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The Void in Your Eyes
Piandao hasn’t known exactly what to expect when he agreed to open his home to the young man. He had been warned that this young man held no love of the Fire Nation, and for good reason. Other warnings came that his injuries had been extensive, and his recovery would be a lengthy endeavor—if he was ever going to be who he was before again at all. There had also been warnings of the potential lingering effects of hypnosis on his mind.
All seemed to be in a general agreement that the young man delivered to Piandao’s castle by stretcher was barely Jet at all.
But none of that intimidated Piandao in the slightest. His home, after years of restoration and redesigns, barely resembled anything related to the Fire Nation at all. It was his sanctuary away from the rest of the nation and the world. One he was willing to share. The injuries had already been assessed and treated by the White Lotus’s own medical staff. Arguably the best healers available to anyone in any of the four nations. All that was left to his recovery was rest and time—both of which were something that Piandao could offer.
And as for the young man’s mind, their paths had never crossed. Piandao had never had the pleasure of his acquaintance. Therefore he had no impressions of who this young man was apparently supposed to be according to everyone else. He would only have their time together to cultivate an understanding of who he was and who he would become when he was no longer bound to a bed or the person the war forced him to be.
Even if it any of that had intimidated him, Piandao found himself more intrigued than anything else, especially as the younger man’s personal effects were delivered along with him. Nothing but a pair of hooked swords—Tigerheads.
The hooked swords, though unique in appearance, had grown in popularity among the peasants due to their ability to be crafted when limited materials were available. A fair amount of damage could also be done with them, even with limited knowledge and training for their use. Piandao characterized them as wild, scrappy sorts weapons. Wielded out of a ferocity to survive, by someone just as scrappy as the weapon themselves.
Piandao’s mind painted a far different picture than the young man in the bed, swallowed by crisp, white bandages and a tangle of burgundy blankets. The young man whose eyes were lifelessly empty and somewhere distant.
It would be intriguing indeed to see who would emerge from that void.
So Cynical
Piandao had sat with the young man for a few hours before he noticed signs of life—dark, sharp eyes were tracking his movements. His patient’s fingers clenched around the hem of the blanket that had been tucked around him.
“It’s alright,” he offered gently, “I’m not sure how much you’ll remember, but you were injured in Ba Sing Se.”
No reply came beyond a wary glower between the bandaged over his torso and the man.
“My name is Piandao and you’ve been brought here to my home so you can convalesce under the protection of the White Lotus.”
The young man stayed silent, holding Piandao’s gaze in a long staring match that the older man had to break first. He let out a soft sigh. “I’ll get us some tea.” A nose wrinkle of disgust came in reply.
He chuckled to himself as he left the room. Young people were so cynical about the restorative properties of tea—not that it was unreasonable for the young man to be cynical in the first place. Even without a word from him, Piandao could see hints of the spirit and fire he’d been told about. Spirits willing there would be more of that to come.
He lingered long enough in the steeping and preparations that it had grown dark by the time he returned to the room. Piandao could see his patient tense up at his return. Eyes glinting in the lowlight of the room, tracking his movements again like caged animal.
“Give me a moment and I’ll turn a light on,” he said gently. He didn’t waste his breath on reassurances that his patient wasn’t going to believe in the first place. Piandao set the tray down on the desk, rifling through the top drawer for a set of spark rocks. He moved for the lamp, striking a soft glow into the room.
“Put it out.” His voice was low and gravely from a lack of use. Piandao doused the flame as requested, waiting as their eyes readjusted to the dark. “No lamps.”
Wordlessly, Piandao picked up the lamp and carried it out of the room. It might have seemed comical if the young man’s voice hadn’t trembled under the weight of his desperation. He returned a few moments later, announcing his reentry to the room with louder footsteps than he would have normally used in case the younger man missed the movements. Piandao approached the bed and held out an unlit candle for him to see.
“Would this be more acceptable to you?”
