Embers: Chapter Nineteen, Part I
Jan. 16th, 2026 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalfThis is a repost from Das_Sporking2; previous installments of this sporking may be found here.
MG: Well, everyone, it’s time to continue our journey through Vathara’s Embers! Last time, Amaya recovered from the spirit fight and learned Zuko and Iroh’s true identities, and oh yeah, the Freedom Fighters disappeared too! Today, we begin what we’re considering as the fic’s third major arc, where we’re going to end up intersecting back with canon as we move towards the climax of the original show’s second Book, which means that we’re going to be seeing the Gaang again soon… but first off, we have to check in on some of our other major characters. Joining us today will be Zuko and Rangi!
Chapter 19
A/N: Again, don't own episode dialogue, especially from "Lake Laogai."
MG: *shrugs* Pretty self-explanatory, nothing to add here.
-
Warm, Shirong thought drowsily, curled on rocks in the Dai Li's borrowed palace garden. Tugged his hat a bit lower, eyes still shut; no point getting burned if he fell asleep out here. Which he might. Like most spirits of malice, the haima-jiao hadn't just wounded his body. His chi was thin, depleted; he didn't feel up to much beyond flicking a pebble, even resting directly on nurturing earth. Sunlight seemed to help, sinking into his veins like a blessing, but when he thought of what he meant to ask of Lee….
Zuko: Okay, I know it’s because the haima-jaio was a spirit of darkness and the deep ocean, so light and heat are its enemy, but even so, isn’t there something a bit… weird about an earthbender finding the sun more healing than, you know, the earth?
MG: Pretty sure this is also foreshadowing for something that’s going to happen with Shirong later, actually…
*both firebenders groan loudly*
The Superior Element: 51
Stay calm, and rest, Shirong advised himself, feeling familiar footsteps on the earth. Ask him, and let him think. He's creative. Don't count it a lost cause just because you won't be in shape to help.
"I didn't think anybody could make rocks look comfortable," Lee said wryly.
Toph: *from outside the sporking chamber* That’s just because you’ve not tried hard enough!
Shirong cracked an eye open to blink at the healers, shifting a shoulder in an abbreviated shrug. "Earth helps us heal." He glanced at Amaya directly.
Rangi: But not as much as the sun, apparently…
"Are you well? Lee was shaken up, and it barely touched his spirit; malicious kamuiy can make the strongest of us feel as though we've struggled free of a midden."
"I'm healing," Amaya said quietly. "May I?"
"Just don't ask me to look," Shirong stated, lifting clear the top layer of his robe. "I'm still not sure I want to know how close it was."
"I can see why." Water-wrapped hands smoothed coolness over his skin, soothing small aches. "Hmm."
From another healer, that would have worried him. But Amaya had a good heart. She wouldn't have sounded thoughtful if there were any danger.
Zuko: *doubles over in bitter laughter* Okay, okay, I’m sorry, but… are we just forgetting what nearly happened to me under Amaya’s attentions? *beat* We are, aren’t we?
"What?"
She withdrew her hands and eyed her apprentice. Who swallowed, but didn't back down. "It froze the life out of him," Lee said plainly. "I just… tried to fix it."
"I think you overdid it," Amaya murmured.
"Overdid what?" Shirong asked pointedly.
Rangi: Well, you clearly didn’t puff him so full of excess chi he popped like a balloon, so whatever happened, it could’ve been worse?
Amaya glanced about the garden, and raised a brow in silent question.
"We're alone. Though Quan will be by later," Shirong answered. That hadn't been hard to arrange. Fortunately. Everyone knew Amaya would never betray a patient.
Zuko: Perform a potentially dangerous technique on them without getting their consent or telling them what you’re doing? She’ll totally do that, though!
"Lee used a technique I reserve for emergencies," Amaya said simply. "It's dangerous. And even when it succeeds, which it did, it disturbs the patient's chi for several days." She glanced skyward. "You were fighting water and darkness. Until it settles, your chi will be seeking light and fire." She frowned slightly, then shook it off. "I would say this is the best prescription. Rest, stone, and sunlight." She gave Lee a serious look. "Try not to do that again soon."
Rangi: How many dark spirits are you planning on fighting, anyway, if it’s even going to come up again?
The young man nodded, though he did glance wryly toward the Inner Wall. East, toward Lake Laogai.
Right. There's a limit to the promises you can keep when the spirits come knocking, Shirong reflected. And on that note…. "Could I speak with Lee in private?"
Blue eyes narrowed. "If this is about trying to recruit a boy I haven't even finished training yet-"
Zuko: …which is different from what Shirong’s been doing up until now how, exactly?
"It's not," Shirong said hastily, as Lee looked indignant. "It's… personal." To me, at least. Though Long Feng won't see it that way.
Rangi: So, it’s personal to you, but Long Feng won’t see it as… what? Something personal? Something he approves of? Would you mind clarifying a bit?
I am a Dai Li agent of Ba Sing Se. My city needs me to act. No matter what our leader orders.
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 35 (even if we’re acknowledging Long Feng’s villainy, we’re still acting like being a Dai Li agent is itself a noble thing, so I’m giving a point)
It still felt like stepping off a cliff.
Breathe. Act calm. The less people who know, the better chance Lee will have.
If Lee chose to help.
Oma and Shu, please let him. I can't do this on my own.
Zuko: And I’m the only person you know who can help with whatever this is (but I can guess)? *beat* No, wait, you’re a Dai Li agent and everyone else you’re buddies with probably works for Long Feng, so maybe I am…
So he was going to enlist a teenage boy. Wonderful. Too bad he couldn't blame this on a concussion.
Rangi: At least he’s kind of aware of how nonsensical this all is?
The Avatar's teachers are even younger. And Lee's got sense. When he has a chance to think.
Which, oddly enough, reminded him of Temul again. The record had been blisteringly clear on the firebender's tendency to open mouth and insert foot.
Zuko: Why are we comparing me to a lady who’s been dead for hundreds of years who I have no connection to aside from coming from the same country as, again?
MG: And, well, when we do meet Temul (in a sense) later in the fic, I wouldn’t really call “foot-in-the-mouth” a quality I’d associate with her…
But there was something more….
He set it aside; Amaya was making her way out of the garden and Lee was frowning at him. Shirong took a reluctant breath, and beckoned him closer. "I need your help."
Lee raked him with a checking-you-for-missing-limbs look he must have picked up from his teacher, and raised that lone brow. "A kamuiy?"
"Not… exactly." Shirong sighed. This is harder than I thought. "Your uncle asked if there might be a reason the haima-jiao was in the lake. There is." He met fiery green squarely. "The Avatar's bison is under Lake Laogai."
Zuko: Uh, no! We were literally shown during the fight why it was here – it was here for me, because I escaped it once already! And I wonder why a water spirit might be in the biggest body of water near the city – that’s a real mystery!
Lee froze. Shirong could see panic trying to clench every muscle in the young man's body, seeking to drive him into flight. But Lee held still, breathing ragged, forcing himself to think. "Why… how… why tell me?"
"The Blue Spirit helped the Avatar once," Shirong said levelly. "I grant you, after what happened at the North Pole, he might want to chain the Avatar to a rock and throw him off a pier.
Zuko: *groans* Aang was defending the Northern Water Tribe from an attack Zhao started and oh yeah, the Ocean Spirit was angry because Zhao killed it’s mate! Do we have to go over this again? How many times do we have to say that before it sinks in?
Rangi: From some of the things our host has let slip, I’m going to guess “quite a bit more,” sadly.
But I hope that the man wanted for raiding Pohuai Stronghold might take pity on the citizens of Ba Sing Se. They don't deserve another haima-jiao."
Zuko: Oh, I get it now – this is all to make sure I have an altruistic motivation for trying to free Appa from the Dai Li, isn’t it? Admittedly that wasn’t my brightest moment when it actually happened, because as Uncle pointed out, I had no idea what I’d do with Appa once I had him… And shouldn’t I maybe be a bit more alarmed that Shirong definitely knows I’m the Blue Spirit, or am I just not caring about that anymore?
Prince Stuko: 78
"I don't… understand," Lee got out. "It's an animal. It's smart, but…."
Gently. He's frightened. And angry. I can't blame him. "If the writings about Avatar Kyoshi are right, it's not just an animal," Shirong told him. "It's the Avatar's animal guide. They're connected. Spiritually. And when they're separated-"
"The spirits get angry," Lee managed, barely above a whisper. "Oh, Agni."
Rangi: …Kyoshi didn’t have an animal guide when we started on our journey. *beat* Wait, are you saying she and Yun would’ve been safe from Father Glowworm if she’d just found a badgermole to cuddle or something? Because I don’t think it works that way.
Shirong let out a relieved breath. He's holding it together. Oma and Shu, that kid is tough. "I'm afraid it may be worse than that."
"…Of course it is," Lee ground out. Sat down on the grass, head lowered, forcing himself through a quick meditation. Let out a sigh, and nodded. "So what's the bad news?"
Zuko: How about I’m sitting here having a friendly conversation with a Dai Li agent who knows who I am, or at least most of it, and could have me killed or worse with a snap of his fingers? And would have motivation for doing that?
"I found a report from General Fong about the Avatar State," Shirong said carefully. Found wasn't exactly accurate; it had landed on him yesterday, while he'd been on light duty sorting paperwork. He'd had a dizzy spell and staggered one way, an officious clerk had jerked another - and an entire shelf had collapsed on top of them. Onlookers had had to dig them both out of the scrolls, and he hadn't even realized he'd carried one off until later. He probably should have returned it, but he'd been sore and bored….
He hadn't been bored since. Terrified, yes. Not bored.
Rangi: *snorts* Crucial information just literally fell on him. That’s convenient! Wish it happened to me, though! Guess Vathara couldn’t figure out a better way for him to have it, huh? Got to say, though, I wish we actually saw him learn this instead of just hearing about it later…
"He noted," Shirong went on, still careful as picking his way across a slope of loose scree, "that you could successfully induce this state by threatening something the Avatar cares about."
Lee went white. "Is he insane?"
Zuko: I mean, from what Aang and Katara told me about that incident later, it doesn’t sound like General Fong could control Aang when he was like that. Like, at all. And I find it kind of hard to believe someone as careful as Long Feng would’ve read that description and decided it was a great thing to try out near the huge, crowded city he was so proud of controlling and keeping “ordered!”
"If he is," oh, spirits, no, "I fear the Grand Secretariat may have joined him." Shirong wet his lips. "I can't let this happen to my city. I meant to do… something, but-"
MG: Like Zuko said, this sort of recklessness and determination to win the war at any cost was in character for General Fong, but I have a hard time buying Long Feng trying it, and we certainly see no evidence in the show that he was trying it. He was keeping Appa as insurance to ensure Aang stayed out of his way and didn’t rock the boat too much. I don’t really think it needs more explanation than that.
"You'd get skewered before you got near Appa." Lee's voice was grim, green eyes glittering. "Don't. You're too hurt to get away clean, and this is going to have to work right the first time." He blinked, then buried his head in his hands as his own words sank in. "Oh, hell…."
Hope stole Shirong's breath. "You don't even have the floorplan!"
"I didn't know the North Pole's, either." Lee lifted his head, smile wry. "At least there won't be a blizzard."
Rangi: *to Zuko* You’re taking this far too well, you know.
Zuko: *grating* Yeah, well, I’m not sure this even counts as me anymore…
"You broke into the…." Shirong knuckled his brow, trying to ward off a headache. "One of these days, we need to have a long talk."
Zuko: What, as opposed to the long talk we had a few chapters ago, where we spilled a whole lot about our plans and travels and you just sort of shrugged and didn’t do anything about it?
Lee smirked; then shivered, looking into memory. "Fong's crazy. The Avatar looks like a twelve-year-old kid. Peaceful. Harmless. But when he's… like that… Aang's not there anymore. It's just the Avatar, and the elements. And they're angry at you. They're angry at everything."
