Disclaimer: Oh my god. I don't own.

AN: Since NT is currently playing hard to get, I started trawling on deviantART and there I found a series of pics and drabbles by none other than sylvacoer. The fic you see below is a collab (kinda) - I got all inspired by her art that I wrote an epilogual piece, and then she let me stick in her drabbles as flashbacks. If you want to find her stuff on deviant, I'm gonna stick a link in my profile.

Also: For maximum viewing pleasure, go find the Avatar soundtrack on YouTube. Its Toph-rocking.

Pairing: Jet/Mai - just so no one's surprised.

Promise, Mantra, Prayer

'Just try twitching,' her flat gold eyes promised, 'and you'll see why I wear dark red all the time.'

Jet focused on the ridiculously delicate yet deadly sharp knife hovering scant centimeters from his face and did not doubt she could carry out her unvoiced threat without hesitation.

He had made rags of her afore-mentioned wardrobe, after all.

'So... now what?'he asked himself.

It was fitting he supposed, that he was to be executed in a fire silo.

His parents had been incinerated in the family's old stone house, and looking up at the great smooth-faced edifice before him, he found far too many similarities. His lungs contracted in fear and agony, fighting the smoke that billowed from the silo's twin chimneys. He could smell burning meat and his imagination filled in the sounds of bone cracking as it was reduced to so much charcoal.

A sudden and unwelcome thought rattled around in his skull:

Oven full of people.

He shut his eyes as they marched him forward. Thought of pale, cool gold; thought of suspicious, narrowed, wondering, pained eyes; thought of a girl with a pale foreign face and pale foreign hands full of slender enemy knives; thought of what a kiss could surprise out of her, and the way her breath had hitched, ribcage expanding under his bloodied hands.

He made her name a mantra and stumbled towards his end.

He grinned confidently, never mind the knife point digging into his jaw as he leaned toward her.

"Your prisoner... milady," he drawled, his tone dripping sarcasm.

'Oh, you're so going to pay for that,'Mai thought, bringing the knife down to his throat.

The prayer was familiar, yet in no way comforting.

Please, Agni, make me a stone.

From her position to the right and just behind the Princess, she could easily make out the toiling figure and his guards. Beyond them was the hulking, sullen mass of the silo, white funeral dragons upon its doors, red Fire Nation emblems upon the twin chimney spouting forth human ashes. Such a ridiculous contrast: here she was, coiled upon a silk pillow with two friends, coifed and sweetly oiled and set high up upon a dais while below a man went, filthy and ragged to die upon her countries fires.

Please, oh please, Agni, make me a stone.

Dimly, she was aware of Ty Lee, glancing nervously over at her, grey eyes huge and full of fear and worry for a friend. Death made the acrobat uncomfortable and public executions gave her nightmares. She would be whimpering and feverish by nightfall, and they sat now at twilight, with the sun falling in slow-motion towards an open horizon. It bleed prophetic colour across the clouds' tender underbellies.

Agni, Agni, make me a stone.

The doors of the silo swung wide, and her pale hands flinched against her skirts. She was not even aware of the Princess's sidelong look, the brilliant sun-bright eyes that said silently:

For your own good, friend. Wheels of iron and subtle tasteless sadness turned in Azula's razorblade mind. You got too close, she thought, you got too close and now it will happen for your own good. No taint survives, and he has surely tainted. For your own good…

Still she prayed.

Agni, oh Lord, make me a stone, an unseeing stone.

She watched him dragged inside the gaping maw of the silo, watched the sallow beasts of the doors swing closed, booming gently in the evening air. Watched the firebenders take up posts upon the balconies that wreathed the building. Watched each bender turn to the dais where they sat, watched them watch Azula, watched as the Princess lifted one claw-nailed hand…

Agni, Lord of Fire, Lord of the Sun, Lord of Light, make me a stone…

Watched that fateful hand fall…

Make me a stone, I beseech you, please, for the love of flames, make me a stone…

Watched the flames roar from every ever-ready hand…

I make a wish upon a star, I make a wish that I'm a stone…

Watched the fire gut the silo, watched it glow from the vents, watched it spill in tongues from the chimneys…

Her breath hitched, once, ribcage expanding –

Arms around her, hands on her back, her sides; taste of sweat and woodlands.

– Long pale hands pinching at the dark red fabric in her lap, but she won't sob, or shed a tear, or cry out, because just in time, Agni made her a stone under his godly molten hands.

Yet she could not find it in her heart to thank him.

It began as game of lies and half-truths: she wanted information (because Azula wanted information); he wanted one last chance to harass (annoy) the Enemy.

But as the hours ticked away...

Jet sank back against the cold stone and said, smirking, "I don't know how much of what you've told me was a lie, but... I'm glad you've spent this night with me."

