still didn’t seem to want to answer. That was completely fine, it’s just Jet needed a name to call the kid. An idea struck him a moment later.
“You know, a lot of my friends have picked new names when they joined my crew, you wanna pick one?”
The kid looked confused. “Did you pick your name?” The words came out raspy, too raspy for a kid so young, but Jet didn’t dwell on that too long.
“I did. My name used to be Kai-Lin, but when I started the Freedom Fighters, I picked ‘Jet.’ You could pick anything you want.”
The kid thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, seeming really disappointed in himself.
“Well, is there anything you like to do? We could start there.”
That perked the kid right up, he started talking about a cousin, mother, and uncle and all sorts of things he used to do with them. How he’d feed turtleducks everyday with his mother, drink tea and listen to stories from his uncle (Jet suggested a tea name, but the kid’s nose scrunched up at that), and how he’d started sword training with his cousin.
“What kind of swords did you like?”
“Dual dao! My cousin always used Tachi whenever he’d train with me, but my master had me using dual swords since he said that I was off balance with only one sword.”
Jet had it, the perfect name for his newest Freedom Fighter. “What if we call you ‘Dao?’”
The kid grinned brightly, then winced, pressing a hand to the wrapped side of his face. Jet had forgotten about that, he needed to get this kid back to Longshot, he’d be their best bet for fixing whatever was underneath.
“Dao, do you want to come to my hideout, I have a friend who could take a look at that for you?”
Dao nodded and tried to stand up only to nearly collapse right back to the ground, Jet quickly scooped him up and sat him on his hip. Looks like they’d be walking back on the ground. Jet doubted Dao would be able to hold on tight enough in the condition he was in now for him to jump through the trees back home.
Jet strapped his swords back on to his belt before setting off back in the direction past the net, though before he even passed it, an annoyed quack came from over by the tree. A little turtleduck sat beside it. Dao tried to reach towards it, but considering he was being held up by Jet, it was a little hard. Jet chuckled and reached down to pick up the small animal. He handed it to Dao who held the animal close.
“Keep that little guy safe, don’t want him getting caught up in one of our nets, do we?”
Dao shook his head, keeping the little critter safe in his arms. Jet picked up the pace back through the woods, letting his new kid rest against his shoulder with his new little pet. About halfway there, Dao fell asleep against Jet’s shoulder. Jet let him rest, the boy looked terrible; his face covered in dirt, his clothing torn up, the little cuts, scratches and bruises on his arms, legs, and face, and that’s not even mentioning whatever was under that rag over the left side of Dao’s face.
Jet finally reached the base of the tree house, he secured his grip on Dao, also making sure that the turtleduck (that was dozing in Dao’s arms) was secured as well, before grabbing onto one of the ropes that would lift him up to the hideout. The boy stirred briefly in his arms, but didn’t wake.
It was still early enough that not many of the other kids were awake, so there wasn’t anyone stopping Jet from getting to their makeshift infirmary.
Smellerbee sat in there with Longshot doing an inventory of their supplies from their last Fire Nation camp raid. Both looked at him as he entered, their gazes drifting to the sleeping kid he was holding.
Longshot motioned for Jet to lie Dao down on the empty bed mat before ushering him out of the way. He moved the turtleduck off of Dao’s chest to the boy’s side, so he could carefully cut off the shredded clothing so he could attend to the scraps and bruises littering the kid’s small body before finally turning to the rag over the boy’s face.
Longshot cut the rag away, and let out a string of curses upon seeing the mark under the cloth. Jet stepped a bit closer to see what had caused his friend to sound so worried. He froze.
The left side of Dao’s face was scorched. The skin around his eye was swollen shut, and leaking some yellow-ish fluid. Longshot immediately began trying to clean the burn out; Bee grabbed a couple of the newly obtained medicines to help Longshot patch up the kid so he’d hopefully make it through the night.
Jet watched on as his friends worked in silence, not really sure what he should be doing. He’d seen kids show up beat up before, that was nothing new, but to see a burn like that on a kid who couldn’t have been any older than six, if he was even that old. This hadn’t been an accident; some Fire Nation asshole had deliberately burned a child.
What could a child do to deserve such a thing? Jet knew the Fire Nation were monsters, but he didn’t think they’d go as far as purposefully harm a child.
He felt a wave of rage wash through him at the sight of that small kid laying there while his friends worked to keep Dao from getting any further along in the infections that had surely settled themselves in his face.
Longshot shooed him out of the room once he noticed the anger brewing under Jet’s skin. There was nothing else they could do now but wait and see what happened to Dao over the next few weeks. If he survived, Jet had already decided Dao would be staying with them. Jet didn’t even care about the fact that the kid was a firebender, he’d been hurt by the Fire Nation just like anyone else here.
Dao would be safe here. No matter who tried to come after him, he'd be safe here. Jet would make sure of that.