“I don’t know.”
The tremble was back in his voice and it was hard to determine under the circumstances if it was lingering fear, his fatigue setting back in, or the most likely scenario of—all a combination of both.
“Would you allow me to try it?”
Piandao had to assume the shrug that followed was the closest thing to an answer that he would get from him. He gently struck the spark rocks again, sparks catching on the wick. A dull glow flickered into life in the room. His patient watched the light, pressed as far back into the pillows as he could to make distance between himself and the glow. It was obvious he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the arrangement. But it seemed to be tolerable enough for the time being. Returning to the tea set, Piandao poured two cups that had grown cold.”
He tried to give one of the cups to the young man in the bed, but he wouldn’t take it and shook his head, “Don’t drag this out, old man.”
“I don’t know that I’m quite certain I understand what it is that I’m dragging out, young man. What is it that you’re waiting for?”
“To die.”
“If your medical reports are anything to go by, you’ll be waiting for that for quite some time I’m afraid," the young man turned away before he saw Piandao's sad smile.
Where to Begin
By the time the younger man was well enough to get out of bed, they had gone back and forth on the subject enough times that it had seemed to lose any sense of meaning to both of them. It was just another game they played really—like Pai Sho. Well, Piandao played Pai Sho. The other knocked pieces around with no respect for the rules of the game while Piandao attempted to play around him.
It always went the same way.
Piandao would bring it up, barely managing to squeeze in a single merit for it. He might say that it would help him regain his strength and spirits. That it would stimulate his mind. Or give him a sense of purpose in his days.
His guest would interrupt after that, reminding the other man that he’d been blade wielding for practically his whole life and he didn’t need anyone training him how to do it. Not to mention the idea of training in something he was already an expert in felt like it would be the opposite of purposeful or stimulating.
Piandao would raise one of his dark eyebrows after that, a hint of a smirk playing in the creases around his mouth. It went without being said that Piandao had also been blade wielding for most of his life. A time period that over doubled the younger man’s very existence, let alone when he had been old enough to pick up a sword for the first time.
A roll of his eyes would follow after that. Earlier in his recovery and their budding familiarity that smirk might have resulted in the young man muttering some kind of obscenity under his breath and turning away on his bed to end the conversation. But he was bolder these days. More comfortable. At home in a way that made Piandao hide his soft grins behind the rim of his teacup, even while he flipped him off and strung colorful insults together at his expense.
More mobile too. Sometimes his lack of interest in the topic drove the other man out of the room, and castle all together. He would disappear for a while, stewing while perched on one of the high perimeter walls or in one of the trees that looked out over the cliff. Feet dangling down carelessly over the sharp drop as if it meant nothing to him.
Piandao did his best to give him privacy in those moments, but from the few glances he stole he could tell that perhaps the view meant nothing because his guest’s mind was somewhere else entirely. Places far away from the castle. Places Piandao couldn’t hope to reach him, even in younger days when scaling walls and trees might have seemed like a more appealing endeavor.
But he would come back better for it, lighter somehow. More grounded. And the pattern was comfortable enough to make Piandao almost choke on his tea the day his companion glanced up from his own untouched cup—growing cold as it often did, to say, “So, this training thing, tell me what it is you want me to do?”
Always so Proud
The younger man sat at the desk, staring between the blank paper in front of him and back at Piandao. In absence of his wheat stalk, he worried his bottom lip.
“This doesn’t look like sword training.”
“Swords aren’t the only thing that have to stay sharp.” The older man playfully tapped the other’s temple. His hand was knocked away and his house guest, turned reluctant student flipped him off for good measure. “It’s not as if I’m asking you to compose a sonnet. It’s just writing your name.”
The younger man leaned back in the chair. He perched his feet on the desk, creasing the corners of the paper as he did. “What the fuck is a sonnet?”
“It’s a kind of poem, Tigerhead.”
