weirdlet | Mpreg Meme

Entry tags:

Mpreg Meme

I'd intended to toss one of these out there someday, only to find I was not alone, and held off to enjoy the others^^ So- if it please you, toss me a pairing/person and a prompt, and I'll see what I can cook up. Avatar fandom only, please, although if it's something I recognize I'll see what I can come up with.

Let's say two prompts per person, promise of one ficbit.

Don't be shy, it's all in good cracky fun!

(Standard warning about not being superfast applies.)

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm glad you enjoyed^^

She rode on a wind that cut like a scythe, and crossed the ocean on a typhoon’s crest with a gathering of men at her back such as the Fire Nation had not seen in a hundred years! Xun Tai, bandit queen of the Red Forest, did stealthily infiltrate the enemy capital, making her way from the island shore up, up the rocky caldera’s sides, and entered at last into the city! Little resistance did they encounter, for who would dare to stand against them?

The palace steps ran with neither blood nor flames, but brown and green and black with the ragged, mismatched armor of her cohorts, whilst meanwhile she led a merry chase over the rooftops and through the windows, seeking the heart of the lair.

The throne-room beckoned, and who was she to refuse a dramatic entrance?

She leapt inward to land in a striking position, naked blades out, staring hungrily into the firelit dark.

There he stood, just as much a student of the theatrical as she- robes trailing, crimson-red and burgundy, with black to show the seriousness of his shadows. The five-point mantle bristled at the outline of his shoulders, the flame-shaped crown sharp and glinting in his topknot- the grey streaks of which trailed down mostly to the outstretched points of his scar, branding one eye with the inalienable marking of the one she sought.

He looked at her, face set like a solemn festival-day mask, and she suddenly felt the lack of her years. The true ragged state of her armor, rust-red leather tattered and cobbled to make her one of the Free. Her hair was in neither topknot nor braid nor Earth-kingdom crown- merely tied back in a brush-bushy tail, wild as brambles and black as oak.

Still, she would not be intimidated.

“Do you know who I am?” she challenged.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked in turn, and she steels herself.

“The Firelord- at last. Do you know how many years I’ve been waiting to finally come face to face with you?” She coiled as if to spring, and the firewall behind him flared.

In the burning, blinking after-glare, she heard him speak, straining through her aching eyes at the sudden lack of heat and light, and his voice was low and gentle, a caressing wind on a summer night.

“I’ve been waiting to see you- since the day you were born.”

Now he moved against a gentle backlight, like a low hearth-fire, and stepped down from his high stage. The Firelord strode forward, and paused well before she could part her blades with an intimidating shing.

He spread his hands, long sleeves making the small movement into something grand.

“Happy birthday, my daughter.”

The Firelord’s Study

Zuko is, at least, no longer hyperventilating.

This may be because he’s just one step back from blind drunk, but anything would be an improvement. Iroh is pretty sure Mai doctored the tea even further from what he’d included so as to get the young Firelord to stop panicking.

“So- he’s alive. And he’s angry. And he’s- what’d you say again?”

“You heard me the first four times.” Katara is not so relaxed, which may be why she’s both about to snap and eyeing the snifter Mai’s holding onto with a white-knuckled grip. Aang, thirteen going on fourteen, has bowed out of this one- peacemaking between rival tribes aside, a custody-battle-in-potentia was not something he feels skilled enough to handle without a lot of meditation.

“What do we do?”

A lot of things flash by in the silence. They’re the same things that have been said over again in the last hour, and they all know them by now. But I’ve already- this can’t be- Jet can’t- I can’t- they’ll never, he’s no, he won’t...

The unkind things must be said, have been said. Jet is a lunatic. The Firelord’s heir, in the hands, in the belly of a young man who hates the Fire Nation with a passion to rival the very foes he despises? Unthinkable. Impossible.

Happening.

Mai is the one who finally sets down the bottle with a thunk and spreads her hands on the desk. Her face is hard and a little too mad to be blank.

“Who else knows about this?”

“Just us in the room, Aang, Sokka- and Jet and his two friends. They don’t seem like they’re in a rush to tell anyone,” Katara says, rubbing her temple. Zuko looks up blearily, torn between many masters and his own heart for something that’s just barely real.

“Then these are your options…”

Winter is coming.

There’s a child on the way.

And Zuko will neither take it away, as Jet feared, nor leave it lost. But things cannot stay as they are.