Rangi: *quietly* You think that’s scary, you should’ve seen how Kyoshi handled Xu Ping An. Want to know how a teenage girl can defeat a firebender warlord with an army of fanatical followers and leave him dead and the rest of them absolutely terrified of her? The Avatar State is how.
"You are going to do it." Shirong shook his head, trying to sort out the morass of relief and gratitude and sudden, sharp worry. "I thought, after what you'd seen…."
"The last thing I want to do is help Aang," Lee grated out. Clenched his fists; breathed out, and deliberately straightened his fingers. "Just so you know, their plan won't work. Admiral Zhao was arrogant and overconfident, and he never saw the Ocean coming until it was too late. But Zhao's not out there. Azula is. She's a military genius. And she's read the reports." Lee smirked, cold and bitter. "There's a reason the Fire Lord put her on his trail after Zhao failed. If anyone can figure out how to kill an Avatar, she can."
Azula: *sticking her head in* Point of correction, but Father didn’t send me after the Avatar. He sent me after Zuzu and Uncle. I happened to run into the Avatar while recruiting Mai and Ty Lee, and it was my own decision to add him to my list of targets as well. But yes, I do read my briefings. Which is why I shot the Avatar in the back rather than facing the Avatar State head on!
*Azula vanishes; Rangi glares at her as she goes*
Spirits, Shirong thought, shaken. He'd never even considered that. Just how high up was his uncle- no. Don't ask. Yet. "Thank you."
"Don't." Lee's voice was hard. "What you're asking has a cost."
Damn. Well. He'd done terrible things to save his city in the past, what was one more-?
Zuko: What does he think I’m going to ask him to do, anyway? Bring me the Earth King’s head on a platter? Cut a hole in the Wall? Kidnap Bosco and hold him for ransom? What?
"Tell them I'm not suitable as a recruit."
Shirong blinked, not sure if he should believe his own ears. "What?"
Rangi: Not really sure an organization like the Dai Li takes “no” for an answer when they’ve got their eye on you, Prince Zuko…
"I'm going to be acting against the Dai Li. You could never be sure I wouldn't do that again." Lee's eyes were hard as jade. "I lost my honor a long time ago. I won't take yours down with it."
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 36 (implying the Dai Li have honor to lose…)
For a long moment, words failed the agent. "…I never believed in the Seven Principles before."
"You know the principles?" Lee asked warily.
Zuko: …here we go…
"Avatar Kyoshi wrote them down, while she was learning firebending," Shirong explained.
Rangi: I promise you, Kyoshi and I were busy with, uh, horse stances… and fireblasts… and, uh… other things… and we did not do that!
Among other things. "I thought the Fire Nation she knew was gone. Drowned in a wave of blood." He smiled wryly. "But you're not all gone, are you? Just scattered. Living by your wits." And your honor.
The Superior Element: 52 (more extolling of Fire Nation values)
"Though I suppose even wits have their limit. Tell your uncle everyone is convinced Jet was crazy, and I'm fairly sure no one else had time to notice the flames were too high, but he should be careful heating up steel. I didn't see him ignite your dagger, and if anyone else had there would have already been an arrest… but tell him to stay low for a while. I'd miss his tea."
"…My uncle's not a firebender."
"You," Shirong said dryly, "are a terrible liar."
Zuko: And you are a terrible spy, to have figured all that out and apparently not reported it!
He chuckled softly. "I've seen you both move, and I've seen you both fight. What you didn't pick up from Amaya, you definitely learned from him." He shrugged, deliberately casual. "Though I've never heard of any bender taking the time to train someone who can't touch their element…."
Rangi: *shrugs* It’s not common, but there’s things you can learn…
"He's Uncle," Lee said quietly. "He knows I've got a lousy temper. And awful luck. He tried to train me to stay alive." The waterbender glanced aside. "I wasn't always a good student." Green eyes looked back up, hard. "So what are you going to do?"
"Do about what?" Shirong said practically. "Amaya saved my life. She's saved a lot of lives, no few of them my comrades.
Rangi: Saved their lives so they can keep terrorizing the city, you mean…
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 37
If it weren't for your uncle, we'd have lost her. All I intend to do is lie here in the sun and forget that night ever happened. Near-death memories can be very unclear. Or so I've heard." He leaned back against the rocks. "No, I think I'll just rest here and tell you about… well, someplace you'll never see. Since you've declined to be recruited."
Zuko: Gah! If I’m not being recruited, why are you telling me Dai Li secrets! What’s wrong with you? Or am I just that special? *beat* This is probably about Lake Laogai and needing me to rescue Appa, so… yeah, it’s because I’m that special.
Taut as a bowstring, Lee listened.
"Temul," Shirong said, surprised; the fact he'd been searching for finally surfacing from memory with that intent look from Lee. "Ask your uncle about Temul. She was a firebender a few centuries back…
Zuko: *nonplussed* Uh-huh. Uncle knows a lot, but it’s not like he keeps a list of every firebender who’s ever lived. All we know about this Temul person is that she tried to get an audience with the Earth King and was denied. Was she really so important Shirong would expect Uncle to know about her?
I think she tried something the opposite of what you've done, adapting waterbending moves to fire." Which hadn't made Avatar Kyoshi happy at all, if he recalled correctly. She'd kept the nations separate with a granite glove behind a golden war fan, and what she would have said about a mixed-blood waterbender probably couldn't be repeated in polite company.
Rangi: *cackles* Oh, oh! If only Vathara knew! You see, Kyoshi? She had mixed blood herself! Her dad was an earthbender, but her mother was an Air Nomad! And the man who basically adopted her and raised her when I first knew her was an Air Nomad monk! *blushes, looks away* And then there’s, you know… me. Us. And, uh, let’s just say that some of the things Kyoshi and one particular firebender were doing together probably shouldn’t be repeated in polite company for, uh… other reasons than Shirong is implying. But yeah, Kyoshi is the last person I know who’d be upset about mixing between different nations! She’d be the first person she’d have to condemn for that!
MG: I’ve alluded before that I have no idea if FC Yee, who wrote the Kyoshi and Yangchen duologies, was at all familiar with Embers, but there are definitely quite a few points in those books that feel like very specific refutations of key elements of that fic… and Kyoshi being canonically mixed-race and in love with a Fire Nation girl can’t help but feel like a very, very direct middle-finger to Vathara’s Kyoshi, whether it actually is that or no. Just something I felt like making a note of!
"If he knows anything, it might help."
Zuko: Unless Uncle knows where Temul was buried and she was buried with detailed plans of Lak Laogai, not really sure that helps much in this situation…
Lee nodded once, obviously committing the name to memory. "The lake?"
"Ah, yes. Well, that's going to be tricky…."
Rangi: Better hope none of the other Dai Li agents are watching you right now, or you’d both be so dead…
-
The bison's here. The bison's here.
Oh Agni, what do I do?
MG: Hmmm; I do think it’s kind of an interesting thing to note that Zuko is panicking here about Appa being in Ba Sing Se, whereas when he found out in canon his attitude was more subdued and… more that of an obsession rekindled, I guess? Not sure if this is meant to be a “Zuko’s attitude is different because his relationship to the people in the city and overall state of mind is different” thing, a “portray Zuko in as sympathetic a light as possible” thing, or maybe something else/a bit of both, it just felt worth pointing out.
Dimly Zuko recalled that Amaya had left him to head for the clinic, sending him on his way to teach Jinhai. He also remembered glaring at a scraggly-headed man who'd tried to pick his belt pouch, and assisting another overeager hand into a wall, before he'd reclaimed enough common sense to get off the streets and up onto the roofs.
MG: …that sounds like the same guy who tried to mug Iroh in “The Tales of Ba Sing Se.” Did that encounter not happen in Embers? Or did Iroh fail to convince the guy to give up his attempt at a life of crime and turn over a new leaf, which is pretty sad, if so? Either way, it doesn’t sound like encountering Zuko here will be nearly as helpful for him.
Stations of the Canon: 28
No people up here. No conflicting voices to have to sort through for meaning when the whole world wanted to blur into a hiss of noise. Just the wind, and the sounds of the city.
Better.
Breathe. In and out.
You're panicking.
Well, yes. The impulse to either gibber or beat somebody else's brains against the wall was a good clue.
Zuko: …I seem to be doing a really good job at analyzing my own panic attack, aren’t i?
It wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair; where the bison was the Avatar couldn't be far away, and the plan wasn't ready, he hadn't had enough time-!
You can't panic here.
Basics. When the world fell apart, stick to basics. He had new and unexpected intelligence on an opponent and target, and he was not reacting in a combat-ready manner.
Strategic withdrawal. Find someplace secure, and reexamine your information.
Meaning decide on a location, and move. Movement would help; movement always helped. Katas, running, fighting. He moved better than he could put things into words. Always.
So move. But move where?
Rangi: *shrugs* Makes sense to me. Firebending is all about positive jing – stay on the attack, keep up your momentum, overwhelm your enemy’s defenses, don’t give them a chance to strike back, and power through your problems. If Zuko really is freaking out like this, makes sense he’d fall back on his most basic training and instincts.
MG: I agree, but I don’t think that’s the only thing we have going on here, as we’ll see in a minute…
Clinic, or Uncle? The clinic would be safe, but Amaya had no experience with infiltration. She'd probably try to talk him out of this. And he couldn't walk away. His word depended on it. The whole city might depend on it.
Uncle.
A better tactical choice, given Iroh's experience with combat, strategy, and the Avatar. But it was the middle of the day, and dragging Uncle away from work might draw all kinds of unpleasant attention. Just because the haima-jiao was dead didn't mean they might not still be watched.
Zuko: *muttering* If the Dai Li were acting like, well, the Dai Li, we’d definitely be watched after everything they’ve picked up about us, spirit or no spirit…
Like Jinhai might be-
I have a pattern. The Dai Li know that. If I don't show up at the Wen house - they'll know something is wrong.
And broken patterns would lead to curiosity about why they'd been broken, and if he did get Appa loose-
They could trace it back to Shirong.
Rangi: And maybe Jinhai and his family, too. I don’t know; I’d be more worried about the civilians, in your shoes. Shirong, to be blunt, can take care of himself. Jinhai can’t.
Which would be bad. Not just for the agent. If they took him, they'd question him - and Shirong didn't have the defenses Amaya had given Lee.
Zuko: *snorts* What “defenses?” I don’t really think the fake personality she gave me is sturdy enough to stand up to determined questioning from the Dai Li, especially if they bring their own brainwashing into things! *beat* Wouldn’t put it past her to have put in a failsafe that I have a stroke or something if they try to use their brainwashing, though. Can’t give away her secrets if I’m dead, right?
I've got to make things look normal.
MG: Okay, okay, I know this scene is serious, but… am I the only one thinking of Frederick in Young Frankenstein frantically yelling at Igor and Inga that they have to all act completely normal when Inspector Kemp comes over to investigate after the Creature has just been brought to life (and then his shirt collar pops out goofily as soon as he’s done talking)? Where my mind went, anyway.
Jinhai's house, then.
Move. Just get there. Get somewhere safe.
Work out what to do after.
A glance pinned down where he was. Forcing himself into the narrow focus of where am I, where am I going, Zuko settled into a roof-eating lope. And tried not to think.
The Dai Li would have seen him come by way of the rooftops before. This wouldn't look suspicious. He hoped.
Rangi: Not sure that logic holds up, but whatever.
I can't take the streets right now. I'll break something. Or somebody.
Which would upset Uncle and Amaya, spirits, what was he going to tell them….
Zuko: Also, you know, I might hurt somebody. I think that’s a little more important than Uncle or Amaya getting upset.
Don't think about it.
Alleys and roofs and balconies, and finally he dropped into a street near the Wen's to at least look semi-respectable entering the house….
One step at a time.
"Lee!" Suyin's face was bright; sobered, seeing him. "Is something wrong?"
"I've had better days," Zuko said dryly. Looked past her to Jinhai. "We should stick to simple moves today. What we got Amaya out of… it was close. Too close."
"What did happen?" Meixiang stepped out of the kitchen, giving him a searching look. "You look like you've been raked over shattered ice."
