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This Is Escape	By : DarkNarrator Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Het - Male/Female Views: 2149 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender and make no money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 1-This Is Escape
- 1
This Is Escape
===

‘I should have known better…’ The Avatar’s return, the Fire Nation’s defeat… no, not defeat. It was a surrender. And because of that…

“Lady Mai?”

The young woman turned away from the sunset. “I have decided,” she said, “My parents are dead. My brother is alive. I will go to the Earth Kingdom and bring him home safely. Do not stop me.”

“What about me?” For a moment, the young woman’s stoic mask trembled as a young man stepped forward, holding his hand out to her. “I have already assembled a search party. They leave tonight. Mai!” He spoke her name like a petitioner’s most ardent plea. “Don’t go. Stay with me. Please.”

The young woman looked at the man who was her first love and slowly shook her head. “I will come back to you, Zuko. Or do you doubt my abilities?”

The young man bowed his head in defeat.

---

She had not been so foolhardy as to believe that she could cross the great ocean and the vast continent beyond on her own. He had prepared a hand-picked contingent of bodyguards and trackers to accompany her, each man further vetted by the White Lotus Society for their loyalty and ability to blend into the Earth Kingdom population.

But all of this was for naught, for someone was already waiting with a trap open wide from the moment they set foot on foreign soil.

The bodyguards were wiped out in the space of one night’s slaughter. She fought to defend herself, but her enemy was motivated by hatred and ambitions deeper than she could imagine. And so it was that a stranger intervened, cutting through the ranks of her assailants with swords bent into lethal hooks. Bloodstained and abandoning the dead, they ran until their pursuers faded into the landscape.

The stranger would not leave her even then, declaring that his “reward” for saving her life would be to travel with her.

She refused.

He insisted.

She wondered why.

“Boredom,” he replied, in a way that made her certain he lied, “And also because I wonder just who you are to have these people coming after you.” And because she did not ask, he gave her his name:

“Jet.”

She was pretty sure he lied about that as well.

---

“I’m beginning to wonder if I should just haul you in to the nearest constabulary,” Jet mentioned as he leapt over a thicket of brambles.

Mai, three steps behind, cleared the obstacle with considerably more grace. “Why now, all of a sudden?” she asked, in spite of herself. A fireball exploded in the brush just behind them, billowing smoke as the soaking foliage caught fire. She whirled and shot the remaining set of bo-shuriken from the gauntlet around her right wrist, and was rewarded by two distinct curses and cries of pain.

“Gotta figure by now, the bounty on you has to be at least 100 silver sycees if we’ve got a mixed bag of firebenders and earthbenders after us,” Jet said around the leather strap between his teeth, tightening the knots that tied his blood-and-sweat-slick hands around the hilts of his shuanggou as they ran on, “And… whoops!”

The ground under their feet shivered, then exploded in a violent mishmash of mud, stone spikes, and raw boulders.

Mai, conditioned after weeks of this sort of pursuit, rode the crest of earth with ease until it broke, alighting on a convenient tree-branch to gauge the deployment of their pursuit. Unfortunately, a firebender, likely fresh from the disbanded ranks of whatever army had last rampaged through this stretch of country, zeroed in on her exposed position almost immediately, and loosed a creative and annoyingly accurate swarm of miniature fireballs that not only obliterated her perch, but the branches just above and below as well. Mai bit down on an involuntary yelp of surprise as gravity seized her, and threw her last heavy dagger at the firebender as she fell. It transfixed him just above the protective iron collar of his battered breastplate, rather than through the windpipe as she intended, but he was down and that was what mattered. Mai tumbled to the ground and rolled upright in the same fluid motion, setting off at a dead run.

“How’re you fixed for those things?” Jet asked, bursting out of the underbrush to her right. The left half of his body was somewhat charred around the edges and there was fresh blood streaming from the dagger-pommels of his shuanggou.

“Hnph,” Mai snorted as they ran, sprinting over treacherous tree roots and ground slick from the morning’s downpour, weaving around tree trunks as their pursuers endeavored to corral their flight.