(Apologies, a few liberties with the intent, but this one’s been dyin’ to get out)

It is said, in the days after his defeat and Firelord Zuko’s ascension to the throne, that Ozai lay in a stupor of despair and could not be comforted, even were anyone to try. The man had been strong and proud, standing at last atop the whole of the world, as none had ever done before him, lord of his own fate and beholden to none lesser. And now all, all was in ashes around him.

Zuko did not have time to attend his father- he had a country to put to rights and a war to restructure into an age of peace and healing. He had found his own two feet and was not willing to be suckered into the game of ‘you bite, I snatch away’ again for love and approval.

It did come to his attention one day, that the guards had noticed their former lord putting on weight that could not be explained away by simple inactivity, nor extra meals bought with bribery for he had nothing to bargain with. Zuko didn’t want to think anything of it, but things had been entirely too quiet from those quarters and he might as well check it out now.

It wasn’t a formal visit. Late in the evening, he walked up the path to the cliffside dungeon, clad in a heavy cloak that signaled, much like stagehands’ black clothing at a play, that he was to be acknowledged but ignored. Guards made way for him and ushered him where they knew he wished to go.

The Firelord’s personal prison wasn’t as empty as he would have liked, but there was still space enough that Ozai’s cell was far away from any that might speak or conspire with him.

As Zuko and his guards approached, he could swear he heard- humming. A deep, resonant sound that idled across some tuneless air, and he would swear he could never remember, could not even imagine his father making that sort of sound ever in his life.

Oh, something was up, and he meant to find out what and snuff it out before it had a chance to spread.

The door clanged open and Firelord Zuko stepped through. There was no party of conspirators to break up, no sorcerous devilry about to whisk his father away with a flash and an evil laugh.

There was just Ozai, lounging in the corner of his cell, hair draggled without the topknot keeping it in order, humming as if he were lazing about in a sunlit field. He wore the same simple prison uniform, hands and feet bare, and did not look up or stop when his son entered the room.

Zuko paused, almost disappointed that the man could still get him worked into a paranoid frenzy without even a fraction of the power he’d thought Ozai wielded as a boy, through the sheer enigmatic mystery of fatherhood.

The fallen Phoenix King brought his nameless song to an end and glanced sidelong at his son, neither smiling nor grimacing but somehow giving the impression that behind the mask of his face he was grinning like a fox, with many teeth.

“To what do I owe this honor?”

“You’re not moping anymore. What are you up to?”

Ozai shrugged, perhaps the most informal gesture Zuko had ever seen him make, and did not uncross his arms. “I? I am doing nothing. Perhaps I have merely found peace in a simple life. The sun sets, and rises, and the world moves on.”

“You’re starting to sound like Azula. I thought you were above her sorts of games- or at least better at them.” Now the gold eyes narrowed, and the smile grew a little tighter. Ozai flicked his gaze to the guards at Zuko’s sides, and he dismissed them with a curt gesture.

The door shut, and Zuko strode forward. He glowered through the bars, watched as his father got lazily to his feet and stood an equal distance away, neither trusting the other to get within arm’s length.

“What I wonder, my son, is what could possibly bring you here? I have slain no guards, whispered no poison in anyone’s ears- you make sure I am served only by those who cannot hear or heed me. How have I aroused your suspicions- and enough to warrant a personal visit, no less?”

“That’s the thing- you haven’t. You’re too quiet- the only strange thing I’ve heard about is the guards think you’re getting fat, and spirits alone know how that could be spun into a conspiracy,” Zuko said, and watched Ozai’s reaction with guarded wariness.

The older man simply smiled. His faded burgundy prison tunic hung baggily about him, neither concealing nor revealing anything in particular but a paunch any other man of his age would have been proud of.

“On that, I suppose we must agree.”

“This was a waste of time,” the young Firelord snapped, turning on his heel. “I cannot believe, even when you’re not trying, I still let you into my head…”

He didn’t have to look to know Ozai watched him go with more amusement than he had watched him enter. His father’s humming resumed, following him out.

…

The jailers had been ordered to keep their lord apprised of any changes. There were none to report; their charge neither complained nor asked for anything, he simply- grew heavier.

Seven months after he took the throne, Zuko stormed into his father’s cell once more.

“Are you sick?” he demanded. Ozai looked up from where he had bundled his pallet up to support his lower back, and did not deign to rise.

“Why-ever do you ask, O mighty Firelord? Is my health of such concern to you?”

