Chapter 1: Questionable Recruitment Practices
Chapter Text
The teenage boy groaned awake. The sun was sending iron spikes through his head, so he squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with a hand. There was something wrong with his face, bumps and ridges where there shouldn't be any.
"Are you okay?" The voice was high pitched and too loud. He blinked his eyes open, careful to shade them this time.
"'m fine," he muttered automatically. Everything jerked and he bit back a curse. His stomach, he was quite sure, wasn't where it was supposed to be; it was leaping up into his throat and then dropping somewhere under the--wagon?
"Can you sit up?" At least the voice was quieter this time.
Whether or not he could sit up was irrelevant. He wasn't going to, not until the world stopped lurching around him. A small hand rested on his forehead, blissfully cool, and he sighed as the headache receded from right behind his eyes. That is, until something jabbed right into the back of his skull. "Dung!"
"Sorry, sorry. That bump looks really bad."
"Then why did you poke it?" he snarled.
The wagon jerked to a stop, and that was it. He lunged past the other person--some little kid he didn't recognize--to vomit over the side of the cart. Nothing came up but a bit of bile.
"You've been throwing up for ages," the kid said.
Head injuries and vomiting, he knew something about that, but it flitted out of reach when he tried to concentrate.
"Well?" That was the wagon driver. The man pointed to a small tent in a field of much larger tents and structures made of stone and earth. "That's the recruiting station."
"Recruiting?" the teenager wondered aloud, but he slid off the back of the wagon. He kept his feet, even though the ground wouldn't stop rocking. He'd dealt with worse than this when… he couldn't think of a specific time, but he was sure he had. He set off towards the tent.
The little kid clung to his hand. There were clean tracks down his dirt-covered face, and his eyes were red. He wanted to say something comforting, but what were you supposed to say? He squeezed the kid's hand, and the kid seemed to take strength from that, straightening up and wiping his nose on his sleeve, adding fresh snot to the innumerable stains.
The teenager ducked through the doorflap into the tent. A thin man dressed in green and brown robes of middling quality was bent over a ledger and didn't look up when they came in. "Name?"
The kid handed the thin man a piece of crumpled paper. "Lee, 16, mother's occupation: farmer, father's occupation: farmer," he read slowly, using his brush to write in the ledger. "Is that accurate?" After a pause, the man looked up for the first time. "Wait. You're sixteen?"
The kid half-hid behind the teenager, but after a moment he nodded.
"Right. Sure." The thin man shook his head, turned to look at the teenager and winced. The man was staring at the side of his face, the one with the weird ridges.
"What's your name?"
"Um." Huh. He wasn't entirely sure. That seemed wrong somehow, but he couldn't think through his headache.
"Do you have your enlistment form or not?" He blinked at the thin man. The kid pushed across another piece of paper. "Li."
The teenager looked at the kid. The kid was looking back up at him.
"Li," the thin man repeated, "That is your name, isn't it? Or do you pronounce the characters differently?" He held up the paper.
The teenager stared at the paper in front of him. The brush strokes were messy, but he could read the name, and it could be pronounced Li. "Uh, yeah?" He scanned down the page. The birth year was specified as the second year of Kuei's reign, which meant… he wasn't sure what that meant.
The thin man pulled the paper back, impatient. "Sixteen years old, mother's occupation…" The man hesitated for a moment, then continued, "prostitute. Father's occupation: unknown." The thin man looked at him again, this time directly in the eyes. "I see. Is this form accurate?"
The teenager said, "I don't know." The thin man glared. "I really don't know, okay, if you'd just let me see the paper again… Li? That's my name?"
The thin man stared at him, then at the kid, then back to him. "Right. I think it's time to consult the captain."
-----
Captain Wu was having a good day. The supplies that had arrived this morning meant they once again had chicken-pig eggs; General Fong's idiotic marching orders had been countermanded by General How; and he'd assigned that bureaucrat that was clearly only in camp to spy for the Dai Li to the recruitment tent.
Unfortunately, the man hadn't stayed there. "Secretary Chung-Hee, I assigned you--"
"Certainly, sir, but there are some… irregularities with the new recruits," the thin man interrupted.
The captain was prepared to give him a dressing down for, say, desertion of his post and interrupting a superior officer, but the recruits followed the spy into his tent and he saw the problem.
"May I introduce you to the hundred-thirty-first's newest recruits: Lee, sixteen , and this young man who may or may not be Li; he seems uncertain." Chung-Hee handed over two enlistment forms, straightened to his not-very-impressive full height and said, "I will resume my assigned post now." He left a pause long enough to be insulting before adding, "Sir."
The child, who could not have been much older than twelve, promptly hid behind the older boy. The teenager--who might have been a short sixteen and had the worst mark of fire the captain had ever seen on a living person--scowled. Captain Wu, following some instinct passed down from his forebears who had survived raising teenagers, pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the incoming headache. "What's your name?"
The teenager looked down at the child, then back at the captain. "Li?" he guessed.
"You're not sure."
"Not… not really, no." The young man brought a hand up to his forehead as if it pained him, but became distracted by feeling the scar.
"...Are you drunk?" A few recruits had found their courage at the bottom of too many cups of rice wine, but none of them had forgotten their names or brought a child with them when enlisting.
"I'm fine," the young man said. He was slowly listing to the side like a junk taking on water.
Captain Wu stood and pushed the first form across his desk. "Is this the form you submitted?"
"I guess?" The teenager bent down to read it.
The child took advantage of the moment to touch a spot on the back of the older boy's head.
"Aaaugh, dragon's dung, will you stop that?"
Ah, it was a head wound. An extremely bad one, if the teenager literally didn't know his own name. He did remember how to curse, though, in a too-interesting way. Captain Wu picked up his lamp and came around the desk. "I need to check your pupils." The teenager's eyes were lighter than he was expecting, less muddy brown or emerald and more--
The teenager flinched away from the lamp--the lamp held up to his horribly burned face--and Captain Wu mentally kicked himself. "Right. Sorry. Can you face the tent flap?"
One of older boy's pupils was reacting normally--the one on his burned side, and it had to be a miracle that he still had that eye--but the other pupil was blown. That wasn't the only alarming thing: he had a crocolion's golden eyes.
They were the eyes of a severely concussed crocolion, and Wu wasn't sure if that was more or less threatening. " Your parents are farmers," he said, evenly.
"I guess?"
The child picked up the recruitment form for Lee and hugged it to his chest; he pushed the other towards the teen.
The teen squinted at the paper. "Ah. No, my mother was--" He scowled, defensive. "She wasn't a farmer."
The captain took the form and realized it was the other one, the one for Li. This one made much more sense. Between the gold of his eyes and his pale skin, Captain Wu would lay odds that his mother had been part Fire Nation in addition to the unknown father; the oldest profession was one of the few open to those with mixed nationality. That explained the kid's cursing, as well, if she'd tried to raise him with some connection to his heritage.
The teenager--Li, apparently--was staring after the form as if it contained all the answers in the universe. For someone who needed a refresher course on their own name, maybe it did.
"You need a healer." At least the infirmary had plenty of experience with head trauma; even the non-bender young men in this camp were determined to prove their heads were harder than rocks. "Follow the road to the right until you reach the infirmary. It's the one with the blue banners."
Li nodded and immediately clapped a hand over his mouth in an effort to avoid vomiting. It was less than reassuring. The younger child took his hand and tugged him out of the tent.
Captain Wu tried pinching the bridge of his nose again, but this was one headache he wasn't going to be able to avoid. He was going to have to open a Shu-damned investigation into the recruiting practices of whichever backwater town had sent these two. Bad enough they'd apparently bludgeoned a teenager half to death and claimed the recruitment bonus for him. Who in Oma's name thought sending a twelve-year-old to fight in the war was a good idea?
-----
Lee went to the infirmary with the older boy. It was a long, low stone building decorated with blue glowing-wave banners. The young woman in apprentice robes stared at the teenager's burn in fascination. "Sit down. I'll get Healer Sun-Hi."
They sat down on one of the cots. There were dozens of them, and Lee tried not to imagine them all filled with wounded soldiers. He gulped back tears. He hadn't been such a crybaby yesterday, but that was before his brother was captured, before his father left for enemy territory, before he'd been sent to join the army, and before he'd spent hours praying to Oma and Shu that the teenager who'd defended him wouldn't die. It had been a very long day.
A woman with gray hair pulled back into a severe bun came out of the back, drying her hands on her healer's robes. "There's nothing I can do about a burn that old," she said. "I doubt even a waterbender could help."
The older boy touched the burned side of his face and looked confused. He'd been looking confused a lot since Gow hit him with that rock, and it was all Lee's fault. He didn't even know the older boy's real name.
"Well? Stand up, and--what's wrong with you?" she asked, annoyed, when he swayed towards her.
Lee had to say something. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that those bullies couldn't come after him again, now he was in an army camp. It couldn't get worse. He hoped. "His head."
"What? Don't mumble."
"He hurt his head."
Healer Sun-Hi walked around the cot and growled something about Shu-damned earthbender exercises and rock-headed young men. She called for her apprentice Nayo to bring hot water and bandages. "How long ago did this happen?"
"...Seven hours?" Lee guessed. The fight had happened at noon, and the sun was just starting to set now.
The lines of concern on the healer's face deepened. "Did he lose consciousness?"
Nod.
"How long?"
It had felt like forever, but had probably only been "Two hours? Then he started throwing up."
Her expression became even grimmer. "Has he seemed disoriented? Did he forget where he was or seem confused over recent events?"
Nod. "Um. He doesn't remember his name."
She raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "This isn't a spirit-story. People don't just hit their heads and forget their past. I don't know what you hope to gain by lying--"
"I'm not lying!" the teenager yelled. He flinched at his own volume and continued quieter, "I forgot for a bit, but I remember now. My name is Li."
Except it wasn't, that's just what Gow had written on the form while the teenager was too unconscious to correct him.
The healer did not look amused. "If you do have a concussion, you'll need to spend the night for observation." The healer told Lee, "It's getting dark. You, runner, go home."
He wished he could. "I can't. I--I enlisted."
Sun-Hi snorted. "Sixteen is the minimum age."