“Ah,” Jet breathed, smirking, sweat streaking the dark ash and dirt smeared over his face. “Right. Well, whenever you feel like turning and making our final stand…”

They burst from the tree cover into achingly bright grey light, a stone’s throw from a precipice overhanging a wide green river.

“Geh, you just had to open your mouth,” Mai muttered, turning to face the way they had come. “Here they… Jet, what are you doing?!”

“We can make it if we jump now,” Jet said, looking down over the edge of the cliff, “It can’t be more than twenty-five, thirty feet. Water’s a little low, but…”

“Jump, if you feel like breaking your legs,” Mai retorted, transferring her last three throwing knives into the palm of her right hand and unsheathing her kodachi with her left as their pursuers emerged from the forest.

“Flank them, everyone get enough space between yourselves,” a slender young man in an Earth Kingdom infantry officer’s tunic directed, gesturing with his dadao. The other men, clad in a motley of Earth Kingdom and Fire Army garb and armed for the most part with Earth Kingdom-style dao, obeyed with discomfiting discipline, fanning out in a loose semi-circle that both prevented their prey from crashing through their line and forced them to face an enemy on several sides at once.

There had been at least a dozen of them at the start of the chase; Mai clicked her tongue in annoyance to see that between her and Jet, they had only managed to whittle the crew down to seven, to include one firebender and at least two earthbenders.

“You there, step away from the edge,” the infantryman, clearly the leader of the troupe, said to Jet.

Jet glared and slid his feet into a preparatory stance, raising his shuangguo. The earthbenders, at the extreme ends of the line and thus nearest to and on either sides of Jet and Mai crouched, drew their fists back to their waists, ready to unleash a barrage of rocks.

“Jet, get over here,” Mai hissed through clenched teeth, not letting her eyes waver from the leader.

“With respect, I ask that you drop your weapons,” the man stated with careful politeness, “Although you have killed several of our comrades, if you surrender now, I promise that you will be turned over to the authorities unmolested.”

“‘Unmolested’ is it?” Jet sneered, moving smoothly to stand beside and slightly behind Mai, “Guess that means you have pig-sheep aplenty in your base camp to…”

“Shut it, Jet,” Mai snarled, slipping the knives between her fingers under the cover of her voluminous sleeve. Several of their pursuers were giving Jet evil looks, and while the distraction was useful, she did not want to risk the odds that an exceptionally stupid man would respond to Jet’s jibes. She would have one chance…

“Woman, tell him to drop his weapons,” the leader said to Mai. There was some snickering from the other men, but the infantryman silenced them with a steely glare. “You will drop your weapons as well. All of them.”

“I’d tell him to drop them,” Mai said tonelessly, sweeping her eyes across the arc of the enemy line (how many bo-shuriken did she have left in her ankle gauntlet?), “But the idiot went and tied them to his hands, and it will take an awfully long time for him how to figure out how to undo the knots.”

The earthbender to her right burst out in a loud guffaw as the other men traded looks mocking disbelief.

“That’s enough! Keep your focus!” their leader barked, too late.

“Hr-RAH!” Jet roared, closing the distance between him and the laughing earthbender in five strides. The man gaped in shock, too surprised to cry out even as Jet lopped off his head with a powerful swipe.

At the same instant Jet began his attack, Mai flung her throwing knives at the leader, two of the delicate, deadly blades piercing his eyes, the third burrowing deep into the middle of his forehead, just below the brim of his helm.

“Captain!” one of the pursuers howled as the corpse toppled over backward.

“Mai!” Mai whirled, alerted by Jet’s yell; the boulder flung by the remaining earthbender sailed past her ear, blasting her cheek with grit and mud. Completing the turn, she kicked up her right leg, loosing the last set of bo-shuriken into the man’s chest and throat. All but one thudded impotently against the thick leather weave of the man’s armor, the last catching him between the hinge of his jaw and his ear.