“It is when you look like someone who has a stone growing in their guts- what is wrong with you?! Are you so proud you wouldn’t ask- but no, of course you are-!” Ozai watched his son fume with the air of someone who knows he has won the game, and is simply allowing his opponent to bury himself up to the neck before delivering the final blow.

When Zuko wound down, the former Firelord got slowly to his feet, coming closer to the bars. Zuko stepped up, opened his mouth, about to insist that there would be an inquest and a healer and that Ozai was not to break any bones nor even insult the healer, and there would be acquiescence and he would be a good patient and-

His hand was yanked through the bars in a grip of iron, and settled against his father’s rounded belly.

Zuko’s eyes went wide, and he twisted in his father’s grip.

“You didn’t think that when I took the name Phoenix King, it was merely an empty title, did you?”

There was taut muscle stretched over the form of some great sphere under his palm, the skin tight under the slide of cloth. The senses he had as a firebender were singing up his arm, telling him this, this was terrible power and coiled potential and fragile as a kindling flame in his father’s belly, hot beneath his hand.

“What did you do?”

…

There was an inquest among the sages, the senior members who had guarded the temple destroyed at last by Roku’s vengeful spirit, and those in the palace who had aided Ozai in his mad ventures. The former Firelord had, of course, ordered the research destroyed, but from what the sages could tell him, Zuko could piece together the idea.

At the end of it, he could only curse the sun, the stars, and all those ancient emperors and kings who wished so desperately for immortality that they stole its secrets and found ways to bend their own abilities to the task.

At least he knew why Ozai had ordered such a mad scheme as burning down the Earth Kingdom when its prize jewels were already in his hands. What was a world of broken cities and bitter ashes, when you could stride it as a living god, and simply outlast the damage, sustained by such terrible sacrifice?

While his son went quietly mad trying to find a solution, to even understand what the effects of his father’s scheme would be, Ozai himself was apparently content to wait it out in his cell. The guard on him was doubled, which had no effect but to make him laugh. The sages had claimed that the ritual was incomplete, that without the conflagration of nearly the whole of the world, the Phoenix King’s plan to reincarnate himself into an eternal spirit of flame would simply fail.

And yet, the- child, or stone, or egg grew slowly, and Zuko hated to visit, hated to see that smug glint in his father’s eye or the way he caressed his abdomen.

Whether his bid for immortality was successful or not, the Phoenix King remained triumphant in his own mind.

…

Eight months after his coronation, Firelord Zuko sends discreet envoys to the university of Ba Sing Se, to the secretive outpost of the Sun Warrior civilization, even to the spirit world by way of ritual prayer and begging of his friend the Avatar.

…

Nine months after, he waits anxiously, only to find that the consensus is that Things are in motion, and that Ozai would have to simply be let go to his natural conclusion, whatever that might be. Zuko finds that his father’s smiles have slipped, and now, though he tries to hide it, worry has creased his face as he grows larger.

He wonders if that is a good thing, or a very bad one.

…

In the tenth month after he becomes so, the young Firelord is called frantically into his father’s cell, where guards and those sages he knows to be loyal have watched night and day for signs of change.

Change has come.

The once- Phoenix-King lies where his pains have tossed him, crouched low like an animal and fighting not to make noise like one. He is flushed and feverish, or perhaps it is the room that grows hot even as he himself goes pale and gasping.

He growls at the sight of his son, and even louder when Zuko orders the room cleared, only to cut off as a cramp ripples through him, vicious and hard.

“You wrought this on yourself,” his son says, voice small and flat. Ozai knows it, too late he knows it. There are things he would say, cunning words and the kind of despairing laughter that cuts both ways- but he cannot bring them forth. Only when the pain passes does he collapse on his mat, gasping after breath.

“Is this how you meant to live forever?” Zuko asks, looking down through the bars at the looming monster that has once more shown itself only to be a fool mortal man.

“I- I cannot abandon this flesh- your Avatar wrought better than he knew-!” Ozai grits out.

He is dying. They both know it. His body will tear itself apart trying to birth what it should never have carried, a too-mortal remnant of a failed attempt to gain immortality. The egg’s power that he had thought he might tap- he contains it, but without his bending he cannot touch it, nor bring it forth to free his spirit from its prison.

The next pain hits, and Ozai screams.

Zuko watches his father’s spine arc, his swollen belly straining horrifically. He reaches through the bars for the grasping hand that scrabbles at the stone, because that’s just what you do. The older man clings to him, willing to hold even to his despised son in this fatal hour.

Never in his life has Ozai asked for mercy.

Now he pleads for it.