Zuko: Well, I was fighting a rogue water spirit, so, close enough?
"Close. Almost drowned," Zuko admitted. "There was a man-eating kamuiy. We stopped it." He held up a hand before they could speak. "If you want details, I'll tell you after practice. If I think about it before… it was too close."
Falling. Dodging. Strikes, with foot or fist or bladed hand. He walked them through it all, warmed by how much better they'd gotten in just a few weeks.
I may never teach them again.
No. No, damn it! My people need me. They need me here!
There had to be a way.
MG: Mmmm. On the one hand, I kind of like this bit… but on the other, I kind of don’t. On the one hand, it does show that Zuko’s involvement with Ba Sing Se, and the Wens in particular, is indeed affecting his judgment and pushing him in particular directions. Character development is good! On the other hand, especially knowing where this fic is going, I still worry it’s pushing Zuko too fast, getting him into a position where he’s willing to renounce his mission and reject his loyalty to his father in a way that it took him a lot longer to arrive at in canon, mostly so Vathara can get Zuko where she wants him. Of course, this is an AU, so Vathara isn’t obligated to follow Zuko’s canon arc… but even so, Zuko’s canon arc is good, arguably the best part of the show, and I don’t think what Vathara does with him is as interesting in the long run. So… I’m divided.
Jinhai was panting, glad to flop down in the garden by the time Zuko called a halt. Suyin was just as sweaty, but breathed easier, ducking inside to get her mother with a look of unbridled curiosity.
Stepping out, Meixiang glanced over her sweating children, and gave him a measuring look. "You stopped it?"
"I helped," Zuko stated. And gave them a brief account of that awful night, sparing the goriest details. But not the key facts: the haima-jiao had killed other waterbenders, and tried to do worse to Amaya. "Uncle says it's a spirit of warm oceans; deserts of the sea," Zuko finished. "I wonder if that's why the Water Tribes stay near the poles."
Katara: *sticks her head in* Oh, and it clearly wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that there’s a ton of ice and snow at the poles, so that’s a good environment for waterbenders or anything! And the Swamp Tribe, who do live where it’s warm, also live in, well, a swamp, which is somewhere else it’s very wet! No spirits needed!
The Deadly Depths: 29
I wonder why something like that never went after Katara; she's been around enough bloodshed to draw them….
Oh. Idiot. She's always with the Avatar. The haima-jiao might not have been the brightest spirit on the block, but I doubt any of them are that stupid.
MG: Or maybe because it’s something Vathara retconned into the setting that has no basis in the parts of the show the fic does take as canon (this is a recurring problem with Vathara’s worldbuilding, IMO – she has to act like it was there all along, but also explain why, if so, nobody ever brought it up before)?
Beware the Sugar Queen: 8 (for the implication that Katara would be a magnet for dangerous spirits without Aang around)
"She lost all her people?" Suyin sniffled, and swiped at her eyes. "That's awful."
"You're her people too, you know," Zuko told her. "She cares about you. A lot."
Rangi: *sniffs* That’s not reassuring!
"I know, but… do you think it would help if we told her about the Southern Water Tribe boy here?"
No. It can't be.
The Avatar's bison was here. It damn well could be. "What Southern Water Tribe boy?" Zuko ground out.
Zuko: Oh, great, Jia being in that poetry class is going to actually be important…
Jinhai scrunched into his mother's arms, wide-eyed; even Suyin paled. "He- Jia said his name was Sokka…."
Words vanished in a white hiss of fury.
Don't move. Don't do anything.
Head down, fists clenched on his green robe, Zuko breathed. And forced himself to stay still. Move, and the simmering cauldron of rage and fear and frustration would tip over, spilling into a wave of fire that would reach out and destroy….
These are your allies. These are your people. Don't move.
"…Back up… tell me where… it's all right, sometimes the great names…."
Meixiang's voice. Worried, but not frightened. Thank Agni, not frightened.
MG: We’re going to have to talk about what’s going on here in just a minute, so… hold this thought, everyone.
Rangi: And of course, it’s a noble thing. *beat* My mom is basically what Vathara would call a great name, being the head of our clan and all, and I’ve never seen anything like this from her. Just so we’re clear!
Divine Right to Rule: 44
Don't give me a target. Please. I'm so angry….
And afraid. So desperately afraid. Everything he'd built, everything he'd tried to plan - it was all coming apart, like folded paper cast into flames.
"…My lord. Can you hear me yet? My lord, my blade is yours, against your enemies…."
She needs me. Zuko forced himself to look up, dragging back words and meaning to human voices.
Meixiang was kneeling in front of him, dagger casting back the sun by her side.
MG: …and of course, what brings Zuko out of it is someone kneeling and offering him fealty. Because of course it is.
Divine Right to Rule: 45
"Don't… do that," Zuko rasped, trying to slow his racing heart. "I'm not your lord."
"Yes," Meixiang said simply. "You are."
Divine Right to Rule: 46
But she looked up, searching his face with concern. And relief. "You've banked the fury? You can understand my words?"
Zuko: Well, it sounds like I could understand her the whole time, at least, so… not sure how much that helps…
Zuko flinched. "I- how did you-?"
"It happens to some firebenders." Tension eased from Meixiang's frame. "I knew one, years ago… my grandfather called it dragon's rage. Dragons aren't hatched with the skill to speak; not like humans are.
Rangi: *snorts* Okay, one, humans aren’t “hatched.” Two, humans aren’t born knowing how to speak either. Has Vathara ever been around a baby? I get what she’s saying – that speech comes later and less naturally to dragons than it does to humans – but that phrasing is kind of weird.
The Ultimate Firebenders: 20
When fury takes them, they can lose the art of it, and words seem but whistles in the wind. So." A graceful gesture toward herself, kneeling. "You are lord here, and you know I follow. This calms the dragon in the blood, and lets you reclaim human words." At his look of confusion, she frowned. "Hasn't your uncle told you this?"
MG: *sighs heavily* Okay, Remember a few chapters ago I mentioned that I think Vathara may be writing dragon-children as autistic coded, intentionally or otherwise? This element is a big part of why. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but just to be clear – I’m on the autism spectrum myself. What Vathara is describing here feels very much to me like what I experience on those occasions I’ve found myself overstimulated and had a meltdown. The way I tend to visualize it is that it’s like I have a meter in my head measuring stress, and once it fills all the way up, I just can’t deal rationally with anything else, and trying to calm myself down normally won’t work (and other people actively trying to calm me down usually makes things worse) – I need to either let it all out at once in a frantic burst, or else retreat somewhere I can be by myself for a while and simmer as my stress level slowly goes down and I can finally get to a point I can interact normally with people again. Zuko’s progressive meltdown in this scene – even including the bit where a pretty minor detail on its own (the revelation of Sokka’s presence in Ba Sing Se) is the last straw and sets him off – feels real to me, in that sense. And I do appreciate that Vathara presents this as something normal and natural for someone like Zuko, something that may need to be managed properly but isn’t a flaw that needs to be “fixed,” it’s just part of who he is.
On the other hand… that it’s explicitly tied to Zuko’s nonhuman heritage I feel considerably more ambivalent about. I’m not inherently averse to nonhuman or part human beings reading as autistic coded (ie, the kalashar from Eberron – some of you who’ve followed my previous stuff may remember my guest sporker Havaktri! – are one of my favorite concepts in D&D and really in fantasy more generally, and I think part of that is that I’ve always read them as being somewhat autistic coded in general. Less consciously, until relatively recently, I think I’ve also read them as somewhat trans-coded as well, though usually less literally than say changelings from the same setting can be). But there’s still something kind of uncomfortable to me in the way it’s very specifically used to “other” Zuko and other dragon-children – it may be normal for them, but it’s still firmly placed outside the realm of human experience, if that makes sense. Not to mention that Vathara has to make it weird by bringing in her nobility fetish and, again, having at least one way to bring Zuko out of his downward spiral be for someone to pledge fealty to him. And I think I’ve noted before, while there are plenty of fictional characters I’ve headcanoned as autistic over the years, I don’t think I ever really read Zuko that way – it always seemed to me that his social awkwardness was a product of his royal upbringing and having had relatively little chance for “normal” social interactions with people before the show began (combined with the fact that, when we meet him, he’s not exactly dealing with his trauma or other problems in his life in a very healthy or productive way). That might just be me, though.
Divine Right to Rule: 47
The Ultimate Firebenders: 21
"This… doesn't happen to my uncle." Dragon's blood? He'd heard the legends, like everyone else. But she can't be serious.
"But I thought - your family's line-" Meixiang closed her mouth, wincing.
"What do you know about my family?" Zuko demanded.
"I… know you are great names." Meixiang looked troubled. "But if it isn't from your uncle's side, then-" Green eyes widened. "Oh. You said your mother was a healer…."
MG: Actually, it is from Iroh’s side too – the fic will later confirm that Zuko and Azula are especially dragony even for dragon-children because they get it from relatively close ancestors on both sides of their family tree. I’m not sure if we ever get a real explanation for why it seems to have skipped a generation on Iroh’s end, though.
Divine Right to Rule: 48
The Ultimate Firebenders: 22
"This isn't her fault!" Zuko blazed. Shuddered, and hauled in his temper with trembling hands. "I just- I'm not good enough. I don't know why it happens, everything just burns inside and the words fly away…."
MG: Honestly, I feel that. *sigh* I just wish I liked this plot point in general better…
"Not her fault," Meixiang said firmly. "Her heritage. It happens." She made her blade disappear up her sleeve. "Is this Sokka your enemy?"
He's fifteen. But Azula was fourteen, did it make any difference?
Rangi: And you were sixteen, so you think you’d know better than to think someone has to be out of their teens to be a threat…
"He… has been." Zuko picked his words. "He's an ally of the Avatar. Who has been declared a threat to the Fire Nation."
"Oh." A breath more than a word; eyes green from Amaya's water wincing with hurt. "A task you could never survive alone… spirits, Lee! You're just one bender!"
But I'm not Lee. "Those are the terms," Zuko said harshly. "I gave my word."
Zuko: Also, Dad made it quite clear when he banished me what I’d have to do if I wanted to come home and be reinstated in my family… and since he was Fire Lord, whether I agreed or not didn’t really matter…
Silence, taut between them. Zuko dipped his head, and started to rise. "I'm sorry-"
"My lord, with all due respect - stay right there."
He sank back down, taken aback. That? Definitely angry Mom mode.
Which stung his pride; she was not his mother, he didn't need looking after-
Rangi: *rolls her eyes* Boys.
But I need help, Zuko admitted to himself, swallowing the acid burn. I can't do this on my own. I need any help I can get.
"I never thought I'd be glad for sitting through so many faculty meetings… what did you promise the Fire Lord to do?" Meixiang said bluntly. "What did you promise, exactly?"
Zuko: Well, “capture the Avatar and bring him to Dad alive” was the basic idea…
"I… I never spoke it to him," Zuko admitted painfully. "He wouldn't see me, after. She- someone delivered the terms…." Terms that had shattered his life, and exiled him forever.
"Wiggle room," Meixiang murmured. Nodded.
Zuko: …not really? Dad was the one who set the terms, it was up to him to decide if I fulfilled them or not. Pretty sure if I’d shown up without Aang, alive or otherwise, and tried to argue I’d succeeded on a technicality… well, if he was in a good mood, he’d probably laugh in my face and toss me out again. A bad mood… I don’t even want to think about it.
"So what did you promise to do?"
Even through cloth, fingernails bit into his palms. "To capture the Avatar. End his threat to the Fire Nation. To my people."
Rangi: Pretty sure “end the threat to Fire Lord Ozai” was the more important, unspoken part there, O Prince.
"And who are we?" Meixiang said bluntly. "Myself. Huojin. Our children. All of us. Who are we, my lord?"
"…My people." Zuko wiped sweat off his face. "My head hurts." My heart hurts.