Something heavy slammed into her from behind. She would have fallen but for the arm that snaked crushingly around her waist, its owner heeling off to one side as a wave of flame roared hungrily over the spot where she had just been standing.

On the one hand, Jet’s action had saved her from being roasted on the spot. On the other, his wild save sent them both toppling backwards over the precipice.

‘I hate rivers,’ Mai thought resignedly before she plunged into the placid green water.

---

In the adventure scrolls she remembered Zuko reading as a little boy, people who fell into rivers because they were being chased inevitably had to go over a waterfall. Barring this, there had to be some sort of white-foam rapids bristling with sharp rocks and replete with treacherous currents that dragged hapless victims beneath the surface.

And so it was that she pulled herself up the steep, gravel-lined bank several miles downriver feeling bizarrely resentful at how absolutely boring her own river escape had been. The current had been swift, but gentle, and the water was hardly the breath-stealing ice-cold that crushed the lungs of unlucky heroes (it had been cold, but after the hot run through the humid, stinking forest, it was almost refreshing). Their clothes had been more torn up by their flight through the forest than from any brushes with nasty sharp rocks, and their pursuers apparently could not swim, for none had braved the leap to carry on the chase. They had not even flung an arrow or two as a parting shot!

“Dammit, Jet!” she swore, rounding on him as he slogged up behind her and collapsed on the bank with a bitten-off groan, sending rocks clattering, “How the hell am I supposed to get my shuriken and knives back now?”

Jet tossed his head, flinging his bangs out of his eyes. “Dunno.”

Mai glared, flexing her grip around her kodachi (even that had stayed with her, just her luck; her most useless weapon, and it was as if she could not be rid of the damned thing!). “So, what do we do now?” she prodded, “Everything, all our supplies, maps, money, all of it's back there with the ostrich-horses. They probably grabbed it even before you dragged us off that cliff.”

“They’d be stupid not to,” Jet agreed, absorbed in sawing through the leather thongs binding his left hand with the dagger-pommel of his right blade.

“And it’s not like you even did it on purpose,” she said, goaded beyond annoyance into anger. She sneered. “You fell off that cliff like a drunken hippo-cow and took me along for the ride.”

“Had to… you would’ve been toasted otherwise,” he replied, throwing the useless bits of leather over his shoulder. “Shit!”

“What now?” Mai asked, noticing how Jet blanched and curled slightly over his arm.

“Ngh… I think it’s broken,” he said, trying to clench his hand into a fist and bring it up to his shoulder, “FUC- yeah, it’s broken. Spirits-freakin’-dammit to Hell!”

“Nice,” Mai assessed, crouching beside him and cutting his right hand loose from the other shuangguo’s hilt with her kodachi, “Let me see…”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” Jet demanded as Mai took hold of his forearm. He tried jerking it away, only to turn dead white, his mouth sagging open in wordless agony.

“Your gauntlet’s not tight enough to keep it immobilized,” she diagnosed briskly, ignoring him, “Take it off and I’ll use my kodachi and dagger sheathes as a splints. Take off your sword belt and sash as well, we’ll use the sash for a sling.”

Jet eyed her. “Anything else you want me to get off?” he muttered, but obeyed, cursing and hissing under his breath as he eased off the heavy metal-and-leather gauntlet, resting his arm on his thigh. A band of deepening purple encircled his forearm between his wrist and elbow (was it her imagination that the arm seemed a little crooked?). Mai sandwiched the limb between the lacquered kodachi sheathe and stiff leather dagger sheathe, binding them in place with a roll of soaking wet bandage from Jet’s emergency field kit.

“I’m impressed – you don’t suck at field dressing,” Jet said, after refusing point blank to Mai’s insistence that she tie up the sling for him, grimacing as he got his arm properly rigged in place.

