#wow this is almost sort of what i wanted

Let’s trade all our tomorrows for just one yesterday
Pairing: Jetko—Rating: T
A/N: hota wanted jetko and who am i to refuse a wish like that? so S3 jetko, because what’s better than S3 jetko (nothing)

It doesn’t feel right that Jet’s here.

Zuko doesn’t want to think that he’s unhappy he’s back, or that he’s unhappy he's alive, but it’s still weird, having him sitting across their campfire, orange flickering in the darkness of his eyes. His eyes are particularly dark, these days. Zuko even thinks his face is more hollowed than it used to be, sharper and more starved, like he’s gone from surviving week by week to day by day. He doesn’t say much, ever.

Jet’s here, he’s alive, and it’s weird.

The first day he showed up, Katara railed on him for nearly three days—asking him how he survived, how he found them, what he was doing, whether he was really different or not (Katara claimed she couldn’t trust people who told her that they changed, and Zuko figured that was fair). But slowly, like a wound closing around a foreign object, Jet slipped into their group, leaving a cold, almost diseased air between everyone. It was tense, to say the least.

Or maybe that’s just how Zuko felt.

But everyone else (Toph, especially) seemed to love Jet now, and he loved all of them back—they were always laughing, joking, getting along just fine, until Zuko stepped up, awkwardly standing outside of their circle when he decided he wanted to know what it would be like to have…friends, or something like that—and everyone got sort of quiet. That’s when the tension came back, and Jet’s eyes went from lit up to dark and quiet.

So yeah, it was just him. Or just Jet. Or the both of them.

It was hard, because Zuko was glad Jet was alive. He was. When Katara had told him he was dead, Zuko had felt something like the bottom of his stomach dropping out—maybe because selfishly, he’d blamed himself for it. It was his fault Jet got arrested. It was his fault he didn’t stop them from taking him away, when he probably could have—and Jet’s blood felt so, so heavy on his hands. But over time, Zuko had almost come to peace with him and his death—not peace in the way he never thought about it, because he did, he’d thought about it constantly, but in the way that he’d started to convince himself that it was better this way, for Jet to be dead. For him to be a part of his life he could look back on, but never revisit.

Jet’s mouth and the warm, lazy way he kissed him was better in Ba Sing Se. It made sense in Ba Sing Se.

But now, he’s alive, and all Zuko can remember are two things— one, the way he kissed him, and two, the way he looked at him when he realized what Zuko was.

Now, the look he gives him is even more poisonous, because Zuko’s had time to think. He’s had time to think about Jet and what he felt about him, he’s been able to process their strange, complicated affair—it was quick, and it was desperate, but as soon as Jet left, Zuko decided that it was more than just desperation or sexual starvation that brought them together. At least, for him, it was. He has no way of knowing what Jet thinks now, because he keeps giving him murderous looks (that he probably does deserve) and stalking away from whenever Zuko does try to talk.

Which isn’t very often, anymore.

It’s really just fucking confusing, Jet being back. Zuko doesn’t want him to be dead, still, rotting in a cavern under a lake, but he does think that it was better for both of them when Ba Sing Se was what they had.

Because now they have this, and it’s terrible.

*

Weeks pass. Jet doesn’t talk to him. Zuko tries, sometimes, but mostly he just gets curt, clipped responses. 

“It’s nice out, today.”

“Yeah.”

“The temple is…pretty cool, huh?”

“It’s big.” Jet stands up. “I hate it.”

And he always walks away.

Eventually, it gets to the point where Zuko removes himself from the group on purpose, so he can listen to Jet talk with his voice bright and full of life, the way he’s supposed to sound. He’ll sit off in the corner and stare into his rice, listening to the way Jet laughs—because Jet’s so broken and so damaged by war, it’s a small price to pay to hear his laugh. Sitting alone.

Sometimes, Toph or Katara will get up and come sit with him. He thinks Katara has an idea of what’s going on, because she’ll rub his back in circles and give him the I know, I know look she always gives Sokka when him and Suki are disagreeing on something. Zuko doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t know what to do with someone caring about him.

But Jet laughs without him, and Katara rubs his back, and Zuko wishes he could save just this one thing from being fucked up.