Zuko: Yeah, well, I doubt Dad even knows any of you exist, if he did know he’d consider you all traitors, and you’re definitely not what he meant when he set the terms for my banishment! Seriously, have we all forgotten that we’re not arguing some thousand-year-old treaty or some bargain with an impartial spirit, we’re talking about my Dad, a very much alive person who also happens to be the tyrant who burned and disowned me, and then gave me the most difficult mission he could think of to rub salt in the wound even more? That’s who and what we’re dealing with here?
"I can only imagine." She inched closer, slow and cautious. "Are you going to talk to your uncle?"
Jerkily, he nodded. "Have to," Zuko got out. "There's more than Sokka, you don't know - have to make sure the bison isn't there anymore, need to get the damn spirits to stop using the city as target practice…."
Rangi: I don’t think “one particular spirit abducting and eating people” really counts as “the spirits, in general, using the city as target practice,” but whatever…
White noise threatened to close in again; he cradled his head in his hands.
"Wait. Just a little longer." Meixiang rose and hurried into the house. Came back shortly, drawing a pale Suyin in her wake. "Go with Lee. Make sure he gets to his uncle, then come home."
"Okay," Suyin said uncertainly. "What's wrong?"
"It's complicated." Meixiang bent and whispered something in the girl's ear. Suyin started, and gulped.
Stepping away, Meixiang regarded Zuko again. "My lord. I trust you will see that my daughter is safe with you."
Zuko: *sighs heavily*
Divine Right to Rule: 49
So I don't do anything stupid while she's there. Zuko clung to that with relief. "I'll be careful."
"You'd better be," Meixiang said bluntly. "We need you. More than you know."
MG: …and that’s when it turned out Meixiang was secretly Emperor Palpatine in disguise. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen… *beat* Sorry, her line there just sounded like some of Palpatine’s dialogue from Revenge of the Sith and that just sort of… came out.
Prince Stuko: 79
-
"What do you mean, he's not here?"
Suyin tried not to flinch at the raw edge in Lee's voice. It helped that Pao looked more morose than angry, sniffing a cup of his own tea and groaning. "I mean he quit!" the teashop owner lamented. "That noble rascal Quon offered him his own shop, in the Upper Ring! And he took it! Even after I offered him the position of Senior Executive Assistant Manager!"
Stations of the Canon: 29
"And how would that be different from what he was doing?" Lee said dryly.
Rangi: Maybe it would pay better? *shrugs*
"…He'd make more tea?"
Rangi: …or that.
Lee looked like he didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or set something on fire.
"Stay with him, so he stays alive," her mother had said. "I'll explain later. Be careful."
Zuko: …I guess the idea is that if I have someone to protect, I’ll be more careful than if it’s just me alone? *beat* I guess that kind of makes sense? It had better not be that since I’m Meixiang’s lord now, she’s not going to let me go anywhere unattended… that’d be awkward.
Which was even scarier than traveling the Lower Ring on her own. Though walking with Lee seemed to make people she'd usually worry about find other places to be. "It's good news, right?" Suyin ventured. "He'd want to tell you. And you're usually at the clinic now."
For a moment Lee seemed to look through her. Focused, and nodded.
"You could talk to him!" Pao almost pounced; thought better of it at Lee's narrowed eyes. "Convince him to come back!"
"Uncle loves tea," Lee said bluntly. "If he left, he's not coming back."
Pao wailed as they left.
"You could have been a little nicer," Suyin scolded him as they went down the street. "Even if you're having a bad day-"
"You have no idea." Lee shook his head, and tried to rein in his tone. "Suyin. The last thing Pao needs is for me or Uncle to be there. Things could get… bad. Fast."
Zuko: …at least I’m self-aware about it?
How bad? Suyin wanted to ask. And was afraid to. "Will you tell me? At Amaya's?"
"Your mother told you to get me to Uncle and go home. She doesn't want you getting hurt."
Boys! "We don't want you getting hurt, either!"
"I can't- you shouldn't-" Lee gripped the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "Ask Uncle. I'm not… thinking very well right now."
Well, at least he knew that. Which put him one up on Min.
Rangi: …well, that came out of nowhere. Min’s not even been in this chapter!
And Uncle was at the clinic, grinning as he shared tea with Amaya. A grin that slipped into sober worry the moment he saw Lee. "Nephew?"
Lee glanced around the edge of screens that partitioned off resting patients; forced a smile for a mother nursing a no longer feverish baby. Stepped close, so his words wouldn't reach past the screen. "The bison's under Lake Laogai." He jabbed a thumb toward Suyin. "And she knows something about Sokka." He dipped his head to Amaya. "Master Amaya. I'm… going to go break some ice in your garden. Maybe a lot of ice."
Zuko: Well, I guess if Uncle wants to serve tea with ice in it, he might be getting his chance?
Silent footsteps, and he was gone.
"Oh, dear." Uncle looked grave. "What is it you know, Miss Suyin?"
"Well, I…."
Ice creaked and cracked, loud as Min shattering rocks.
Rangi: Wait, Min’s not even the only earthbender in the Wen family – what, are Tingzhe and Jia just really, really quiet earthbenders?
"He's somewhere in the Upper Ring," Suyin said in a rush. "He has to be, or he couldn't have fallen into Madam Macmu-Ling's class. Jia saw him there, he's Southern Water Tribe, I thought maybe you'd like to talk to him?" She looked at Amaya, eyes wide. "Lee was acting weird before I told him - kept the lessons really simple, like he was trying not to think about something - and then when I said Sokka's name, I thought- it was scary!"
"I would think it was," Uncle murmured. "Tell me what you know, and exactly what you saw."
Rangi: I guess General Iroh means “what you saw about Zuko” because Suyin admitted she didn’t actually see Sokka…
-
They're here, Zuko thought, shards of ice melting around him. Those idiots are here, and I have to do something, I have to!
He Has Much to Learn: 26 (treating the Gaang as stupid by default gets a point)
Something. But what?
Even if I can find him-
Oh, take that as a given, where Sokka was the Avatar wouldn't be too far away.
If I find him - it's just me, and Uncle, in the middle of Ba Sing Se. If he goes into the Avatar State… thousands of people could get hurt.
Zuko: I know Aang couldn’t really control the Avatar State yet at this point, but I really don’t think he’d let that happen in the middle of Ba Sing Se, because he doesn’t want people to get hurt.
Not that he could let that matter when his duty to his nation was on the line.
But… my people are here, too. What do I do? I can't do nothing, but I don't know what to-
Panic. An old enemy. He knew the coppery taste of it, the way it bent the world into enemy and destroy and blocked out any words that argued otherwise.
Reaching back to Uncle's lessons in survival, Zuko sat down.
Ow.
Knelt, brushed away a few chunks of ice, and sat again. And breathed.
MG: At first I thought Zuko was acting like trying to calm down was in itself physically painful, which is both intensely relatable and yet also kind of funny… sadly, I don’t think “Zuko sitting on ice shards by accident” is quite as effective.
Survival. Basics. What do you have? What do you need?
He had information on the Avatar, and the bison. He needed-
My people. Safe.
If he captured the Avatar, they would be safe-
Rangi: Capture the Avatar and Fire Lord Ozai’s last major obstacle to ruling the world gets removed. Now, this is all centuries after my time, but from what I’ve gathered about him, nobody would be safe.
Can I do that? Zuko drove the doubt home, mercilessly. Lives were at stake, not just his honor. He couldn't afford to be optimistic. He couldn't afford to be wrong. He's the Avatar. Master of air. Probably master of water and earth by this time. I'm not even a master of fire. And with water? Katara could thrash me up, down, and sideways. I know healing, but Amaya and I are teaching ourselves combat moves. Against a trained waterbender? We'd be toast.
MG: On the one hand, I’d normally be happy about the fic having Zuko acknowledge his limitations like this… but considering how blatantly Vathara favors Zuko and how OP she ends up making him, it makes scenes like this come off as false modesty (on the fic’s part if not necessarily on Zuko’s) in a way that’s more annoying than endearing.
He's the Avatar, and he's not alone. And I know how the Dai Li like to keep things quiet. I can't fight them all.
Rangi: …maybe that would be more meaningful if you hadn’t just spent several chapters being buddies with the Dai Li…
Remember. Remember what Uncle said. Azula could catch the Avatar. But could she hold him? Without killing him?
I… can't.
It hurt. Like fire. Like clutching the shattered edge of an icy lake, cutting and numbing and hurting all the worse for it.
I am not going to cry.
MG: …you know what, as a “Zuko realizes his mission was always doomed to failure” moment, this is actually quite good. No notes!
Zuko hugged his knees for long minutes, trying not to think. Pain was not the enemy. People thought it was, but it wasn't. Pain was a warning. Something is amiss. Something is about to break.
Zuko: And let me guess, is the thing that’s about to break “loyalty,” by any chance?
MG: …not quite yet, but you’re on the right track.
Zuko: *groans and facepalms*
But he was already broken. There was nothing to do but accept the pain, and wait until he'd suffered enough. Until it sank into his very bones, where it could be acknowledged… and ignored.
Rangi: Sorry, but in my experience the cure for suffering isn’t “more suffering,” though I get that you’re not in a good place to appreciate that right now. But can I just say, as someone who’s… not been in your exact situation, maybe, but gone through some stuff in my life, too… this attitude is not going to help you.
I can't capture the Avatar. But I have to protect my people.
Inside and outside the walls; Agni, this was so like the North Pole, how could Avatar be this stupid twice?
MG: Hmmm, it’s almost like Aang came to Ba Sing Se for a reason and wasn’t just goofing around… but that’s just crazy talk…
He Has Much to Learn: 27
I wish I could yell at him. I wish I could pick him up and shake him until his teeth rattled-
Rangi: And unless you rattle his teeth so hard the Earth King himself comes running to see what the commotion is, I don’t think that’s going to do anything about the actual reason Aang’s here!
He Has Much to Learn: 28
Something white blew in the wind.
Climb, leap, and scramble; Zuko gained the clinic's roof, snatched paper from the air-
A flyer. Neatly and professionally inked, with a picture of a creature most hadn't seen for a hundred years.
Stations of the Canon: 30 (apparently Zuko still needs to find the flyer, even though he already knows about Appa in this version)
Zuko shook a fist at the sky, wishing he knew enough about air-spirits to castigate them all to the lowest bowels of Koh's lair. "I know already!"
MG: And we have another case of “Koh’s lair equals hell.” A rather confusing one, considering as far as we see in canon, Koh lives in a cave under a tree in the Spirit World, and there’s nothing else down there, just him. It doesn’t really have “levels” or “bowels” like Hell (whether the Christian Hell or the various Buddhist Hells, really) is generally depicted.
Anyway, this chapter is long, so we’re stopping here for today! This part… was a pretty mixed bag for me. After having spent several chapters dealing with the spirit, we’ve finally caught up with the show and are back on track for Embers’s own main plot, which is good. And I definitely think there are some good moments of characterization from Zuko scattered here throughout! On the other hand, there are lots of smaller bits I really don’t like, and they end up adding up. Most obviously, we have Zuko somehow being the only person Shirong can trust to rescue Appa, and Shirong continuing to be a terrible Dai Li agent; we get our first taste of Kyoshi the Racist, which is going to go much worse places as the fic goes on; we get more info on dragon-children, and maybe I’m reading too much into it with the “dragon children are autistic” thing, but either way it leaves me feeling deeply ambivalent and uncomfortable; and of course there’s the constant harping on how dumb Aang and his friends are for being here in the first place, which I’d take for being part of Zuko’s own inner monologue except Vathara pretty clearly agrees. Sigh. It all comes together to just be kind of wearying, and it all points to worse things to come down the line. In any case, that’s all for today! Next time, Amaya meets the Gaang. Be prepared. We’ll see you then! Our counts stand at:
Beware the Sugar Queen: 8
The Blind Bandit Wins Again: 13
The Deadly Depths: 29
Detached from Reality: 11
Divine Right to Rule: 49
Elemental Determinism: 48
He Has Much to Learn: 28
Prince Stuko: 79
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 37
The Real Victims: 35
Simple Rubes from the Water Tribes: 25
Stations of the Canon: 30
The Superior Element: 52
True Guardians of Balance: 1
The Ultimate Firebenders: 22
MG: Well, everyone, it’s time to continue our journey through Vathara’s Embers! Last time, Amaya recovered from the spirit fight and learned Zuko and Iroh’s true identities, and oh yeah, the Freedom Fighters disappeared too! Today, we begin what we’re considering as the fic’s third major arc, where we’re going to end up intersecting back with canon as we move towards the climax of the original show’s second Book, which means that we’re going to be seeing the Gaang again soon… but first off, we have to check in on some of our other major characters. Joining us today will be Zuko and Rangi!