Lee wanted to tell the truth and go home. Except Gow and the others were at home, and it was his fault the older boy had gotten hurt. He couldn't leave him here. "I'm sixteen."
The healer paused in scooping some sort of salve out of a jar to give him a sardonic look. "I'm sure being a soldier sounds exciting, but the war is too dangerous for a child."
Lee bit his lip and blinked quickly to hold back tears. He knew it was dangerous. Big brother Sensu had been captured by the Fire Nation. Was probably going to be killed by the Fire Nation unless Dad found him quickly. He didn't want to be here--
"What war?" the teenager asked.
-----
The healer, her apprentice and the boy turned to stare at Li. Was this about his face again? The healer had said he had an old burn--was he ugly or something?
"You don't remember the war with the Fire Nation?" the apprentice healer asked, voice high with disbelief. "The one that's been going on for a hundred years ?"
"Um…"
-----
Captain Wu accepted the tea Healer Sun-Hi offered him. He knew what to expect, so he kept a pleasant expression on his face while sipping at it. The healer brewed her tea the same way she made her herbal medicines: steeped for maximum potency.
The captain looked over at the sleeping boys. Someone had pushed their cots together.
"If his brain doesn't swell too much overnight, he'll probably survive. We'll know by morning." Healer Sun-Hi didn't sound particularly invested, but then she never did. There were healers who cared deeply for each of their patients, who fought like hell to give them another week, another day, even another hour of breath. Sun-Hi's predecessor, Healer Chele, had been one of them.
Sun-Hi was not.
"Does he really not know his name?"
Sun-Hi shrugged one shoulder. "He claims to have forgotten the war and the nations, as well. I'm not certain if he's faking. Retrograde amnesia is extremely rare, but it is possible, especially in cases like this where the patient received additional concussions before the first one could heal."
Captain Wu frowned. "He's had multiple head wounds in the last few weeks?"
"Weeks, or months. Malnutrition slows down the healing of fractures." Wu frowned. He'd noticed how refugee-thin the older boy had been. "The younger boy is much healthier, at least."
Wu would lay odds that Li had been taking the brunt of the hunger and physical abuse to spare the younger boy. The kid was probably his little brother, in spirit if not in blood.
"You can't actually believe the little one is sixteen," Sun-Hi said in a tone that suggested she'd heard stupider ten times today. The last time Wu had needed to speak to her was in the wake of Specialist Zixin using reindeer honey and ostrich-horse feathers in an extremely non-regulation manner, so he didn't doubt that she had.
"No more than I believe the older one volunteered. I've already sent someone to investigate. We'll find whoever is taking advantage of refugees; with Oma's luck, we'll even find some living relatives for them."
"In the meantime, you want them in the army?" Sun-Hi snorted. "Do we even have uniforms small enough?"
"I'm not putting them on the front lines, if that's what you mean, and it's certainly safer in the barracks than on the road. How long do you think it's been since they had food, shelter and medical care?" Captain Wu looked over at the healer's charges. Little Lee had squirmed halfway onto the other cot to hide his face in the older boy's shirt. Li was holding on to him in his sleep like someone who had lost everything else in his world.
"There's not much the best medical care can do if his brain swells too much. I'll make an assessment in the morning of how much permanent damage is done."
"I'll be by again in the morning, then," Wu said, missing Healer Chele with a dull ache like the one in his left knee on cold mornings. Sun-Hi might be an excellent battlefield medic, but that didn't make her much of a healer.
-----
Sun-Hi watched the last of the grains slip through her sand clock and considered not waking the boy. He'd looked exhausted, and they would both appreciate full night's sleep for once. It wasn't as if she would try trepanning even if his brain was swelling, no matter how curious her apprentice Nayo was; better for the boy to die in his sleep than in agony from infection after having holes cut in his skull. Still, monitoring concussions was something that had been drilled into her when she was an apprentice herself, so she rose with a sigh.
The boy was muttering in his sleep and holding himself rigid. Some sort of nightmare?
He reacted to the hand shaking his shoulder with the speed of a cobra-crane; he grabbed and yanked, dumping her on her ass. The other hand went to his belt. Things might have ended quite gruesomely for Healer Sun-Hi if there had been a knife there, but there wasn't, so the boy just blinked at his empty hand.
"You're in the Ba Sing Se army camp," she said, as monotone as she could while seething with anger--entirely directed at herself. She should have recognized the signs of night terrors before he nearly stabbed her. "It is the eighteenth year of His Majesty Kuei's reign. You're in the infirmary with a head wound. You are safe here."
She repeated the mantra again while he looked around the infirmary and down at the younger boy who was--against all odds--still asleep. His eyes held more awareness when they met hers again. "I'm sorry." His voice was as hoarse as someone suffering from smoke inhalation.
He released her, so she stood and poured some water from the pitcher next to his bed into a cup. "Drink this first."
He took a swallow and paused in surprise. "This isn't tea."
"Three gongs just struck. Did you really expect me to make you tea?"
"Uh, no. This is good. Sorry." He finished his water. Normally, she would ask about year and location, but she'd just told him that. Twice. Besides, there were bigger problems than a bit of disorientation. "Do you remember your name?"
"Li," he answered confidently.
Sun-Hi hadn't made a point of remembering it, so she assumed that was correct. More importantly, "Do you remember which side you're fighting for?"
"Earth Kingdom, fighting off the invading Fire Nation."
"Two for two. Go back to sleep; I'll be waking you up soon enough to ask those same questions again."
"Why?" He lay back, at least, and his eyelids were drooping.
"Because I'm the healer, and you're the patient. So sleep. Do you need more water?"
"'m fine, Uncle," he muttered and was asleep before Sun-Hi could ask what he'd meant by that.
-----
Li was bored. He'd been lying on this stupid cot for days, and every time he got up to do anything other than use the latrine, the old battle-ax of a healer glared at him. The little kid in the cot next to his--also named Lee, apparently, and wasn't that going to be confusing--got small and quiet whenever Li asked him questions, and all Li seemed to have were questions.
The only one who would talk to him was Nayo, the healer's apprentice, and she laughed at him. Worse, she thought it was funny to lie to the amnesiac. Li was concussed; he wasn't stupid.
The man who entered the infirmary was broad-shouldered and had black hair shot through with gray tied back in a neat queue. The laugh lines around his eyes were offset by the worried crease between his brows. He looked vaguely familiar; Li didn't think this was the first time he'd stopped by the building to talk to the healer.
Li stiffened when the man finished speaking to the healer and came right over to his cot. His bearing spoke of a lifetime of military service. "I'm Captain Wu. I'm in charge of the 35th Light Infantry Unit. Healer Sun-Hi tells me you've been sneaking out."
Li felt a small hand tighten in his shirt at the tone of disapproval and bristled. "I feel fine. There's no reason for us to be here."
"How much do you remember?"
"Enough."
"Really. Who gave you that head wound?"
The little kid hid his face. Li glared at the captain.
"Maybe that's too recent. How about, where were you born? Do you have relatives? How do you know Little Lee?" The man sighed. "You nearly died a couple of days ago."
"I'm fine now. I can work. I can fight."
The man's eyes turned evaluating. "I can't deny that you're a fighter, but you need time to recover." He was looking for something in Li, and Li wasn't sure if he found it. The captain conceded, "It doesn't have to be here. Would you prefer to bunk in the barracks?"
Li nodded, waiting for the trap. Nothing good ever came without strings.
"Come with me, then. I'll introduce you to Sergeant Bingwen. I'm sure he'll be more than happy to add you to the duty rotation."
-----
Specialist Zixen looked up from the tile game he was winning against Private Yanlin when the sergeant entered the barracks. Sergeant Bingwen was followed by a teenager who was either enlistment age--barely--or had lied on his form. Half of his face had been burned off and there was a bandage around his head. He looked more like a war casualty than a new recruit.
One of the camp's runners--the kids who lived in the town and ran errands in exchange for meals and the occasional copper coin--trailed after him. Predictably, Min perked up. The guy had five little siblings at home and actually missed them. It was baffling to Zixen. When he was five years old, he had traded his little sister for a spider-hound puppy, and he still resented that his parents had made him get her back again.
"Hey kid," Min said, "What's that behind your ear?" He reached out a hand to mime finding a coin in the kid's hair.
The kid actually squeaked and tripped over his own feet trying to get away. Zixen had never seen Min fail to win over a kid; they could usually tell he was a big sloth-bear softie. Then the war casualty got in Min's face, yelling, "Don't you touch him!"
"Woah, hey, let's take a step back," Zixen said, grabbing Min's shirt and dragging him back. (He still held his hand of tiles in the other hand; he had his priorities, and Yanlin had wagered an entire week of laundry duty.)
The new guy was younger. He was a full hand shorter than Min. He was injured and probably blind in his left eye. For all of that, Zixen wouldn't wager half a copper against him if the new guy thought he had to fight.
"Li!" Bingwen snapped. Li didn't look away from his opponent.
Min rocked back and held his hands out to the side. "I didn't mean to--I was just going to give him a copper piece. Sorry, kid, didn't mean to scare you."
The kid got up and tugged on Li's hand as if to call him to heel. "Li, stop it, I'm fine." He told Min, "It's okay. You just startled me."
Li stepped back so that his scowl could include everyone.
Min tried again, this time from a safe distance. "Hey, kid, what's your name?"
"I'm, um, Little Lee."
-----
Sergeant Bingwen was concerned. Captain Wu had given him the basics: obviously false enlistment papers, amnesia, an open investigation and a severe head wound. What was really concerning him, though, was Little Lee's acceptance of his nickname. Bingwen's kids were around the same age and hated any implication they weren't full grown adults.
"Private Min, Specialist Zixen, Private Yanlin, these are our new--" not recruits, he didn't want the child and the teenager with a thick bandage around his head to think they were actually soldiers, "--bunkmates. Please answer their questions, show them where to go, and-- Li, what in Koh's lair are you doing?"
Li was looking at a map. A tactical map of the area around Fort Shin, with markings indicating the best information on enemy positions, which he must have swiped right off of Bingwen's desk. "Give me that, it's classified." He wondered for a moment if the young man was a spy, either Fire Nation or Dai Li, but if so he was the world's worst. He wasn't even trying to hide what he was doing.
"I thought we were in the Earth Kingdom," he said, "So why are these towns marked with a flame symbol?"