“I learned it. Never had to use it, because, unlike certain idiot-peasants, I’m skilled enough that I never had treat my own wounds in the first place,” Mai informed him. She glanced up at the overcast sky and the pearl-sun beating down through the vapors. “We have to find a place to sit out the rest of the day and night, in case you go into shock. Let’s go.” Mai rose and gathered up Jet’s shuangguo, hefting the heavy weapons over one shoulder.

“Heh? Uh… right,” Jet mumbled bemusedly as she turned and strode up the bank.

Mai heaved a deep breath, trying to ignore the obnoxious tightness of her chest as she heard him scrambling to catch up with her. ‘How long did that idiot fight with his arm broken like that?’

---

The cave was hidden beneath the washed-out root system of an old pine that had grown stubbornly from the cliff face, perched over a narrow defile that might flood if there was a big enough thunderstorm, but now only cupped the odd murky puddle. They both had to stoop to clear the roots, but even Jet could stand upright once in the cave with inches to spare. Some large animal, possibly a platypus bear or boar-q-pine, had scraped out burrow space down to the cool sandstone, but it was clear from the undisturbed dust and litter that it had quit the cave some time ago. Jet set about clearing the cave of the worst of the mess and building some form of sleeping place in the rear while Mai stood at the mouth, removing her gauntlets and inspecting them in dying daylight. The dunking in the river would ruin the firing mechanisms if she could not somehow recover her kit or at least find a decent mechanic soon.

‘As if I’ll ever find something like that out here in these boondocks!’ she thought bitterly, glaring at the landscape. ‘That idiot – not only did he go and injure himself, he ruined my best weapons!’ The tightness in her chest twisted painfully and she grit her teeth. ‘Stop thinking about him, it was his own fault!’

‘(He wouldn’t have been injured if it hadn’t been for you.)’

She frowned. ‘Shut up – he did it to himself.’

‘(He saved you.)’

‘… By accident. And he even screwed that up!’

‘(He’s done it more than once.)’

‘I don’t even know if that’s the truth! He knows I’m Fire Nation, yet he makes no secret about his stupid hatred of them! The idiot doesn’t even know who he is and he…!’

‘(And yet he risks his life for you.)’

‘Shut up! This isn’t a romance scroll where the heroine falls for the mysterious stranger! I’ve had to save his ass plenty of times!’

‘(Yes, you have…)’

And for some reason, Mai did not have a response to that. She wrapped her arms around herself, shuddering at the way her sun-dried tunic crisped and creaked from whatever muck had been in the water… and then she remembered Jet’s arm around her waist, strong and sheltering… ‘He turned so that he would hit the water first… Agni, did he break his arm then?’

“…Mai!”

Mai started and whirled, almost braining herself on a low-hanging root. “What?” she demanded, annoyed, glaring at Jet.

He chuckled, apparently amused at having caught her off-guard. “I was saying, we’re pretty much screwed, so far as hunting goes. The sun’s going to set soon and you’re pretty much out of your shooty-pointy stick-things, right?” Her withering glare was sufficient answer. “Guess that means we go hungry tonight. Also, I’m not sleeping outside for a wandering platypus bear to get me, so if you want to keep up your little “separate sleeping arrangements” deal, guess that means you got the doorway.” He chuckled and turned back into the cave.

“You…!” Mai started, incensed; her breath caught. “Jet, take off your shirt.”

Jet swiveled around, staring at her as if she had just suggested saber-toothed mooselions made excellent pets. “What is it with you and having me strip today?” he asked, “Don’t tell me you’re finally coming around an… AUGH, WHAT THE HELL YOU CRAZY BI-!”

Mai paused in the middle of trying to thrust his right arm backwards through the sleeve whilst yanking the bottom of the shirt over the sling and his head. ‘What am I doing!?’ The slash across Jet’s back might not even be all that serious (except that there had been fresh blood glistening on the ragged edges of the cloth…). “Take your shirt off,” she repeated, making sure to sound as bored as possible as she pulled up on the hem of his tunic. “Couldn’t you feel it, idiot-peasant? Your back is sliced open and there’s blood…” Mai froze. There was a nasty scar along his hip that ran down past the waist-band of his pants, and another slanting down across his tightly-muscled stomach. Both looked old and neither looked like the wounds had been treated by any sort of competent doctor. “Agni…”

“What, you’re wanting payback for that time I took a peek at you?” Jet snarled, roughly shoving her away and pulling his tunic back into place with a jerk, “I told you, the steam pretty much covered everything, and it’s not like I…!”