“What? Like,” he snatched the brush off the table and brandished it, “This is not a sword. But I’ll still hurt you with it. Watch your back, old man?” A victorious gleam danced through Jet’s eyes.
No amount of training or control could have prevented Piandao from letting an audible chuckle slip out after that unexpected performance. “That would be a haiku, not a sonnet. Neither of which are your name, I might add.” Approaching from behind, he caught the brandishing wrist and gently guided it toward the paper again. As amusing as it was, he’d taught more than enough students to know work avoidance strategies when he saw it.
The young man bristled, twisting the brush handle to deliver a harsh rap against Piandao’s knuckles.
“Don’t.”
Piandao released his hold. He absently massaged the stinging skin, but it would hardly be the first blow a student had managed to land on him. One of his eyebrow’s raised, waiting for an explanation—one that wouldn’t be as forthcoming if the clench of teeth on his pale bottom lip was anything to go by.
“Sorry,” the younger man ground out a short, lispy apology through his teeth. He shoved back from the table and retreated from the room. The older man considered letting him go, waiting for him to clear his mind safe on one of his tree or wall perches. But something in his instincts said this was a time to push his reluctant student out of his comfort zone.
He found him on one of the walls, eyes tracing the worn holds that had the younger man had scaled. Sighing, Piandao perched one of his feet in the lowest hold and hoisted himself to the next one.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like, Tigerhead? I’m joining you,” Piandao answered, with less ease than he would have preferred as he scaled to the next hold. “A master never lets his opponent hold the high ground for too long.”
“I didn’t know we were fighting.”
“My knuckles might say otherwise.” Both of their eyes found the tender, raised patch on his hand where the brush had connected with the joints. “This task seems to have struck a nerve, and I’m not referring to my tendons.” Piandao sank onto the wall beside him. The reply came in the form of a noncommittal grunt, but Piandao took it as the affirmative that it was. “And why is that?”
No answer came at first, but despite the fact that the younger man was looking in any other direction than Piandao it wasn’t difficult to tell he was present in the moment. A deep red had crept its way through the skin on the back of his neck and spread through his cheeks.
“Because I can’t do it. Is that what you want to hear, old man?”
The broken silence was replaced by another, and it was Piandao’s turn to feel a flush blossoming beneath his skin. It was wrong to have assumed that writing his name would be simple task for a war orphan. Something he should have known all too well from his own humble beginning. Living in a castle made it far too easy to forget the distant past of scratching letters into the dirt behind the orphanage to prove to the matron he was worthy of the scraps of paper he’d begged for—that they wouldn’t be wasted on him.
Piandao shook his head, he rubbed his shoulder and glanced at the ground distastefully at the thought of climbing back down. But nothing could be resolved from their current position. He let out a long breath, and slotted his foot into the furthest hold he could reach.
The younger man followed his progress, head cocked to the side—his question obvious even without words. And Piandao only had to wait a minute or two for his student to be curious enough to follow. They took the curved pathway that lined the inner portion of the walls around to the Zen garden.
Piandao watched how the other man breathed easier there, his movements far less caged than they’d seemed by the confines of the desk. The presence of rocks may have reminded him of home in the Earth Kingdom, or it may just have been that he wasn’t the sort of person who was meant to sit at a desk at all. Whatever his reasons were, Piandao found far less resistance when he picked up a stick that had blown into the garden and beckoned the other to follow him to a patch of loose pebbles.
He traced out his own name in the pebbles, forgoing his usual flourishes of calligraphy that no longer seemed appropriate in the moment. Piandao turned his attention back to the other man, “Beyond mental stimulation, the other purpose of this exercise is putting your identity out into the world in a way, as you do each time you brandish a weapon.” His lip twitched, “Or brush.” His student smirked in reply, “We’re also manipulating an environment to better suit our situation, as you should always be prepared to do in battle. Now watch.” He dipped the stick into the pebbles again and spoke them aloud as he dragged out the letters J-e-t through the shifting pebbles next to his.
