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Fire Lord Iroh understands that balance is necessary. (An Avatar: the Last Airbender AU).
Fire Lord Iroh understands that balance is necessary. (An Avatar: the Last Airbender AU).
*fire*
Since the exile, Father has become selectively deaf. When the men tell him that rations are running low, he doesn’t hear. When the men tell him that the last storm did a number on the main mast, he doesn’t hear. And when they tell him that no one has seen the Avatar in a hundred years, he doesn’t hear that either.
Zuko does what he can. He follows the sailors on their maintenance rounds. He goes ashore in Fire Nation territory to beg supplies from the outposts. He trades fishermen's wives coin for stories.
Now he bows in front of Father. He doesn’t wait to be acknowledged before he speaks: if he did that, he would be waiting forever.
“I heard from the traders that Kyoshi Island has been buying up expensive foods, like they’re preparing for a large celebration. Kyoshi doesn’t have any holidays this time of year, though. It’s odd. I was thinking, the last earth-bender avatar came from Kyoshi. What if they’re celebrating because the Avatar has returned? Maybe we—”
“Fool. I told you to find me the Avatar, not to monitor peasants’ eating habits. Your sister would bring me facts, not half-bitten speculation.”
“Azula’s not here right now, Father,” Zuko says carefully.
This is another thing that Father is not always able to hear.
“Where is she? She should be back by now.”
“She’s—” Zuko fumbles. There’s no good way to answer this question. The truth will get fire flung in his face, but Zuko’s rotten at lying. “She left, Father. She went back home.”
Father lifts his head slowly. His hair is long and he has not been tending it. In the firelight, Zuko can make out a thick sheen of grease.
“Who says this,” he asks silkily, with all the threat of a venomous snake.
“Commander Zhao did.”
Father’s head tilts in interest. “And did you burn him for that slander?”
“No, Father.”
“Worthless. Azula would not stand for any slight upon my name.”
Zuko can’t hold it back any longer. “Azula betrayed you. She snuck off in a raft in the dead of night. Zhao told me she’s renounced your name and pledged her obedience to—”
“Lies!” Fire sweeps across the floor. Zuko flings himself to the side. He’s lucky—only his sleeves get singed. “Lies! You are envious. Your sister has always been your better: more capable, more powerful, more loyal.”
Each word comes accompanied with a stab of flame.
Zuko runs. He doesn’t stop until he reaches the boiler room, deep in the bowels of the ship. He sinks down on the ground, panting. For a moment, he remembers Uncle’s warm hand on his shoulder, his parting words: you will always have a home with me, nephew.
“Azula, the loyal one,” Zuko repeats bitterly. “Then why is it me who’s still here?”
.earth.
When Toph is eleven, Ba Sing Se falls. It happens just like that. One morning, the sun rises over the walls and the Fire Nation comes along for the ride.
Ba Sing Se falls, but very little changes at first. Mother and Father get stricter about the curfew, even as they stay up later themselves. Bending vanishes from her tutoring schedule. Then, one morning, Toph is shaken awake early.
They’ve been summoned to the palace, Father says.
Dressing takes place in a hurry. Toph’s draped in her gauziest gown; soft-toed slippers are forced over her feet. When Mother applies blush to her cheeks, Toph can feel her hand trembling.
She must not, says Mother, under any circumstances, admit that she can bend.
Toph agrees in a small voice. Five nights after the invasion, she’d snuck out to Earth Rumble’s stadium. It was open-entry night, but the stands had been deserted. Toph had left without going inside.
The ride to the palace takes place in silence. A few times, Mother says, “Do you think—” and Father hushes her with a grunt.
It’s not only the Beifong family that has been summoned. As they walk into the audience hall, Toph feels the vibrations of many bodies. Nobody is speaking, but she can hear the private thunder of their hearts. Mother’s grip on her hand tightens.
The minutes pass. Feet are shuffled, whispered conversations flare up and out. Then a gong sounds, and seven people enter. Most of them take up positions on either side of the throne, but one of them ascends to it.
“Esteemed families of the Earth Kingdom,” a rumbling voice calls out. “Greetings to you! I am sure you are wondering what the events of this past week mean for you and your families. I can tell you in one word: they mean change. But change may be bad or good. I entreat you to view this change as an opportunity. I promise you, the Fire Nation has the greatest respect for the Earth Kingdom’s history and traditions.”
Toph stops listening. First, because it’s boring. Second, because something more interesting is happening overhead. Cracks snick quietly through the ceiling, directly above the spot where Toph and the rest are standing. She tilts her head upward.
A few things happen in quick succession. A large chunk of stone dislodges itself from the ceiling. People start to scream. And Toph raises her hand.
She’s had bigger boulders flying at her head. This one is no trouble at all. She slows its speed until the block is frozen in place. There’s no good space to stick it, so she just keeps it there, hanging in the air.
The screams subside. The people around her shuffle backwards, until Toph’s alone at the center of a wide circle.
“Well, well,” says the rumbling voice.
“Your eminence!” It’s Toph’s mother speaking. She rushes to the front of the room and falls to her knees. “There must be some sort of mistake. My daughter is blind, anyone you ask will confirm this. She is being framed.”
“Seems to me,” a new voice pipes up, “that she’s blind and she can bend. Can bend damn well, from the look of it. You got a name, blind bender?”
The voice is female, young, and far too cheerful. Her footsteps are so light that Toph can barely track her movements.
“Toph,” Toph says defiantly. She wonders how much time it will buy her to chuck the block and run. There’s a lot of earth here. If they don’t have benders with them, she could jam the doors behind her to block pursuit. But she can sense movement on the ceiling, and the edges of the block are too precise for it to have fallen naturally.