"Fort Shin is in Xao province," Bingwen said, snatching back the map. Li just cocked his head. Right, amnesia. "It's a Fire Nation colony."
"The Fire Nation has colonies?"
Yanlin snorted. "Aren't you from one?"
"I--why do you think that?"
"Because you're a coal--" Yanlin stopped himself. Bingwen pinned him with a glare anyway. "You, uh, look like you have some Fire blood. Not that I have a problem with that! So, um, where are you from?"
Li shrugged.
Little Lee said, "He's having some memory problems, but Healer Sun-Hi says it'll start to come back to him. Maybe."
Zixen snorted. "What, you forget your own name too?"
"Yes," the teen said.
Zixen… didn't have a retort for that.
Sergeant Bingwen asked, "So, what do you remember?"
"My name is Li, I was born in the second year of His Majesty… um."
"Kuei," Little Lee prompted, like he was helping an actor who forgot their lines.
"The second year of His Majesty Kuei's reign, and I just enlisted in the Earth Army. This camp is three hundred kilometers south of the walled city of Ba Sing Se, in the Earth Kingdom, and we are fighting off an invasion by the Fire Nation." His confident recitation stumbled. "Which has lasted a hundred years?"
"The invasion happened afterwards, but the Fire Nation killed all the Air Nomads a hundred years ago," Little Lee explained.
"Air Nomads ?"
"Yeah, they did it to break the Avatar cycle," Yanlin put in.
"What's an Avatar?"
Sergeant Bingwen shook his head. "These days? A daydream for those who do not wish to face reality."
Yanlin bristled. "Sir, the Avatar really has returned, and he's immensely powerful. My cousin serves under General Fong, and he said the Avatar destroyed half the fort all on his own."
"Which would be more impressive if it were a Fire Nation fort, instead of one of ours. I am not going to let a child fight the war for me."
It would have been more convincing if the group didn't include Min (a private who had just turned eighteen), Li (a badly-wounded teenager who may or may not be old enough to enlist), and Little Lee (a kid who definitely wasn't). Oma's name, he felt old.
-----
Secretary Chung-Hee could be a patient man, but not under these circumstances. He'd been on a mission at the Ba Sing Se army camp (placed far enough from the actual city to avoid giving the populace any inconvenient ideas). The mission had been to liaise with military intelligence, not to go on a weeks-long tour of dust villages.
It wouldn't have taken nearly this long if not for his dear tour guide Mukai. The wagon driver couldn't remember where he had picked up the boys, had not filled out the required paperwork, and had even lost the receipt for the recruitment bonus he had given out. (The recruitment bonus Mukai absolutely should not have given out for a small child and a half-dead young man.)
Chung-Hee missed Ba Sing Se, where everyone understood the vital importance of paperwork and not pissing off the bureaucrats.
"What's this one called?" Chung Hee asked as the wagon came to a stop at a small grouping of buildings that shouldn't dare to call itself a town, but probably did based solely on the existence of a general store.
Mukai shrugged, either not knowing or not caring. Probably both.
Secretary Chung-Hee took up his papers and prepared to ask yet more dull village folk if they were missing any children. There was a gaunt, dusty woman who had just stepped out of the only store, so he headed in her direction.
She ran past Chung-Hee and bellowed, "YOU! Bring my son back, you mudsucker!"
Mukai took one look at her face and shook the reins, shouting for his Gemstock bulls to "Go, go!"
"Mukai, don't you dare--" was as far as Chung-Hee got before realizing it was too late; from this distance all he could do would be to damage the cart or maim the animals, and neither would get him back to the army camp any faster.
The woman had not reached the same conclusion and ran after the cart, screaming expletives at the fleeing driver.
Chung-Hee went into the store and purchased a cup of tea. The beverage was dreadful, but sipping it killed time until the woman returned, tears in her eyes and still cursing three generations of Mukai's family.
"Good afternoon, ma'am. I am Secretary Chung-Hee."
The woman looked him up and down, doubtless suspicious of his city accent and the fact that not a mote of dust dirtied his uniform. "What do you want?"
"I am here on behalf of the Earth Army, investigating some irregularities in recruitment. I do believe we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."
"...What does that mean?"
"It means I know where your son Lee is, ma'am."
The joy that lit her face made her look a decade younger.
-----
Day one of Li's strict bedrest started with Li going missing. When the unit dragged themselves out of bed at six gongs for breakfast and training, he wasn't in his bed. Little Lee, in the next bed, was still dead asleep.
Li wandered into the barracks two hours later, in different civilian clothing, hair wet from a shower and munching on a red-bean bun.
"You're supposed to be on bed rest," Sergeant Bingwen said. "Where were you?"
"I was looking around the camp."
"Where did you get new clothing?"
"There was a storage depot next to the quartermaster's office."
"You went to the quartermaster's office? That's on the other end of the camp."
Zixen focused on the more important question. "Where did you get the sweet bun?"
Li sealed his lips with the last of the sticky concoction.
-----
"You should take me with you, next time you go around camp," Min said. "To prevent any misunderstandings."
There was a weight to Min's words, as if he was trying to say something completely different from what he was actually saying. Li hated when people wouldn't just say what they meant. "Why?"
"It doesn't have to be me. Any of the guys or the sergeant would work too. Just until people recognize you, or you're issued your uniform. It's safer."
Li had seen an eight-year-old running errands, but apparently the amnesiac needed a special escort. "I can take care of myself," he growled.
-----
There were plenty of words for Li, running the gamut from mild slight to inflammatory.
Mixed heritage. Fire-blooded. War child. Colony brat. Coal kid. Half-breed.
Ashmaker's bastard.
Min had heard them all. Li must have as well, but thanks to his memory loss, he would get to hear them all again for the first time.
-----
"You look lost."
Li scowled. He was not lost. Just because he had head trauma didn't mean he was stupid or forgetful. His memory was fine, other than some gaps. "I don't need help."
"But it's late, and you're headed in the wrong direction," the soldier said. He smiled. He had a different style uniform than Sergeant Bingwen's unit. Li didn't recognize it.
"No, I'm not! I know where I'm going."
Second and third soldiers had approached from his bad side, trying to sneak, but he heard them and spun around to try to keep them all in view. They were all wearing the unfamiliar uniforms.
"Where you're going is with us," the spokesperson said, smile still big and friendly. "Ashmakers and their spawn belong in the Pit." His stance shifted.
Ah, Li thought as the ground liquefied beneath his feet. That must be an earthbender's uniform.
The ground was against him, so Li took to the air, leaping clear of the quicksand. Another earthbender tackled him from the side, and he should have been able to throw the man, except the body blow jostled his head. Everything dissolved into a bright spike of pain.
He clenched his jaw, brought one arm up to protect his head and jabbed an open hand into his opponent's face, breaking the nose. They slammed into the ground together.
Li managed to suck in one breath before the earth swallowed him.
-----
The second day of Li's strict bedrest ended with him going missing, but for a different reason.
-----
"You couldn't have sent me a message last night?" Sergeant Bingwen asked, hanging onto his temper by his fingernails.
"We only discovered him at the shift change. We didn't have anyone guarding the jail; there aren't supposed to be any prisoners."
"That was hours ago. Why didn't you release him?"
The guard's smile was oily. "Release a possible Fire Nation spy to wander around camp, just because he knows a few officers' names? We had to be certain he was telling the truth. You understand."
Sergeant Bingwen indulged in a brief fantasy of wringing the man's neck like a chicken-pig's. He wasn't certain what his expression did, but the other man's smile died.
"Sergeant Fe Li. What I understand that you're holding one of my charges, a sixteen-year-old boy with a brain injury who was released from the infirmary two days ago. Now, will you release him, or would you prefer to verify with Healer Sun-Hi?" He made a point of checking the sand clock. "Before you answer, you should know you'd be interrupting her tea break. I believe that last person who did that was prescribed enemas every day for a month."
The man folded like a bad hand of tiles.
-----
Well, this was familiar. Li was sitting on the same cot as last time, with Little Lee curled up next to him. Captain Wu asked, "How is he?"
Healer Sun-Hi shrugged. "Fine, aside from inhaling too much dust; he should breathe as much steam as possible in the next few hours to help him cough it up. At least his concussion isn't any worse. I have other patients, you know. I can't spend all my time patching up one sixteen-year-old." She turned back to her paperwork. Wu had started towards Li's cot when she added, "Why, just last night I had three earthbenders come in with scratches and bruises. One of them had a broken nose."
Wu forced his face into neutrality. "Interesting, that. I'll do what I can to keep this one out of your hair." He made his way over to his teenage problem. "How are you feeling?"
"Fine," Li growled, immediately undermining his point with a coughing fit.
"Can you tell me what happened?"
Li glared and kept his mouth shut. Much as he hated to admit it, Wu knew that was smart.
Besides, there wasn't a lot Li could say that the captain couldn't figure out himself. A few earthbenders had taken one look at Li and decided he didn't belong and needed to be taught a lesson. From the even coverage of dirt and the inhaled dust, they had almost certainly sunk him fully underground, a maneuver so dangerous it wasn't allowed in bender practice. Then he'd spent a long night and morning in an underground cell.
"Very well. Are you ready to go back to the barracks?" Li nodded. "Let's get you a shower and some clean clothing, then."
With some misgivings, Wu took Li to pick up a couple of uniforms. The captain hadn't wanted it to look as if Li was really in the army until the investigation was complete, but the boy needed whatever meager protection the uniform could provide. While Li took an over-long hot shower (which could be justified as following medical advice), Wu stopped by the nearest canteen for leftovers from lunch. The egg-drop soup was cold and half-congealed, but Li wolfed it down exactly like a sixteen-year-old who'd missed two meals.
Back at the barracks, Li sat iron-rod straight on his bed, refusing to lie down even though Private Yanlin was napping a few beds over. Little Lee was tucked into his side and they both kept watch like singing gophers. Little Lee was tucked into his left side--his burned side; did they even realize he was covering for the older boy's weaknesses?
Sergeant Bingwen was quietly furious with the situation. "There's nothing you can do about the attackers?"
Wu grimaced. "Nothing that wouldn't blow back on Li. He's only provisionally in the army at all, and you know how much leeway earthbenders get. Even if I pushed, the worst that their commander would agree to is a reprimand for hazing, which would paint a target on Li's back."