And Zuko- being himself, and not the man his father sought to raise- grits his teeth, and gives it to him.

…

When the embers have died down at last, there is an egg in the ashes. It is warm to touch, and glows like amber around its shadowed center. The sages swarm the room and inspect it in every way short of cracking it open, seeking its spiritual significance and if it must or must not be purified with flame.

Zuko stands aside, cinders smudged on his hands, his face as he stares at the ground. He stays that way until the senior sage places the egg (it is heavy, and warm, so warm he can feel it through his clothing) in his arms, and the rest of them begin funerary rituals to lay to rest the spirit of one who dies in childbirth, to keep them from haunting.

He feels the pulse of flame below the surface, and it is neither malevolent nor shiningly holy- it is simply alive.

He wonders if he should shatter it, or place it far below in a vault, or simply hold it close and see what hatches.

I need my brain back, thankyouverymuch.

Wow. WOW. Completely different I expected and in a really frakking GOOD way.

Aafgdgjk.

But I had a place picked out for it an' everything! Oh very well... *dusts it off*

I'm so glad you liked it^^ That's one I've been *wanting* to do.

Thank you. *puts it back to it's place*

At first I was like: Oh shit, I meant Zuko preggers (very surprising, coming from me) but then I read along and I was flabbergasted. It was so bloody good!

^^ I know, and I felt a little guilty deliberately misinterpreting when I know that it's the way you generally mean things, but this is what stuck in my head.

Don't feel guilty, you have no need for that.

*nod* Anyway- I'm really glad you enjoyed it^^

(I know, ancient thread necromancy, but sometimes it takes me forever to just decide 'it's finished enough'. If you see it, I hope you enjoy)

Jet’s been having a surreal year so far.

First the Avatar drops right out of the sky and mucks up a plan that had been his most cherished obsession for months- and in the ensuing mayhem, he decides it’s time for a change. Maybe it’s not the change sweet Katara was expecting, or even hoping for, but something had to. That’s what divests him of the gang and brings him to Ba Sing Se, where he thinks he finds a kindred spirit.

He’s wrong, so terribly wrong, and the lover and the lie get him stuck down in a hole where his soul is picked apart and scraped for useful leavings. He’s dangled like a puppet, bait on a string for the kid that’s supposed to save the world, then just barely survives getting shattered in body as well as mind (his soul went long ago).

His friends, his most loyal comrades, manage to get him to the surface again, sweet dry earth, and they find a sawbones that bleeds him and binds him and keeps him breathing long enough to realize that something else weird is going on. Really weird.

He has a child in his belly. A firebender’s child- or he might just have Lee’s. In the aftermath of dreaming green and black, he’s not sure what was real and what was true and what really was just him being a fucking basket-case before they ever even played with his head. (It’s amazing what you learn, listening to people talking about you as they pull you apart.)

It’s too much. He goes home.

It takes a long time, and they have to steal on the way. There are Fire Nation troops everywhere, and supply trains, and retreating movements all over the place- Smellerbee and Longshot are just glad to have him back, and he just wants something, anything familiar. Striking fast and hard, moving on quickly, they make it back to the old hideout again, and it’s been half a year since they left and the fall’s just starting to creep in after green summer. They clear out the abandoned tree-houses, make it home again, and get to hunting and laying in supplies. His stomach starts to fill in, curve out. And by that point, he thinks maybe, just maybe, he’s starting to be okay again.

Only Katara and her gang show up and give him news that shatters the world all over again, until he makes up his mind that the baby is his, first and foremost. The Firelord (the Firelord!) who was his lover can go hang.

…

Winter comes to the Red Forest, and there’s nothing for it but to sneak into town and take what’s needed- they’ve only got three people, and Jet’s too heavy to hunt with knives or do a lot of wandering around in the snow setting and checking traps. The place hadn’t been completely destroyed in the flood, but it had needed a lot of work and repairs to make it livable again, and there isn’t much to scrounge in the aftermath.

There’s also apparently a warrant out for his arrest, for war crimes, banditry and generally being an annoying little fucker to the powers that be- and he’s not real fast on his feet these days, so they actually catch him. He notes that there’s red flags and green mingled when he’s hauled before the judge, and a woman in scholarly robes and with a sour, spectacled visage is waiting in his place.

She’s his law-speaker, apparently, and when he’s summarily ordered to the gallows after the listing of his crimes, she pleads his belly for him. The judge is not amused.