"…You're welcome," Mai whispered.

Just as his life finished flashing before his eyes (the stories were true), just as he was about to relive the last kiss of his life (how can you love someone in the space of two weeks? How can you love someone who lied and threatened you? How can you love someone whose Nation orphaned you?), just as the flames roared and spat fatal heat overhead –

– the earthen floor split open beneath him and he fell, yelling, seven feet down into unlit blackness. The floor crashed back into place before the flames could find him again and the only sound was his own breathing and the blood raging restless and adrenaline-rich in his ears.

Then he held it for a few seconds and realized he was not alone.

Without warning, the there was the soft, rough snatching sound of a flame catching and amber light birth figures standing in a circle around him.

A Yu Yan archer; a gigantic prison guard with a tiny helmeted boy upon his massive shoulder; a black-eyed girl in Fire Nation red; a woman in official benders garb with a set of keys in one hand and flame in the other; a girl in a hanbok with nervous features; and a young man with grass-green eyes, his arms still raised as he carefully sealed shut the earth above them.

Eyes wide, he found the four familiar faces and cried out once before he was engulfed in a bone crushing hug from four sets of arms.

Longshot with Yu Yan paint on his face, Pipsqueak in his clever disguise, The Duke laughing under his stolen headgear, and Smellerbee, for once free of her tribal stripes and clad in more red than was strictly comfortable…

"How did you find me? How did you…I mean the floor just! And then! And now!"

"You're sputtering, Fearless Leader." Bee was grinning at him. Before he could enquire further, she turned to the two benders. He narrowed his eyes at the woman with the keys and flame, but she just smiled at looked to Bee.

"Haru, we good? No leaks?"

The earthbender turned his deep jade eyes on her and smiled. "All good; not even a scar where the floor meshed back together. They'll never know." Haru grinned at Jet. "Congratulations, you're officially dead."

The firebender, the woman, smiled serenely. "And I'll write up the papers to prove it."

He couldn't believe it when his rebels bowed as one to her, Smellerbee saying, "We thank you, Ming. And thank the General for us, if he hadn't –"

"If he hadn't had a soft spot for second-chancers, there still wouldn't be a soft spot where you were standing a moment ago." He realized she was talking to him. "You're important to someone," she told him softly, and there was look in her eyes that made him believe her.

As the nervous girl – Song – came forward, taking the keys from Ming to unlock his cuffs and drawing potions and poultices from her satchel to daub upon his wounds, he looked up, and thought of pale gold; thought of a pale face and pale hands and hitched breath and the taste of star anise and fire flakes.

He made her name a mantra and then he made it a promise.

Mai, Mai, Mai…

"Why?" she demanded as soon as she was free, her hand unconsciously drifting to her lips.

Jet picked himself off of the ground, warily eyeing the soldiers surrounding him. "It seemed like a good idea," he replied with a smirk that did not reach his eyes. "Besides, I'm a dead man anyway."

Mai did not understand why she wanted to reach for him as the soldiers dragged him away...

She didn't sleep that night.

Beyond the far wall, she could make out the soft, bird-quick breathing of Ty Lee caught in a nightmare. In a few minutes the acrobat would wake crying, and her friend would spend the rest of the night settling her back to sleep.

Restless, waiting for nothing at all, she turned and shivered under her sheets. She dreaded and deeply desired oblivion – it offered rest, a cotton-warm darkness to take her in a lull her like a child, away from the lurking grief she wouldn't admit to, and yet at the same time this wasn't guaranteed; the same oblivion could prove not-so-oblivious after all. She might end up like Ty Lee – caught in a suffocating blanket of black-backed nightmares, his face broken apart by the hands of firebenders, right in front of her, again and again…

One of her curtains twitched.

She was on her feet in an instant, padding silent and full to the brim with channeled wrath.

Who would dare…?

There was a set of iron cuffs on her window sill. Cuffs she knew, because she'd put that dent and that scratch and that nick in the metal.

His cuffs.

Her hand went to her mouth in an involuntary gesture, but the question still remained: who would dare? It was cruelty beyond reason to put those there, to remind her…

Despite the dull iron, they caught the moonlight, and she stilled. There was blood on them. It was dried in flaking patches, but there were still small sticky bits where it had caught and clotted. There was still blood, but more importantly, she realized, there was not a single sign of ash.

No set of cuffs could have been retrieved from the silo still covered in little knots of liquid blood and completely free of ash – it just wasn't possible…

Heat burst in her chest, her breath hitched again, a great hot gasp.

Oh, oh, oh…oh Agni, thank you, thank you, thank you…

She whispered his name, first as a prayer, then as a promise:

"Jet, Jet, Jet…"

AN2: So, love it, hate it or just don't care?