The sergeant growled.
"If it helps, Li broke one of their noses."
"That does help." The man held up two fingers a pinky's width apart. "A little."
-----
Min was being followed. He might not have noticed for quite a while, except that while Li was oddly talented at staying in his blind spots, Little Lee was not. "You two want to grab dinner with me?"
Li glared at his partner for getting them caught and braced himself. "You were right. Is that what you wanted to hear? Going out alone was a mistake."
Min sighed. "I wish I weren't."
"I didn't do anything!"
"Of course you didn't." Then, because Li seemed like he needed the reassurance, "You didn't do anything to deserve what happened to you. Some people are just assholes."
Min continued towards the canteen. Li walked beside him now, an odd combination of affronted pride and defensiveness. They went through Shuchong's food line. Min automatically flirted with the middle-aged woman while she served him, and she gave him an extra scoop of the possibly-chicken-pig meat and gravy. She snuck a couple of chewy candies to Little Lee. Li kept his head down, hiding his eyes. He got neither.
They ate. Little Lee soon declared himself full and passed the rest of his bowl to Li. The teenager ate his own portion and the remainder of Little Lee's down to the last grain of rice. He seemed to be trying to decide whether to give up his weirdly perfect table manners and lick the last of the gravy from the bowl.
"We can get more, you know."
Li scowled. "It wouldn't be fair to the others if I ate more than my share." It sounded like he was quoting someone.
"Did Shuchong say that? The woman who was serving us just now."
"The one who gave you extra meat? No."
"Then let's ask her. Nicely. She likes it when guys flirt with her."
Li seemed horrified. "Her? But she's old."
"She can't be older than forty."
"That is old! She's twice your age!"
"I'm not having sex with her, just flirting," Min clarified, lowering his voice in hopes that Li would do the same. "You know. Smiling at her, complimenting her."
"Why would she want that?" Li seemed to have a harder time grasping this than Little Lee, who was nodding along. Then again, kids were naturals at being cute when they wanted something.
"Just, when you hand her the bowl, give her a compliment. It's a bit of a game, I promise she isn't going to take you seriously."
Min took the lead. He wasn't particularly hungry any more, but if he didn't get in line he doubted Li would go alone. "Shuchong, my lovely blossom, your smile always brightens my day."
"Aren't you a charmer," she said, taking his bowl.
Min elbowed Li, who seemed frozen. "This is my friend Li, and he has something he wants to tell you as well."
Li straightened to his full height, pasted on a fake smile, and half-shouted, "Your thighs are very large, ma'am. You must be strong!"
Silence fell. Shuchong paused halfway to filling the bowl, dripping gravy. Min stared at Li. He'd said compliment, not… whatever in Koh's lair that had been. Had Li even met a woman before?
Shuchong threw her head back and howled with laughter, spilling half the ladle as she tried to get the laughter under control. Li looked like he was trying to decide whether it would be safer to flee or stay very still.
"Oma and Shu, I haven't heard something that awkward since my wife asked me out," Shuchong said, wiping tears from her eyes. "You are correct though, I am very strong. And you look half-starved." She ladled extra meat into his bowl, then grabbed a clean bowl from the stack and filled that one too. "Probably going through a growth spurt, am I right? Next meal, bring up two bowls from the start. Anyone gives you trouble, tell them Shuchong thinks you need fattening up." She handed Li the second bowl and a few of the candies she gave runners.
Li stared at her as if the idea of kindness was foreign to him. Min elbowed him. "Thank you!" he half-shouted. "Thank you, ma'am."
He tucked into his food as if afraid someone would take it away. When he was done, he said, "I don't understand. I didn't do anything."
"Sometimes we get things we don't earn. Some people are just kind."
Li looked at him as if Min were crazy. It looked like that was much harder to believe than people being assholes.
-----
"If you play this at the gambling place in town, the House always wins on cobra-crane eyes or spidersnake eyes," Zixen explained, "but the sergeant won't let me use that rule."
Li frowned. "So I just have to roll the dice?"
"Call high or low first, then roll."
They took turns. Little Lee had an early lucky streak. Min dipped into the red, then recovered. Yanlin, who always got too excited, kept betting all his winnings until he lost them all.
Li had an unbroken losing streak starting with the very first roll.
"Good thing we're only playing for half-copper stakes, right?" Zixen said, elbowing him.
"This game is rigged."
Zixen rolled his eyes. "Just be patient. No one can be that unlucky for long."
Li could.
Twenty minutes later, when Li was the equivalent of a full week's pay in the red, the rest stopped taking turns. They stopped making bets. It was just Li, calling "high" or "low" and rolling the opposite, over and over again.
"This is cheating!" Li yelled, jumping to his feet. "These dice aren't fair." He threw the bone dice across the barracks.
"I've seen people have better luck playing against earthbenders while using stone dice," Zixen pointed out. "You might be the unluckiest person I've ever met." Which possibly should have been obvious earlier, what with the horrible scar and amnesia.
"So, about what you owe," Zixen said, ready to write the whole debt off; the sergeant would not be pleased to hear he'd fleeced the new guy, even if he hadn't intended to do so.
"I'm not paying! I'm not even speaking to you until you admit you cheated." He stalked angrily out of the tent.
Min jumped up to follow him, except moments later the sprinkle of rain turned into a downpour so thick you could barely see through it. Li continued to stalk away, looking like a half-drowned pygmy puma kitten.
"Huh," Min said. "He really is unlucky."
Zixen went to find his dice. They'd landed on spidersnake eyes.
-----
On day three of Li's strict bedrest, Sergeant Bingwen hung out the runner flag. Within minutes, a little girl of about eight appeared in the door as if summoned. She saluted the sergeant with the wrong hand and chirped, "Where do you want your message delivered, sir?"
"Actually, I don't have a message. I have an assignment for you instead."
"An assignment? To do what?"
"Little Lee, could you come over here? I'd like you to show him how to be a runner."
The girl looked up at the older boy and pouted. "He'll slow me down."
"I will not!"
"I'm Xiao, and I'm the fastest of all! No one delivers messages faster than me."
The sergeant produced a silver coin for the girl. "For your trouble. Just let him be your shadow for two days."
She snatched the coin. "Okay, sure. Come on, let's race!"
Little Lee hesitated and looked back at Li, who gave him a little "shoo" motion. Little Lee asked the sergeant, "You'll look out for him?"
"I promise." Bingwen didn't point out that a twelve-year-old shouldn't have to look after a sixteen-year-old. Xiao shouldn't be the breadwinner of her family, either, but with her father missing and her pregnant mother on bedrest, she was.
"Come on," Xiao said, "we need to go! Around here, if you don't work, you don't eat!"
The sergeant dearly wished he were an airbender who could blow those words away from the one person who absolutely should not have heard them.
"What?" Li asked, frowning.
"That doesn't apply to you as a member of the army, Li," the sergeant said. "You're injured," the sergeant said. "Please, just take a break," the sergeant said.
At various points that day, Sergeant Bingwen found Li:
- Sweeping out other units' barracks
- Unloading supplies from wagons
- Scrubbing cookpots
- Doing laundry
- Cleaning weapons
- Mucking out the stables
He wasn't doing any of them correctly, but he seemed to think enough effort would make up for that.
Sergeant Bingwen was a realist. Bedrest was no longer an option, so he scrambled for something that resembled "light duties". At the very end of his rope and running late for patrol, he sent Li to the canteen.
Chapter 2: Things Li Does Not Know
Chapter Text
Cook Xiaobo usually undercooked the congee and burned the rice, but this was new depths. Captain Wu wasn't entirely sure whether his lunch had started out as rice, tater-chokes or literally any other type of starch, but it had become glue that stuck to his chopsticks, his teeth and, horrifyingly, the inside of his throat. He had to cough out the bite he'd just taken to avoid choking.
"Lee, right?" he asked the runner. The very young runner, and this wasn't really what he'd meant when he told Sergeant Bingwen to keep the new kids out of trouble. "What is this?"
The kid rocked from one foot to the other. "The cook wanted me to bring it to you 'specially."
Which meant he'd done something to offend the man and wouldn't get anything even slightly edible until he fixed it. He finished his report for General How and went over to the northern canteen. Which was completely filled with smoke. "Xiaobo?" he yelled.
The cook emerged from the smoke carrying a large pot in one hand and dragging a young man with the other, which was the other Li accounted for. Xiaobo threw the pot at the captain's feet like a challenge. "Sergeant Bingwen sent him to help me. He's helped me into losing three of my best pots."
"I did what you told me to!" Li yelled, gesticulating with a large stirring spoon.
The cook snatched it from him and stabbed it into the pot. It came out with a cross-section of the rice, like those colored layers of rock you could see on the walls of the Great Divide. "Uncooked!" Xiaobo said, pointing at the topmost layer. The second layer was "Glue!", and the third layer was "Charcoal! Do not come back into my kitchen until you learn how to keep a cookfire under control and use a Shu-damned sand timer." He stalked away.
Li crossed his arms and glared at the captain, looking much put-upon. "I was assigned to the canteen."
"Sir," Captain Wu corrected.
"What?"
"'I was assigned to the canteen, sir .' While you're in uniform, I am your commanding officer." At least until Secretary Chung-Hee's investigation into the recruitment practices of remote small towns was complete, and wouldn't it be a shame if that task kept him away from the camp for weeks or months.
"I was assigned to the canteen, sir, and I tried, but the cook kept yelling at me for not knowing things, and how is it my fault I don't know!"
Wu pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why don't we start you with the basics. You can make tea for me." That should be simple enough, he'd just watch the entire time.
Wu handed him the kettle from his tent. The teenager filled it with water he drew from the well. So far so good. The teenager hung the kettle on an iron trivet near the captain's tent and glared at it as if trying to bring it to a boil with his eyes.
"Do you not know how to boil water?" the captain asked.
Li shifted his glare, as if he hoped to set fire to Wu with his eyes.
"You have to start the fire first."
"I know that!"
"'I know that, sir.' Then do it."
Li ignored the spark rocks right there and continued to glare at the kettle and the cold cookfire.
