MG Reads Embers: Chapter Fifty-One
Jan. 27th, 2024 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterghandalfWarning: This chapter contains some flashbacks to brutal violence and death.
Chapter Fifty-One
We open with Aang grumbling as he and Sokka leave the weapon shop in Shu Jing; he thinks about how much Sokka loved trying out every weapon, and how Kuzon was apparently the same way, which bothers him. He doesn’t think weapons should be fun. Sokka says the shopkeeper wanted to talk, but not about Temul – Aang thinks it’s because her story doesn’t make Sozin, the Fire Nation’s great hero, look very good. Sokka thinks it’s also because she is a ghost. He realizes that Gyatso never told Aang about ghosts and takes him aside to explain; ghosts are different from spirits, since they used to be people. Sometimes they stick around out of malice, but more often they want to watch over their descendants. Aang thinks Air Nomads wouldn’t leave ghosts, then, since they don’t have families and don’t want to hurt people, but Sokka reminds him they’re talking about Temul – and they’re not Temul’s family. Aang thinks that they were trying to help, but Sokka says that according to what Gran-Gran told him, that’s not enough. Aang can’t imagine she’d want revenge on them for anything, so they’re left trying to figure out what she wants until they’re interrupted by Boots. Aang doesn’t understand why Toph likes that thing so much, and then Katara comes over and says they found something. We cut to Team Avatar hiding in a tunnel, as Katara points out that this is the only place around town that seems to have guards, and that probably means something. Aang thinks the ground feels hot, and Katara thinks this must be the place she heard about. Toph says the guards are gone, and they all scramble up out of the ground to find themselves in the middle of a large area of scorched earth, leaving everyone horrified. They decide to stay and try and help, like they helped the Painted Lady and her river; Sokka notices it’s almost sunset, and then they get sucked into a vision.
They find themselves surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers; Aang says they’re not breathing and doesn’t think they can see them. He doesn’t think they’re ghosts, either… they feel even less substantial than that. An old man in red robes steps out from the soldiers and commands Temul to surrender; she steps out to face him and refuses, addressing him as Sozin. Katara wants to help, but Aang thinks that this is what Tao called a phantom and there’s nothing they can do. Sozin accuses Temul of smuggling a group of people into the Fire Nation; she doesn’t deny it but says they’re beyond his reach now. He might be a monster, but she won’t let him make a monster of her. Sozin promises to destroy her whole clan if she doesn’t talk, but Temul says his would-be victims were women and children – and the women were incapable of doing violence even, or perhaps especially, to save their own children, after what their elders did to them. Sozin again demands that she surrender; Temul again refuses and challenges him to fight. The two of them begin to duel, and Aang has never seen firebending like this, even from Jeong Jeong – it almost reminds him of how Suki fights, or of waterbending. At last, Sozin takes Temul down and promises to find all the survivors, and the Avatar. For now, he’ll make Shu Jing an example. He blasts Temul’s mouth, throat and chest with fire so she can’t breathe and can’t bend and walks towards a line of captive children; Temul, still defiant, pulls out a blade and stabs herself, praying to Agni to save her children. Aang pulls water from Katara’s waterskin and bends ice over them, and the vision ends. We cut to Sokka waking up to find everyone else in a pile, unconscious but all right. He finds a middle-aged swordsman standing over them, offering water. He says he didn’t dare move them, after the curse got them all. Now that it’s dawn, nothing more should happen, and he can get them away from here. The guards are supposed to keep people away – to cut down on the deaths. Sokka notes that the ground is still blackened but no longer appears freshly burned, but Aang and Katara do have some burns. Sokka thinks that the phantom wasn’t supposed to be real, and the swordsman says that “real” can be a blurry concept. He helps everyone up and gets them into a nearby farmer’s cart – the farmer greets him as “Lord Piandao” and Sokka is amazed; he thinks Boots must have gone to find him. Piandao is intrigued, but he’s also seen the papers Zuko left for Katara and thinks it’s his duty to help out travelers on vendetta. Sokka gives a brief explanation about their family, leaving out that they’re Water Tribe, and Piandao promises tea to help with the headache, and then they’ll see about the curse.