“Maybe I’m just a supremely ugly girl, ever think of that?” Jet barks, and his lawyer shushes him before he can get himself arrowed rather than hung. But there’s an exam, and a stay of sentencing, and very shortly he’s gestating in a jail-cell, waiting and- well-

Just waiting.

The little thumper that Katara told him is a baby girl shifts inside of him, sometimes quite visibly- and because it freaks out his jailers, he’s nonchalant about it, just resting and waiting for something to happen. The place is badly constructed and drafty, and he starts coughing after about a week.

He’s pissed at himself and the world and at his high-and-mighty-Highness-Firelord-‘Lee’. He’d stood ready to die for sake of the world being free of the Fire Nation and the sake of making them hurt like they’d hurt him- and now he’s going to die for it and leave a little half-breed girl to their mercies, to be raised among sympathizers and traitors if she ever gets to grow up at all.

He’s going to die, and that lying fucker is going to let him.

It isn’t something he wants to admit caring about. How he could ever have been that much of a fool, to doubt even for a second that anything from a firebender’s hand could do aught but burn him?

Jet curls up on his bench, too tired to chip at mortar or try and charm guards that are afraid of him like he’s contagious (who knows, with the coughing he might be). Smellerbee and Longshot took him at his word when he sent them away this time- he has no doubt they’re working on something, but they haven’t wasted their chances on visits. And if he doesn’t dream of the little light or the burning village, or the million other things no one should ever see, there should be no disturbances to a long night’s shivering.

…

He wakes to the clink of keys and a dark figure in a blue mask leering from the doorway. The guy’s head is bowed over his task, and Jet bites back a grunt as he gets up. He’s stiff and aching, some of it from cold, some from the weight of his gut.

Blue-Mask looks up and lays a gloved finger atop his carved lips; Jet crosses his arms, as much to keep out the chill as to emphasize his glower.

The man at the bars fiddles with the keys a little more, and with a faint click the door eases open. No squeal- must’ve been oiled before he’d woken up. Blue-Mask gives him a necessarily blank look and eases in, glancing behind before he reaches back into the rucksack he’s wearing and comes up with-

Well, what do you know? Someone’s thought things out- there’s boots to guard against the snow he knows is laying thick on the ground. Overlarge tunic to layer over his prison-issued one, a cloak as well. And behind his back-

Jet reaches out for the shang gou, and if they aren’t the pair they took off him on arrest then they’re damn well good enough for now. Only Blue-Mask straight-arms him, square in the tenderest part of his chest, and gestures him both to hush and to wait at his hiss- and Jet wants to suckerpunch him and take them anyway, but he’s fat with child and awaiting execution and he wants out more than he wants his weapons.

Mostly.

He hurries into the clothes he’s been provided and watches as Blue-Mask moves to the hard bench where he’d been sleeping, lithe muscle moving expertly under black cloth. He takes another thing from his pack- a scroll of parchment that looks like it cost more than anything Jet’s ever owned, seals in red and gold and black dangling from the edge, and fancy-carved end-caps that shout High! Class! Fire Nation!

This is set carefully in place in the middle of his bunk, and Jet feels his fists clench. Blue Mask turns around and looks at him, and he forces them to relax, to pull the cloak close around him and follow when his rescuer indicates the door with a jerk of his head and ghosts away.

Jet follows at his quickest waddle, and they pad swiftly through the halls, evading the jailers and the guards on the rounds and waking anyone else- it’s not a fortress, and soon enough they’re out and not a drop of blood spilled nor alarm raised.

It’s just as cold out as he thought, and as they make their way through alleys and shadowed paths, snow starts to fall. It’s not a blizzard- yet- but before morning, hell, before an hour’s gone past, their tracks are going to be gone.

Someone really thought this through. He’s not sure he trusts the intent behind it, but he can admire the mind that came up with the scheme.

A lot of luck and a lot more breathless struggling sees them over the town wall- a rope over each side could be missed where a ladder wouldn’t, and Jet tries to appreciate the subtlety, but needing a boost to get his ass over is doing nothing to improve his mood. Still- they’re down, and from there it’s a straight shot into the woods and he knows where to go from there.

Blue-Mask doesn’t take off. In fact, once they’re well into the tree-line, he stops and perforce Jet stops as well, a black-gloved hand grasping his wrist.

Now that there are no guards around to tempt him into confrontation, the silent man offers up the shang gou, and Jet grasps them for a moment, grinning in satisfaction to feel them in his hands again. But the snow is falling, thick if not fast, and he’s cold. The hookswords go onto his belt, and he follows the shadowy figure as they wade deeper into the night.