*

It’s three weeks since Jet’s come back now, and he still hasn’t warmed up to Zuko. It’s not fair, it's so unfair that Zuko can tell he’s starting to get mad about it—anger was always an easy path for him to turn to, and he knows Jet’s the same way, and he thinks that maybe that’s why they haven’t been able to speak to each other properly, because there’s no way it won’t end up with them shouting at each other. Zuko’s not entirely sure if he can handle that, again, but it must be better than this. There are wounds in both of them, wounds that haven’t healed properly and need to be opened again—but Jet won’t give, and Zuko won’t push, and so they’re stuck. Stuck avoiding each other, stuck glaring at each other from across rooms, stuck wishing they weren’t the people they were, that Jet was happy and Zuko was Lee, and that they could just have Ba Sing Se Back.

Zuko looks at Jet, and he knows that’s what he wants.

Sometimes, Jet catches Zuko’s eyes for more than a second, and his eyebrows crumple like he’s still breaking.

Zuko hates himself for doing that, even though it wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t.

*

Okay, so Katara definitely knows.

She comes up to Zuko, her arms behind her back, obviously twisting her own fingers around themselves, her eyes blinking at the stone floor. 

“So, I was just thinking,” she says, occasionally flicking her eyes up, the toe of her boot kicking at the ground. “…You should talk to Jet.”

“What?” Zuko just stares at her. “I’m…I’m not talking to Jet. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”

“Yeah, but,” Katara brings her arms around and folds them across her chest, chewing at her lip a bit. “It’s pretty awkward between you guys, right? I just think maybe talking to him would…make it better. You’re shutting each other out.”

“What makes you think there’s anything to shut out?” Zuko tries not to snap at her, he knows it’s not her fault. But he’s been angry for so long, and it's hard. “Maybe we just hate each other.”

Katara, to her credit, keeps her cool. “But you don’t.” She touches his arm, gives him another sympathetic look. “I know you don’t.”

She has the sense to leave it at that and not push in any further; patting him on the arm, she gives him one, sad little smile and walks away, joining Aang and Toph where they’re working on earthbending. Zuko just sighs.

Maybe he should. Maybe wounds exist only so they can be opened, maybe things only heal so they can get worse.

Zuko looks back on his life so far, and thinks that must be logical.

*

“I told you,” Jet shoulders past him, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Katara said we needed to.”

“You really think I give a shit what she thinks we should do?”

Zuko rakes a hand through his hair. This isn’t going well, not going well even in the slightest—everyone else has gone out (shopping, or something), leaving them both behind with the intention of letting them have at it. Talk, fight, fuck, whatever it was they ended up doing. In all honestly, Zuko was hoping for a combination of the first and the last, but there wasn’t anything Jet did without fighting, so it was probably going to be all three. Or none of them, if Jet continued to refuse looking at him.

It was starting to really piss him off.

“Well look,” Zuko spat, grabbing him by the upper arm and wheeling him around so he was forced to look at him, face to face, his heavy, poisonous dark eyes glaring at him from underneath thinly pressed eyebrows. “I don’t give a fuck what you think we should do either. But I spent the last damn month thinking you were fucking dead. I thought you were gone.”

Jet sneers at him. “What, did you cry over it or something?”

“You—” Zuko huffs, and shoves him back. Jet catches his balance easily, stepping back lightly on his feet, still glaring. “You owe me an explanation.”

For a second, Jet’s eyes actually widen, and an incredulous looks spreads across his face. “Me?” he laughs. “Me? I owe you an explanation?” He steps forward, shoves Zuko in the chest with the tips of his fingers. “What about you, huh? You never gave me an explanation. Out of the two of us, which is the one who fucking lied? Which is the one of us who infiltrated a city he didn’t fucking belong in, going around telling people shit about being some poor, put down upon refugee? Because it sure as hell wasn't me who did any of those things.”

He looks hurt, Jet. His face twists and he suddenly looks hurt—of course. Zuko tries to calm down, to understand. 

“Look, I know why you’re upset, but—”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. Jet snaps, and suddenly his fingernails are biting into Zuko’s shoulders and his back is slammed against a stone wall with Jet glaring at him, his grip so hard it fucking hurts. Zuko pushes back but Jet just shoves him harder, crushing his shoulderblades into the stone.

“No,” he growls, his voice suddenly so low, Zuko wouldn’t have been able to hear it if it hadn’t been an inch away from his face. “You don’t know why I’m upset. You don’t know what it feels like to be lied to like that. To trust someone who does nothing but lie to you. You—” his face crumples again, and Zuko actually thinks he might cry, if he wasn’t so angry— “You have no idea what that did to me. I’d have been happy never seeing you again in my life, but now I have to look at your damn face every day and remember what you did.”