Captain Wu wished Sergeant Bingwen were here to foist this off on, instead of off on patrol; he dealt with stubborn teenagers all the time. "Li, do you know what these are?"
"A rock and a piece of metal. I'm not stupid." Captain Wu opened his mouth, so the teenager added on a sulky "sir."
"They're called spark rocks." He demonstrated, and Li started at the sparks. "You try."
Li was clearly trying, but he was utterly failing at a task most eight-year-olds had mastered.
"Try scraping the flint at more of an angle." Then, a couple of seconds later, "The rock is the flint."
When Li finally got a small shower of sparks with each strike, the captain showed him how to lay out the tinder and kindling and blow on the tiny flames until there was a little cookfire under the pot.
"Now just be patient, don't feed it too much kindling all at once, and come get me when the water is boiling." Captain Wu straightened from his crouch and stretched to get out that one kink out of his spine.
"Uh-huh."
Wu decided to retreat rather than try to get any kind of respectful answer out of Li.
-----
Wu heard the fourth gong as he was wrapping up yet another report. He added his signature, closed it with his wax seal, and realized he hadn't heard from Li in the last half-hour.
Given the amount of smoke in the kitchens this morning, he really should have expected the veritable bonfire engulfing the teapot and the teenager sitting next to it, continuing to feed it more fuel.
"Li!" Wu shouted. No response. It was as if Li was completely mesmerized by the flames. With a sinking feeling, Wu stepped between the fire and Li, grabbing his shoulder to shake him out of whatever kind of trance--
Li threw himself backward with a cry of despair, hands thrown up to protect his face. To protect his horribly burned face.
Wu realized that he might have been an asshole for giving Li this assignment.
He tipped over the safety barrel and doused the flames. Whoever tried to start the next cookfire in the water-logged embers was going to be pissed, but there were more important things for him to worry about.
"Li, it's okay. The fire is out. You're fine."
The kid's words were mostly too quiet to hear, but Wu caught a quiet "please" and "no" and "I'm sorry" from behind his hands.
Touching the kid hadn't helped, so he sat down beside him instead and just kept repeating variations of "you're safe" and "no one is going to burn you". He hoped they weren't lies. If the kid stayed in the army, he'd be facing firebenders again sooner or later.
If Wu had any say in it, it would be much, much later.
-----
He was hyperventilating, he realized, but he couldn't remember why. There were tears on his cheek, a shameful weakness that he dashed away as subtly as he could. Where--
That was Captain Wu sitting next to him. Because he was in an Earth Kingdom army camp, and his name was Li, and why was the captain telling him he was safe over and over again? "What happened?" Li's voice was scratchy, like he'd been crying. Or screaming.
"Your fire got a bit out of control," the man explained. Something in Li wanted to snap back a denial, but he didn't actually remember what had happened. "I think it brought up some bad memories."
Li sat up and glared at the captain, and the watery remains of a cookfire, and a passing soldier who'd stopped to stare at them. He didn't have any memories, how could he have bad ones?
"I can't sleep through bending practice," Captain Wu said, offhand. "I know it's just some earthbenders tossing boulders around, but when those hit the ground it feels just like a flaming catapult ball does when it crashes into our front lines. That's why I always get up well before fifth gong."
Li stopped glaring, confused. It made sense; watching a fire catapult ball approaching and hearing it whistle through the air was terrifying. He just didn't know why the captain was telling him this.
"I'm going to have Sergeant Bingwen switch you to different duties. You and cooking don't go together very well."
"I can do it, I just need another chance! Sir."
"I'm sure you can, Li, but Xiaobao burns enough of our food without assistance, and I fear we would quickly run out of cookpots." He tipped his head towards the kettle, which was blackened. "We'll find something that fits you better."
Li frowned. Giving up seemed wrong, but if he found something he could do really well… "Can I start training with the rest of the unit?"
Captain Wu's eyebrows went up and he smiled. "You actually want to train? If the healers clear you, I don't see why not."
Li didn't know why the man had smiled, but he realized he was smiling back.
Chapter 3: Things Li Does Know
Notes:
MuffinLance planned to come up with a better moniker if they wrote this. Unfortunately, I wrote this, so you're stuck with 'What The Fuck' Li.
Chapter Text
Training was at six gongs, just after dawn. The soldiers always dragged in at the last possible minute and didn't fully wake until after ten or twenty earth-pushes.
Li was on the training ground twenty minutes early.
Healer Sun-Hi had been very clear about the kid, who had been malnourished and badly bruised in addition to the almost-lethal headwound. That the burn covering half his face didn't even rank in her top three concerns really said something about how badly off Li was. She had told Sergeant Bingwen that the kid could train, gently, as long as he quit when he got tired and stayed with stances and basic weapons training. No sparring of any kind, are you out of your mind, one more blow to the head would kill him.
Bingwen was not optimistic, given that Li's 'two weeks of strict bedrest' had turned into 'two weeks of light duty', had turned into 'two days of light duty and two weeks of normal duty', had turned into 'stop, Li, please, just take a Shu-damned break so we don't get tired just watching you'.
Healer Sun-Hi had been clear that Li should stop training as soon as he became tired. Sergeant Bingwen wondered if she'd ever actually met Li.
So stubbornness was not the issue. Neither was stamina, despite how skinny Li still was (though that would change if he kept going back for thirds every meal). The issue was that the kid had learned every single one of his stances wrong.
"Legs further apart!" he yelled as the unit drilled in the Gemsbok Bull stance. "Bend your knees more, Li, you need to be solid and immovable. You too, Yanlin, I see you coming up out of the stance. Lower!"
After half an hour, Li still hadn't gotten any of the stances more than halfway correct, and he was bristling like a boar-q-pine. Bingwen called for everyone to take a break and get water. Predictably, Li just kept trying to do the stances instead.
"Take the rest of the morning off," the sergeant ordered.
Li scowled. He had yet to give a 'yes, sir' that sounded anything but sullen, and he wasn't starting now.
"We're moving on to sword training, and you're not ready for that yet. You need to master the basic stances first."
"Fine," he said, and kept trying to move smoothly from the elephant mandrill stance into the gopher bear stance. "I'll just keep practicing the basics then. Sir."
Bingwen had done his best; Oma save him from rock-headed teenagers. Part of the problem might have been that Little Lee had come to watch. No one could figure out exactly what the relationship was between those two. They weren't blood related, anyone with eyes could tell that (and what parents would be stupid enough to give two kids names that sounded the same but were written with different characters), but Little Lee stuck close to Li's side whenever he could. It was fated to be a mystery, because Little Lee refused to say anything about how he ended up enlisting and the other Li couldn't remember.
Li definitely showed off for the kid, though.
The sergeant left him to his practice while the rest of the unit picked up their blunt wooden swords and started on their warmup of one hundred cuts. Bingwen left Li to his practice, and did not say anything when Li came up out of his stance again, when he stepped his feet too close again, and certainly didn't yell when he needed to go, "Lower, for Shu's sake, you aren't a bumble-fly, Li."
Li flushed and lowered his stance again.
Which is when Little Lee picked up two of the practice swords, and the sergeant was drawing a line. He was not training a small child in swordsmanship, that was just… fine, apparently, because Little Lee handed the swords over to Li.
-----
The young man they called Li--it wasn't his real name, Lee knew, but the older boy had never actually told Lee or his family what his name was, and now he couldn't--just looked at the swords and didn't take them. "The sergeant says I'm not ready yet."
"The sergeant hasn't seen you use them," Lee said. The wooden swords weren't shaped like dao, just two straight swords, but he'd picked the shortest of the ones available. "Just take them."
He did, holding them awkwardly, and tried a couple of swings.
-----
"Shouldn't I start with one, instead of two?" Li asked. He'd come to the camp with the kid, but Lee had never explained how they knew each other. For the first few days, he'd barely spoken at all or left Li's side.
"They're not two swords," the kid said, like he was repeating something someone else had said. "They're two halves of one sword."
Two halves? How would a blade with two halves even work? They would need to move together somehow, maybe like this, spinning around each other but never touching, like two halves of a whirlwind…
-----
Sergeant Bingwen was no longer paying attention to what the unit was doing, which was fortunate for the unit because they had all stopped drilling to watch Li. Who was apparently a Shu-damned master swordsman based on the way those blades were whirling through the air like the wings of a dragonfly-hummingbird. His stances--they were still wrong, too shallow with the feet too close together--but they were wrong for Earth Kingdom non-bender unarmed combat. They were clearly perfect for whatever sword school Li had learned.
"What the fuck?" Zixen asked.
Little Lee was standing back, completely unsurprised. The sergeant tried to adopt the same slightly-pleased-and-not-at-all-flummoxed expression. Mentally, he started to fill out a requisition form for two swords of high-quality steel. For the first time he thought this whole recruitment debacle might actually turn out well.
-----
"I'm just saying, how do we know which side he's really on?" Private Yanlin asked, mucking out the stable. He kept a close eye on the ostrich-horse, which looked like it was considering taking a bite out of whoever was nearest. "I mean, he says he doesn't remember anything at all. What if he really is Fire Nation, not just a coal child?"
Specialist Zixen, carrying in a bale of hay, rolled his eyes. Yanlin didn't really mean what he was saying, he just spoke without thinking, but without the sergeant around to reign him in his language could get pretty offensive. Min never spoke up, but he was shoveling like the manure had said something about his mother.
"Like, that thing with the swords. How do we know that's not a Fire Nation thing?"
"I've never seen a Fire Nation soldier with two swords," Corporal Toyozo said. As the member of the unit who had seen the most fighting, his words carried weight. That he used them so sparingly gave them even more impact.
"So maybe that isn't a Fire Nation thing, but we've all seen his eyes. What if he looks in a mirror someday and decides he's fighting for the wrong side?"
"You're a moron," Zixen pointed out. "You think that guy looks in the mirror, and the first thing he's going to notice is whether his eyes are more yellow than brown? With that face?"
Toyozo agreed, "That's not the kind of burn you get in a house fire. Li took a fire-punch to the face."
"When he wasn't much older than Little Lee, I'm thinking," Zixen said to drive the point home. "Li's not an idiot, and whether or not he remembers it, his history is right there on his skin. He can tell he's fighting for the right side."
-----
"Did you touch my Dao?" Li yelled.
