Soldier's Boy
Eighteen

Early the next morning, Aang shook Kouji awake gently. "Lee and I are going back for our supplies," he whispered. "You can go back to sleep somewhere else."

The boy looked at him blearily, and asked, "How many cups of sugar does it take to get to the moon?"

"A lot," Aang said. "Come on, come sleep down here instead, we'll only be gone a couple hours…"

Kouji groaned and somehow managed to get to the ground without breaking his neck, where he instantly fell asleep again.  When he woke up for real an hour later, Lee, Aang, and Appa were still gone.  "Sozin's balls!" he breathed, his brain finally kicking in.  He stumbled over to Katara to wake her.

"Five more minutes," she mumbled, swatting at him.

"Katara, Aang and Lee are gone!"

"What?" she yelped, coming awake.

Quickly he explained the early morning conversation to her.

"…Dammit, someone else should've gone," Katara muttered, then went over to begin the long, annoying task of waking her brother up.

Kouji backed away to let her do that, then hesitantly headed for Toph.  The closer he got, the redder his face became.  "What is it, Sunshine?" she asked, when he was still about three feet away.

"O-oh — y-you're awake…" he said, then wished he could kick himself.  Of all the inane—!

"Heard you coming. Woke me up. What is it?"

"A-aang and Lee a-are gone."  He ran a nervous hand over his head.

"Well, that's stupid. Who let them go off alone? That freaky princess is still out there somewhere."

Kouji's flush grew darker and he mumbled something.

She sat up. "Why?"

"I-I wasn't th-thinking — Aang w-woke me up, I w-wasn't really paying attention!"

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered, then kicked a rock over at Sokka. "Sleepytime is over!"

Kouji fled to the fire and settled down, his worry kicking into overdrive.  What if Lee somehow managed to convince Aang to leave him?  Or worse, what if Aang did leave him?

A little over an hour later, however, Lee and Aang both returned, with Appa and all the supplies they'd left behind.  "Lee!" Kouji cried, running to the older boy and hugging him tightly around the waist.

"Hey," he said, sounding slightly surprised. Then again, they had argued the night before; maybe he was expecting his brother to still be too angry for his usual level of affection.

"How did it go?" the boy asked now, disengaging.

"Fine. No problems."

That had to be a good sign.  If there had been no problems, then Lee wouldn't have to leave, and wouldn't think they wanted him to.  Kouji smiled.  Lee managed a tight little smile back, then helped the others load up Appa more neatly.

"We're gonna look for another place to practice," Aang informed the others.

"Okay," agreed Kouji as his excitement spiked.  Finally, he and Aang could learn earthbending!

They piled on and managed to get going in another hour — Sokka insisted on checking over the supplies "to make sure those girls didn't booby-trap them!", and Katara wanted to make sure everyone got breakfast before they left.  Kouji managed to help Katara with breakfast without hurting himself or burning anything, though he did manage to nearly break his leg five minutes before they took off when he got tangled in Appa's reins, which meant, of course, that Lee kept an iron grip on his collar to prevent further accidents.

All. Day. Long.

Kouji argued for his freedom for two hours, then caved in and sulked for the rest of the flight.  He wasn't a little kid!

They found a very pretty spot near a little lake around sunset.

"We'll start tomorrow morning," Toph said, decisively, as they unloaded Appa and set up camp.

"Okay," said Kouji from where he'd been sat down and told to stay put while the unloaded. It seemed Lee was afraid he'd do himself injury collecting firewood now.  Hopefully, he would relax a bit after Kouji had gotten a lesson or two with Toph.

I hope I can sleep, thought Kouji.  It's been so long since I had any lessons, and even then all of mine came from Ichi-ni.

After dinner, they all settled in for sleep.

Early the next morning, "Today's the day!" Aang whisper-shouted ecstatically, jumping all over camp. "Can you believe it? After all that time searching for a teacher, I'm finally starting earthbending! And this place! It's perfect! Don't you think?"

Kouji lunged for the Avatar from the ground and managed to catch hold of the older boy's legs, bringing him groundward.  "It's too early," he complained.

The ground shook. "Good morning earthbending students!" Apparently, like Aang, Toph thought it was plenty late enough — as did Lee, who was conspicuously absent.

That grabbed Kouji's attention as he got off of Aang.  "Where's Lee?" he asked.

"I dunno, he was gone when I woke up. Good morning, Sifu Toph!"

"Hey," Katara complained groggily. "You never call me Sifu Katara…"

"Well… if you think I should…"

Kouji groaned quietly and went to wash up.

Sokka, still in his sleeping back, made incoherent angry noises at Aang.

"Sorry, Snoozles," Toph said. "We'll do our earthbending as quietly as we can." Without any further warning, she launched him several feet into the air.

Kouji just barely managed to avoid Sokka on his return trip down.  "Have a nice flight?" he asked.