It’s not easy going. The groundcover’s nearly knee-high and rising with the snowfall, and Jet is losing feeling in his hands, his feet, his face. Blue-Mask holds on to his arm, and guides him as he clutches the cloak tight. The wind’s picking up, and his teeth chatter as he tries to keep his eyes open for the Freedom Fighters and their own secret trail signs.

Soon he’s just trying to keep his eyes open at all, trying not to tumble forward into the snow. He’s losing it, and all he can hope is that this wasn’t how Blue-Mask meant to kill him.

…

He comes to somewhere between waking and oblivion, and can go no farther. Someone is rubbing his hands, his feet- he starts to shiver, and a pathetic noise escapes him as feeling returns to them and it hurts.

Lips cover his, and warmth blossoms in him like the burn of liquor, down to his very core.

Jet’s not sure if that part’s a dream or not, but he’ll take it.

He finally opens his eyes, and Blue-Mask is crouched across a campfire from him. They’re in a tent, small and snug; he smells meat and spice from the small pot on the fire and his mouth waters and the baby stretches in him, which he takes to mean that Thumper’s hungry too.

“Hey,” he tries.

Blue-Mask looks up at his croak. Jet tries to pull himself upright- his snow-soaked outer garments are gone, steaming by the fire, and he’s wrapped in blankets. The hookswords are laid out neatly in arm’s reach of him.

He’s got a cup of the soup in his hands and Blue-Mask’s back across the fire from him in the space of a dizzy blink. He thinks, there’s been easier ways to kill him and first sips, then sculls it. It’s hot. Not just warming, there’s a sizzling edge to the broth that sears the tongue and clears the sinuses, and he coughs after.

It grows, and try as he might to clamp down it rattles in him until he’s doubled over, hacking and shaking and someone’s holding his shoulders like they’re trying to keep him from shaking himself to death, or addling the egg he’s carrying.

Finally the spasm eases, and then stops. The hands withdraw from his shoulders, and he opens his eyes to see Blue-Mask back in place across the tent from him.

“Wow,” he rasps dizzily, and suddenly there’s a mug of half-melted snow at hand- though he actually saw the guy move this time. He’s on the verge of laughing, but that’ll just set it off again, so he gives his most charming after-battle grin and knows he looks crazy. “You sure know how to bring a guy back to life, stranger.”

Blue-Mask doesn’t say anything, just sits back and does his best impersonation of a statue, and a good long while passes in silence during which Jet tries to put his brain back together.

Thumper does one of those ‘let’s-see-if-we-can-make-daddy-nauseous’ somersaults in him, and he swears Blue-Mask follows the movement. Jet looks back at him over the rim of his mug and considers his rescuer through the slowly-clearing haze. He’s been saved from the gallows, but he’s in the middle of a snowstorm, separated from his friends, his resources, and he knows there’s only one thing he’s got left more valuable than his neck stretched on the gibbet.

If his weapons hadn’t been left- very carefully- within plain view, he might have tackled the guy already. This is a very cozy cage, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let himself be hauled away as a prize by anyone who knows enough to value him or his kid alive.

He plays tired and lays back down, pretending to sleep off the cold some more. Blue-Mask watches him for a while, and pulls the soup off the fire before taking a cup and stepping outside the tent.

…

They spend the next- twelve, eighteen hours that way, while the storm howls overhead. Jet rests almost as much as he pretends to, and Blue-Mask is as forthcoming with answers as ever.

It’s weird.

Jet’s trying to read the guy who’s taken his life in his hands, and is coming up with conflicting signals. There’s discipline there, and rare skill- but not professional. The guy’s got the mask between him and the world, but Jet thinks it’s because he needs it- it gives him the cold detachment a professional would already have.

The guy wants him comfortable. The food is one thing, but the nest of blankets, the care when he was coming out of the freeze, leaving him his weapons as a good-behavior bribe? And if this is a trap meant to lull him into coming quietly, wouldn’t it have been sprung and the pretense dropped by now?

He thinks he knows, and it lessens the guilt when Blue-Mask looks out the tent flap, indicates that the storm’s gone, and gets a cooking pot to the back of the head for his troubles.

Honey or vinegar- he knows bait when he tastes it.

From there Jet moves as fast as he can. He leaves Blue-Mask tied (quality rope, there), firmly but not damagingly, and rearranges the fire to burn warm but not out of control for a good while before bundling into every layer of warm clothing he can squeeze into.