Chapter 19
A/N: Again, don't own episode dialogue, especially from "Lake Laogai."
MG: *shrugs* Pretty self-explanatory, nothing to add here.
-
Warm, Shirong thought drowsily, curled on rocks in the Dai Li's borrowed palace garden. Tugged his hat a bit lower, eyes still shut; no point getting burned if he fell asleep out here. Which he might. Like most spirits of malice, the haima-jiao hadn't just wounded his body. His chi was thin, depleted; he didn't feel up to much beyond flicking a pebble, even resting directly on nurturing earth. Sunlight seemed to help, sinking into his veins like a blessing, but when he thought of what he meant to ask of Lee….
Zuko: Okay, I know it’s because the haima-jaio was a spirit of darkness and the deep ocean, so light and heat are its enemy, but even so, isn’t there something a bit… weird about an earthbender finding the sun more healing than, you know, the earth?
MG: Pretty sure this is also foreshadowing for something that’s going to happen with Shirong later, actually…
*both firebenders groan loudly*
The Superior Element: 51
Stay calm, and rest, Shirong advised himself, feeling familiar footsteps on the earth. Ask him, and let him think. He's creative. Don't count it a lost cause just because you won't be in shape to help.
"I didn't think anybody could make rocks look comfortable," Lee said wryly.
Toph: *from outside the sporking chamber* That’s just because you’ve not tried hard enough!
Shirong cracked an eye open to blink at the healers, shifting a shoulder in an abbreviated shrug. "Earth helps us heal." He glanced at Amaya directly.
Rangi: But not as much as the sun, apparently…
"Are you well? Lee was shaken up, and it barely touched his spirit; malicious kamuiy can make the strongest of us feel as though we've struggled free of a midden."
"I'm healing," Amaya said quietly. "May I?"
"Just don't ask me to look," Shirong stated, lifting clear the top layer of his robe. "I'm still not sure I want to know how close it was."
"I can see why." Water-wrapped hands smoothed coolness over his skin, soothing small aches. "Hmm."
From another healer, that would have worried him. But Amaya had a good heart. She wouldn't have sounded thoughtful if there were any danger.
Zuko: *doubles over in bitter laughter* Okay, okay, I’m sorry, but… are we just forgetting what nearly happened to me under Amaya’s attentions? *beat* We are, aren’t we?
"What?"
She withdrew her hands and eyed her apprentice. Who swallowed, but didn't back down. "It froze the life out of him," Lee said plainly. "I just… tried to fix it."
"I think you overdid it," Amaya murmured.
"Overdid what?" Shirong asked pointedly.
Rangi: Well, you clearly didn’t puff him so full of excess chi he popped like a balloon, so whatever happened, it could’ve been worse?
Amaya glanced about the garden, and raised a brow in silent question.
"We're alone. Though Quan will be by later," Shirong answered. That hadn't been hard to arrange. Fortunately. Everyone knew Amaya would never betray a patient.
Zuko: Perform a potentially dangerous technique on them without getting their consent or telling them what you’re doing? She’ll totally do that, though!
"Lee used a technique I reserve for emergencies," Amaya said simply. "It's dangerous. And even when it succeeds, which it did, it disturbs the patient's chi for several days." She glanced skyward. "You were fighting water and darkness. Until it settles, your chi will be seeking light and fire." She frowned slightly, then shook it off. "I would say this is the best prescription. Rest, stone, and sunlight." She gave Lee a serious look. "Try not to do that again soon."
Rangi: How many dark spirits are you planning on fighting, anyway, if it’s even going to come up again?
The young man nodded, though he did glance wryly toward the Inner Wall. East, toward Lake Laogai.
Right. There's a limit to the promises you can keep when the spirits come knocking, Shirong reflected. And on that note…. "Could I speak with Lee in private?"
Blue eyes narrowed. "If this is about trying to recruit a boy I haven't even finished training yet-"
Zuko: …which is different from what Shirong’s been doing up until now how, exactly?
"It's not," Shirong said hastily, as Lee looked indignant. "It's… personal." To me, at least. Though Long Feng won't see it that way.
Rangi: So, it’s personal to you, but Long Feng won’t see it as… what? Something personal? Something he approves of? Would you mind clarifying a bit?
I am a Dai Li agent of Ba Sing Se. My city needs me to act. No matter what our leader orders.
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 35 (even if we’re acknowledging Long Feng’s villainy, we’re still acting like being a Dai Li agent is itself a noble thing, so I’m giving a point)
It still felt like stepping off a cliff.
Breathe. Act calm. The less people who know, the better chance Lee will have.
If Lee chose to help.
Oma and Shu, please let him. I can't do this on my own.
Zuko: And I’m the only person you know who can help with whatever this is (but I can guess)? *beat* No, wait, you’re a Dai Li agent and everyone else you’re buddies with probably works for Long Feng, so maybe I am…
So he was going to enlist a teenage boy. Wonderful. Too bad he couldn't blame this on a concussion.
Rangi: At least he’s kind of aware of how nonsensical this all is?
The Avatar's teachers are even younger. And Lee's got sense. When he has a chance to think.
Which, oddly enough, reminded him of Temul again. The record had been blisteringly clear on the firebender's tendency to open mouth and insert foot.
Zuko: Why are we comparing me to a lady who’s been dead for hundreds of years who I have no connection to aside from coming from the same country as, again?
MG: And, well, when we do meet Temul (in a sense) later in the fic, I wouldn’t really call “foot-in-the-mouth” a quality I’d associate with her…
But there was something more….
He set it aside; Amaya was making her way out of the garden and Lee was frowning at him. Shirong took a reluctant breath, and beckoned him closer. "I need your help."
Lee raked him with a checking-you-for-missing-limbs look he must have picked up from his teacher, and raised that lone brow. "A kamuiy?"
"Not… exactly." Shirong sighed. This is harder than I thought. "Your uncle asked if there might be a reason the haima-jiao was in the lake. There is." He met fiery green squarely. "The Avatar's bison is under Lake Laogai."
Zuko: Uh, no! We were literally shown during the fight why it was here – it was here for me, because I escaped it once already! And I wonder why a water spirit might be in the biggest body of water near the city – that’s a real mystery!
Lee froze. Shirong could see panic trying to clench every muscle in the young man's body, seeking to drive him into flight. But Lee held still, breathing ragged, forcing himself to think. "Why… how… why tell me?"
"The Blue Spirit helped the Avatar once," Shirong said levelly. "I grant you, after what happened at the North Pole, he might want to chain the Avatar to a rock and throw him off a pier.
Zuko: *groans* Aang was defending the Northern Water Tribe from an attack Zhao started and oh yeah, the Ocean Spirit was angry because Zhao killed it’s mate! Do we have to go over this again? How many times do we have to say that before it sinks in?
Rangi: From some of the things our host has let slip, I’m going to guess “quite a bit more,” sadly.
But I hope that the man wanted for raiding Pohuai Stronghold might take pity on the citizens of Ba Sing Se. They don't deserve another haima-jiao."
Zuko: Oh, I get it now – this is all to make sure I have an altruistic motivation for trying to free Appa from the Dai Li, isn’t it? Admittedly that wasn’t my brightest moment when it actually happened, because as Uncle pointed out, I had no idea what I’d do with Appa once I had him… And shouldn’t I maybe be a bit more alarmed that Shirong definitely knows I’m the Blue Spirit, or am I just not caring about that anymore?
Prince Stuko: 78
"I don't… understand," Lee got out. "It's an animal. It's smart, but…."
Gently. He's frightened. And angry. I can't blame him. "If the writings about Avatar Kyoshi are right, it's not just an animal," Shirong told him. "It's the Avatar's animal guide. They're connected. Spiritually. And when they're separated-"
"The spirits get angry," Lee managed, barely above a whisper. "Oh, Agni."
Rangi: …Kyoshi didn’t have an animal guide when we started on our journey. *beat* Wait, are you saying she and Yun would’ve been safe from Father Glowworm if she’d just found a badgermole to cuddle or something? Because I don’t think it works that way.
Shirong let out a relieved breath. He's holding it together. Oma and Shu, that kid is tough. "I'm afraid it may be worse than that."
"…Of course it is," Lee ground out. Sat down on the grass, head lowered, forcing himself through a quick meditation. Let out a sigh, and nodded. "So what's the bad news?"
Zuko: How about I’m sitting here having a friendly conversation with a Dai Li agent who knows who I am, or at least most of it, and could have me killed or worse with a snap of his fingers? And would have motivation for doing that?
"I found a report from General Fong about the Avatar State," Shirong said carefully. Found wasn't exactly accurate; it had landed on him yesterday, while he'd been on light duty sorting paperwork. He'd had a dizzy spell and staggered one way, an officious clerk had jerked another - and an entire shelf had collapsed on top of them. Onlookers had had to dig them both out of the scrolls, and he hadn't even realized he'd carried one off until later. He probably should have returned it, but he'd been sore and bored….
He hadn't been bored since. Terrified, yes. Not bored.
Rangi: *snorts* Crucial information just literally fell on him. That’s convenient! Wish it happened to me, though! Guess Vathara couldn’t figure out a better way for him to have it, huh? Got to say, though, I wish we actually saw him learn this instead of just hearing about it later…
"He noted," Shirong went on, still careful as picking his way across a slope of loose scree, "that you could successfully induce this state by threatening something the Avatar cares about."
Lee went white. "Is he insane?"
Zuko: I mean, from what Aang and Katara told me about that incident later, it doesn’t sound like General Fong could control Aang when he was like that. Like, at all. And I find it kind of hard to believe someone as careful as Long Feng would’ve read that description and decided it was a great thing to try out near the huge, crowded city he was so proud of controlling and keeping “ordered!”
"If he is," oh, spirits, no, "I fear the Grand Secretariat may have joined him." Shirong wet his lips. "I can't let this happen to my city. I meant to do… something, but-"
MG: Like Zuko said, this sort of recklessness and determination to win the war at any cost was in character for General Fong, but I have a hard time buying Long Feng trying it, and we certainly see no evidence in the show that he was trying it. He was keeping Appa as insurance to ensure Aang stayed out of his way and didn’t rock the boat too much. I don’t really think it needs more explanation than that.
"You'd get skewered before you got near Appa." Lee's voice was grim, green eyes glittering. "Don't. You're too hurt to get away clean, and this is going to have to work right the first time." He blinked, then buried his head in his hands as his own words sank in. "Oh, hell…."
Hope stole Shirong's breath. "You don't even have the floorplan!"
"I didn't know the North Pole's, either." Lee lifted his head, smile wry. "At least there won't be a blizzard."
Rangi: *to Zuko* You’re taking this far too well, you know.
Zuko: *grating* Yeah, well, I’m not sure this even counts as me anymore…
"You broke into the…." Shirong knuckled his brow, trying to ward off a headache. "One of these days, we need to have a long talk."
Zuko: What, as opposed to the long talk we had a few chapters ago, where we spilled a whole lot about our plans and travels and you just sort of shrugged and didn’t do anything about it?
Lee smirked; then shivered, looking into memory. "Fong's crazy. The Avatar looks like a twelve-year-old kid. Peaceful. Harmless. But when he's… like that… Aang's not there anymore. It's just the Avatar, and the elements. And they're angry at you. They're angry at everything."
Rangi: *quietly* You think that’s scary, you should’ve seen how Kyoshi handled Xu Ping An. Want to know how a teenage girl can defeat a firebender warlord with an army of fanatical followers and leave him dead and the rest of them absolutely terrified of her? The Avatar State is how.