We cut to Piandao watching Team Avatar eat; having gone through all their papers, he knows who they are, and saw Zuko’s letter. He’s intrigued by the idea that Toph is trusted by both Zuko and by the Southern Water Tribe, and that Zuko himself is no longer loyal to his father. He thinks that a banished prince, no longer loyal to the Fire Lord, represents one of the few loopholes in Kyoshi’s decree, and it’s something the White Lotus has been working towards for a long time. On the other hand, Zuko apparently doesn’t trust Aang, which presents a problem. He hopes Iroh’s working on that, but he also thinks that putting Zuko and Katara together for any amount of time will end badly. While technically polite, Zuko’s letter to her was still undeniably hostile – the last time Piandao saw someone pull that off, it was a message from Shidan to War Minister Qin that contained an unspoken but heavily implied death threat. Consequently, the whole situation between Zuko, Aang and Katara bothers Piandao a lot – he knows the only reason Zuko would’ve sent that letter would be to try and break Team Avatar apart. He briefly reflects on how he met Zuko, and how Temul counselled him that Zuko would never be content learning to wield just one blade. He knows Zuko isn’t stupid, and did all of this on purpose, but it still presents a problem for the White Lotus. He’s interrupted by Sokka asking about the curse – apparently, most of Shu Jing knows to avoid it, and Piandao realizes that Temul didn’t warn them away. Revenge is the motivation that binds her to the world, and one of the people she wants revenge on is the Avatar. Katara says they’re from the colonies and didn’t know; Piandao thinks they should keep away from anywhere there’s armed guards. He confirms it was a phantom; with her death, Temul called down Agni’s wrath, and the fire still blazes there and can be awakened under the right circumstances. He’s seen the vision himself, but only the edges, and he bets they have questions – what they saw isn’t like what they’d have learned about Sozin in school. Aang is horrified by what Sozin did and intended to do; Piandao says that Sozin was a dragon-child, and dragon-children are easily provoked, especially when defied. Katara protests that Sozin killed Temul for helping people, and Piandao tells her that was his right in an Agni Kai. She would have also had the right to kill him; where Sozin crossed a line was in planning to kill her whole clan, and that’s probably why Agni answered her, even when she was trying to save people who weren’t Fire Nation.
Sokka asks why she saved Air Nomads if they attacked the Fire Nation first; Piandao thinks he’s much better at passing as Fire Nation than his friends, and says that Sozin lied, and there was no Air Nomad army. But he was a dragon-child, and no one expects dragon-children to ever lie, so people believed him. Nobody realized he was a dark dragon until it was too late. Temul knew, but it wasn’t enough to save herself. It did save those of her clan who got away, though – none of them were willing to swear loyalty to Sozin after he killed her. Piandao took up her title eventually, but he’s adopted – he was just a wandering swordsman when he came to Shu Jing and Temul recruited him as a worthy successor. Toph is stunned – she’s heard of marriages between ghosts, as a symbolic way to end feuds, but never a ghost actually adopting someone! Temul herself suddenly appears and says that’s in the Earth Kingdom. She says she’s pleased with Katara for trying to help – but “Kuzon” has a lot to answer for. For one, that name isn’t his to use. Piandao thinks Kuzon is dead and won’t mind, but Temul shoots him an icy glare – she minds. It was Kuzon who told her about Sozin’s plans, and she decides to show everyone what happened. We cut to a vision of Temul trying to warn the eldest sister of the Western Air Temple about Sozin, but the nun dismisses her as a murderer who has harmed airbenders in the past. Temul doesn’t deny that she’s killed, and that she’s chased airbenders out of her domain before when they’ve been a nuisance; she doesn’t think that has anything to do with the issue at hand but knows the airbenders won’t see it that way and won’t listen to her. She tries to tell them Sozin is coming, but the nun says he can’t reach them here. Temul can think of at least three ways he can get to the temple without bison, but the nun finally tells her to leave.
She does and finds a quiet place to meditate and practice with her sword, until she hears a strange sound and goes to investigate, where she finds a swordman practicing on a balcony. She thinks he’s omnitsu, and sees a young nun watching in fear – not fear of the man, but of Temul. She tries to blow Temul away and tells the man, Shih, to run. The nun says that Shih is never going back, and Temul can tell Sozin that – Temul says she’s not here for Sozin but recognizes Shih as the “Demon of Taku.” Shih tells the nun, Gyate, that Temul isn’t there to harm them – she’d have brought a host of omnitsu and a net if she had. Looking the man over and seeing how young-looking and agile for his age he is, she recognizes that he’s a powerful chi user and thinks that wouldn’t be enough. Temul knows his reputation, and doubts the Eldest Sister knows he’s here. Gyate’s expression confirms it, and Temul promises she won’t tell. Still, she knows what will happen if Gyate and Shih’s children aren’t benders – Gyate sadly confirms she had a son who was, and a daughter who’s a few months away from when they’ll be able to tell. Temul is amazed at the idea of an Air Nun being so grieved about her children and tells her to get as many children and younger nuns to where her ship is waiting as she can. Gyate can’t imagine going against the elders, who will no doubt pursue them. Temul doesn’t think they’ll have time for that to happen before the temple burns. Gyate isn’t a master yet, but she can still tell somehow that Temul is telling the truth; Shih tells Gyate to prepare for a ride and wants to talk to Temul alone. Shih says that the ones left behind will be helpless; Temul says airbenders are never helpless, and that they don’t love him anyway. He says airbenders aren’t allowed attachments, but she doesn’t think that should stop anyone – and Gyate is pregnant again. His children need him. He promised never to be the Demon of Taku again, but that might be what his people need. Temul knows that Sozin will have no choice but to try and kill her, and she’s prepared to accept that, but she wants to get the Air refugees to safety first. She admits that she hates airbenders and always has… but she also refuses to be a murderer or allow her people to become that.
