Fight & Mourn
The war had ended four years ago, and some pockets of Fire Nation soldiers still hadn't gotten the point. Jet and Azula had been travelling together for the past year hunting the ones that wouldn't give it up, and driving them out of wherever they'd holed up, freeing the towns that they continued to harass.
The latest battle had been particularly difficult. There were twenty soldiers, and well trained ones, too. And, it seemed, every last one of them was a firebender. Azula and Jet were a flawless team by then, though. They covered each others' backs and flowed around each others' movements, working together and taking out many of the men simply because they were uncoordinated bullies.
Then two of them worked together to lob a massive fireball at Jet. Since he'd been so adept at dodging and weaving through smaller bursts of flame, the idea was to simply incinerate him in one go. For a moment, he was completely frozen as he watched the fireball come towards him, petrified with fear.
Then Azula was in front of him. Was she taking the shot for him? Fuck, no, he couldn't let her! The woman he loved was not about to die just to save his sorry ass because he'd frozen! But...Azula was fine. The fireball parted around her hand, redirected to the ground on either side. Jet was frozen once again. So this was why he'd never seen her bend. He'd identified her as a bender the very first day they met, but he'd always thought she was an earthbender...
How could he have been so stupid! Those golden eyes, the harsh z sound in her name, it was all right there, plain as day and he'd never seen it. He had the fight to worry about for the moment, and he got back to work beating the soldiers down. With Azula bending freely now, it didn't take much to send them running. She wasn't just a firebender, but a freakishly powerful one it seemed.
After it was all over, she looked to Jet with worried eyes. "I...I should have told you," she admitted awkwardly, not sure what to say to him.
"No fucking shit you should have!" he roared, taking a shot at her with the sword still in his hand.
Azula blocked it with her arm, wincing as the metal struck her flesh. "I wasn't lying about anything else, Jet... I grew up in the Earth Kingdom, I hate the Fire Nation, I believe in our work..."
"Shut UP!" he screamed, striking her again, This time she didn't block in time, and the hook caught the flesh of her throat, tearing through easily. He hadn't meant to do that, hadn't meant to do more than hit her with the blunt end. His eyes widened and he fell to his knees beside her, assessing the damage. It wasn't so bad she couldn't speak, had missed her vocal chords and trachea, but it had ripped out enough that she'd bleed out shortly. There was nothing he could do but cradle her in his arms. "Az," he whispered, eyes wide in horror at what he'd done. "Az...I didn't mean... It was an accident," he promised, voice shaking as he held her, her crimson blood spilling across his arms, painting her green clothes red, red like the Fire Nation.
"Jet," she whispered with the last of her fading strength, her voice shaking as she tried to make it obey her despite the pain coursing through her. "I know. And I love you. Always," she whispered, eyes remaining open as the life drained from them. Her body had always felt so warm, but now it was going cold, and all Jet could do was kneel beside her and cry.
The town's elders offered to give her a funeral as their thanks for rescuing the town. While they were preparing her body, one last detail came out. The birthmark on her thigh, he'd often wondered about the odd shape. It looked like a dragon, but he'd passed it off as his imagination. The old woman that had been washing Azula for burial took him aside to explain. It was a mark that only members of the Fire Nation Imperial Family bore, indeed it was a dragon mark, a leftover from an age when the Imperial Family had been blessed by the dragons rather than the heartless hunters of them.
The girl he'd fallen for, he'd loved with all his heart, wasn't just a firebender, but none other than the full blooded sister of the newly crowned Fire Lord. She'd been at the Avatar's right hand when he'd defeated the Fire Nation. She was one of the people he owed the world's new peace time to.
As much as he hated doing it, he wrote a letter to the Fire Lord, tersely informing him of his sister's death. He wrote a letter to the Avatar as well, and he supposed that from there, word would reach the rest of Azula's former allies and friends. They all arrived within a week, thanks to the Avatar's flying bison. Jet wasn't inclined to actually speak to any of them, but Zuko eventually cornered him.
"What happened to my sister?" he demanded, grief clear on his face.
"We had a fight," he answered, knowing full well that he was about to be in a lot of trouble. He felt he deserved it. The longer she'd been gone, the more he realised he'd loved her. At this point, he half wanted to simply follow her, from the shame of what he'd done. "We had a fight and I killed her. It was an accident, but that doesn't matter."
The old woman that had first told him about Azula's true identity stepped forward before Zuko could react. "He blames himself for her death, he means. There was a fight with a band of Fire Nation soldiers. She was injured, and he couldn't save her in time. He's grieving. They were lovers," she insisted firmly, dispelling Zuko's anger at the other man.
"Is that what happened?" Zuko asked, a bit dazed to hear that there were still soldiers that were more interested in keeping up the war than coming home.
"No, we--"
"It is," confirmed one of the men of the village. "We all saw it. Down to the way he held her body and howled after he'd run them all out." Nearly every head in the village nodded along in agreement.
Zuko nodded stiffly, hanging his head and letting the tears fall for several long minutes. "I'm going to put out an edict...any Fire Nation soldiers remaining in the Earth Kingdom that do not return to the Fire Nation immediately are to be killed on sight. Any soldiers that have remained these four years that do come home will face ten years hard labour and twenty years imprisonment. And when I find the ones involved in this... I'll kill them myself," he snarled, looking to Jet with his tear-filled eyes.
"I know...my sister was never fond of her homeland or her title. I can't imagine you would be either. But if there's anything I can do--"
"Just get out. After she's buried, you take your feet, off this earth, you get out of the Earth Kingdom, and you don't come back," he snarled, turning his back and storming off. Jet went back to that town every year after that, always returning to her grave to tend to it, to spend a few days whispering to the earth about what he'd accomplished that year or what news he felt she might find interesting. When he became an old man, too old for his nomadic lifestyle, that was the town he settled in. And when he died, they buried him next to her.