"You are going to do it." Shirong shook his head, trying to sort out the morass of relief and gratitude and sudden, sharp worry. "I thought, after what you'd seen…."
"The last thing I want to do is help Aang," Lee grated out. Clenched his fists; breathed out, and deliberately straightened his fingers. "Just so you know, their plan won't work. Admiral Zhao was arrogant and overconfident, and he never saw the Ocean coming until it was too late. But Zhao's not out there. Azula is. She's a military genius. And she's read the reports." Lee smirked, cold and bitter. "There's a reason the Fire Lord put her on his trail after Zhao failed. If anyone can figure out how to kill an Avatar, she can."
Azula: *sticking her head in* Point of correction, but Father didn’t send me after the Avatar. He sent me after Zuzu and Uncle. I happened to run into the Avatar while recruiting Mai and Ty Lee, and it was my own decision to add him to my list of targets as well. But yes, I do read my briefings. Which is why I shot the Avatar in the back rather than facing the Avatar State head on!
*Azula vanishes; Rangi glares at her as she goes*
Spirits, Shirong thought, shaken. He'd never even considered that. Just how high up was his uncle- no. Don't ask. Yet. "Thank you."
"Don't." Lee's voice was hard. "What you're asking has a cost."
Damn. Well. He'd done terrible things to save his city in the past, what was one more-?
Zuko: What does he think I’m going to ask him to do, anyway? Bring me the Earth King’s head on a platter? Cut a hole in the Wall? Kidnap Bosco and hold him for ransom? What?
"Tell them I'm not suitable as a recruit."
Shirong blinked, not sure if he should believe his own ears. "What?"
Rangi: Not really sure an organization like the Dai Li takes “no” for an answer when they’ve got their eye on you, Prince Zuko…
"I'm going to be acting against the Dai Li. You could never be sure I wouldn't do that again." Lee's eyes were hard as jade. "I lost my honor a long time ago. I won't take yours down with it."
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 36 (implying the Dai Li have honor to lose…)
For a long moment, words failed the agent. "…I never believed in the Seven Principles before."
"You know the principles?" Lee asked warily.
Zuko: …here we go…
"Avatar Kyoshi wrote them down, while she was learning firebending," Shirong explained.
Rangi: I promise you, Kyoshi and I were busy with, uh, horse stances… and fireblasts… and, uh… other things… and we did not do that!
Among other things. "I thought the Fire Nation she knew was gone. Drowned in a wave of blood." He smiled wryly. "But you're not all gone, are you? Just scattered. Living by your wits." And your honor.
The Superior Element: 52 (more extolling of Fire Nation values)
"Though I suppose even wits have their limit. Tell your uncle everyone is convinced Jet was crazy, and I'm fairly sure no one else had time to notice the flames were too high, but he should be careful heating up steel. I didn't see him ignite your dagger, and if anyone else had there would have already been an arrest… but tell him to stay low for a while. I'd miss his tea."
"…My uncle's not a firebender."
"You," Shirong said dryly, "are a terrible liar."
Zuko: And you are a terrible spy, to have figured all that out and apparently not reported it!
He chuckled softly. "I've seen you both move, and I've seen you both fight. What you didn't pick up from Amaya, you definitely learned from him." He shrugged, deliberately casual. "Though I've never heard of any bender taking the time to train someone who can't touch their element…."
Rangi: *shrugs* It’s not common, but there’s things you can learn…
"He's Uncle," Lee said quietly. "He knows I've got a lousy temper. And awful luck. He tried to train me to stay alive." The waterbender glanced aside. "I wasn't always a good student." Green eyes looked back up, hard. "So what are you going to do?"
"Do about what?" Shirong said practically. "Amaya saved my life. She's saved a lot of lives, no few of them my comrades.
Rangi: Saved their lives so they can keep terrorizing the city, you mean…
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 37
If it weren't for your uncle, we'd have lost her. All I intend to do is lie here in the sun and forget that night ever happened. Near-death memories can be very unclear. Or so I've heard." He leaned back against the rocks. "No, I think I'll just rest here and tell you about… well, someplace you'll never see. Since you've declined to be recruited."
Zuko: Gah! If I’m not being recruited, why are you telling me Dai Li secrets! What’s wrong with you? Or am I just that special? *beat* This is probably about Lake Laogai and needing me to rescue Appa, so… yeah, it’s because I’m that special.
Taut as a bowstring, Lee listened.
"Temul," Shirong said, surprised; the fact he'd been searching for finally surfacing from memory with that intent look from Lee. "Ask your uncle about Temul. She was a firebender a few centuries back…
Zuko: *nonplussed* Uh-huh. Uncle knows a lot, but it’s not like he keeps a list of every firebender who’s ever lived. All we know about this Temul person is that she tried to get an audience with the Earth King and was denied. Was she really so important Shirong would expect Uncle to know about her?
I think she tried something the opposite of what you've done, adapting waterbending moves to fire." Which hadn't made Avatar Kyoshi happy at all, if he recalled correctly. She'd kept the nations separate with a granite glove behind a golden war fan, and what she would have said about a mixed-blood waterbender probably couldn't be repeated in polite company.
Rangi: *cackles* Oh, oh! If only Vathara knew! You see, Kyoshi? She had mixed blood herself! Her dad was an earthbender, but her mother was an Air Nomad! And the man who basically adopted her and raised her when I first knew her was an Air Nomad monk! *blushes, looks away* And then there’s, you know… me. Us. And, uh, let’s just say that some of the things Kyoshi and one particular firebender were doing together probably shouldn’t be repeated in polite company for, uh… other reasons than Shirong is implying. But yeah, Kyoshi is the last person I know who’d be upset about mixing between different nations! She’d be the first person she’d have to condemn for that!
MG: I’ve alluded before that I have no idea if FC Yee, who wrote the Kyoshi and Yangchen duologies, was at all familiar with Embers, but there are definitely quite a few points in those books that feel like very specific refutations of key elements of that fic… and Kyoshi being canonically mixed-race and in love with a Fire Nation girl can’t help but feel like a very, very direct middle-finger to Vathara’s Kyoshi, whether it actually is that or no. Just something I felt like making a note of!
"If he knows anything, it might help."
Zuko: Unless Uncle knows where Temul was buried and she was buried with detailed plans of Lak Laogai, not really sure that helps much in this situation…
Lee nodded once, obviously committing the name to memory. "The lake?"
"Ah, yes. Well, that's going to be tricky…."
Rangi: Better hope none of the other Dai Li agents are watching you right now, or you’d both be so dead…
-
The bison's here. The bison's here.
Oh Agni, what do I do?
MG: Hmmm; I do think it’s kind of an interesting thing to note that Zuko is panicking here about Appa being in Ba Sing Se, whereas when he found out in canon his attitude was more subdued and… more that of an obsession rekindled, I guess? Not sure if this is meant to be a “Zuko’s attitude is different because his relationship to the people in the city and overall state of mind is different” thing, a “portray Zuko in as sympathetic a light as possible” thing, or maybe something else/a bit of both, it just felt worth pointing out.
Dimly Zuko recalled that Amaya had left him to head for the clinic, sending him on his way to teach Jinhai. He also remembered glaring at a scraggly-headed man who'd tried to pick his belt pouch, and assisting another overeager hand into a wall, before he'd reclaimed enough common sense to get off the streets and up onto the roofs.
MG: …that sounds like the same guy who tried to mug Iroh in “The Tales of Ba Sing Se.” Did that encounter not happen in Embers? Or did Iroh fail to convince the guy to give up his attempt at a life of crime and turn over a new leaf, which is pretty sad, if so? Either way, it doesn’t sound like encountering Zuko here will be nearly as helpful for him.
Stations of the Canon: 28
No people up here. No conflicting voices to have to sort through for meaning when the whole world wanted to blur into a hiss of noise. Just the wind, and the sounds of the city.
Better.
Breathe. In and out.
You're panicking.
Well, yes. The impulse to either gibber or beat somebody else's brains against the wall was a good clue.
Zuko: …I seem to be doing a really good job at analyzing my own panic attack, aren’t i?
It wasn't fair, it just wasn't fair; where the bison was the Avatar couldn't be far away, and the plan wasn't ready, he hadn't had enough time-!
You can't panic here.
Basics. When the world fell apart, stick to basics. He had new and unexpected intelligence on an opponent and target, and he was not reacting in a combat-ready manner.
Strategic withdrawal. Find someplace secure, and reexamine your information.
Meaning decide on a location, and move. Movement would help; movement always helped. Katas, running, fighting. He moved better than he could put things into words. Always.
So move. But move where?
Rangi: *shrugs* Makes sense to me. Firebending is all about positive jing – stay on the attack, keep up your momentum, overwhelm your enemy’s defenses, don’t give them a chance to strike back, and power through your problems. If Zuko really is freaking out like this, makes sense he’d fall back on his most basic training and instincts.
MG: I agree, but I don’t think that’s the only thing we have going on here, as we’ll see in a minute…
Clinic, or Uncle? The clinic would be safe, but Amaya had no experience with infiltration. She'd probably try to talk him out of this. And he couldn't walk away. His word depended on it. The whole city might depend on it.
Uncle.
A better tactical choice, given Iroh's experience with combat, strategy, and the Avatar. But it was the middle of the day, and dragging Uncle away from work might draw all kinds of unpleasant attention. Just because the haima-jiao was dead didn't mean they might not still be watched.
Zuko: *muttering* If the Dai Li were acting like, well, the Dai Li, we’d definitely be watched after everything they’ve picked up about us, spirit or no spirit…
Like Jinhai might be-
I have a pattern. The Dai Li know that. If I don't show up at the Wen house - they'll know something is wrong.
And broken patterns would lead to curiosity about why they'd been broken, and if he did get Appa loose-
They could trace it back to Shirong.
Rangi: And maybe Jinhai and his family, too. I don’t know; I’d be more worried about the civilians, in your shoes. Shirong, to be blunt, can take care of himself. Jinhai can’t.
Which would be bad. Not just for the agent. If they took him, they'd question him - and Shirong didn't have the defenses Amaya had given Lee.
Zuko: *snorts* What “defenses?” I don’t really think the fake personality she gave me is sturdy enough to stand up to determined questioning from the Dai Li, especially if they bring their own brainwashing into things! *beat* Wouldn’t put it past her to have put in a failsafe that I have a stroke or something if they try to use their brainwashing, though. Can’t give away her secrets if I’m dead, right?
I've got to make things look normal.
MG: Okay, okay, I know this scene is serious, but… am I the only one thinking of Frederick in Young Frankenstein frantically yelling at Igor and Inga that they have to all act completely normal when Inspector Kemp comes over to investigate after the Creature has just been brought to life (and then his shirt collar pops out goofily as soon as he’s done talking)? Where my mind went, anyway.
Jinhai's house, then.
Move. Just get there. Get somewhere safe.
Work out what to do after.
A glance pinned down where he was. Forcing himself into the narrow focus of where am I, where am I going, Zuko settled into a roof-eating lope. And tried not to think.
The Dai Li would have seen him come by way of the rooftops before. This wouldn't look suspicious. He hoped.
Rangi: Not sure that logic holds up, but whatever.
I can't take the streets right now. I'll break something. Or somebody.
Which would upset Uncle and Amaya, spirits, what was he going to tell them….
Zuko: Also, you know, I might hurt somebody. I think that’s a little more important than Uncle or Amaya getting upset.
Don't think about it.
Alleys and roofs and balconies, and finally he dropped into a street near the Wen's to at least look semi-respectable entering the house….
One step at a time.
"Lee!" Suyin's face was bright; sobered, seeing him. "Is something wrong?"
"I've had better days," Zuko said dryly. Looked past her to Jinhai. "We should stick to simple moves today. What we got Amaya out of… it was close. Too close."
"What did happen?" Meixiang stepped out of the kitchen, giving him a searching look. "You look like you've been raked over shattered ice."
Zuko: Well, I was fighting a rogue water spirit, so, close enough?