The younger man frowned and swept his foot over the pebbles. The word disappeared back into the patch of stones. “Jet isn’t my name. That’s just what people call me.”
“No one ever mentioned that to me,” Piandao said apologetically.
He shook his head, “Doubt any of them ever knew.” His eyes misted, and he tipped his face skyward as if he was trying to force tears back down before they could fall. “It’s been a long time since anyone called me anything else.”
It was difficult to fill in the gap of what he wasn’t saying on the subject.
“Baojing,” he said, glancing almost shyly back at Piandao as if they were meeting for the first time.
And perhaps in a certain way they were.
Baojing. Fitting—treasured gem, if he recalled correctly. And what a treasured part of him to be entrusted with.
“Baojing,” Piandao repeated warmly and relished in the way the younger’s eyes lit up at the sound of his name. He took the stick again and traced out the new set of letters into the stones before handing the stick over to his less reluctant student.
Biting his lip in concentration, he traced out his own wobbly versions of the letters below Piandao’s. He glanced back again, so proud.
Every Bone in Your Hand
“No.”
Sighing, Piandao let the tail of the sash dangle from one of his hands. It wasn’t as if that had been an unanticipated response from him. The young man had barely agreed to participate in the trainings in the first place. “Which aspect is it about this exercise that offends you?”
“Was I supposed to understand what the fuck any of that was supposed to mean?” He asked, head cocking to the side. He kept himself out of arm’s reach, glaring at the sash like it was a snake poised to strike.
“To rephrase, why not, Baojing?”
He shrugged, the use of his name settling some of his agitation. Sighing, the younger man answered, “I don’t see the point of it for one thing.”
“Ah, and yet that would imply you have more than one reason to refuse it.” The younger man raised his chin, as if he was daring Piandao to keep asking questions. But unfortunately for him, the older man wasn’t so easily intimidated. “Is it the blindfold?”
“Yes.”
Piandao’s eyebrow raised at the moment of complete honesty.
“I can understand your hesitations, Baojing, but this won’t be anything like what you might remember. That much I can promise you.” When no further arguments or protests came, Piandao closed the distance between them. The young man tensed, but made no attempt to retreat as the sash was brought over his eyes and gently tied in place. “Breathe,” he said firmly, listening to the other’s pattern becoming shallow and ragged. They stood for several minutes before he found a more controlled rhythm.
During past versions of this exercise with other students Piandao normally placed his hands on their shoulders and steered them from behind. However, Baojing, wasn’t a normal student. It required a certain change in strategy. The older man rested his hand gently on the top of one of the younger’s shoulders to not startle him and slid his palm down over the taut muscles through his arm. He captured Baojing’s hand firmly in his and simply said, “Walk with me.”
And they walked.
Prior students were told to listen to the way the grass rustled as they brushed past it. To estimate how far away the bird calls they could hear were coming from. To feel and calm the beating of their hearts in their chests.
But Baojing had dedicated himself to his own study as the two of them walked. The pads of his fingers traced every joint and bone in Piandao’s hand. Nails, bitten to their quicks, scratched against his calloused palm. Piandao let Baojing explore the landscape of his skin with no resistance until the younger man stopped short in their path.
“Water,” he said confidently, craning his face in the direction of the waterfall’s roaring flow. Shivering as ghosts of droplets misted his face—ones that would never reach them at their current distance, “A river? No.” He shook his head. “It’s a waterfall.”
“Yes. Would you like to see it?” Baojing let out a soft hum of agreement. “Alright then, would you like some—“
Before Piandao could offer his assistance with the blindfold, the younger man had torn the sash from his face. He blinked away the stinging tears watering in the corners of his eyes at the sudden rush of light pouring in. On the opposite side of the cliffs from them, a waterfall was fed by the currents of a river. The sun reflected off foamy white caps where the water churned.