Zixen yawned and rolled over. "No," he lied. He had, but only after Yanlin had picked them up in the first place to see if they could replicate Li's crazy whirlwind of death with the things. It turned out mastering the two swords was a lot harder than it looked. "Maybe it was Little Lee?" Li was soft on the kid, so it wasn't really throwing him under a charging komodo rhino.
"Little Lee would have asked first, and I would have let him, because asking first would be polite. Do not mess with them without permission!" He threw himself on his bed.
To divert his attention, Zixen asked, "When are you going to pay me what you owe?"
"I DON'T OWE YOU ANYTHING YOU CHEATER!"
Private Min poked his head into the barracks. "Hey, did I hear Li shouting in here? It's his shift for latrine duty."
Zixen said, "Yeah, he's right… huh." Li was not in his bed, sulking like the overdramatic teenager he was. He wasn't anywhere else in the barracks, either. "What the fuck? He must have passed you. How did you miss him?"
"I did not miss him." Min threw his hands up. "This is the third latrine duty in a row he's skipped. Where in Oma's name does he even go?"
Zixen was coerced into looking around the barracks (come on, he wasn't hiding in one of the chests for personal belongings, he wouldn't even fit there), then dragged off to take his place when Min accused him of covering for the teen.
From his perch in the rafters, Li smiled.
-----
"Where were you?" Min said. "I looked everywhere!"
"In the rafters."
Min looked up--and up. The barracks were tall for ventilation reasons, so the rafters were at least 30 feet off the ground. "You were up in the rafters? For three hours ??"
"Yeah."
"What the fuck?"
Li shrugged.
-----
"You must be crazy, to have come here again. At night. Alone. Not going to hide behind your coal-loving buddies?"
Li turned to face the three earthbenders he'd been hoping to lure out. He drew his swords. "I'm not hiding."
"You think a couple of swords is going to help against half a ton of rock? Clearly, we were too gentle last time. This time is going to cost you."
Li waited, perfectly balanced on the balls of his feet, for the first attack.
-----
"What the fuck. You're fucking crazy," the earthbender with the broken arm spat. "Do you know who you've pissed off?"
"Shut up," another hissed, trying to stop the bleeding from the long, shallow cut on his side. "Don't make him mad!"
The third earthbender just groaned and curled up on his side.
-----
Healer Sun-Hi only recognized her repeat offenders from seeing that broken nose again, but she remembered the context the first time, and the terrified and furious boy who had come in the next day.
Sun-Hi appreciated that the boy had provided this opportunity for Naya to practice her sutures. Sun-Hi sent her to fetch the sanitized thread and the dullest needles.
Chapter 4: Sergeant Bingwen Is Not Careful What He Wishes For
Chapter Text
Life in the Earth Army wasn't as bad as Lee thought it would be. Sure, the food wasn't nearly as good as back on the chicken-pig farm, but it was plentiful. He was doing important work here, too, looking out for Li and running messages from one end of the camp to the other. He hadn't gotten stuck on the front lines like he thought he would be; no one would even let him put on an army uniform no matter how many times he said he really was sixteen.
Still, there were days like today. He'd seen the date on one of the messages. Today was his mom's birthday, and he'd been hit with a wave of homesickness. His mom was probably all alone today, because he and Sensu and Dad had all left. Sensu had been serving his country when he had been captured, and Dad had gone to rescue him, but Lee had just been stupid and started a fight he couldn't win with Gow and the other bullies.
Which was why he had found this supply warehouse at the edge of camp, where he could just tuck himself between a stack of mattresses and the wall to cry without worrying Li or Min or the others. When he no longer felt like there was something in his chest trying to rip its way free, Lee scrubbed at his eyes and blew his nose. He couldn't let anyone see he'd been crying like a baby just because he missed his mom.
He made his way to the door, and Li was sitting there on a stack of tater-choke boxes. Legs crossed, back straight, like he was willing to wait for hours.
"Hey, Li," Lee said, and his voice didn't waver because he wouldn't let it. "Did you have a message for me to deliver?"
"You're homesick, aren't you?"
"No, I'm not." Lee couldn't prevent the slight sniffle at the end.
There was a long silence, and Lee thought that might be the end of it.
"I don't remember my home," Li said.
Lee flinched. That was all his fault, too.
"What's yours like?"
"It's… it's just some dumb chicken-pig farm where everything's always falling apart," Lee said. "It's next to a tiny town no one cares about except Gow and his--nevermind."
"Lee. Can you tell me… Why did we enlist?"
-----
Li kept his voice light and diffident. He couldn't show how much he wanted this because life never gave you what you wanted the most. So he'd been pretending it was fine, not knowing where he came from or why he was here. Maybe it was better this way; he couldn't remember his life, but he'd seen the burn on his face and the entire unit knew about his nightmares. When he tried to remember home, all he got were flashes of a beautiful woman in elegant clothes--too expensive for a farmer or fisherwoman--and a sense of loss. When he tried to remember his father, all he got was a shadow and--
Don't think about it.
Li might have left it alone, because Little Lee hated talking about his past as much as Li couldn't remember his own. Except something was hurting Little Lee, had made him cry for almost an hour, and Li didn't know how to fix it.
Little Lee looked up at him with tear-reddened eyes and admitted, "I don't know much of anything about you."
Li breathed through the pain as his hopes and fears were both dashed.
"You rode into Dusty Gulch--that's the little town I'm from--on your ostrich-horse. You saw when I threw an egg at Gow, but you didn't elephant-rat me out, even when he stole the feed you'd bought. You told him maybe the egg was from a chicken flying over," Little Lee smirked a little bit.
"Gow?"
"He's one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that is supposed to protect the town, but they're all big bullies instead. I invited you home to feed your ostrich-horse, and you helped around the farm, and after I borrowed your swords you showed me how they work, and you gave me your dagger. It was like-- it was a little bit like having Sensu back."
The kid started crying again. Li didn't know how to stop that, so he patted him on the shoulder. Little Lee took that as an invitation to cry into his lap.
"Sensu's my big brother. He's in the army—he was in the army. But Gow and-- and-- his bullies said he'd been captured, and that the Fire Nation killed their prisoners. Then Dad left to-- to try to find Sensu, and you left, and then the bullies came back. They were trying to take-- to take our food, so I tried to fight them off-- and-- and--"
Li sent a quick thanks to Oma that she'd watched over this child. If this story was going where he thought it was, Lee had angered some very dangerous men.
"They took me, said if I was old enough to fight them I was old enough to--to fight the Fire Nation. Then you came, and you fought all four of them, and you were winning . I thought-- I thought it was going to be okay, but Gow was an earthbender, and he hit you so hard." In barely a whisper he admitted, "I was afraid you were dead."
"I'm not dead," Li pointed out. "I recovered."
"You got hurt, you lost your memory, because of me, because I was stupid! And I don't even know your name , Dad didn't want me to pester you with questions."
Li patted him on the back, but Little Lee just burst into fresh tears, so he clearly didn't know how to do this comforting thing right. He tried, "It's Gow's fault he hurt me, not yours, and I'm not sorry I stood up to him. I'll never be sorry for standing up to bullies."
From Lee's story, it sounded like the Fire Nation was the biggest bully of all.
-----
"What do you mean, you want us to attack Camp Sungye?" Sergeant Bingwen asked. He'd tracked the Li down to explain that he couldn't just vanish off the earth every time he was assigned latrine duty, but he should have expected this. Conversations with Li never went the way they were supposed to.
"We need to rescue the prisoners from the hundred third division that are being held there."
The sergeant knew that the question he should be asking was 'how do you know that', but stopping Li from finding out information above his security clearance was even harder than getting him to show up for latrine duty. If camp security was so lax that a teenager with head trauma was able to find out all their troop positions, he didn't want to know. He wished Li would at least lie about it, but the kid didn't seem capable of not blurting out the truth. So all Bingwen asked was, "Why?"
"I've heard the Fire Nation kills their prisoners."
Bingwen sighed. "Sometimes, yes, from what we can tell." It wasn't always possible to identify those who had been killed by earthbending. That was often a mercy for the earthbenders who thought they were fighting firebenders, not unarmed Earth Army prisoners dressed in Fire Nation uniforms. "That doesn't mean we can just attack their camp."
Li's face settled into the exact stubborn lines Bingwen had been trying to avoid. That's the expression he'd had when Zixen had dared him to eat the Spiritfire Pepper and the rest of the unit combined couldn't talk Li out of it. That's the expression he'd had when Private Yanlin had told him the pygmy pumas were feral and he shouldn't keep trying to make friends with them. That's the expression he'd had when Bingwen told him to put the Earth Kingdom map away, memorizing all the provinces and towns could wait for morning, and the kid had set his blanket on fire trying to hide his lamp under it.
"Li, I know you're trying to help, but we need to know what defenses the camp has before we can launch any sort of rescue mission. Otherwise, the rescue team would just be captured as well." If they were lucky. "Do you understand? You need to be patient."
Li's scowl stayed, but he nodded. Later, Sergeant Bingwen would realize that had been in answer to "Do you understand?", not an agreement to be patient.
-----
Captain Wu did not enjoy being interrupted while taking tea. It was one of the few times of the day he could just sit, breathe and let his mind empty of orders and strategy. Still, the look on Sergeant Bingwen's face said this couldn't wait.
"Sergeant? What's wrong?"
"Li is gone."
Wu stared at him for a moment. "We're talking about Big Li, right? It isn't my job to get him to complete his duties, it's yours. If you would just permanently take him off of latrine duty he would probably stop vanishing until the next meal time."
"Sir, he left. No one saw him at breakfast or lunch and his swords are missing."
Wu set down his tea with mixed feelings. Things were much simpler this way, of course. The Earth Army only took volunteers, and getting dumped at the recruitment tent with head trauma didn't count. So Li hadn't really deserted.
Stealing the specially-requisitioned swords did not look good, but the kid very well might be fifteen years old and still a minor. General How would let him overlook the theft, just this once. "I see. It's unfortunate that he left before our investigation was complete; I'd hoped to reunite him with his family, if they are still alive. Still, he has the right to leave. He never officially enlisted."
The anxiety in Bingwen's face only increased. "Captain Wu, that's not the problem. I think I know where he went."
-----
"This is our town," brute one said. "We protect it."