We cut to Sokka as he snaps out of the vision, and Temul complains that airbenders never listen. She knows exactly who Aang is and has known it ever since he set foot in her domain. Aang says he won’t let her hurt anyone, and she only laughs him off. She’s a Fire Nation ghost, and in life she was a dragon-child – Aang doesn’t have anywhere near the spiritual strength to make her do anything. Sokka is shaken by her expression, and Piandao tells her to stop scaring Aang, but she only wants him to do one thing – to listen. Aang insists he’s not Kyoshi, and he won’t accept the blame for Sozin’s war. Temul is darkly amused that he blames Sozin and asks where Appa is now – Aang says he won’t let her hurt him, and Temul says again that he’s not listening. Piandao assures Aang that Appa is fine – Temul might frighten him a bit, but she won’t hurt him. Katara accuses him of lying to them, since he knew who they were from the beginning – he points out she claimed to be Fire Nation, so who lied first? He says the Water Tribes never think any fight against outsiders is fair, unless they win. To an extent, Piandao respects that – a warrior has to do what it takes to win. But he’s also the Lord of Shu Jing, responsible for protecting its people, and he knows what sort of destruction the Avatar can cause. Sokka realizes Katara kept the letter with the vendetta, and Katara wonders how Piandao can trust the word of an exile. Piandao knows exactly why Zuko was exiled, but Toph interrupts, wanting to know about Appa. Temul says Appa is currently eating his way through the local fields, and it’ll take years to repair the damage; Piandao promises to reimburse it, but Temul doesn’t think that will be enough. Aang can’t believe that’s what she’s worried about, and Sokka asks about the dirt in the Fire Nation – is it different from other places? Toph feels the earth a bit, and realizes how salty it is, even here, and it’s light. Piandao says that before the Fire Lord, riding Komodo rhinos across a field did enough damage to be cause for a clan war. Temul insists that sky bison weigh vastly more than rhinos, and the Air Nomads brought them by every year, always doing damage and always making excuses, which she calls lies. Aang says Air Nomads don’t lie, and Temul says they don’t lie to each other – they lie to outsiders all they like, and their outcasts definitely lie.
Aang protests that there were no Air Nomad outcasts, and Temul gloats how his own people never told him the truth. The Air Nomads never killed, and didn’t keep prisoners – so every year, their elders decided who were the criminals among them and exiled them and their bison, dumping them on everybody else. Whatever crimes they committed after that were everyone else’s problem, and if people fought back, they just took it as proof of how violent and uncivilized everyone else was. She thinks that if Sozin had just wanted to kill the
Air Temple elders, she’d have been the first to support him. Aang says he doesn’t understand her, and she says he never will if he won’t listen. Piandao explains that in High Court, there are two words that mean “listen.” “Zrnu” means listen the way most people mean it. “Kanatsusuru” is a dragon word, and those don’t translate well – Aang thinks dragons don’t talk, and Piandao says they have their ways. “Kanatsusuru” means something like “stop talking and watch closely.” He can imagine generations of firebenders yelling at the Air Nomads to do that, and it only causing more of a mess. Sokka thinks it’s no wonder they can’t talk to anybody here, and Piandao doubts most people would believe the Avatar had come to talk. Aang insists he didn’t want to fight and doesn’t understand why Temul showed them lies. Piandao says it’s exactly what she saw happen – Katara insists that if someone had warned the Air Nomads, they’d have done something, and can’t imagine someone with a name like “the Demon of Taku” could be a good guy. Piandao notes that she’d be surprised at the names their group has been given in the Fire Nation – the blast at the Northern Air Temple was especially deadly. Piandao’s not accusing them of anything – they had every right to fight to protect innocent lives. Shih had thought he was in the right at Taku, too, but he was then one of the first people to see what Sozin really was, which is why he deserted. Katara thinks that if he really was so deadly, he could have killed Sozin and ended the war before it started – Toph, though, can’t weigh in on whether it was truth or lies, since it was a vision and not real. Katara doesn’t care – she still thinks if Temul had warned them, they could have done something. Piandao says he knows she did – Temul and Sozin’s Agni Kai, and the reasons for it, is recorded in the official histories. But what Sozin didn’t know was who helped the survivors hide – Kuzon. Everyone falls silent, and Piandao tells them they’ll be safe to stay here and leaves. Sokka goes after him, to apologize – whatever they think of Temul, Piandao helped them.