“As if!” Mai snapped, “Just take off the damned shirt, idiot, unless you want that cut on your back going septic.”

“It’s nothing,” Jet muttered, glowering, “I can’t even feel it. ‘Sides, I’ve had worse.”

“I don’t doubt,” Mai snorted, “But if you get a fever, I’m leaving you behind!”

“Fine,” Jet answered, shrugging his right shoulder.

Mai clenched her jaw, counting slowly to five. “Take you shirt off, or I will cut it off you,” she said coldly.

Jet narrowed his eyes. Mai cocked her head, went to the mouth of the cave where she had placed their weapons, picked up her kodachi and turned to him. “Well?”

He looked at her, gaze flicking momentarily toward the cave opening beyond as though he were seriously considering making a run for it. Finally, he snorted a laugh through his nose and said, “All right then. What the little lady wants, the little lady gets. Just don’t get too excited.”

“I won’t,” Mai said drily, keeping her kodachi at the ready in case the idiot changed his mind. Jet took an inordinate amount of time removing his shirt, playing up his splinted arm for all that it was worth. The daylight was swiftly dying by the time he dropped the tattered garment to the cave floor and slowly turned his back to Mai.

Her eyes flew wide open and the kodachi fell from her nerveless hand, metal clanging sharply on stone.

“So… like what you see?” he asked huskily, challenge, bitterness, and self-loathing warring for dominance in his voice.

Mai did not answer for a long time. She thought she had seen it all, seen all the horrors human beings could wreak upon each other, witnessed enough torture and barbarity and killing and death to be inured to shock and pity.

Obviously, she was giving the human race too much (or too little) credit. The conscious, careful cruelty that had burned those perfectly legible words into Jet’s skin defied her faculties to comprehend, which was saying something for the erstwhile right-hand of Fire Princess Azula:

‘This fool thought to defy the mighty Fire Nation: all who see, bear witness.’

She crossed the space separating them as though drawn by an inescapable gravity. Her fingers hovered above the scarlet-tinged scars and she imagined she could feel the remnants of the heat that had scribed them. Ridiculous, of course; it was only Jet’s natural animal warmth that radiated from his skin.

Other than a fractional, instinctive tensing of his shoulders and the muscles of his back, Jet gave no sign he was aware of her invasive nearness. Emboldened, sensing the challenge, Mai brushed her fingers lightly, slowly down his back, occasionally tracing the outline of an exquisitely formed character with fascination that bordered on surreal.

Jet shuddered, stifling the groan, but he did not move away.

Mai’s own breath caught, suddenly too aware of his warmth, of the texture of his skin, of his scent. Something (pity? desire? lust?) throbbed in her chest, and lower, and she wanted nothing more than to press herself against him, to trace his scars with her lips, to have his lips devour hers…

Eyes wide, Mai snatched her hand back, her skin tingling as if stung by the aftermath of lightning. “All right, you were right, it’s just a scratch,” she mumbled, flicking her eyes at the long slash across Jet’s lower back. Beads of dark drying blood limned the slash, and she wondered why she had panicked at the stains on his tunic, it was ridiculous, it made her seem like she actually cared that he…!

Very slowly, Jet turned, his dark eyes fixing on her through the thick fringe of his bangs. He stepped toward her, so that his splinted arm just barely brushed against the front of her shirt. Mai felt heat rush to her face (and pool between her thighs), sparking anger. He was challenging her again, like he always did, daring her to step back, to retreat. Stubbornly, she remained in place, glaring up at him, trying to ignore the quickening of her breath and heartbeat. Her resolve almost broke (almost) as he raised his good hand to her face – she supposed then would have been the time to shove him away (not because he was trying to hurt her), to sneer (not because he sneered), to make some crack about his low birth (not because he was mocking her for her “noble” status). But his gaze, his nearness was like a tranquilizing drug, spreading leaden warmth through her limbs… and she liked it.