He made more incoherent angry noises, then hopped away in his sleeping bag.  Shaking his head, the former colonist turned to Toph, trying not to blush.  Aang was bouncing around excitedly again, asking her what he got to learn first.

"I'm going to take Twinkletoes through the basics. Like moving rocks," Toph told Kouji, hitting Aang so he would stop bouncing. "I'll come find you when I'm ready for you."

"Should I d-do anything in the meantime?" he asked her.  Damn that stammer, anyway!

"Whatever you want," she said, then dragged Aang away.

That… is remarkably unhelpful.  Kouji sighed, turning away, then spotted Katara and got an idea.  He already knew fire techniques…  Cautiously he approached her.

"What's up?" she asked.

"Could you show me how to do the water whip?" he replied, looking hopeful.

"Um… sure?" she said, then led him to the pool.

Some pestering got him the basic theory behind the whip, and then he began copying her stance and movements.  She corrected him when he messed up, a little confused as to why he wanted to learn something he couldn't use.  Finally, when he had it all down, he reached into the pool and collected some dirt off the bottom.  With help from the waterbender, he got it dried, then dumped it into his money-bag after taking the coins out and passing them to her to hold onto.

Then he began to try the water whip technique using the dirt he'd just collected.

Katara left to go see what Aang and Toph were up to, Lee was still missing, and Sokka had gone off hunting, so he was alone.

After two hours, Kouji gave up, discouraged.  He'd thus far only succeeded in failing spectacularly, and the last three times he'd whipped himself in the face.  And then a sudden unexpected Toph grabbed his collar. "Twinkletoes is taking a break." She didn't sound happy about this. "So it's your turn now."

Kouji yelped in surprise when she grabbed him and hoped she'd attribute his pounding heart to being startled.  "O-okay."

She took him through some basic exercises, then more and more difficult forms, to see what he was doing. After spending over an hour constantly correcting his stance, she called a halt. "I'm going to go grab Twinkletoes and see if he's done sulking."

"A-all right," Kouji replied, slightly dazed.  Toph was an exceedingly hard teacher.

Sokka and Lee were still gone, too. There was, however, some dried fruits and nuts among their supplies, though they were out of meat.  Sighing, Kouji ate some of the food, wondering what Lee was up to.

*           *           *

Unable to sleep, Lee had left the camp a few hours before dawn. He was positive they were going to leave him here, anyway, so he might as well make it easier on them, rather than forcing them to wait for him to sleep. He scaled one of the cliffs, looking for an empty space to practice with his swords.

Or a cave, where no one would see him practice bending.

Thinking about that gave him a guilty rush — he hadn't practiced in years, not since he was ten and his mother had caught him playing with the fire from their stove, gotten very upset, told him it was too dangerous, and made him promise not to do that again.  But with Azula now in the picture, and more dangerous than ever before…

There — just fifty yards ahead and to the left a bit, a cave.  He hesitated a moment, looked around furtively, then made a small light and set out to explore it.  There, just far enough back from the entrance that he was nearly impossible to see, a young man sat, staring at the wall across from him.

Lee knew him.

Kouji's brother, Ichiro. Who clearly wanted to be left alone.

Lee blew out the light, and backed out of the cave. He'd find another.

Too late; Ichiro's head snapped around and he called fire to his hand.  "Who's there!?" he snapped.

"I was just leaving," Lee said, quietly. "I won't tell anyone you're here." It wouldn't be lying to Kouji if he never brought it up. And Kouji would want to leave with Ichiro, but needed Toph's teaching.

Ichiro blinked, and let the fire die to a dull orange in his hand.  "Lee.  It's you."  He sounded… strangely relieved.

He shrugged, then continued on his way out of the cave; the other boy, however, lunged after him and caught his arm.  His golden eyes were urgent as  they met Lee's.  "Don't answer me, just nod or shake.  Are the others with you now?"

Lee stiffened when Ichiro grabbed him, then nodded once.

Ichiro seemed to pale.  "Are they near?"

Lee nodded again.

"Sozin's balls."  Ichiro doused his flame, plunging both of them into the strange grey pre-dawn light.

"Can you let go, please?"

"Huh?"  The older boy looked down where he still had Lee's arm. "Oh."  He let go.  "Sorry."

"It's fine." He turned again to leave.

"Is Kouji not with you?"

"He was still asleep when I left."

Ichiro nodded, then hesitated.  "Is he all right?"

"He's fine. Getting lessons from Aang's earthbending teacher."

A definite flinch there.  "Good, he needs them."

Lee didn't argue. Or ask about the flinching. He continued out of the cave.  It didn't take him long to find another cave, and, nervously, hesitantly, he started trying to run through the katas he remembered learning back before he and his mother had left.