Sokka finds him painting and goes down on his knees – he says people are complicated, but Aang likes things simple, and he’s under a lot of pressure. He doesn’t think Temul hated airbenders, she was just mad at them, but she never wanted them dead. Piandao asks if Sokka thinks she succeeded, and he thinks yes and no – she got stuck as a ghost, which isn’t a good thing, but she died doing what she thought was right, which is. Piandao thinks that’s true, and as a ghost, she was able to help Kuzon too, by giving him support and advice. He was the one who convinced her to go to the Air Temple. Sokka thinks the story is true – Aang thinks the Air Nomads were all good, but he’s good at ignoring things he doesn’t want to deal with, and people aren’t like that. And he remembers Aang lying to Zuko, and thinks he understands a bit more now why Zuko was so angry about that. Piandao admits he knows Zuko – he saved him from drowning as a child, and suspects Azula got him into the river on a dare. Piandao taught Zuko to swim, and Sokka asks if he heard about how Zuko swam into the Norther Water Tribe. Suddenly, it occurs to Sokka that if Zuko hadn’t been there, Iroh wouldn’t have been there… and Zhao would have won and the moon would have died, and waterbending would have been destroyed. Out loud, Sokka thinks Zuko screwing up may have saved the world, to which Piandao laughs. Sokka doesn’t know if he can apologize for his friends, and he knows Aang says “sorry” and goes right ahead and does what he wants to anyway, which wouldn’t be well thought of in the Water Tribes where you have to rely on each other. He realizes the Fire Nation are the same way and thinks Aang will never sit still long enough to get them. Sokka feels like everyone else in the group has their niche, but he’s supposed to be the idea guy and doesn’t know how to get out of this – suddenly, something clicks and he realizes that he’s heard of Piandao, he’s someone Zuko mentioned who uses chi to fight. He thinks they need to get out of here before Aang gets into a fight with Temul again, and then asks if Iroh is right about waterbenders having once used swords. Piandao admits they did, and Temul learned swordsmanship on Kyoshi Island. Sokka thinks about that and says she doesn’t want anything to do with Aang… but Sokka isn’t Aang. Piandao gestures to Sokka’s boomerang and asks to see what he can do.
MG’s Thoughts
This chapter… ugh. I have thoughts on it. To get the more minor issue out of the way first, I have rather mixed feelings about the use of ghosts in this fic. They’re not nearly as prominent as dragons (though I’ll note that, in the form of Temul, we have yet another dragon-child running around…) but I have a similar issue with how they’re handled. Namely, that they’re not uninteresting, but it feels like they just don’t have an lot to do with, you know Avatar: The Last Airbender where ghosts of this sort just don’t feel like a thing (aside from the Avatar’s past lives, we have a couple of examples of dead humans who ascended to become spirits – Yue, Iroh in Korra, the Painted Lady per word of god… and that’s about it). The firm dividing line between ghosts and spirits doesn’t really ring true, either.
The bigger issue… the Air Nomads. It starts off minor, with Aang’s ignorance of ghosts being directly attributed to Air Nomads not having families(?) but gets a lot worse when Temul shows up. Basically, Temul’s whole flashback seems like an extended exercise in how the Air Nomads were arrogant, self-righteous, out of touch hypocrites who were rightfully resented by their neighbors for all the trouble they caused and brought destruction on themselves for refusing to heed the warnings, and… I really don’t like it. I get what Vathara’s going for here, I genuinely do – she’s trying to explain the sorts of ethnic and racial tensions that led to the Air Nomad genocide, while also breaking some of Aang’s pedestals about how wonderful his people were. And neither of those is a bad thing on principle! At the same time… there’s only so many chapters one can have where the fic beats the drum of “the Air Nomads sucked, actually” before it gets wearisome (especially when paired with the fic also constantly insisting that the Fire Nation’s culture always be treated with utmost respect and how wrong it is to criticize their practices when you don’t understand them… when the Air Nomads and Water Tribe aren’t given the same courtesy). And of course, we have yet another chapter of Aang being portrayed as completely ignorant and naïve about the way the world really works and what people are really like, this time with Katara backing him up and getting some of the same treatment. Character-wise, Piandao feels off to me too, possibly because Vathara has given him a largely different backstory from canon (“abandoned by parents shamed to have a nonbender son” is canon; everything about him being a lord and adopted by a ghost isn’t) and possibly just because Vathara’s Fire Nation being so different from canon affects every character caught up in it. Overall, though, I can see what this chapter is trying to do… but I think it takes it too far for comfort.
On the other hand, this is by my count the last really long chapter in the entire fic – all the remaining ones are noticeably shorter. So, we have good news there, at least!