He hesitates at the entrance, hefting the shoulder bag he’s filled with useful things, and starts to step out the door. Blue-Mask is breathing, warm and set up in the tent behind him- if he’s resourceful as he’s been so far, he’ll make his way back to civilization no problem. Jet needs to get moving and figure out where he is, and how far away home might be from here.

He wonders if this Firelord that Lee has become is one who takes care of things through agents, or does his own dirty-work.

The tent-flap closes again.

The mask comes away and it can’t be put back, and as he bites back a curse, he knows he can really only blame himself for looking.

…

It turns out that Blue-Mask had his base-camp actually kinda really close to where home is. And the place isn’t abandoned- the central meeting-house is closed down, but the same two personal dwellings they’d cleared together are still in working order.

Smellerbee and Longshot’s place has been lived in, recently. His- is just the way he left it, sealed and caulked for winter.

He waits for them up top.

Smellerbee’s eyes go wide when her head pops up over the edge of the platform; she drops the brace of winter turkeyducks she’s carrying and leaps for him, while Longshot retrieves her catch before it can fall to earth.

“Jet!”

“Hey, guys-oof-!”

He catches their embraces, holds them tight, and they’re all three laughing and crying all at once. They hug him, touch his face, touch his stomach, like they can’t believe he’s alive and whole. The relief, the love is real and so bright and warm after all this time.

Once the first glow dies down, though, so is the anger.

“Where’ve you guys been?” he asks, Longshot breaking off to start hanging up the catch while Smellerbee puts on water.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to get to you- you were in the middle of town, and our faces were on the wanted posters. Jet- did you make it out- yourself?” she hesitates.

“You, ah, wouldn’t happen to know a guy- blue mask, never speaks?”

The water splashes.

“He found you!”

“Yeah- yeah, he found me,” Jet says, glancing between the two of them. “You guys gonna come with me so we can thank him properly?” He acts like he doesn’t see the flash of guilt, the surprise, the fear. They were in on it- they knew.

They follow him down anyway, and come upon the tent just as Lee is stumbling out, smoldering rope bits falling away from his wrists and feet.

Jet smiles, advances, and slams the other guy down into the snow so hard that he thinks if he were still wearing the mask it would fly off. Carrying Thumper may make him clumsy, but sometimes the extra weight has advantages.

“So- you were gonna ‘make it up to me if you could,’ huh?” he snarls, only partially holding back a coughing fit, and this can’t be Lee, Lee wouldn’t stare up at him so stupid, Lee would have wrestled him off and glowered and bit.

Lee wouldn’t have let him get his hands around his neck.

“What were you gonna do, huh? Drag me back to the Fire Nation, keep me ‘til I popped, then execute me? Like those bastards back in town were planning?!”

Smellerbee’s trying to drag him back, holding on to his shoulders and sinking her grip into the layers of cloth and tearing. Jet throws her off, gets up off of Lee who’s gasping for breath, the marks of his fingers growing livid in his pretty neck.

“And you two! You knew this guy was coming for me! You let him get to me!”

“We were trying to save you! Jet, they knew our faces! We couldn’t get near you, we had to get help!” she shouts up from the snow. Now it’s Longshot holding him back from Smellerbee, arms grappling up from under his.

“So you let the Firelord come get me, the guy who got me brainwashed, who wants my kid?”

“-said I wouldn’t take her,” and Lee, Zuko’s getting up from the snow, rubbing his throat with a wince. “I won’t. I left a pardon, back at the prison. You’re s’posed to- ow,” he pauses, and he dares to look up at him with something like humor, self-deprecating as it might be, glimmering in his eyes. “You really-“

His head snaps back when Jet clocks him, and Longshot holds on tight to keep him from managing that again.

“You son of a bitch! How dare you show your face around here! You lying bastard, you fuck up everything and then waltz back here when it’s convenient?”

Zuko is getting up, grimacing- his hair’s black and messy where it spills out from under his cowl, knocked askew. He keeps his distance this time, and there’s some of the old, wary Lee again.

“I didn’t come here to hurt you, or to take the baby. I came here to try and keep you both from getting killed.”

“Oh no. You don’t get to throw me away, then decide I’m worth saving when you’ve got an army on your side and I’ve got your precious royal heir! She’s not, you hear me? She’s not Fire Nation, she’s not going to be a part of you scumbags, and I don’t want you around!”