He was usually rather disciplined about turning his students away from the view after only a minute for the exercise to challenge their minds as it intended, and yet for the first time he found himself reluctant to pull Baojing away from the view that lit up his face with such wonder. But gently steered him around, attempting to pass him the roll of parchment and paints.
“In a battle you might only have an instant to commit a terrain to your memory, so the purpose of the exercise to recreate as much as you can of what you’ve just seen.”
“Sounds like a load of royal bear shit if you ask me.” The offerings of the paper and painting supplies were pointedly ignored.
Piandao chuckled, “Oddly enough, I don’t recall asking your opinion, Baojing.” Smirking, he continued, “But if you think it would be too difficult for you, then I suppose we can-“
Eyes narrowing, the younger man snatched the paint set out of Piandao’s hands. He knew he’d been goaded into it, but he wouldn’t be shown up by the older man telling him he couldn’t do something.
“Turn around,” Baojing demanded.
“Pardon?”
“I don’t get to look at the waterfall, so you can’t see this masterpiece until I’m finished with it. Turn around.”
Rolling his eyes skyward, Piandao nodded and turned back toward the waterfall. He lowered himself down to the grass, wondering if the younger man would take enough time on the exercise for him to squeeze in a brief meditation. Piandao doubted it. But passed the time by matching the pattern of his breathing to the lapping of the waves against the rocky patch of shore below them.
“Done!”
Based on the way Baojing’s lips twitched around a reed he’d snatched from a bed of weeds, Piandao had the distinct impression that his initial victory in their battle over the training exercise had somehow shifted to a place that was no longer in his favor.
“Well, let’s see this masterpiece of yours.”
The result of the young man’s efforts was nothing short of breathtaking. Every crack and fissure of the cliffs was depicted between the swirls and curls of blue and white currents. But the part of the composition that rendered Piandao truly breathless was Baojing’s inclusion of himself in the landscape, peering out between a patch of weeds that had been painted right above his wobbly signature, with his middle out stretched out toward them.
Piandao doubled over, unrestrained tears fell through his wheezes of laughter as he fought to regain control of his breath. Rendered even more breathless as chuckles were joined by unfamiliar, but brighter peals of laughter from the young man at his side.
Wasn’t Just Waiting to Die
“I don’t know if that’s wise quite yet, Tigerhead,” Piandao answered the question that had been burning on Baojing’s tongue for the last week.
“Then when?” Baojing asked, pausing in buffing a smudge off one of his hooks. Piandao didn’t answer. “I’ve been climbing on the walls and trees for a month now. I’ve pushed rocks around. I learned how to write my name, and I painted your shitty waterfall. This whole training thing was your idea, so when do I get to fight?”
To his credit, the young man had done everything asked of him—not without complaints or his own personal flair of course, but many of these training exercises were meant to allow for some flexibility in their execution.
“Dare I ask what your newfound motivation is for this?”
“What, afraid I’m going to beat you up, old man?” Piandao ignored the goading. Instead, he closed the distance between them and tugged the closure on Baojing’s tunic open. The material hung loosely around his shoulders, baring his torso. The younger man raised an eyebrow, “See something you like?”
“What I would like to see is evidence that your injuries have progressed to a stage of recovery that they won’t be exacerbated by light sparring,” Piandao answered, glad to have an excuse not to meet Baojing’s gaze at that particular moment as he examined the state of his abdomen. “Assuming I agree to this, it will not be the sort of fight where anyone beats anyone else up, do we have an accord in that regard?”
The younger man shrugged, “Don’t know what all of that meant, but if I say yes does it get us to the fighting part faster?”
Piandao sighed, “Yes, if you can give me your word that you’re not going to push yourself too far.”
“Which word do you want me to give you?”