Chapter Fifty-One
We open with Aang grumbling as he and Sokka leave the weapon shop in Shu Jing; he thinks about how much Sokka loved trying out every weapon, and how Kuzon was apparently the same way, which bothers him. He doesn’t think weapons should be fun. Sokka says the shopkeeper wanted to talk, but not about Temul – Aang thinks it’s because her story doesn’t make Sozin, the Fire Nation’s great hero, look very good. Sokka thinks it’s also because she is a ghost. He realizes that Gyatso never told Aang about ghosts and takes him aside to explain; ghosts are different from spirits, since they used to be people. Sometimes they stick around out of malice, but more often they want to watch over their descendants. Aang thinks Air Nomads wouldn’t leave ghosts, then, since they don’t have families and don’t want to hurt people, but Sokka reminds him they’re talking about Temul – and they’re not Temul’s family. Aang thinks that they were trying to help, but Sokka says that according to what Gran-Gran told him, that’s not enough. Aang can’t imagine she’d want revenge on them for anything, so they’re left trying to figure out what she wants until they’re interrupted by Boots. Aang doesn’t understand why Toph likes that thing so much, and then Katara comes over and says they found something. We cut to Team Avatar hiding in a tunnel, as Katara points out that this is the only place around town that seems to have guards, and that probably means something. Aang thinks the ground feels hot, and Katara thinks this must be the place she heard about. Toph says the guards are gone, and they all scramble up out of the ground to find themselves in the middle of a large area of scorched earth, leaving everyone horrified. They decide to stay and try and help, like they helped the Painted Lady and her river; Sokka notices it’s almost sunset, and then they get sucked into a vision.
They find themselves surrounded by Fire Nation soldiers; Aang says they’re not breathing and doesn’t think they can see them. He doesn’t think they’re ghosts, either… they feel even less substantial than that. An old man in red robes steps out from the soldiers and commands Temul to surrender; she steps out to face him and refuses, addressing him as Sozin. Katara wants to help, but Aang thinks that this is what Tao called a phantom and there’s nothing they can do. Sozin accuses Temul of smuggling a group of people into the Fire Nation; she doesn’t deny it but says they’re beyond his reach now. He might be a monster, but she won’t let him make a monster of her. Sozin promises to destroy her whole clan if she doesn’t talk, but Temul says his would-be victims were women and children – and the women were incapable of doing violence even, or perhaps especially, to save their own children, after what their elders did to them. Sozin again demands that she surrender; Temul again refuses and challenges him to fight. The two of them begin to duel, and Aang has never seen firebending like this, even from Jeong Jeong – it almost reminds him of how Suki fights, or of waterbending. At last, Sozin takes Temul down and promises to find all the survivors, and the Avatar. For now, he’ll make Shu Jing an example. He blasts Temul’s mouth, throat and chest with fire so she can’t breathe and can’t bend and walks towards a line of captive children; Temul, still defiant, pulls out a blade and stabs herself, praying to Agni to save her children. Aang pulls water from Katara’s waterskin and bends ice over them, and the vision ends. We cut to Sokka waking up to find everyone else in a pile, unconscious but all right. He finds a middle-aged swordsman standing over them, offering water. He says he didn’t dare move them, after the curse got them all. Now that it’s dawn, nothing more should happen, and he can get them away from here. The guards are supposed to keep people away – to cut down on the deaths. Sokka notes that the ground is still blackened but no longer appears freshly burned, but Aang and Katara do have some burns. Sokka thinks that the phantom wasn’t supposed to be real, and the swordsman says that “real” can be a blurry concept. He helps everyone up and gets them into a nearby farmer’s cart – the farmer greets him as “Lord Piandao” and Sokka is amazed; he thinks Boots must have gone to find him. Piandao is intrigued, but he’s also seen the papers Zuko left for Katara and thinks it’s his duty to help out travelers on vendetta. Sokka gives a brief explanation about their family, leaving out that they’re Water Tribe, and Piandao promises tea to help with the headache, and then they’ll see about the curse.
We cut to Piandao watching Team Avatar eat; having gone through all their papers, he knows who they are, and saw Zuko’s letter. He’s intrigued by the idea that Toph is trusted by both Zuko and by the Southern Water Tribe, and that Zuko himself is no longer loyal to his father. He thinks that a banished prince, no longer loyal to the Fire Lord, represents one of the few loopholes in Kyoshi’s decree, and it’s something the White Lotus has been working towards for a long time. On the other hand, Zuko apparently doesn’t trust Aang, which presents a problem. He hopes Iroh’s working on that, but he also thinks that putting Zuko and Katara together for any amount of time will end badly. While technically polite, Zuko’s letter to her was still undeniably hostile – the last time Piandao saw someone pull that off, it was a message from Shidan to War Minister Qin that contained an unspoken but heavily implied death threat. Consequently, the whole situation between Zuko, Aang and Katara bothers Piandao a lot – he knows the only reason Zuko would’ve sent that letter would be to try and break Team Avatar apart. He briefly reflects on how he met Zuko, and how Temul counselled him that Zuko would never be content learning to wield just one blade. He knows Zuko isn’t stupid, and did all of this on purpose, but it still presents a problem for the White Lotus. He’s interrupted by Sokka asking about the curse – apparently, most of Shu Jing knows to avoid it, and Piandao realizes that Temul didn’t warn them away. Revenge is the motivation that binds her to the world, and one of the people she wants revenge on is the Avatar. Katara says they’re from the colonies and didn’t know; Piandao thinks they should keep away from anywhere there’s armed guards. He confirms it was a phantom; with her death, Temul called down Agni’s wrath, and the fire still blazes there and can be awakened under the right circumstances. He’s seen the vision himself, but only the edges, and he bets they have questions – what they saw isn’t like what they’d have learned about Sozin in school. Aang is horrified by what Sozin did and intended to do; Piandao says that Sozin was a dragon-child, and dragon-children are easily provoked, especially when defied. Katara protests that Sozin killed Temul for helping people, and Piandao tells her that was his right in an Agni Kai. She would have also had the right to kill him; where Sozin crossed a line was in planning to kill her whole clan, and that’s probably why Agni answered her, even when she was trying to save people who weren’t Fire Nation.