"Close. Almost drowned," Zuko admitted. "There was a man-eating kamuiy. We stopped it." He held up a hand before they could speak. "If you want details, I'll tell you after practice. If I think about it before… it was too close."
Falling. Dodging. Strikes, with foot or fist or bladed hand. He walked them through it all, warmed by how much better they'd gotten in just a few weeks.
I may never teach them again.
No. No, damn it! My people need me. They need me here!
There had to be a way.
MG: Mmmm. On the one hand, I kind of like this bit… but on the other, I kind of don’t. On the one hand, it does show that Zuko’s involvement with Ba Sing Se, and the Wens in particular, is indeed affecting his judgment and pushing him in particular directions. Character development is good! On the other hand, especially knowing where this fic is going, I still worry it’s pushing Zuko too fast, getting him into a position where he’s willing to renounce his mission and reject his loyalty to his father in a way that it took him a lot longer to arrive at in canon, mostly so Vathara can get Zuko where she wants him. Of course, this is an AU, so Vathara isn’t obligated to follow Zuko’s canon arc… but even so, Zuko’s canon arc is good, arguably the best part of the show, and I don’t think what Vathara does with him is as interesting in the long run. So… I’m divided.
Jinhai was panting, glad to flop down in the garden by the time Zuko called a halt. Suyin was just as sweaty, but breathed easier, ducking inside to get her mother with a look of unbridled curiosity.
Stepping out, Meixiang glanced over her sweating children, and gave him a measuring look. "You stopped it?"
"I helped," Zuko stated. And gave them a brief account of that awful night, sparing the goriest details. But not the key facts: the haima-jiao had killed other waterbenders, and tried to do worse to Amaya. "Uncle says it's a spirit of warm oceans; deserts of the sea," Zuko finished. "I wonder if that's why the Water Tribes stay near the poles."
Katara: *sticks her head in* Oh, and it clearly wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that there’s a ton of ice and snow at the poles, so that’s a good environment for waterbenders or anything! And the Swamp Tribe, who do live where it’s warm, also live in, well, a swamp, which is somewhere else it’s very wet! No spirits needed!
The Deadly Depths: 29
I wonder why something like that never went after Katara; she's been around enough bloodshed to draw them….
Oh. Idiot. She's always with the Avatar. The haima-jiao might not have been the brightest spirit on the block, but I doubt any of them are that stupid.
MG: Or maybe because it’s something Vathara retconned into the setting that has no basis in the parts of the show the fic does take as canon (this is a recurring problem with Vathara’s worldbuilding, IMO – she has to act like it was there all along, but also explain why, if so, nobody ever brought it up before)?
Beware the Sugar Queen: 8 (for the implication that Katara would be a magnet for dangerous spirits without Aang around)
"She lost all her people?" Suyin sniffled, and swiped at her eyes. "That's awful."
"You're her people too, you know," Zuko told her. "She cares about you. A lot."
Rangi: *sniffs* That’s not reassuring!
"I know, but… do you think it would help if we told her about the Southern Water Tribe boy here?"
No. It can't be.
The Avatar's bison was here. It damn well could be. "What Southern Water Tribe boy?" Zuko ground out.
Zuko: Oh, great, Jia being in that poetry class is going to actually be important…
Jinhai scrunched into his mother's arms, wide-eyed; even Suyin paled. "He- Jia said his name was Sokka…."
Words vanished in a white hiss of fury.
Don't move. Don't do anything.
Head down, fists clenched on his green robe, Zuko breathed. And forced himself to stay still. Move, and the simmering cauldron of rage and fear and frustration would tip over, spilling into a wave of fire that would reach out and destroy….
These are your allies. These are your people. Don't move.
"…Back up… tell me where… it's all right, sometimes the great names…."
Meixiang's voice. Worried, but not frightened. Thank Agni, not frightened.
MG: We’re going to have to talk about what’s going on here in just a minute, so… hold this thought, everyone.
Rangi: And of course, it’s a noble thing. *beat* My mom is basically what Vathara would call a great name, being the head of our clan and all, and I’ve never seen anything like this from her. Just so we’re clear!
Divine Right to Rule: 44
Don't give me a target. Please. I'm so angry….
And afraid. So desperately afraid. Everything he'd built, everything he'd tried to plan - it was all coming apart, like folded paper cast into flames.
"…My lord. Can you hear me yet? My lord, my blade is yours, against your enemies…."
She needs me. Zuko forced himself to look up, dragging back words and meaning to human voices.
Meixiang was kneeling in front of him, dagger casting back the sun by her side.
MG: …and of course, what brings Zuko out of it is someone kneeling and offering him fealty. Because of course it is.
Divine Right to Rule: 45
"Don't… do that," Zuko rasped, trying to slow his racing heart. "I'm not your lord."
"Yes," Meixiang said simply. "You are."
Divine Right to Rule: 46
But she looked up, searching his face with concern. And relief. "You've banked the fury? You can understand my words?"
Zuko: Well, it sounds like I could understand her the whole time, at least, so… not sure how much that helps…
Zuko flinched. "I- how did you-?"
"It happens to some firebenders." Tension eased from Meixiang's frame. "I knew one, years ago… my grandfather called it dragon's rage. Dragons aren't hatched with the skill to speak; not like humans are.
Rangi: *snorts* Okay, one, humans aren’t “hatched.” Two, humans aren’t born knowing how to speak either. Has Vathara ever been around a baby? I get what she’s saying – that speech comes later and less naturally to dragons than it does to humans – but that phrasing is kind of weird.
The Ultimate Firebenders: 20
When fury takes them, they can lose the art of it, and words seem but whistles in the wind. So." A graceful gesture toward herself, kneeling. "You are lord here, and you know I follow. This calms the dragon in the blood, and lets you reclaim human words." At his look of confusion, she frowned. "Hasn't your uncle told you this?"
MG: *sighs heavily* Okay, Remember a few chapters ago I mentioned that I think Vathara may be writing dragon-children as autistic coded, intentionally or otherwise? This element is a big part of why. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but just to be clear – I’m on the autism spectrum myself. What Vathara is describing here feels very much to me like what I experience on those occasions I’ve found myself overstimulated and had a meltdown. The way I tend to visualize it is that it’s like I have a meter in my head measuring stress, and once it fills all the way up, I just can’t deal rationally with anything else, and trying to calm myself down normally won’t work (and other people actively trying to calm me down usually makes things worse) – I need to either let it all out at once in a frantic burst, or else retreat somewhere I can be by myself for a while and simmer as my stress level slowly goes down and I can finally get to a point I can interact normally with people again. Zuko’s progressive meltdown in this scene – even including the bit where a pretty minor detail on its own (the revelation of Sokka’s presence in Ba Sing Se) is the last straw and sets him off – feels real to me, in that sense. And I do appreciate that Vathara presents this as something normal and natural for someone like Zuko, something that may need to be managed properly but isn’t a flaw that needs to be “fixed,” it’s just part of who he is.
On the other hand… that it’s explicitly tied to Zuko’s nonhuman heritage I feel considerably more ambivalent about. I’m not inherently averse to nonhuman or part human beings reading as autistic coded (ie, the kalashar from Eberron – some of you who’ve followed my previous stuff may remember my guest sporker Havaktri! – are one of my favorite concepts in D&D and really in fantasy more generally, and I think part of that is that I’ve always read them as being somewhat autistic coded in general. Less consciously, until relatively recently, I think I’ve also read them as somewhat trans-coded as well, though usually less literally than say changelings from the same setting can be). But there’s still something kind of uncomfortable to me in the way it’s very specifically used to “other” Zuko and other dragon-children – it may be normal for them, but it’s still firmly placed outside the realm of human experience, if that makes sense. Not to mention that Vathara has to make it weird by bringing in her nobility fetish and, again, having at least one way to bring Zuko out of his downward spiral be for someone to pledge fealty to him. And I think I’ve noted before, while there are plenty of fictional characters I’ve headcanoned as autistic over the years, I don’t think I ever really read Zuko that way – it always seemed to me that his social awkwardness was a product of his royal upbringing and having had relatively little chance for “normal” social interactions with people before the show began (combined with the fact that, when we meet him, he’s not exactly dealing with his trauma or other problems in his life in a very healthy or productive way). That might just be me, though.
Divine Right to Rule: 47
The Ultimate Firebenders: 21
"This… doesn't happen to my uncle." Dragon's blood? He'd heard the legends, like everyone else. But she can't be serious.
"But I thought - your family's line-" Meixiang closed her mouth, wincing.
"What do you know about my family?" Zuko demanded.
"I… know you are great names." Meixiang looked troubled. "But if it isn't from your uncle's side, then-" Green eyes widened. "Oh. You said your mother was a healer…."
MG: Actually, it is from Iroh’s side too – the fic will later confirm that Zuko and Azula are especially dragony even for dragon-children because they get it from relatively close ancestors on both sides of their family tree. I’m not sure if we ever get a real explanation for why it seems to have skipped a generation on Iroh’s end, though.
Divine Right to Rule: 48
The Ultimate Firebenders: 22
"This isn't her fault!" Zuko blazed. Shuddered, and hauled in his temper with trembling hands. "I just- I'm not good enough. I don't know why it happens, everything just burns inside and the words fly away…."
MG: Honestly, I feel that. *sigh* I just wish I liked this plot point in general better…
"Not her fault," Meixiang said firmly. "Her heritage. It happens." She made her blade disappear up her sleeve. "Is this Sokka your enemy?"
He's fifteen. But Azula was fourteen, did it make any difference?
Rangi: And you were sixteen, so you think you’d know better than to think someone has to be out of their teens to be a threat…
"He… has been." Zuko picked his words. "He's an ally of the Avatar. Who has been declared a threat to the Fire Nation."
"Oh." A breath more than a word; eyes green from Amaya's water wincing with hurt. "A task you could never survive alone… spirits, Lee! You're just one bender!"
But I'm not Lee. "Those are the terms," Zuko said harshly. "I gave my word."
Zuko: Also, Dad made it quite clear when he banished me what I’d have to do if I wanted to come home and be reinstated in my family… and since he was Fire Lord, whether I agreed or not didn’t really matter…
Silence, taut between them. Zuko dipped his head, and started to rise. "I'm sorry-"
"My lord, with all due respect - stay right there."
He sank back down, taken aback. That? Definitely angry Mom mode.
Which stung his pride; she was not his mother, he didn't need looking after-
Rangi: *rolls her eyes* Boys.
But I need help, Zuko admitted to himself, swallowing the acid burn. I can't do this on my own. I need any help I can get.
"I never thought I'd be glad for sitting through so many faculty meetings… what did you promise the Fire Lord to do?" Meixiang said bluntly. "What did you promise, exactly?"
Zuko: Well, “capture the Avatar and bring him to Dad alive” was the basic idea…
"I… I never spoke it to him," Zuko admitted painfully. "He wouldn't see me, after. She- someone delivered the terms…." Terms that had shattered his life, and exiled him forever.
"Wiggle room," Meixiang murmured. Nodded.
Zuko: …not really? Dad was the one who set the terms, it was up to him to decide if I fulfilled them or not. Pretty sure if I’d shown up without Aang, alive or otherwise, and tried to argue I’d succeeded on a technicality… well, if he was in a good mood, he’d probably laugh in my face and toss me out again. A bad mood… I don’t even want to think about it.
"So what did you promise to do?"
Even through cloth, fingernails bit into his palms. "To capture the Avatar. End his threat to the Fire Nation. To my people."
Rangi: Pretty sure “end the threat to Fire Lord Ozai” was the more important, unspoken part there, O Prince.
"And who are we?" Meixiang said bluntly. "Myself. Huojin. Our children. All of us. Who are we, my lord?"
"…My people." Zuko wiped sweat off his face. "My head hurts." My heart hurts.
Zuko: Yeah, well, I doubt Dad even knows any of you exist, if he did know he’d consider you all traitors, and you’re definitely not what he meant when he set the terms for my banishment! Seriously, have we all forgotten that we’re not arguing some thousand-year-old treaty or some bargain with an impartial spirit, we’re talking about my Dad, a very much alive person who also happens to be the tyrant who burned and disowned me, and then gave me the most difficult mission he could think of to rub salt in the wound even more? That’s who and what we’re dealing with here?