Piandao’s expression darkened, eyes turning to steel. “This isn’t a game, Baojing. In entering any fight, even against an opponent who means you no harm, you have to evaluate both your physical and mental preparation for it. You also need to be able to respect your limitations. Ignoring any of that can get you or your opponent killed. Now, are you certain you are fully prepared for a match?”
“Yeah.” He reached for his hooked blades.
“Not so fast, Tigerhead. We have to set the rest of the terms first.” The younger man ground his teeth together in irritation. “It won’t take long if you’re participating in the conversation appropriately, Baojing,” he added gently. “Now, for a first match, the only thing your swords should come into contact with are my sword. Pull your blows back just short of any hit you have an opening for.”
He demonstrated by sweeping his blade just short of Baojing’s nose, unsure whether pride or chagrin should be his reaction when the younger man didn’t so much as flinch.
“Should either of us want the match to stop at any point, we simply cross any of the lines,” he pointed out the edge of the training terrain, “or say the word Rhododendron.”
“Why not just say stop?”
“Stop is a word likely to come up in taunting and banter, Tigerhead, which I imagine you are the sort of person who might enjoy engaging in during a fight.”
“Fine, we can use your flowery safe word. Anything else?”
“No, I believe that covers it,” he answered without acknowledging the suggestive nature of the remark. Piandao turned on his heel and crossed to the far end of the fighting terrain. “Ready?” He asked.
Baojing slid his arms the rest of the way out of his tunic and tossed it out of bounds. He drew his hooked blades, striking them against each other in a way that made the metal sing. The younger man nodded, adjusting his grip on his swords and finding his opening stance.
Piandao lunged, forcing him to stumble backward out of range of his sword, “And here I thought you were ready?” Piandao taunted.
Teeth gritted, Baojing crossed his swords together to block the next strike and raised his arms. The position forced Piandao’s wrist into an angle that couldn’t be maintained, leaving the older man no choice but to disengage. “Good. There are times where two blades are better than one, use it to your advantage for defense and attacks.”
“Worst fucking taunting I’ve ever heard, old man,” Baojing muttered, launching himself onto one of the boulders in the terrain to give himself the high ground.
“Not a bad strategy to give yourself the high ground, but don’t forget to leave yourself an exit route so your opponent can’t trap you there,” Piandao swept his blade toward his ankles, leaving Baojing no choice but to jump and abandon his perch to evade him.
He hit the ground hard, boots scrabbling for purchases against loose stones and almost losing his balance. Baojing ducked behind the footbridge as the next stroke of Piandao’s blade slashed in his direction. His sword gouged the stones behind where the younger man had been. Baojing pressed his back into the edge of the bridge, catching his breath until a shadow cast over him, “While wise to gather your thoughts and breaths wherever you can, you should never linger too long in a pot that gives your opponent so much access to you.”
The sword came down, forcing the younger man to dodge again. Rocks jammed into his unprotected ribs. Baojing let out a grunt of pain as he crumpled to the ground, falling still.
“Baojing?” Piandao let his sword drop to his side. He slid off the bridge in a fluid motion to kneel at the younger man’s side.
“Never tend to your opponents injuries before the fight ends,” muttered Baojing, swinging one of his hooks and stopping just short of Piandao’s knee. He smirked from his place on the ground, making no attempt to push himself up to a more upright position.
Sighing warmly in his relief, Piandao coaxed the younger man’s head onto his lap to cushion him from the worst of the stones beneath them. “I should be impressed you managed to use my weakness against me,” he said gently as he began his assessment of the extent of his injuries, “That could have gone much better for the both of us, but I suppose it could have gone worse.”
“Well, nobody died.” The younger man managed a broken laugh.
Piandao chuckled softly in agreement, brushing a stray twig from Baojing’s hair.
Nobody died, and while the results of this particular exercise might have landed Baojing back on bedrest for a few days or more—likely earning himself more than a few colorful insults in the process of enforcing it. But this was a far cry from the young man in the bed those first few hours. A young man who wasn’t just waiting to die.