He touched her, his thumb caressing the curve of her cheekbone and she felt the warmth solidify and expand in her womb, pulsing in her core. She whimpered…

Jet’s eyes widened, drifting to her parted lips, and Mai realized (too late!) that he had not been challenging her, he had been asking permission and that she had granted it with her stillness and silence and that he was about to…

The kiss was the heat and desperate strength of a man consigned to death, defiantly seizing one last moment of life, of pleasure, of selfishness, of perverse indulgence. It was the kiss of a madman, a fanatic, and Mai welcomed it. She crushed against him, one arm snaking around his waist, the other seizing the shoulder of his damaged arm; the make-shift splint pressed bruisingly into her ribcage as she sought to close every last gap between their bodies, felt the hardness rising between his legs, pressing against her lower belly.

Jet grunted in pain, but only deepened the kiss, his hand sliding to the back of her neck, to tilt her head, his tongue surging into her opened mouth. It was an attack, brutally establishing dominance. Mai groaned, almost purred, heedlessly returning the favor, reveling in the dark satisfaction of having done something completely, utterly selfish and reckless.

Jet pulled back as though she had struck him, but did not release her. Instead, he stared down at her, his eyes dark with emotions Mai could not name.

“Don’t toy with me,” he rasped, “Not now. We’re lucky to be alive and I’m in no shape to…” He grit his teeth. “Don’t act like you’re…!”

“Like I’m what?” Mai demanded, bemused.

“Like…” Jet’s fingers wove themselves into her hair, combing clumsily through her disordered buns and tangling as he cradled the back of her neck, “Like you’re going to give me the one thing I know you’d never stoop to giving someone like me!”

It was his way of letting them both save face, an opportunity to stop this now, to pretend it never happened…

He was an idiot, a half-mad, conniving bastard with no past to speak of, a spinner of deceits and half truths. ‘But why do you keep him with you?’

He hated the Fire Nation, and it was disturbing the way he talked about it, how he smirked in satisfaction to see people wearing Fire Nation colors suffering. ‘But can you blame him?’

There was nothing about him she could be certain of. ‘He turned his back. He speaks in lies, but what he does…’ Mai’s heart pounded in her ears; how many days had they travelled and fled and fought and argued and survived? How many times had they walked the razor edge of death? She closed her eyes, biting her lip, too keyed up, too exhausted to think anymore. Was it too much to ask of her pride, too much to reassure herself that she was, in fact, alive? She pressed her face into his chest, his heat soaking into her cheek and lips. She breathed in, river-smell and sweat and blood and leather and metal, his scent, washing over her.

“Mai?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Sit down,” she grated, looking up at him. When Jet stared at her, uncomprehending, she moved her hands to his upper arms, and with a sudden push that nearly sent him tumbling, repeated, “Sit. Down.”

“What the hell are you…?!” Jet demanded, but something made him shut up and do as he was told. His jaw was tight, muscles twitching under the skin, his eyes sparking like a wary predator’s in the waning twilight. Those eyes followed Mai as she knelt beside him, widened when she deliberately pulled out the knot that tied her pants around her waist and let the loose material drape over her upper thighs. “Hey…” She continued as if she had not heard him and began undoing the line of fasteners down the front of her thoroughly soiled shirt, beginning with the one at her throat. She was midway down, the shirt gaping over her breast bindings, when Jet’s good hand fastened on hers. “Stop,” he ordered raggedly, his breathing harsh in the enclosed space. He was staring fixedly at the wedge of skin and linen just beneath the shirt.

“Do it yourself,” Mai said, slipping her hand out of his and watching him coolly.