An hour later, after forgetting half the movements in every single one he tried, he gave up to work with his swords a while. At least he'd grown out of the klutziness…

"You're rooting yourself wrong."

It was Ichiro.  Apparently he'd followed the other boy.

Lee jumped and almost attacked him before his brain caught up with his reflexes and he realized who'd walked in on him. "No, I just forgot the movements."

"Same thing," said the other boy.  "Look, put your feet like this."  Rather than touch Lee again, he instead demonstrated.

Lee stared at him for a moment, then put his swords away and copied him.

"How much do you remember?" the golden-eyed colonist asked.

"That's what I was trying to figure out," the other teenager admitted. "I haven't practiced in years."

"Then let's just start with the basics," Ichiro said, getting out of his stance and circling Lee briefly.  "As we go through, you can tell me what's familiar."

Lee nodded. "All right."

Hours passed, with Ichiro putting Zuko through his paces and occasionally giving him advice or reminding him of the basic tenants of firebending.  Finally, at sundown, Lee stopped. "I should head back," he told Ichiro — though he didn't plan on going back right away. He'd find an empty place and do swordwork for a few hours first, then go back for food and an hour or two of sleep before coming back up for more practice. The less time he spent in camp, the easier it would be for the others to leave him behind when they were ready to go. "We'll probably stay here as long as it's safe."

Ichiro was quiet for a long moment.  "I'll be in here.  Don't let them come up this way.  And don't tell Kouji I'm here?"  There was a quiet plea in his voice now.

"He needs to stay with Toph for a while," Lee said, by way of answering, then collected his swords and left to find a place to work with them for a while.

This time, Jeong-Jeong's former pupil did not follow.

By the time Lee made it back down to the camp, two and a half hours after full dark fell, he was exhausted enough to want to skip his planned feeding and just sleep.  Kouji, however, was not about to let him.  "Lee!" he said excitedly, grinning at him.  "I made dinner!"  He didn't seem anywhere near as exhausted as he should have been.

"Tha's great," Lee mumbled, managing a tired smile in a return, and stumbling over to his bedroll.

"Here, I saved you some!"  The youngest of their group followed him and offered him a kebob, saving him travel time.

"Thanks," he said, then devoured it in about ten seconds.

Kouji made a few more trips, getting food into him, before he finally stopped pestering the older boy, something of a relief for Lee, who was asleep less than thirty seconds later.

The next two or three weeks passed in a similar pattern, with Lee leaving an hour or two before the others got up to train first with Ichiro, then on his own, and Toph spending the day training Kouji and Aang — now together, since Aang had mastered the basics. She'd let them stop at sundown, and Lee would stumble back into camp two or three hours later.  Kouji would feed Lee, they'd all go to sleep, and wake up the next day to do it all over again.

Ichiro seemed pleased with Lee's progress, and commented once that the other teenager was rapidly catching up to him.  Lee glowed under the praise, and cut back further on his already-short hours of sleep to push himself even harder.

And then one morning Ichiro wasn't there.  There was, however, a scroll with Lee's name scrawled on the outside of it.

He left the scroll where it was while he went through his usual firebending practice — odd though it felt without Ichiro there to correct him — and opened it just before leaving to work with his swords.

Lee (it read),

I'm sorry to run out on you like this, but I ran out of time.  An explanation like this should be done face to face, but I can't risk it.  To make a long story short, I was forced to sell my services to a group of Fire Nation soldiers after Yui got bit by a gilapede. Showing myself was the only way to save her, and they recognised me.  They gave me a choice: go out and look for the Avatar, or I would go to prison and Yui would be sold to the first people they came across.

I'm glad I ran into you.  You needed the training badly, and it gave me an excuse to not go looking.  I can tell them I never saw the Avatar.

Please burn this letter, and don't tell anyone about it.  By now Yui has completely recovered from the venom and can get away on her own; if I go to prison, she can get me out.  Coming for us would be far too risky to all of you.  We'll be all right.

Keep working on your kata; you'll outdo me, given enough time, and gods all know Aang's going to need a firebending master.

Ichiro.

Lee reread the letter several times, committing it to memory, then burned it, scattered the ashes, and left to do his sword practice.  As usual, he stumbled back into camp after most of the others had gone to bed, debated and rejected the idea of getting food — tired as he was, he might fall asleep eating it and choke or something — and headed for his bed roll.

Kouji slept on the ground next to where the roll was, curled around the bag of dirt he'd taken to wearing in imitation of Katara with his blankets over his head.  Presumably there had been an argument between the others of some sort.  He wondered vaguely what it was. Not that it really matters, anyway, they're not going to take me with them when they leave. He adjusted Kouji's blankets to make sure his brother could breathe, then crawled into his bedroll for his allotted three or four hours of sleep.

Current Location: my bed
Current Mood: accomplished
Tags: au, avatar, fanfic, soldier's boy

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