“You don’t have to have me around. You just have to stop raiding the troops.” Fucker is standing there sounding reasonable, like that’s even an option now that he brings it up-

“Why would I do that?” Jet says, not fighting Longshot anymore but not unclenching his fists either. The archer wisely does not let him go. “The war’s over, it’s a brand new world, yeah, yeah- but even in this brand new world, I’m a wanted criminal for trying to drive off the invaders who burned down my home!”

Zuko’s staring at him, yellow eyes boring in like he’s trying to find a weak spot.

“I left an Imperial pardon back at the prison- saying you were to be forgiven your crimes and left alone, so long as you returned the favor. If you stop- if you don’t attack people anymore, then you’re safe. The baby’s safe.”

His breath is coming hard, and the crisp winter air is hitting him where it tickles with every outburst, but he’s trying to hold off another fit-

“Well, yippee! The Great and Powerful Firelord has once again reached across the seas and helped himself to whatever the hell he wants! Did you ever think I didn’t want to be forgiven? That I don’t think I committed any crime?!” He’s baiting Zuko, he knows it and he can’t stop and he doesn’t want to. The other boy won’t bite, and Jet wants to curse him back to his farthest ancestors for that calm, hurt look, wants him to go away because the cough’s rattling up inside him again and he can’t stop it…

“It’s not about you anymore.”

Longshot’s relaxing his grip and it’s a good thing, because Jet’s doubling over and coughing like there’s no tomorrow; and they’re all gathering around him even that bastard and he sweeps out an arm to try and fend him off-

Longshot and Smellerbee are holding on to him, crouched in the snow, and if he hadn’t slapped him away Lee- Zuko- would probably be on him too, holding him up until he stops shaking…

“Go-“ he gasps, stifles a cough- “-away. I don’t want you around here.”

“Jet-“ Smellerbee’s saying, gloved hands on his shoulder as he wheezes.

“No. No- I don’t care what argument you’re gonna try on me. I don’t want his help. I don’t want him here. I won’t- I’ll abide by the pardon, but I don’t want him anywhere near me, near us. Okay?” he says raggedly, tired, so tired.

…

Zuko wants to offer what hospitality he can- but Jet’s been burned too many times, by too many people, and a wounded animal often goes back to its den to lick its wounds, even against all sense. Especially against all sense, when Jet’s involved. So the mother of the Firelord’s heir does not wind down his time in the royal palace, attended and worshipped and coddled to bring about health and comfort for bearer and child. He lives on barren platforms in the trees, dependent on his two friends’ hunting skills for food and open to the dangers of the wilderness and weather.

If they ‘hunt’ little caches that spring up just out of sight of the nearly abandoned tree-village, no one’s to say. Longshot still takes down muledeer and ground-rabbits, and Zuko assumes that Jet assumes Smellerbee’s using her less-notorious face to beg or steal rice and winter vegetables from local townsfolk.

Sometimes Jet is visible on the edge of this platform or another, though mostly he doesn’t risk the travel. His belly sticks out, round and big, and his cheeks aren’t as hollow as they might be.

Zuko has to take comfort in that.

The Blue Spirit cannot haunt these woods very often- there is duty to attend to, and tradition states that if this child will not be his heir, then his attentions should lie elsewhere so long as he fulfills his monetary obligations. The new Firelord has a reputation for bending, breaking, and otherwise realigning tradition- but he has to be present to do that, and he can only borrow Appa for stealth missions so many times in a week.

Mai knows he’s torn- if she is irritated, she doesn’t show it, nor rub salt in the wounds. In all other matters she’s willing to snap and yawn, to poke holes in his political theory and make him think about just how far his constituents will let him stray. In this, she is not silent- that would be worse than her anger. But she is the one who outlined his options, even the nasty ones, even the nice ones.

He thinks she’s counting this under the ‘things Zuko tortures himself with when he really doesn’t have to, but of course he has to, because if he didn’t he wouldn’t be Zuko’ category. When he comes back to the palace and falls into bed, she touches his hair, his back.

She’s had hostages to fortune, too.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 3 of 3

Mpreg Meme

Re: Hakoda/Zuko, Feeling the Awkward Pt.4

Bonus!fic- 20 Years Later (with edits)

Edit! Bonusfic!- Informing Zuko

Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (1/however many it needs)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (2/however many it needs)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (3/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Re: Ozai/Zuko, This Shouldn't Happen (4/4)

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 1/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 2/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 3/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 4/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 5/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 7/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 8/?

Late!late!Bonus!fic- After The War 9/?