San spat. "You're goons, thieves and kidnappers."
Secretary Chung-Hee stepped in front of her before her anger got her into more trouble than she could handle.
"Gentlemen, I'm so glad to finally meet you," he said. "I am Secretary Chung-Hee."
"Secretary?" brute two mocked. "What, are you going to write our letters for us? Fill out forms?"
Chung-Hee was not surprised these barely-literate brutes didn't understand the power of the exactly correct form. He imagined most subtlety went over their heads. "I'm here about an issue with the forms you recently submitted to the Earth Army."
The two brutes stared in dull confusion. Their leader, showing the barest glimmer of comprehension, scowled.
"Do you recognize these enlistment forms? Falsifying information on them is punishable with a court-martial, and the handwriting doesn't match those of the two enlistees." Chung-Hee hadn't bothered to verify that, but that wasn't something these men needed to know.
"That wasn't us!" brute one said.
"How fortunate for you. As soon as I have verified that with a sample of each of your handwriting, and you have returned the recruitment bonuses you obtained fraudulently…"
"Uh, Gow?" brute one asked, worried. "What are we gunna--"
"Shut up," the lead brute said. "This is a very dangerous area. Desperate refugees, wild animals, Fire Nation patrols… You really shouldn't have come all on your own. Particularly with such a full purse."
"You murderous--" San began.
"Shut your trap or you'll get the same, woman."
"Ma'am, if you would excuse me for a moment," Chung-Hee said to her. "This won't take any time at all." By the time the brutes recognized the insult, he'd stepped forward so that San was no longer in the line of fire.
"Crush him!" the leader yelled.
The two lackeys charged him at the same time. WIth a neat side-step at the last possible moment and a little tug to keep brute two's momentum going, Chung-Hee sent them flying into a tangled heap on the ground.
The lead brute bellowed and punched a chunk of rock at him. Chung-Hee drifted to the side, letting the rock pass by a finger's width from his head. It seemed that this Gow was an earthbender. As obvious and reliant on brute force as any of the Army's, but he still might give Chung-Hee a bit of light exercise.
Chung-Hee ducked a larger boulder, smiled, and moved.
-----
Specialist Zixen was on watch at the gates, so he was the first to realize who the messenger riding an ostrich-horse was. He made hasty excuses to the others on watch and opened the gates. "What the fuck, Li! Where in Koh's lair have you been? The sergeant was convinced you'd gone behind enemy lines on a half-baked rescue mission."
"I didn't go on a rescue mission, I was just gathering information." Li slid off its back and drew a bucket from the well for his mount.
"For two days? Where did you go?"
Li stared as if Zixen were talking nonsense. "Camp Sungye, of course. How else could I scout it?"
"Wait, what the fuck?"
"I need to report to Sergeant Bingwen."
Watching Li stride off toward the training grounds, leading the ostrich-horse, Zixen realized he had one more question. "Hey, are those black clothes mine?"
-----
Captain Wu was getting used to being interrupted while taking tea. Li walked into the captain's tent like he owned it. Sergeant Bingwen followed him in, looking more gobsmacked than relieved at the boy's reappearance. That was ample warning that the captain was about to have to deal with Li Logic.
Li Logic invariably lead to tension headaches.
"I'm glad you've returned," Wu said. "We were worried."
"Why?"
"You left without explanation and were gone for two days."
"Sir, it takes more than two days to get to Camp Sungye and back by foot. If I hadn't ridden an ostrich-horse back, it would have taken three days. There was no need to worry that I had failed before then."
"Wait, where did the ostrich-horse come from?" Sergeant Bingwen asked.
"Um," Li said.
Apparently there were things that Li thought he should be embarrassed about, but going AWOL behind enemy lines wasn't one of them. Trying to keep his voice even, Wu asked, "Li. Did you steal an ostrich-horse?"
"No! I didn't."
The kid couldn't tell a believable lie to save his damn life. "What the fuck, Li. DID YOU STEAL A OSTRICH-HORSE FROM A FIRE NATION CAMP?"
"OF COURSE NOT!" he yelled back. "That would have given away that I was there. I just… I found her on the road, and she looked hungry, and she wouldn't stop trying to preen my hair, so I just… brought her back here?"
Wu was tempted to let him have it for that ridiculous excuse when he realized that was all beside the point. Li had gone behind enemy lines to scout a Shu-damned Fire Nation camp because he wouldn't take "no" for an answer on rescuing prisoners.
"Li, on whose orders did you go to Camp Sungye?"
"The sergeant's. May I?" The kid grabbed the captain's brush, inkpot and paper and started to draw something.
It was well known that waterbenders can freeze with a gesture. Captain Wu could do so with a look. "Sergeant Bingwen. Is there something you wanted to tell me?"
Bingwen threw up his hands. "He wanted us to mount a rescue operation for the prisoners held at Camp Sungye, and I told him that we couldn't do that without better intelligence. I did not give any order to go get that intelligence!"
The teenager looked up from his drawing of--Oma's name, that was Camp Sungye, wasn't it?--to protest, "You said we needed information before we could rescue them, so I got the information. I'm not useless!"
Not useless at all. The captain watched, bewildered, as the kid added more and more detail. The prisoners were held near the center of the camp, surrounded by boxes that probably indicated tents. Now he was drawing… was that the guard's patrol route? Li started drawing more troop positions along the road to Touhoma, and if these were accurate, it might actually be possible to rescue the prisoners.
Li finally put the brush down and rubbed the unscarred side of his face, getting traces of ink all over it. The kid looked exhausted, almost as if he'd walked for fourteen hours, stayed up the night to watch where the guards patrolled, and then rode an ostrich-horse back without stopping to sleep.
"Li…"
The young man tensed up, all of his pride and defensiveness there in his jaw and the set of his shoulders.
Captain Wu decided a bit of praise might disarm him. "Please understand, this is impressive work. Very impressive; we might even be able to rescue the prisoners based on this information." He let that sink in before continuing, "That doesn't change the fact that you left against orders, crossed behind enemy lines and put yourself in a great deal of danger."
"I told you that Sergeant--"
"Sergeant Bingwen did not order you to do reconnaissance, he merely stated that we didn't have enough information. That is not even granting permission, much less giving orders." Li's face darkened. "Why are you so concerned about these prisoners?"
"The Fire Nation kills some of their prisoners. Isn't that reason enough?"
Captain Wu just raised an eyebrow and waited.
Li's scowl twisted even further and he dropped his gaze. "They're from the hundred third division. Little Lee's brother is in the hundred third."
Wu sighed. That would do it. "If you're serious about joining the army, you need to learn to follow orders and not take senseless risks."
"I knew what I was doing!" Li yelled.
"I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR SAFETY!"
Li froze, shocked. Heartbreakingly so.
Wu stood and came around the desk. "Sergeant Bingwen is your superior officer, and I am your captain. We are responsible for making sure you have all the equipment and training you need to survive this war. Don't throw your life away on an impossible mission." He wanted to reach out, put a hand on his shoulder, but the teenager looked moments away from bolting. "Get some food and rest, and… where's the ostrich-horse?"
"I told Zixen to take him to the stables," Bingwen said.
"Her," Li corrected. "I named her Song."
"Weird name for an ostrich-horse."
Li shrugged. "It felt right."
Wu held up the map of the enemy camp. "I'll follow up with my lieutenants, see if we can come up with a rescue plan. In the meantime, get something to eat and get some sleep."
"Yes, sir."
Another thought occurred to him. "Oh, and stop by the infirmary. I'm sure Healer Sun-Hi would like to check you over and see how well you have been following her instructions."
For the first time since he went AWOL, Li looked alarmed. "Do I have to, sir?"
Captain Wu crossed his arms. "You were missing for two days, Li. Next time, clear it with me before you leave."
"Yes, sir," the teenager grumbled.
-----
Healer Sun-Hi was not pleased to have the same rock-headed idiot land in her infirmary three times in less than three weeks, this time covered in scrapes and cuts. She had several disinfectants that were less painful than pure alcohol. Sun-Hi saw no reason to use them.
Chapter Text
Li woke from a nightmare covered in sweat. Sergeant Bingwen, in the next bed over, slept on, which was no surprise. Rumor was Sergeant Bingwen could sleep through earthbenders at boulder-throwing practice; that's why he had been encouraged to take the bed next to Li. Little Lee and Private Yanlin, on the Sergeant's other side, were also sleeping, so he must not have been that loud. Li reached for the remnants of the dream, but all he could remember was a feeling of desperation. Whatever fears and memories his sleeping mind had conjured up were inaccessible to his waking mind.
He pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt against the early morning chill. It used to be Zixen's; Li would return it after the man admitted he cheated at dice. Or maybe not; it was worn soft and felt right against his skin in the way new linen never did. Li scaled the outer wall of the barracks and sat in his usual spot on the roof.
He watched the setting moon with a mournful feeling he couldn't place. If he told Yanlin, the private would no doubt have some theory to explain it; the man was fascinated by the mystery of Li's past and couldn't understand Li's own ambivalence.
Li remembered some things. A sad woman who smelled of jasmine-lilac. How to scale a stone wall with the skill of a thief. A feeling of desperation, of needing to find something he'd lost. The rocking of a boat under him and the cries of albatross-gulls. The movement of the twin dao as if they were a part of his body. A shadow looming over him while he was on his knees, a shadow who was-- don't think about it.
So Li watched the moon set in the west and didn't think about his missing past or his uncertain future. He didn't think about how new it felt to be surrounded with comrades who liked and teased him; he didn't think how strange it was to have adults who cared about his safety; he didn't think about the way Little Lee holding his hand eased an ache inside of him.
When the sun crested the horizon, Li was the only one in camp who watched it rise.
-----
The column of men marching into the Ba Sing Se Army Camp were dirty, ragged, and underfed. The arrival of the men of the hundred third division (and one Earth Kingdom civilian who had been captured wandering too close to Camp Sungye) was greeted with cheers; someone had pulled out a Bini horn and was playing an off-key rendition of His Majesty the Earth King .
"SENSU??" Lee shouted. His brother had just enough time to brace himself before a twelve-year-old catapulted into his arms. "Sensu!"
"Lee?" someone else said.
"DAD!" Lee shouted, leaping from Sensu's arms into Dad's and knocking him over.