Sokka asks why she saved Air Nomads if they attacked the Fire Nation first; Piandao thinks he’s much better at passing as Fire Nation than his friends, and says that Sozin lied, and there was no Air Nomad army. But he was a dragon-child, and no one expects dragon-children to ever lie, so people believed him. Nobody realized he was a dark dragon until it was too late. Temul knew, but it wasn’t enough to save herself. It did save those of her clan who got away, though – none of them were willing to swear loyalty to Sozin after he killed her. Piandao took up her title eventually, but he’s adopted – he was just a wandering swordsman when he came to Shu Jing and Temul recruited him as a worthy successor. Toph is stunned – she’s heard of marriages between ghosts, as a symbolic way to end feuds, but never a ghost actually adopting someone! Temul herself suddenly appears and says that’s in the Earth Kingdom. She says she’s pleased with Katara for trying to help – but “Kuzon” has a lot to answer for. For one, that name isn’t his to use. Piandao thinks Kuzon is dead and won’t mind, but Temul shoots him an icy glare – she minds. It was Kuzon who told her about Sozin’s plans, and she decides to show everyone what happened. We cut to a vision of Temul trying to warn the eldest sister of the Western Air Temple about Sozin, but the nun dismisses her as a murderer who has harmed airbenders in the past. Temul doesn’t deny that she’s killed, and that she’s chased airbenders out of her domain before when they’ve been a nuisance; she doesn’t think that has anything to do with the issue at hand but knows the airbenders won’t see it that way and won’t listen to her. She tries to tell them Sozin is coming, but the nun says he can’t reach them here. Temul can think of at least three ways he can get to the temple without bison, but the nun finally tells her to leave.
She does and finds a quiet place to meditate and practice with her sword, until she hears a strange sound and goes to investigate, where she finds a swordman practicing on a balcony. She thinks he’s omnitsu, and sees a young nun watching in fear – not fear of the man, but of Temul. She tries to blow Temul away and tells the man, Shih, to run. The nun says that Shih is never going back, and Temul can tell Sozin that – Temul says she’s not here for Sozin but recognizes Shih as the “Demon of Taku.” Shih tells the nun, Gyate, that Temul isn’t there to harm them – she’d have brought a host of omnitsu and a net if she had. Looking the man over and seeing how young-looking and agile for his age he is, she recognizes that he’s a powerful chi user and thinks that wouldn’t be enough. Temul knows his reputation, and doubts the Eldest Sister knows he’s here. Gyate’s expression confirms it, and Temul promises she won’t tell. Still, she knows what will happen if Gyate and Shih’s children aren’t benders – Gyate sadly confirms she had a son who was, and a daughter who’s a few months away from when they’ll be able to tell. Temul is amazed at the idea of an Air Nun being so grieved about her children and tells her to get as many children and younger nuns to where her ship is waiting as she can. Gyate can’t imagine going against the elders, who will no doubt pursue them. Temul doesn’t think they’ll have time for that to happen before the temple burns. Gyate isn’t a master yet, but she can still tell somehow that Temul is telling the truth; Shih tells Gyate to prepare for a ride and wants to talk to Temul alone. Shih says that the ones left behind will be helpless; Temul says airbenders are never helpless, and that they don’t love him anyway. He says airbenders aren’t allowed attachments, but she doesn’t think that should stop anyone – and Gyate is pregnant again. His children need him. He promised never to be the Demon of Taku again, but that might be what his people need. Temul knows that Sozin will have no choice but to try and kill her, and she’s prepared to accept that, but she wants to get the Air refugees to safety first. She admits that she hates airbenders and always has… but she also refuses to be a murderer or allow her people to become that.