He flicked his eyes up to hers for a moment before returning it to place where his fingers hovered a hairsbreadth above the thick silk. For a moment, Mai thought he would jerk his hand away; barring that, that he would actually try to close her shirtfront up again. It reminded her of Zuko, the desperate, helpless confusion mingled with dark lust in his stare. (She wondered why she did not feel a flash of guilt, thinking of her betrothed at a time like this, and mentally shrugged.)

Jet was not Zuko. He smirked at her, affixing a veneer of his usual confidence over his turmoil. “I told you, you were a cruel woman – why do you feel the need to prove it at every turn?” The next fastener gave way, and the others followed in remarkably short order.

Mai raised an eyebrow, neither helping nor hindering him, although she could not deny the sudden quickening in her heartbeat every time his fingers inadvertently brushed against her skin. Jet must have somehow heard or felt the tell, for his grin widened. With a casual flick of his wrist, the last fastener flew open, and Mai shrugged out of the garment. Jet pouted like a child denied a sweet. “You said I could do it myself,” he reminded her.

Mai rolled her eyes. “You’re taking too long,” she muttered, rising up on her knees and pushing her pants and undergarments off without any pretense of seduction or grace. All the same, Jet stared, completely entranced, until she slid her knee across his thighs, mounting him.

“Don’t I get to play at all?” he wheedled, again fixating on the linen strips binding her breasts.

Mai snorted through her nose, the impatient pulse between her legs demanding action instead of toying. All the same, she reached back, intending to undo the knot at her spine that tied the yards of fabric in place.

Jet had other ideas. Before Mai could react, he had reached past her, his cheek pressed flush against her collarbone; metal flashed into the blended moon and firelight, and cold pressed sharply against her sternum for an uncomfortable, terrifying moment. And then, the bindings dropped away, split up the middle by the knife Jet secreted in his boot. “Heh,” Jet commented triumphantly, tapping his shoulder with the flat of the blade as he eyed her bared breasts.

Mai’s eyed narrowed dangerously.

“Hey, wha-?!” he managed, just before Mai snatched the knife from his slack grip and slashed through the waistband of his trousers.

“… You don’t wear anything underneath these,” she observed unnecessarily.

“And you’re fucking crazy,” Jet riposted, glaring, “Do you do this with all your boyfriends or am I a special case?!”

Bored with the repartee, Mai tossed the knife aside and slipped her hand into the opening at his crotch, fingers caressing teasingly down the length of his shaft. Whatever complaints Jet had yet to vent were forgotten as he gasped, eyes widening at her bold touch.

“You deserved it,” Mai informed him, gripping him and sliding her hand slowly up to his tip, feeling him stiffen and swell. Jet moaned through clenched teeth, his body twisting beneath her. He pressed his splinted arm to his torso and grabbed her thigh with his good hand. Mai hissed as his fingers dug viciously into her skin, his fore and middle fingers rubbing against her slit.

“When my… arm… get’s healed up…” he gasped, lunging forward to press his hot mouth against her left breast, tongue and teeth scraping against her piqued nipple, “You’re… going to be… sorry…!”

“Hmph,” Mai replied, flicking her thumb over his sensitized tip, causing him to emit a half-yelp of arousal and surprise.

Mai was certain she had control of the situation: Jet was injured, one arm (at least) fractured and immobilized in its splint and sling; she was on top of him, in such a way that he had no chance to gain purchase. However…

Calloused fingers slid inside of her, grazing the soft bud of sensitive flesh at her opening, circling back to capture it and just as brusquely pull away, leaving her gasping at the breathless waves of pleasure that radiated through her. Jet, grinning against her breast, repeated the motion several times, each time urging her higher and leaving her emptier with each denial of orgasm, until his fingers were slick with her.

“What?” he muttered against her as she trembled and moaned, “Something as little as that, and you forget to…?”

She was not nearly prepared, not nearly satisfied with the foreplay, but the way he said it thoroughly annoyed her through the haze of induced pleasure. Rising up slightly on her knees, she shoved his hand aside and thrust him into her.