"I can only imagine." She inched closer, slow and cautious. "Are you going to talk to your uncle?"
Jerkily, he nodded. "Have to," Zuko got out. "There's more than Sokka, you don't know - have to make sure the bison isn't there anymore, need to get the damn spirits to stop using the city as target practice…."
Rangi: I don’t think “one particular spirit abducting and eating people” really counts as “the spirits, in general, using the city as target practice,” but whatever…
White noise threatened to close in again; he cradled his head in his hands.
"Wait. Just a little longer." Meixiang rose and hurried into the house. Came back shortly, drawing a pale Suyin in her wake. "Go with Lee. Make sure he gets to his uncle, then come home."
"Okay," Suyin said uncertainly. "What's wrong?"
"It's complicated." Meixiang bent and whispered something in the girl's ear. Suyin started, and gulped.
Stepping away, Meixiang regarded Zuko again. "My lord. I trust you will see that my daughter is safe with you."
Zuko: *sighs heavily*
Divine Right to Rule: 49
So I don't do anything stupid while she's there. Zuko clung to that with relief. "I'll be careful."
"You'd better be," Meixiang said bluntly. "We need you. More than you know."
MG: …and that’s when it turned out Meixiang was secretly Emperor Palpatine in disguise. Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen… *beat* Sorry, her line there just sounded like some of Palpatine’s dialogue from Revenge of the Sith and that just sort of… came out.
Prince Stuko: 79
-
"What do you mean, he's not here?"
Suyin tried not to flinch at the raw edge in Lee's voice. It helped that Pao looked more morose than angry, sniffing a cup of his own tea and groaning. "I mean he quit!" the teashop owner lamented. "That noble rascal Quon offered him his own shop, in the Upper Ring! And he took it! Even after I offered him the position of Senior Executive Assistant Manager!"
Stations of the Canon: 29
"And how would that be different from what he was doing?" Lee said dryly.
Rangi: Maybe it would pay better? *shrugs*
"…He'd make more tea?"
Rangi: …or that.
Lee looked like he didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or set something on fire.
"Stay with him, so he stays alive," her mother had said. "I'll explain later. Be careful."
Zuko: …I guess the idea is that if I have someone to protect, I’ll be more careful than if it’s just me alone? *beat* I guess that kind of makes sense? It had better not be that since I’m Meixiang’s lord now, she’s not going to let me go anywhere unattended… that’d be awkward.
Which was even scarier than traveling the Lower Ring on her own. Though walking with Lee seemed to make people she'd usually worry about find other places to be. "It's good news, right?" Suyin ventured. "He'd want to tell you. And you're usually at the clinic now."
For a moment Lee seemed to look through her. Focused, and nodded.
"You could talk to him!" Pao almost pounced; thought better of it at Lee's narrowed eyes. "Convince him to come back!"
"Uncle loves tea," Lee said bluntly. "If he left, he's not coming back."
Pao wailed as they left.
"You could have been a little nicer," Suyin scolded him as they went down the street. "Even if you're having a bad day-"
"You have no idea." Lee shook his head, and tried to rein in his tone. "Suyin. The last thing Pao needs is for me or Uncle to be there. Things could get… bad. Fast."
Zuko: …at least I’m self-aware about it?
How bad? Suyin wanted to ask. And was afraid to. "Will you tell me? At Amaya's?"
"Your mother told you to get me to Uncle and go home. She doesn't want you getting hurt."
Boys! "We don't want you getting hurt, either!"
"I can't- you shouldn't-" Lee gripped the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "Ask Uncle. I'm not… thinking very well right now."
Well, at least he knew that. Which put him one up on Min.
Rangi: …well, that came out of nowhere. Min’s not even been in this chapter!
And Uncle was at the clinic, grinning as he shared tea with Amaya. A grin that slipped into sober worry the moment he saw Lee. "Nephew?"
Lee glanced around the edge of screens that partitioned off resting patients; forced a smile for a mother nursing a no longer feverish baby. Stepped close, so his words wouldn't reach past the screen. "The bison's under Lake Laogai." He jabbed a thumb toward Suyin. "And she knows something about Sokka." He dipped his head to Amaya. "Master Amaya. I'm… going to go break some ice in your garden. Maybe a lot of ice."
Zuko: Well, I guess if Uncle wants to serve tea with ice in it, he might be getting his chance?
Silent footsteps, and he was gone.
"Oh, dear." Uncle looked grave. "What is it you know, Miss Suyin?"
"Well, I…."
Ice creaked and cracked, loud as Min shattering rocks.
Rangi: Wait, Min’s not even the only earthbender in the Wen family – what, are Tingzhe and Jia just really, really quiet earthbenders?
"He's somewhere in the Upper Ring," Suyin said in a rush. "He has to be, or he couldn't have fallen into Madam Macmu-Ling's class. Jia saw him there, he's Southern Water Tribe, I thought maybe you'd like to talk to him?" She looked at Amaya, eyes wide. "Lee was acting weird before I told him - kept the lessons really simple, like he was trying not to think about something - and then when I said Sokka's name, I thought- it was scary!"
"I would think it was," Uncle murmured. "Tell me what you know, and exactly what you saw."
Rangi: I guess General Iroh means “what you saw about Zuko” because Suyin admitted she didn’t actually see Sokka…
-
They're here, Zuko thought, shards of ice melting around him. Those idiots are here, and I have to do something, I have to!
He Has Much to Learn: 26 (treating the Gaang as stupid by default gets a point)
Something. But what?
Even if I can find him-
Oh, take that as a given, where Sokka was the Avatar wouldn't be too far away.
If I find him - it's just me, and Uncle, in the middle of Ba Sing Se. If he goes into the Avatar State… thousands of people could get hurt.
Zuko: I know Aang couldn’t really control the Avatar State yet at this point, but I really don’t think he’d let that happen in the middle of Ba Sing Se, because he doesn’t want people to get hurt.
Not that he could let that matter when his duty to his nation was on the line.
But… my people are here, too. What do I do? I can't do nothing, but I don't know what to-
Panic. An old enemy. He knew the coppery taste of it, the way it bent the world into enemy and destroy and blocked out any words that argued otherwise.
Reaching back to Uncle's lessons in survival, Zuko sat down.
Ow.
Knelt, brushed away a few chunks of ice, and sat again. And breathed.
MG: At first I thought Zuko was acting like trying to calm down was in itself physically painful, which is both intensely relatable and yet also kind of funny… sadly, I don’t think “Zuko sitting on ice shards by accident” is quite as effective.
Survival. Basics. What do you have? What do you need?
He had information on the Avatar, and the bison. He needed-
My people. Safe.
If he captured the Avatar, they would be safe-
Rangi: Capture the Avatar and Fire Lord Ozai’s last major obstacle to ruling the world gets removed. Now, this is all centuries after my time, but from what I’ve gathered about him, nobody would be safe.
Can I do that? Zuko drove the doubt home, mercilessly. Lives were at stake, not just his honor. He couldn't afford to be optimistic. He couldn't afford to be wrong. He's the Avatar. Master of air. Probably master of water and earth by this time. I'm not even a master of fire. And with water? Katara could thrash me up, down, and sideways. I know healing, but Amaya and I are teaching ourselves combat moves. Against a trained waterbender? We'd be toast.
MG: On the one hand, I’d normally be happy about the fic having Zuko acknowledge his limitations like this… but considering how blatantly Vathara favors Zuko and how OP she ends up making him, it makes scenes like this come off as false modesty (on the fic’s part if not necessarily on Zuko’s) in a way that’s more annoying than endearing.
He's the Avatar, and he's not alone. And I know how the Dai Li like to keep things quiet. I can't fight them all.
Rangi: …maybe that would be more meaningful if you hadn’t just spent several chapters being buddies with the Dai Li…
Remember. Remember what Uncle said. Azula could catch the Avatar. But could she hold him? Without killing him?
I… can't.
It hurt. Like fire. Like clutching the shattered edge of an icy lake, cutting and numbing and hurting all the worse for it.
I am not going to cry.
MG: …you know what, as a “Zuko realizes his mission was always doomed to failure” moment, this is actually quite good. No notes!
Zuko hugged his knees for long minutes, trying not to think. Pain was not the enemy. People thought it was, but it wasn't. Pain was a warning. Something is amiss. Something is about to break.
Zuko: And let me guess, is the thing that’s about to break “loyalty,” by any chance?
MG: …not quite yet, but you’re on the right track.
Zuko: *groans and facepalms*
But he was already broken. There was nothing to do but accept the pain, and wait until he'd suffered enough. Until it sank into his very bones, where it could be acknowledged… and ignored.
Rangi: Sorry, but in my experience the cure for suffering isn’t “more suffering,” though I get that you’re not in a good place to appreciate that right now. But can I just say, as someone who’s… not been in your exact situation, maybe, but gone through some stuff in my life, too… this attitude is not going to help you.
I can't capture the Avatar. But I have to protect my people.
Inside and outside the walls; Agni, this was so like the North Pole, how could Avatar be this stupid twice?
MG: Hmmm, it’s almost like Aang came to Ba Sing Se for a reason and wasn’t just goofing around… but that’s just crazy talk…
He Has Much to Learn: 27
I wish I could yell at him. I wish I could pick him up and shake him until his teeth rattled-
Rangi: And unless you rattle his teeth so hard the Earth King himself comes running to see what the commotion is, I don’t think that’s going to do anything about the actual reason Aang’s here!
He Has Much to Learn: 28
Something white blew in the wind.
Climb, leap, and scramble; Zuko gained the clinic's roof, snatched paper from the air-
A flyer. Neatly and professionally inked, with a picture of a creature most hadn't seen for a hundred years.
Stations of the Canon: 30 (apparently Zuko still needs to find the flyer, even though he already knows about Appa in this version)
Zuko shook a fist at the sky, wishing he knew enough about air-spirits to castigate them all to the lowest bowels of Koh's lair. "I know already!"
MG: And we have another case of “Koh’s lair equals hell.” A rather confusing one, considering as far as we see in canon, Koh lives in a cave under a tree in the Spirit World, and there’s nothing else down there, just him. It doesn’t really have “levels” or “bowels” like Hell (whether the Christian Hell or the various Buddhist Hells, really) is generally depicted.
Anyway, this chapter is long, so we’re stopping here for today! This part… was a pretty mixed bag for me. After having spent several chapters dealing with the spirit, we’ve finally caught up with the show and are back on track for Embers’s own main plot, which is good. And I definitely think there are some good moments of characterization from Zuko scattered here throughout! On the other hand, there are lots of smaller bits I really don’t like, and they end up adding up. Most obviously, we have Zuko somehow being the only person Shirong can trust to rescue Appa, and Shirong continuing to be a terrible Dai Li agent; we get our first taste of Kyoshi the Racist, which is going to go much worse places as the fic goes on; we get more info on dragon-children, and maybe I’m reading too much into it with the “dragon children are autistic” thing, but either way it leaves me feeling deeply ambivalent and uncomfortable; and of course there’s the constant harping on how dumb Aang and his friends are for being here in the first place, which I’d take for being part of Zuko’s own inner monologue except Vathara pretty clearly agrees. Sigh. It all comes together to just be kind of wearying, and it all points to worse things to come down the line. In any case, that’s all for today! Next time, Amaya meets the Gaang. Be prepared. We’ll see you then! Our counts stand at:
Beware the Sugar Queen: 8
The Blind Bandit Wins Again: 13
The Deadly Depths: 29
Detached from Reality: 11
Divine Right to Rule: 49
Elemental Determinism: 48
He Has Much to Learn: 28
Prince Stuko: 79
Protectors of our Cultural Heritage: 37
The Real Victims: 35
Simple Rubes from the Water Tribes: 25
Stations of the Canon: 30
The Superior Element: 52
True Guardians of Balance: 1
The Ultimate Firebenders: 22