We cut to Sokka as he snaps out of the vision, and Temul complains that airbenders never listen. She knows exactly who Aang is and has known it ever since he set foot in her domain. Aang says he won’t let her hurt anyone, and she only laughs him off. She’s a Fire Nation ghost, and in life she was a dragon-child – Aang doesn’t have anywhere near the spiritual strength to make her do anything. Sokka is shaken by her expression, and Piandao tells her to stop scaring Aang, but she only wants him to do one thing – to listen. Aang insists he’s not Kyoshi, and he won’t accept the blame for Sozin’s war. Temul is darkly amused that he blames Sozin and asks where Appa is now – Aang says he won’t let her hurt him, and Temul says again that he’s not listening. Piandao assures Aang that Appa is fine – Temul might frighten him a bit, but she won’t hurt him. Katara accuses him of lying to them, since he knew who they were from the beginning – he points out she claimed to be Fire Nation, so who lied first? He says the Water Tribes never think any fight against outsiders is fair, unless they win. To an extent, Piandao respects that – a warrior has to do what it takes to win. But he’s also the Lord of Shu Jing, responsible for protecting its people, and he knows what sort of destruction the Avatar can cause. Sokka realizes Katara kept the letter with the vendetta, and Katara wonders how Piandao can trust the word of an exile. Piandao knows exactly why Zuko was exiled, but Toph interrupts, wanting to know about Appa. Temul says Appa is currently eating his way through the local fields, and it’ll take years to repair the damage; Piandao promises to reimburse it, but Temul doesn’t think that will be enough. Aang can’t believe that’s what she’s worried about, and Sokka asks about the dirt in the Fire Nation – is it different from other places? Toph feels the earth a bit, and realizes how salty it is, even here, and it’s light. Piandao says that before the Fire Lord, riding Komodo rhinos across a field did enough damage to be cause for a clan war. Temul insists that sky bison weigh vastly more than rhinos, and the Air Nomads brought them by every year, always doing damage and always making excuses, which she calls lies. Aang says Air Nomads don’t lie, and Temul says they don’t lie to each other – they lie to outsiders all they like, and their outcasts definitely lie.
Aang protests that there were no Air Nomad outcasts, and Temul gloats how his own people never told him the truth. The Air Nomads never killed, and didn’t keep prisoners – so every year, their elders decided who were the criminals among them and exiled them and their bison, dumping them on everybody else. Whatever crimes they committed after that were everyone else’s problem, and if people fought back, they just took it as proof of how violent and uncivilized everyone else was. She thinks that if Sozin had just wanted to kill the
Air Temple elders, she’d have been the first to support him. Aang says he doesn’t understand her, and she says he never will if he won’t listen. Piandao explains that in High Court, there are two words that mean “listen.” “Zrnu” means listen the way most people mean it. “Kanatsusuru” is a dragon word, and those don’t translate well – Aang thinks dragons don’t talk, and Piandao says they have their ways. “Kanatsusuru” means something like “stop talking and watch closely.” He can imagine generations of firebenders yelling at the Air Nomads to do that, and it only causing more of a mess. Sokka thinks it’s no wonder they can’t talk to anybody here, and Piandao doubts most people would believe the Avatar had come to talk. Aang insists he didn’t want to fight and doesn’t understand why Temul showed them lies. Piandao says it’s exactly what she saw happen – Katara insists that if someone had warned the Air Nomads, they’d have done something, and can’t imagine someone with a name like “the Demon of Taku” could be a good guy. Piandao notes that she’d be surprised at the names their group has been given in the Fire Nation – the blast at the Northern Air Temple was especially deadly. Piandao’s not accusing them of anything – they had every right to fight to protect innocent lives. Shih had thought he was in the right at Taku, too, but he was then one of the first people to see what Sozin really was, which is why he deserted. Katara thinks that if he really was so deadly, he could have killed Sozin and ended the war before it started – Toph, though, can’t weigh in on whether it was truth or lies, since it was a vision and not real. Katara doesn’t care – she still thinks if Temul had warned them, they could have done something. Piandao says he knows she did – Temul and Sozin’s Agni Kai, and the reasons for it, is recorded in the official histories. But what Sozin didn’t know was who helped the survivors hide – Kuzon. Everyone falls silent, and Piandao tells them they’ll be safe to stay here and leaves. Sokka goes after him, to apologize – whatever they think of Temul, Piandao helped them.