Too quickly. Too hard. She felt herself stretch, and it felt as though she was about to tear. Mai gasped, torn between pain and ecstasy, but pride and lust demanded she take him further in. Jet moaned and she smirked in satisfaction. But working up a rhythm of thrust and withdraw only heightened her unpreparedness and his inability to respond; she could not relax, could not lose herself in the pleasure. She had to arch her stomach around his splint, the kodachi hilt digging painfully into her lower ribs. Her muscles quivered, rebelled, and she sagged against him, panting, clenching her teeth against a whimper of pain.

“Typical Fire Nation: can’t finish what you start,” he breathed. His hand clamped on her upper thigh, pushing her back slightly. Mai hissed, irritated at his presumption, and Jet tilted his head somewhat apologetically before planting a languid, open-mouthed kiss between her breasts. He slid his hand under her thigh and cupped her bottom, forcing her to rise up slightly on the balls of her feet and lean away from him. “Try now.”

‘As if something as little as this will make a difference,’ Mai dismissed, even as she followed his lead and adjusted herself to take him in at this new angle.

But it did. Oh, but it did! He slid into her fluidly, heat and pleasure flooding her, the wave knocking her feet out from under her so that she nearly sprawled back on his thighs. Only by grabbing his shoulders, her fingers digging deep into his sweat-slicked skin, did she stay upright. Her feet scraped against the ground until they found purchase against the cave wall behind him.

“Come on, then…!” he urged, pulling her down so forcefully that her pelvis jarred against his, his entire length plunging deep into her. Mai choked on her scream and thrust her hips against him, feeling him stretch and fill her, agonizingly glorious fulfillment. Her fingernails bit deep into his skin, dark blood welling up and spilling down his back. Neither of them minded. Jet bit down on a curse as she bumped against his splint again and tried guide her motions with his hand on her hip.

Mai paid him no mind, having him completely at the mercy of her rhythm, enthralled with the feel of him stroking in her, dark and hot, her head lolling back as she rode him.

“Mai!” Jet gasped, tightening his grip on her hip to the point that it bruised the china-white skin, “Mai! I can’t…!” Suddenly, he yanked her down and heaved up into her, emptying himself with a deep moan. Mai, dizzied and just short of climax, gasped as he withdrew, slumping on his lap and staring at him in disbelief.

“Goddammit, what do you expect!” he cursed under his breath, swiping sweat-drenched bangs from his eyes to glare at her, “I’m in this shape and you expect me to…!”

Mai stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Fuck!” he snarled, thrusting his hand down between them, his fingers reaching up into her as before. Mai writhed, denied and angered, yet his questing fingers turned in her and suddenly stroked up against something that made her shriek as the world was knocked head-over-heels. Even then, Jet did not relent, working his thumb up into her to stroke against her center as his fingers, hard, unrelenting, rough, stroked against her, sending her over the edge of orgasm. She fell heavily on one arm, her legs sprawling haphazardly on either side of his hips. Only when she finally quieted, her body shivering in the aftermath, did he withdraw his hand. Almost carelessly, he swiped her moisture of on his sling before reaching down and scooping her up by his arm around her lower back. Mai folded against him, her over-stimulated center quivering as it came in contact with his near-feverish skin.

“Not bad,” she managed, scraping her nails over his shoulder and nestling her cheek against his neck. If this had been Zuko, they would have stared deep into each others’ eyes and babbled some nonsense about not hating what they had just consummated, or said nothing as they embraced under tangled silken sheets to drift into comfortable sleep.

But Jet was not Zuko. He merely grunted at her assessment, and clasped her closely, possessively, his forehead sagging tiredly against her shoulder. He did not embrace her, merely shielded her body from the worst of the cold and dirt and damp, and used her body to contain his own warmth.

“Sleep,” he muttered, “Tomorrow, we find someone who can set this broken arm of mine properly.”

“Whatever,” Mai replied, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

--- FIN --- (for now)
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This Is Escape