Zuko doesn’t know if it’s worth it to defend himself, but he tries anyway. He has to. There are still pieces—broken and unrecognizable pieces but pieces nonetheless—left of what they had. It’s in the way Jet touches him, even now, how warm his hands feel. It’s the way he looks at him like he’s just a little bit scared and just a little bit vulnerable, like he doesn’t know what to say, or how to fill the spaces Zuko leaves in the air. There are pieces left of their relationship in the way that Zuko puts his hands on Jet’s arms and Jet doesn’t shove them away, just stands there and looks at him, like he’s trying to make himself believe that none of this is real, after all.

“I know,” Zuko says, keeping his voice soft. “I lied to you. I lied to you a hundred times. But only about that one thing.”

Jet starts shaking his head back and forth. “Don’t.” His voice breaks. “Don’t.”

Zuko wants to shove him back, wants to fucking knock some sense into him already, because he’s being so stupidly stubborn—but by some miracle he doesn’t, and tries to use what little reserve of patience he has left. For Jet, he can be patient for Jet. If it keeps him from looking so vulnerable and broken and wrong, he’ll do just about anything—because Jet isn’t supposed to be vulnerable. It’s not right, the way he looks like he’s about to fucking cry. 

It breaks his heart, a little, and Zuko knows that’s just the wound opening back up. 

“Stop being stupid,” Zuko tells him in the gentlest voice you can use while telling someone to stop being an idiot. “I don’t care if you hate me, or not.” A lie. “You just need to be able to deal with me being in the same room as you. Because this bullshit is driving everyone else crazy.”

Jet looks defeated.

“That so?” he says, more of a quiet musing than anything else. He looks more hollow than ever, and his grip on Zuko’s shoulders lessens, and he backs away, just a little bit. “Well. Me being stupid, of course. That’s what it was. It’s not like I can’t believe I was in love with you, or anything. That would be stupid.”

Zuko closes his eyes, drops his head. 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I know.”

Jet walks away, and Zuko doesn’t follow him.

*

For the next few days, Zuko doesn’t go anywhere near him. He doesn’t think he can. Jet’s face is just a reminder that once, he had the best thing he’d ever managed to get, and he fucked it up, just because of something he couldn’t help.

It sucks. It fucking sucks. It’s like there’s a hole in his chest and he shouldn’t care because he’s a prince and stupid Earth Kingdom orphans shouldn’t matter to him so much.

But this one does, and it’s killing him,

*

It doesn’t feel right that Jet keeps looking at him.

All throughout dinner, Jet keeps his eyes on him, carefully and steadily, almost like he’s analyzing Zuko as a target and he’s just planning all of the cruel, stealthy ways he can eliminate him. Zuko tries to not let it bother him, but everything Jet does bothers him, so it’s hopeless. Eventually he just starts glaring back, and he swears that Jet’s face gets a little softer. Maybe. Maybe he’s just hopeful.

The group talks amiably among themselves, and Jet and Zuko chime in eventually (but they never speak directly to each other), and Zuko catches Katara glancing between the two of them like she hopes something is going to happen. Maybe she’s talked to Jet, too. Zuko doesn’t think he would put it past her. Katara’s so focused on bringing them together, and not just the two of them, but everyone. Zuko thinks it’s probably a product of her struggling to keep her own family together, for so long.

It’s nice, having someone like that around.

After some time, everyone stands up and filters away, but Jet and Zuko stay. Zuko’s heart sticks in his throat, a little, because suddenly he can tell that Jet wants to talk to him, and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to process that. How he’s supposed to react to him, wanting to talk.

Because it’s Jet, he goes right into it without pretense or the awkwardness of starting conversation. “I watched you and Aang do your firebending thing earlier.”

Zuko nearly chokes on his rice. “The firebending…you mean training?”

“Obviously.” Jet puts his bowl down. “The kid’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“He might even be better than you.”

Zuko gives him a look. “What’s your point, Jet?”

Jet shrugs. “I’m just saying. If the Avatar does it, then—maybe it’s not completely fucked up, right?”

It takes him a second to realize he’s still talking about firebending. Zuko nods slowly. Maybe he has something in his ears, because it almost sounds like Jet’s coming around to him again, and that maybe he’s getting it through his thick skull that Zuko doesn’t want to burn him to death. 

“Katara talked to you, didn’t she?”

Jet snorts. “Yeah. How’d you figure?”