"What are you doing here?" Sensu wanted to know.
Lee tried to explain, but it was all tangled up on his tongue and he was too happy to care. He buried his head in his dad's filthy shirt and cried.
After all of the former prisoners had showered, feasted and been checked over by the brusque healer, they bedded down in the only place with enough open cots: the infirmary. No one protested when Lee shoved three cots together and claimed the middle one so he could fall asleep between his dad and his big brother.
When Lee had first seen the infirmary, he'd imagined that having all these cots filled with soldiers would be awful. He was so happy he'd been wrong.
-----
Li watched the reunion from his perch on top of the canteen. Little Lee had his dad and his real big brother now; he didn't need Li anymore.
Behind the column of men from the hundred-third were nineteen men and women in red and black, hands in stone cuffs. They were surrounded by guards, many in earthbender uniforms. They did not go to the showers, the canteen or the infirmary. They were taken directly to the Pit.
-----
Secretary Chung-Hee made sure he wore his blandest expression when he reported to Captain Wu, just to piss him off. After four weeks in the dust, he thought he deserved it. They both knew why Chung-Hee had been sent to the camp, and Dai Li agents didn't allow petty tyrants with grudges to derail their missions, even when those petty tyrants were officially their superiors.
Especially not then.
"Sir, the recruiting irregularities have been remedied," he said, handing over an official report couched in the most bureaucratic language possible.
Captain Wu tried to skim the report, but quickly gave up. "You found the men responsible?"
"The three soldiers assigned to guard Dusty Gulch were being underutilized by the army. Given their fighting spirit, I encouraged their interest in aiding the war efforts in a front-line capacity and started their transfer paperwork."
There was a form to volunteer someone facing court martial for a dangerous assignment. Unfortunately for the brutes, finding and filing the correct form to un-volunteer themselves was well beyond their abilities.
"You reassigned them to Xao?" The captain sounded pleased.
"General Zongying has been insistent about needing new troops." The earthbender had been a disappointing opponent, but maybe he would do better against firebenders.
"True. Were you able to find any information on the recruits?"
"As we suspected, the younger boy is twelve and thus well below recruitment age. His mother is eager to see him returned and insisted on coming."
"She's here?"
"As I said, she is quite eager. Apparently her husband went missing trying to rescue their older son, who was captured while serving in the--"
"Hundred third division?" Captain Wu interrupted. "We've been hearing quite a bit about them lately. What about the older boy?"
"I've been able to confirm that his enlistment papers were completely falsified. No one in the town even knows his name. Apparently he rode in on an ostrich-horse one day and spent the night at the younger Lee's chicken-pig farm in exchange for help repairing a roof. The following day, he got into a fight with the three Earth Kingdom soldiers when they pressed the child into service. According to the townspeople, he had real skill with a two-sword style."
Captain Wu smirked at a private joke, then grew serious. "Nothing else? No leads on his family or identity?"
"There's little that can be found without a hometown or even a name." The evasion was automatic; among the Dai Li, a few earthbenders could sometimes detect lies. Captain Wu was not a bender, though, so Chung-Hee indulged in one: "I was unable to learn anything more." He did not mention the Fire Nation wanted poster he had found; that was information for the Dai Li alone.
"Very well. You must be tired from traveling; take a few hours to rest. I'll need your assistance again when the gong strikes sixteen."
Chung-Hee raised his eyebrows in a diffident query.
"The soldiers of the hundred-fifth division have been rescued, and their statuses will need to be changed back to active."
-----
Captain Wu had insisted that Li be here, so he tried to be patient as the woman named San cried and hugged Little Lee, then the older boy Sensu, then her husband Gensu, then Little Lee again, until they ended up in a tangle of limbs and joy. Li tried to slip away behind the captain's bulk, but Captain Wu put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
Li froze and looked up at the man. Had he done something wrong? The captain was smiling at the family reunion and patted Li's shoulder, as if he were… proud?
Distracted, Li didn't manage to dodge when San threw her arms around him. "Oma and Shu bless you," she sobbed. "You brought my family back to me."
"Let him breathe, dear," her husband said, pulling her into his arms. Li's moment of freedom didn't last; Little Lee latched onto his leg like a pentapus.
Sensu said, "They're posting me to guard Dusty Gulch. If your amnesia persists--or even if it doesn't--you are welcome at our farm. We always have plenty of work to do."
"Though maybe we won't have you fixing the roof," his father said with a chuckle. Li smiled and nodded; he'd learned that was the easiest way to deal with things he probably should know but didn't.
Captain Wu gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, "When you're done here, come see me in the command tent. There is something I need to discuss with you."
Li waved as the family started towards the wagon that will take them home.
Little Lee turned and ran back. "I almost forgot! Mom found this. You gave it to me, the day you fought those bullies." He held out a sheathed knife.
Li hesitated. Was this a part of his past he wanted to remember? "If it was a gift…"
"It's the only way I can say thank you. Take it." The boy shoved the knife into his hands and ran back to his family.
The blade had a good balance. Li pulled it out of its sheath to inspect the blade, and to his surprise, there was an inscription:
Made in the Earth Kingdom
The creeping dread that had been hanging over him for weeks dissipated. He was where he was supposed to be, after all.
-----
"Mom, before we leave, can we stop by my friend Xiao's house? She taught me to be a runner, and her mom is really sick, so I thought I'd give her some of the money I made running errands. The two gold pieces at least."
Sensu's jaw dropped. "You made two gold pieces running errands for a couple of weeks? I don't make two gold pieces in a month!"
"Well, no, I started with four silver pieces, but Zixen taught me how to gamble, and I'm really good at pretending I don't understand the rules until after the bets are placed."
"What."
-----
"Li," Captain Wu said, "the results of the investigation were not what we had hoped. All we were able to confirm is that your enlistment papers are falsified. We don't know your real name… or your real age." He wasn't sure if he needed to make it more obvious than that.
"Sir?"
Apparently, he did. "If you are fifteen, you are below enlistment age and would be released from the army. Perhaps you could stay with Little Lee's family, at least until you are of age." Or forever. They had, after all, been about ten seconds away from adopting him.
A crease appeared between Li's brows. "What would happen if I am sixteen?"
"You would stay with the army, under my command. You would be expected to fight."
The tension went out of Li's shoulders. "I'm sixteen, sir."
"Are you sure this is what you want?" It was the wrong choice. Li was still too young to understand the value of his own life.
Then again, that was why wars were always fought by the young.
"My name is Li, and I am sixteen, sir."
There was something burning in Captain Wu's chest as he met the young man's trusting gaze. It was probably indigestion. "Very well. I'm assigning you to the scouts," because the regular units wouldn't know what in Koh's lair to do with his ability to vanish into thin air. "Welcome to the Earth Army, Scout Li."
-----
Long Feng was flipping through the papers sent by Agent Chung-Hee, wondering why a report of some peasants being pressed into service had been flagged for his personal attention, when he found a Fire Nation Wanted poster staring back at him. He went back and read the report more carefully. The evidence was all circumstantial, and yet…
The skill with the twin dao. The ability to scale walls and the stealth to vanish into thin air. It seemed to be true that the boy who'd enlisted at the Ba Sing Se army fact was, in fact, the Blue Spirit. It was a pity he wasn't a bender; anyone who could break into and out of Pouhai Stronghold would have been a welcome addition to the Dai Li.
Long Feng smoothed his mustache, considering how it would play out. Captain Wu was not imaginative, but he was dependable; he would make the boy a scout. If he was as good as Agent Chung-Hee thought he was, the Five Generals would soon have access to better information on the enemy's movements and fortifications.
More than that, the boy would be a hero. The time was ripe for them, with the reemergence of the Avatar; a demoralized citizenry and desperate military were looking for signs of hope. Tales of his heroics might penetrate the great walls of Ba Sing Se when more dour news did not, might carry whispers of the war even to the ears of King Kuei.
That was the danger of legends. It was a pity, Long Feng thought as he wrote his orders, that this one would be strangled in its crib.
Notes:
Thank you for reading! There is a Part II, which I will start posting this week; subscribe to the series if you want notifications.
Pages Navigation
Tamtheotter on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 01:24AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:39AM UTC
Comment Actions
MuffinLance on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 01:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:42AM UTC
Comment Actions
SymbioteSpideypool on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 02:37AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
Erisenyo on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 02:38AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:50AM UTC
Comment Actions
thesamestarlight on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 05:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
thesamestarlight on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 06:25AM UTC
Comment Actions
Imheretoreada_z on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 06:03AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 01:33AM UTC
Comment Actions
Inmognito (madmogs) on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 06:56AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:51AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kiladry on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 08:04AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 01:33AM UTC
Comment Actions
quietellen (Sociofemme) on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 12:28PM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 04:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
Anonymous_Nerb on Chapter 1 Wed 17 May 2023 02:08PM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 05:00AM UTC
Comment Actions
LizwiddaZ on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 09:48AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 01:38AM UTC
Comment Actions
maxie_xxx on Chapter 1 Thu 18 May 2023 03:26PM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Fri 19 May 2023 01:34AM UTC
Comment Actions
hulijing95 on Chapter 1 Sat 20 May 2023 02:25AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Wed 31 May 2023 10:56PM UTC
Comment Actions
engineerwenlock on Chapter 1 Mon 22 May 2023 03:41AM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Wed 31 May 2023 10:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
Rey_pulga on Chapter 1 Wed 24 May 2023 07:24AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kiwibirdkiwi on Chapter 1 Tue 27 Jun 2023 01:59PM UTC
Comment Actions
BioHammer on Chapter 1 Wed 28 Jun 2023 09:08PM UTC
Comment Actions
FullmetalDE on Chapter 1 Wed 12 Jul 2023 04:33PM UTC
Comment Actions
dandelionlily on Chapter 1 Thu 13 Jul 2023 03:20AM UTC
Comment Actions
FullmetalDE on Chapter 1 Thu 13 Jul 2023 05:24AM UTC
Last Edited Thu 13 Jul 2023 05:27AM UTC
Comment Actions
The_Maned_Wolf on Chapter 1 Mon 24 Jul 2023 06:00PM UTC
Comment Actions
Indrel on Chapter 1 Mon 26 Feb 2024 03:17AM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation