weirdlet

The AU: Sun Child, in which Princess Zura was pregnant when she was banished from the Fire Nation. Now she roams the world with a child in tow, seeking the Avatar as the key to redemption- for her, and her daughter...

The Prompt/Summary: Ooh yeah, life goes on- long after the thrill of living is gone... at least from Zura's point of view. Meanwhile, life is about to get very interesting for those who can't leave well enough alone...

(I'm back- I decided to start posting bits again, I just hope you'll bear with me as they're mostly bits and pieces more in keeping with the earlier meme-responses, without entirely gelling into full chapters)

The Fic-

The weeks go by, and Ba Sing Se swallows them up like an ocean. They are nothing here, and no one. There has only ever been the daily flurry of tea-making and serving platters, of ambling the markets and coming home to a tiny apartment with thin walls and crisscrossing lines of laundry for a view.

This city is a prison.

But a prison, Zura reflects, where no one is trying to kill her, and where her daughter eats every day and giggles rather than whimpers, is a seductive one indeed. She does her job, and damns the world with every clattering teacup.

Uncle is painfully cheerful, and she loves him- but once again, his calling and her duties are not lining up.

The really annoying part?

In as big a city as Ba Sing Se, the world is still divided into little quarters, spheres of we-all-use-this-baker, that-bathhouse, we-answer-to-these-guards and those-gossips. Meaning that as long as you live within a neighborhood, some people are just hard to avoid. Walking around the marketplace- working in a teashop- even waiting on the landing outside one’s apartment, the street is wide and open and Certain Persons will show up there.

Zura’s not certain if there’s a different standard of courtship for peasant girls, or if she’s just paranoid.

At least she has her routine to amuse her.

…

“Hey, Li- want to go see if we can’t find some fun?”

Get out unless you can pay for tea.”

“Hey, Li- Jin’s traded off with Smellerbee and there’s a really awful sword-juggler on the corner of Sixth and Monkeyfeather Lane- you wanna go see the show?”

“Away with you, vagabond!”

"Hey Li- the stars have fallen down and I’m wearing antlers.”

"GET OUT AND- wait, what?”

"Just checking.”

…

After the first three times, someone jokingly put out a hat and a guard actually wrote them both tickets for unlicensed street theater. It cost her a day’s wages and she doesn’t know how Jet paid his off, but at least since then the so-called Freedom Fighter has toned things down a bit.

This is very good for him, because she might be inclined to turn up the force with which she ejects him if he hadn’t. She needs those tips.

Her friend Jin- for she can’t call her anything less anymore- happily babysits for her most days of the week, but is talking about finding someone to trade off days with, because she’s still got other work to do for her own household. For today they’re okay, though- and Zura kisses Lan Min goodbye in her play-pen before thanking her friend once more and taking off for Pao’s shop.

There are shadows three in her wake, peeking around the corner.

…

After the Thing with the Tea Shop that was never to be spoken of again (no matter how many times it was repeated), Jet figured that taking some time to establish himself and his gang properly in the city would not go amiss. While he never let the actual truth of circumstances stop him when he was on a roll, having a position of substance to fall back on never hurt anyone.

There was just one problem with this.

It would seem that living in the woods had not prepared Jet at all for the modern civilized job-market.

Smellerbee had said at the outset that they would have to get jobs once they got out in the world, and the basic principal had seemed sound enough- service for others, pay for you, coin to trade for what you need. Not exactly Freedom Fighting- but Ba Sing Se was supposed to be a place where you were already free, and they had to survive there before they could help keep it that way.

Only everywhere he went, he got turned down, and to a very similar litany of whys. He had no experience in their line of work; he wasn’t a match for their style; he’d better be off before they had him arrested as a vagabond. He was too scrawny for the hard work and too dangerous for the soft. He couldn’t read the characters on the menus, and the army didn’t even have a recruiting board that he could find.

It was, Jet mused, as if the people of Ba Sing Se had no recognition for talent when they saw it.

Still- it wasn’t in him to give up. The idea simply didn’t cross paths with him. And thus, when he saw the same men in the harder streets of the lower ring, always furtive, always brazen, making their rounds just like the guards did, he began to get the glimmerings of a plan.

…

The knock sounded, and Jin opened the door.

“Hi, Jet.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Two minutes after Li leaves. You’re not as subtle as you think you are,” she said with a smile, folding her arms. “So, what’s it this time? We’ve already established that your boyish charm goes over like a lead balloon…”

“Actually,” the country-boy said, grinning sheepishly. “I was looking for more- practical advice. I was wondering what you could tell me about the guys who hang out around the Black Shirshu… -whoa!”