Sokka finds him painting and goes down on his knees – he says people are complicated, but Aang likes things simple, and he’s under a lot of pressure. He doesn’t think Temul hated airbenders, she was just mad at them, but she never wanted them dead. Piandao asks if Sokka thinks she succeeded, and he thinks yes and no – she got stuck as a ghost, which isn’t a good thing, but she died doing what she thought was right, which is. Piandao thinks that’s true, and as a ghost, she was able to help Kuzon too, by giving him support and advice. He was the one who convinced her to go to the Air Temple. Sokka thinks the story is true – Aang thinks the Air Nomads were all good, but he’s good at ignoring things he doesn’t want to deal with, and people aren’t like that. And he remembers Aang lying to Zuko, and thinks he understands a bit more now why Zuko was so angry about that. Piandao admits he knows Zuko – he saved him from drowning as a child, and suspects Azula got him into the river on a dare. Piandao taught Zuko to swim, and Sokka asks if he heard about how Zuko swam into the Norther Water Tribe. Suddenly, it occurs to Sokka that if Zuko hadn’t been there, Iroh wouldn’t have been there… and Zhao would have won and the moon would have died, and waterbending would have been destroyed. Out loud, Sokka thinks Zuko screwing up may have saved the world, to which Piandao laughs. Sokka doesn’t know if he can apologize for his friends, and he knows Aang says “sorry” and goes right ahead and does what he wants to anyway, which wouldn’t be well thought of in the Water Tribes where you have to rely on each other. He realizes the Fire Nation are the same way and thinks Aang will never sit still long enough to get them. Sokka feels like everyone else in the group has their niche, but he’s supposed to be the idea guy and doesn’t know how to get out of this – suddenly, something clicks and he realizes that he’s heard of Piandao, he’s someone Zuko mentioned who uses chi to fight. He thinks they need to get out of here before Aang gets into a fight with Temul again, and then asks if Iroh is right about waterbenders having once used swords. Piandao admits they did, and Temul learned swordsmanship on Kyoshi Island. Sokka thinks about that and says she doesn’t want anything to do with Aang… but Sokka isn’t Aang. Piandao gestures to Sokka’s boomerang and asks to see what he can do.
MG’s Thoughts
This chapter… ugh. I have thoughts on it. To get the more minor issue out of the way first, I have rather mixed feelings about the use of ghosts in this fic. They’re not nearly as prominent as dragons (though I’ll note that, in the form of Temul, we have yet another dragon-child running around…) but I have a similar issue with how they’re handled. Namely, that they’re not uninteresting, but it feels like they just don’t have an lot to do with, you know Avatar: The Last Airbender where ghosts of this sort just don’t feel like a thing (aside from the Avatar’s past lives, we have a couple of examples of dead humans who ascended to become spirits – Yue, Iroh in Korra, the Painted Lady per word of god… and that’s about it). The firm dividing line between ghosts and spirits doesn’t really ring true, either.
The bigger issue… the Air Nomads. It starts off minor, with Aang’s ignorance of ghosts being directly attributed to Air Nomads not having families(?) but gets a lot worse when Temul shows up. Basically, Temul’s whole flashback seems like an extended exercise in how the Air Nomads were arrogant, self-righteous, out of touch hypocrites who were rightfully resented by their neighbors for all the trouble they caused and brought destruction on themselves for refusing to heed the warnings, and… I really don’t like it. I get what Vathara’s going for here, I genuinely do – she’s trying to explain the sorts of ethnic and racial tensions that led to the Air Nomad genocide, while also breaking some of Aang’s pedestals about how wonderful his people were. And neither of those is a bad thing on principle! At the same time… there’s only so many chapters one can have where the fic beats the drum of “the Air Nomads sucked, actually” before it gets wearisome (especially when paired with the fic also constantly insisting that the Fire Nation’s culture always be treated with utmost respect and how wrong it is to criticize their practices when you don’t understand them… when the Air Nomads and Water Tribe aren’t given the same courtesy). And of course, we have yet another chapter of Aang being portrayed as completely ignorant and naïve about the way the world really works and what people are really like, this time with Katara backing him up and getting some of the same treatment. Character-wise, Piandao feels off to me too, possibly because Vathara has given him a largely different backstory from canon (“abandoned by parents shamed to have a nonbender son” is canon; everything about him being a lord and adopted by a ghost isn’t) and possibly just because Vathara’s Fire Nation being so different from canon affects every character caught up in it. Overall, though, I can see what this chapter is trying to do… but I think it takes it too far for comfort.
On the other hand, this is by my count the last really long chapter in the entire fic – all the remaining ones are noticeably shorter. So, we have good news there, at least!
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Date: 2024-01-28 04:04 pm (UTC)Gyatso is fiercely attached to Aang, is knowledgeable about the greater world even in this fic, AND openly held a minority position among the temple elders. I don't know about you, but if I thought brain-washing was a reasonable response to 'disrupting harmony' I'd be looking for an excuse to nail the non-conformist, assuming I didn't straight-out declare non-conformity grounds for brain-washing!
And yet this fic gives no reason to believe that Gyatso ever had to worry about getting his mind tampered with. For that matter, I don't think we get any hint that men had their minds tampered with which... isn't how that works. The ability to make other people Do The Right Thing is no respecter of sex.
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Date: 2024-01-28 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-05 05:02 am (UTC)He probably had a lot of Water Tribe blood or something.
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Date: 2024-02-05 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-06 12:03 am (UTC)