masterghandalf

Chapter Five

The chapter opens with Team Avatar safe and rested, and Sokka asking Toph to explain what exactly it is she understands about what happened with Zuko and Iroh last episode. Toph takes a moment to think about how she usually prefers the blunt truth, but that she’s had to learn some stuff about the way the world works that the others clearly haven’t. First, she asks why Sokka didn’t specify that Zuko was a prince instead of “some angry guy with a ponytail”; Sokka doesn’t get what the big deal is, and Toph explains that the Fire Lord only has two kids, and they just ran into both of them. Katara and Sokka are stunned to learn this, but Aang admits he’d already suspected, from how Azula and Zuko talked to each other and how she thought his scar was funny. Toph explains that while her parents didn’t usually have her around when they had business meetings, she still overheard things – and she doesn’t say that sometimes her parents did business with Fire Nation merchants. And although the exact circumstances of how Zuko got banished aren’t widely known, everyone knows it has something to do with how he got scarred. And suddenly, with Aang having reappeared, Zuko has a chance to redeem himself. If he does, he’d be back as first in line to the throne, ahead of Azula – and if he died trying, her position would be secure. Toph also knows that Zuko was telling them the truth, since she can tell when people are lying – and that his uncle has to be none other than Fire Lord Ozai’s older brother, General Iroh, the Dragon of the West. Aang is stunned.

We cut to Zuko, desperately trying to keep himself from yelling at his uncle while internally berating himself for letting Azula get the better of him and almost kill Iroh. We find that Iroh is trying to teach Zuko lightningbending, but Zuko is struggling because he lacks the proper calm – and because he doesn’t understand how to separate energies inside himself. Iroh says that Zuko seems calm when he’s healing, but Zuko admits he treats healing like a fight, and discusses how his healing technique is different from Katara’s. Iroh says he has another idea. We then cut back to Katara later that evening, as Toph asks what’s the matter – Katara doesn’t want to talk about it, but Toph thinks it has to do with Zuko (who she calls “Sparky”) and his own ability to heal people. Katara admits that’s it, and how, based on what she heard from Jeong Jeong, firebenders don’t have healing powers, but Toph says that masters don’t know everything; she figured out some of her own best moves because nobody told her she couldn’t and thinks Zuko probably learned the same way. Katara talks about how Zuko attacked the Southern Water Tribe and what he did then, and Toph says that what’s really bothering her is that all of them (except Aang, for obvious reasons) could go home if they wanted to, but Zuko can’t. Katara says that it’s the Fire Nation’s fault that Aang can’t go home, and Toph tells her that Zuko’s not to blame for that, since he wasn’t around then – and that the Fire Nation might have killed the Air Nomads, but Chin the Conqueror would have done the same if he could. And that some of the Air Temples were near Water Tribe territory, but the Water Tribes didn’t try to stop the Fire Nation either. She thinks that by holding themselves aloof from the rest of the world, the Air Nomads made enemies.

Katara protests that their dad wouldn’t do something like that, but Sokka, waking up, says that Gran-Gran left the North Pole for reasons they don’t really know, and maybe that had something to do with it. He reminds her how she had to fight Pakku to even have a chance to learn from him, and how little the Water Tribe knew about the Fire Nation. In fact, none of them knows much about the Fire Nation, other than that they started the war, and Sokka thinks that’s interesting. Katara protests that nothing about Zuko is interesting; Sokka thinks she’s still just mad Zuko tied her to a tree that one time. Toph wants to hear about this, but Katara shushes her; she still can’t believe everyone is thinking about Zuko. Sokka adds that Iroh mentioned that being thought a traitor was unfair to Zuko, and he wonders if that’s true about Iroh himself. Toph wonders if it has something to do with the North Pole and what happened there; Sokka adds that while Iroh said he wouldn’t teach Aang, he never said anything about not helping him in other ways. And they’re sure to run into both Zuko and Iroh again.