He stumbled in following the grip on his collar; Smellerbee and Longshot followed close behind and the door shut behind them.

“What,” Jin panted, “would make you think I know anything about them?”

Jin was not an unkind person. She would warn someone if they were holding a live firework or about to step into an uncovered sewer, as well as to not buy from Old Man Bu’s meat-pie stall in the middle of the week. And so she spent the next half an hour, right there in her parents’ kitchen, informing the Freedom Fighters why getting involved with the fellows who hung out around the Black Shirshu was a very bad idea.

“They’re the people you go to if you have a problem that you can’t take to the guards. Not that there’s not some things you can’t take to them, either- some things- you just don’t do or say,” she hastened to warn. “But for new immigrants, ones who don’t know the ropes- they can be the people to talk to, first.”

"Okay…” Jet drawled, working his trademark straw around in the corner of his mouth. “They- take care of problems? What kind of problems?”

“Oh, all sorts of problems. You hungry? They’ll feed you. You need work? They’ll find you something- loan you a little to tide you over, too. Justice hasn’t been done to your satisfaction? They can do it for you- up to a point. And they do it neat and clean, because that’s the only way they’re allowed to work.”

“Who lets them work?” Smellerbee interjected, as Longshot was pegged with a stuffed platypus-bear and turned his attentions to Lin in her pen. The two-year-old grinned up at the gangling archer, and he set his hands on his hips to face her down.

“No, don’t give her attention, that just encourages it- the guards. The guards, and the people who watch the guards,” Jin replied, plucking the abandoned toy off the floor. “The Black Shirshu gang- and the people like them, in other places- they take care of the sticky things that the higher-ups don’t want to hear, make people feel like they’ve got a court of last resort. And if they don’t take your case, you’re prettymuch done.”

That straw of grass flipped from one side to the other in a contemplative roll.

“Explain to me how helping people who won’t get help from the authorities they have to obey is a bad thing?” Jet said at last.

“Because you have to obey them, too.” Jin got up from the table, set the toy bear back in the pen with her friend’s daughter. “Having no money? Is different than owing money- especially to the gentlemen at the tavern. And if you get a favor- you owe them. If not in money, in favors, if not in favors, in letting them get involved in your work and helping them do their business, just a little at a time. And if you don’t make good…”

Longshot glanced over his shoulder, and Smellerbee had the pinched look around her face that said she’d probably guessed.

“-they take it out of peoples’ hides?” their leader filled in, eyebrows arched to the ceiling.

“Got it in one. And you can’t do anything about it, because you’re in with them, and you can’t take it to the guards,” Jin said with an air of finality. “You’re not a Good Citizen anymore. Spirits alone help you if you’re actually one of them and mess up, because then you’ve got nowhere to run and no mercy coming. They serve a purpose, when everything’s going smoothly, but when the chips are down- things can get very bad, very fast.”

“How do you know so much about this?”

Jin looked at Jet, at his two friends, at the toddler who was getting ready to demand attention from them by any means necessary. The sparkle that was ever-present in those firefly-eyes was gone, and she picked Lin up before she could start fussing, bouncing her on one hip.

“Once upon a time, I had a brother.”

…

Well.

…

“You got the information?”

The alley’s dark but not chill this time of the morning, and Smellerbee’s perched on a crate, Longshot keeping his archer’s eyes on the surrounding rooftops.

“It checks out- the local ‘grandfather’ is Big Yan in the butcher shop. He’s an important man in the neighborhood, but not real openly rich. Donates to charities. People talk about him like he’s good to know, but bad to owe.”

“Hn- that sounds like our man. Now if we could just arrange a meeting…”

“Jet- we’re supposed to be changing our ways. No more vigilante justice, remember?”

“Relax, ‘Bee, I’m not gonna start busting up shipments or laying out traps for thugs. But- doesn’t it seem like we ought to check out these guys who’re supposed to be watching out for us refugees? See if they’re actually doing it, or if they’re just preying on the weak and helpless in their most desperate times of need? ‘Cause I gotta tell you- that sort of traitor thieving,” and Jet’s voice is dangerous. “-would piss me off."

Smellerbee looks at Longshot, who flicks dark eyes slowly at Jet, then nods once.

She thinks of being hungry, of being desperate, and what would have happened if Jet’s offer had been false when she took it (he breaks you down and builds you up but he doesn’t farm you for a little extra meat).

Smellerbee finally nods, and resigns herself to being a Freedom Fighter a little longer.

At least he’s got something else to think about besides that girl.