“There’s no way you’d say something like that without her telling you to.”

“Maybe.” Jet leans back on his hands. “Or maybe you’re just underestimating my ability to adapt.”

Zuko snorts too. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

It’s small, but it’s the first good moment they’ve had, and when Jet stands up and carries his bowl back to the kitchen, Zuko swears he can see something like the shadow of a smile on his face. 

Slowly, the pieces are coming back together.

*

It starts to feel right that Jet is back. Bit by bit, Jet falls back into place by his side, and it doesn’t take long for him to always be there—not necessarily doing anything, just being there, whether they’re eating or Zuko is training Aang or whether he’s helping Toph get something off one of the high shelves. Jet’s presence is such a warm, familiar thing that Zuko doesn’t waste time trying to figure out why he’s warming up to him.

“Zuko,” Jet says, walking in step with him as they walk through the temple together. 

“What?”

“Nothing.” Jet puts his hands behind his back. “I was just saying it out loud. Your name.” His eyes flick over to his. “I haven’t said it out loud much.”

“Oh.” Zuko doesn’t know what to say about that.

“It’s nice, I guess.” Jet shrugs. “Fits you better than that fake name did.”

“Uncle came up with it,” Zuko mutters. “Not me.”

“I knew it was a fake name, the minute you told me what it was. Everyone’s name is Lee, Zuko. You can tell when someone’s a real Lee, and when they’re just saying they are because that’s what everyone else is.”

“What about you?” Zuko half scowls at him. “Jet’s not your real name, either.”

“No,” Jet muses. “No, it’s not.”

Zuko doesn’t ask him what it really is—he doesn’t think he’ll get a straight answer anyway. There’s something in him that doesn’t want Jet to be anything other than what he already is—quick, sly, angry, and just a little bit wild. He just doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would fit into the mold of a common Earth Kingdom name.

They’reboth better off without them, really. Common names.

There’s a warm touch touch on his hand, and Zuko looks down to see the tips of Jet’s fingers touching his. He pushes back the ball in his throat, and closes his hand around his, willing himself to pull Jet just that much closer, again.

*

It’s hard, watching Jet learning how to love him again.

They’ve left the temple now, and there’s the same thing replaying in his head over and over—him, falling from the top of Azula’s airship, tumbling down through the air only to catch Jet’s outstretched hands.

Any one of them would have done that for him, he knows that. But it was Jet who did, and that matters.

Jet’s touch is more tentative than it used to be, but what else can Zuko expect, really. Both of them are hidden away in Zuko’s tent, and Jet sits on the ground in front of him, his arms hooked lazily around his neck, kissing him like he always used to—his mouth is just as warm and soft as Zuko remembers it was, and he tastes exactly the same—a little bit like grass, a little bit like earth. 

“I missed you,” Jet says, mumbling quietly into his mouth. “I really did.”

“Yeah,” Zuko says back, putting his hands on Jet’s hips so he can pull him into his lap a little better. Jet lets him, wraps his legs loosely around his waist. “Me too.”

Jet slides his hands into Zuko’s hair and kisses him a little harder, pulls a little more aggressively at his mouth, dragging the tip of his tongue along his lips and across the edge of his teeth—Jet’s always been a little raw with the way he kissed, and Zuko loves that—how messy and good everything always was. That’s just how it was with Jet. Messy, but good. 

Even so, this is all they can do, so far—they’ll kiss, for a while, and then Jet will drop his head onto Zuko’s shoulder and go quiet, and Zuko will know he’s trying to deal with everything, all over again. It’s hard, knowing how much he’s struggling with it. Being in love with him (which he says he is, he says it every chance he gets, like he’s reminding himself that it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing he loves a firebender).

When Jet pulls away this time, though, there’s something distant on his face. It sends an unpleasant feeling down into his stomach, but Zuko lets him crawl off his lap and sit back down, just about a foot away from him. He drops his head, Jet, and twists his hands in his hair.

“Sorry,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’m…I'm trying.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything, for a while. It’s alarming, seeing Jet so vulnerable like he gets sometimes, but it’s better than him being angry. It’s honest, at least. Zuko reaches forward and takes his hand, and Jet winds his fingers through his. Carefully.

“It’s okay,” he says, his voice just as quiet. “It’s okay.”

“I love you,” Jet mumbles brokenly into his knees.

Zuko looks at him, and gives him a small, sad smile he can’t see.

“Not yet,” he tells him, squeezing his hand. “But you will, someday.”