We cut back to Zuko and Iroh, as Iroh is explaining the philosophy of the elements to Zuko. The Avatar is powerful not only by combining the power of all four elements, but by knowing the cultures of all four nations and being able to teach them all. Zuko doesn’t understand, so Iroh has him imagine a child who’s just begun to learn firebending, and how he’d explain it to him. Zuko describes how fire naturally wants to fight and burn; if you want it to do more, you have to flow with it, and learn to follow its rhythm, and give yourself to it before you can control it. Iroh asks Zuko to demonstrate, and he does, forming a fireball that contains elements of multiple colors, and Iroh thinks to himself that Zuko’s use of fire has elements of waterbending in it, and that it moves like the dao – two complementary halves of one whole. Iroh himself then tries to duplicate Zuko’s technique, finding it to be not as easy as it looks, and though he briefly manages to manifest green-colored flames, it quickly falls apart, and Iroh finds his breathing and chi flows disrupted. Zuko asks what Iroh did, and Iroh says he’s figured out some of what Zuko does when he heals – he links himself to the energies of the fire to make a lasting change, which isn’t what normal firebending teaches. Zuko fears he was doing it wrong, and Iroh says he was doing it right – it was Iroh himself who was wrong, and that’s where he faltered. Iroh then explains some of the things he’s seen Zuko do – his use of fire at the South Pole, breaking Zhao’s stance with a single blow, and holding his own, however briefly, against Azula. And he can heal. Iroh asks what all of those had in common, and all Zuko can come up with is that they were all outside; Iroh in turn says they should probably be more concerned about techniques they can use if they run into Azula again and asks if that’s why Zuko studied swordsmanship. Zuko says he just wanted to be good at something, and Iroh assures him that he is.

For now, though, Iroh has another technique he wants to show Zuko, one that even Ozai and Azula don’t know, because Iroh himself invented it, based on waterbending, which he’d studied long before Zuko ever met Katara. Zuko protests that Katara tried to bury him in ice, and Iroh reminisces about his own courtship with his future wife, which apparently made that look tame. Zuko, flustered, insists that Katara is Water Tribe and neither of them is interested. Iroh explains that his technique is lightning redirection, and demonstrates the motions for Zuko; Zuko, recognizing some similarities to his healing, is able to catch the flow, and asks Iroh to test it on him. Iroh doesn’t want to shoot lightning at his own nephew and refuses – if Zuko’s lucky, he’ll never have to use this technique, and even if he’s not lucky, he’s still not ready to practice with actual lightning. Zuko, on the verge of losing control, insists that he needs to know he can do this, and Iroh finally says he’ll consider it. But right now, they’re both beaten and exhausted, and Iroh is doing the best he can – by teaching Zuko the skills he’ll need. Zuko apologizes for everything he’s put Iroh through, admitting that he just wants to go home; Iroh says he understands, and that if Zuko is feeling guilt over the fate of their crew, he thinks if anyone could have survived the North Pole, it’s them. Later that evening, watching Zuko sleep, Iroh thinks to himself that Zuko has finally realized he can’t go home, and wondering if nearly getting killed by Azula every so often is worth the chance to give his nephew an epiphany. Of course, there’s still the question of whether that will break Zuko’s loyalty to Ozai – which is doubly strong, as Ozai is both his father and Fire Lord. He thinks that if they’re lucky, Azula will chase the Avatar for a while instead of them – though Iroh regrets the thought, as he bears Aang no ill will, and doesn’t hold him responsible for the destruction at the North Pole, though he can only hope he’ll never do such a thing again. With Sozin’s Comet coming, Iroh knows they’ll soon be out of time, and the easiest thing to do would be to find a place to hide. And the best place to hide is the one place Iroh could never take, and where his son died – Ba Sing Se. But the chapter ends as Iroh thinks it may be Zuko’s best hope.

Following the chapter proper is an AN. If bloodbending is internal waterbending, why shouldn't firebending - as it is currently practiced - have had similar origins? All the other elements involve external control of an existing substance. It'd make a lot of sense if firebending started the same way… and then evolved, into the internally-controlled fire which can be much more handy for combat.

MG’s Thoughts

Here, alas, is another chapter where I think some of the bigger issues that will plague the fic going forward start to become more obvious. First off, we really start to see the depiction of the Gaang as stupid kids becoming obvious, most clearly in that they don’t have any idea who Zuko actually is before Toph spells it out for them. Now, in canon it’s never explicitly shown when the Gaang figure out that Zuko is the Fire Lord’s son, but I don’t think it was that hard – Aang especially would have reason to know what “prince” means in a Fire Nation context, since he’s been to the Fire Nation at a time when the monarchy was already in place, and since a random old man in “Zuko Alone” recognized Zuko’s name, knowledge of at least parts of his story seems fairly widespread. Considering the rather snide reference to Sokka’s “some jerk with a ponytail” line from canon, I have to wonder if Vathara was just annoyed that the characters weren’t treating Zuko with proper “respect” or thought they surely wouldn’t have called him such a thing if they’d known who he really was.

Related to that, we also see the emergence of Toph as the fic’s “other” voice of reason, alongside Zuko, and… it kind of bugs me. For one, I doubt being “the adult in the room,” so to speak, is something canon!Toph would at all be interested in (in canon, the only time she really took in the “voice of reason” role was in “The Western Air Temple,” and that mostly because she didn’t have the same bad blood with Zuko everyone else did – though I suspect that’s part of why Vathara likes her – and to a certain extent in the Ba Sing Se arc, which was less about “worldliness” and more about her knowledge of aristocratic society specifically). For another, Toph is presented as someone who knows what the world is really like… because she’s competed in Earth Rumbles and spied on her dad’s business meetings? Really? Something about that just rubs me the wrong way, especially considering Aang, Katara and Sokka have all lived things Toph has only heard about secondhand. I can’t help but feel that in most stories it would be Toph who’d have to learn the lesson that the polite unreality of her dad’s business deals leads to real consequences that hurt real people, especially when he’s dealing with both sides of a war (I don’t think the intention here is for Toph’s parents to come across as war profiteers, but…) but nope. Vathara really does want us to see Toph as the worldly one. It also leads to a kind of uncomfortable running situation, and I don’t know if it’s intentional or not – and maybe I’ve just read too much of the Mists of Avalon spork and am inclined to see the worst – where it’s the aristocrats (Zuko and Toph) who really understand the world and have to explain them to the stupid commoners, who are expected to just sit down and quietly listen to their betters. I don’t know if Vathara meant that, or if it’s just a side-effect of her favorite characters being nobles and her least favorite characters not being, and I’m reading too much into it, but in any case – especially when those commoners include a genocide survivor and two kids who’ve been living with the effects of the war their whole lives – it still bothers me.

We also see some issues starting to crop up here that will get much more prominent later on. First off is Katara being portrayed as totally irrational where the Fire Nation in general and Zuko in particular are concerned, which will only get worse as the fic goes on. The other is the insinuation that everyone secretly resented the Air Nomads and at least didn’t raise much of a fuss when the Fire Nation attacked them; while the fic never tries to present the genocide as right or justified, it does sometimes feel like it’s trying to take the sting of it and the Fire Nation’s culpability off, in various ways (seriously, what was the point of mentioning Chin the Conqueror and what he might have done here? That’s like suddenly bringing up Napoleon in the middle of a conversation about the Holocaust!). This will also get worse as the fic goes on, imo, especially as we delve more into Vathara’s take on the Air Nomads. Finally, we’ve also got a brief allusion to Vathara’s idea that Koizilla is one of the worst things anyone ever did, which we’ll come back to repeatedly over the course of the fic.

On the other hand, there is some interesting Zuko and Iroh stuff here (noticing a pattern?) as well as some insight into the philosophy of firebending healing and related effects, and how it’s different from normal firebending. Unfortunately, for me, considering they’re actually interesting and compelling, I think those elements get overshadowed by the chapter’s more problematic and troublesome content.