She’s not the only earthbender here.
“Nice to meet you, Toph. How old are you?”
“Eleven,” she says, raising her chin.
“Eleven! And catching half the ceiling like it’s nothing. Your parents must be proud of you, huh?”
Toph says nothing. The ceiling block starts to rock dangerously.
“My name’s Ty Lee. Commander Ty Lee. I’ve only been around Ba Sing Se a couple of days, but I’ve noticed some funny things. Your army, your elite troops—where are the girls, I asked myself? Kind of scared me, to be honest. I thought, are they all off hiding somewhere, about to slit our throats in the night?”
There’s a smile in the commander’s voice, like she wouldn’t say no to a late-night throat slitting session.
“But then I asked around and everyone told me, oh no. Girls in the army? It wouldn’t do. Girls are like gems; you admire them, you don’t make swords out of them. What do you think about that, Toph?”
“Diamonds are harder than steel,” she says, wishing she could cross her arms. “Maybe they should make swords out of them.”
The commander laughs. The sound’s genuine, not mocking, and Toph relaxes despite herself.
“Couldn’t have put it better myself. The Fire Nation doesn’t believe in that kind of nonsense. We value anyone who’s strong, anyone who’s hard-working and committed. We’re putting together an elite cadre. Best fighters from all the kingdoms. We could use someone like you.”
“You’re offering me a job?”
“Sure am. It’ll be progressive, it’ll be cool, and you will be officially licensed to hit people with rocks. What do you say?”
The silence is gaping as Toph considers, the block of ceiling spinning idly over her head. No one’s talking, but she can feel the weight of their attention. Hearts thrumming, feet tapping, blood pounding, all for her—all because what she does next matters.
Toph decides that she likes the feeling. She likes it a lot.
She slams down the block and cracks her knuckles. “I say, when do we start?”
| air |
Aang isn’t sure what he was expecting, but this wasn’t it. The Fire Lord’s chambers are cozy and well-lit. The floor mats brim with overstuffed pillows; cheap knick-knacks compete for space on crowded shelves.
There aren’t any guards, either.
“Avatar Aang.”
He spins so quickly he almost loses his footing, summons a protective burst of air—and falters.
“Please don’t,” says the Fire Lord, smiling. “You’ll spill the tea.”
Aang stands, his glider held out awkwardly, as the Fire Lord sets down a tea tray on a side-table and begins to pour out two cups.
“The air nomads drank butter tea, I believe,” the Fire Lord continues, his voice light and easy. “An acquired taste, I’m told, and I have never had the chance to acquire it. So I hope you will pardon me if I serve you a nice boring sencha.”
Aang finds his voice.
“Maybe you should have thought about that, before you murdered them.”
The Fire Lord’s face falls. “Your pain,” he says, “must be such that no words can do it justice. Still, I will say what I can. I am sorry for your loss, which was also a loss for the world. Fire Lord Sozin represented the worst qualities of fire: capriciousness, cruelty, thoughtless destruction. We all live in the shadow of his legacy.”
“And what about the Water Nation?” Aang demands. “That wasn’t Sozin. Your men killed Katara’s mother, just because she said she could water-bend.”
“I admit that I erred with the Northern Water Tribes,” the Fire Lord says quietly. “I erred in trusting my brother Ozai. When I learned what he had done, I exiled him from our nation. You know the conclusion of that story, I believe. Or are my friends wrong that my nephew kept you company, for a time?”
Aang remembers Zuko’s face, deathly pale when he removed his mask. In the end, Zuko had only been willing to say two things about his father: that Zuko had killed him, and that he had deserved it.
“You’re saying you didn’t want that. You didn’t want to hurt the Water Tribe. But, you’re at war with them.”
“I am very glad to meet you face to face, Avatar Aang. I fear that distance has done us no favors. My brother sought to capture you out of the wrong-headed notion that your head could buy back his place in our nation. But I do not want you captured or killed, Avatar. No, far from it! Aang, I am asking for your help.”
“My help,” Aang repeats. He feels . . . disorientated, like Appa’s tumbled into a particularly twisty dive.
“Please,” the Fire Lord says politely, “sit.”
Aang sits. He takes the cup of tea the Fire Lord offers him and sniffs at it. Maybe it’s poisoned.
The Fire Lord sips at his own cup with a content sigh.
“Balance,” he says. “So often we use that word as an answer. But I rather think it’s a question. What does it mean for the world to be in balance?”
“The Four Nations,” Aang says warily. “The four elements, living together in harmony.”
“If you weight a scale with two gold coins on one side and two silver coins on the other, have you achieved balance?”
“No. Gold’s heavier.”
“Precisely. Gold and silver have different properties, which must be taken in account to balance them. Now, I have tried to study elements beyond my own. But I will not claim expertise when I sit in front of a master! Tell me, Avatar, are all the elements the same? Or do they each have unique properties?”
“They’re not the same,” Aang says slowly. “Air’s flexible. Water is too—I found it the easiest to learn. Earth’s different. It doesn’t yield. And fire—”
The Fire Lord meets his eyes knowingly.
“Yes,” he says. “Fire. I said to you that Sozin embodied the worst aspects of fire. But there are other aspects, too. Fire is life and heat. It is ambition and drive. My people are strivers. They are not content to pass their lives in isolation, to labor unseen and unremarked, within fixed and pre-determined borders. They wish to spread. For that is the nature of fire too.”
“That doesn’t justify what you’ve done.”
“No, it does not. But it explains it. And this brings me back to my point about properties. Is it balance to constrain the element that by its nature spreads? I do not love war. But expansion is in my people’s nature, and when we seek it, violence seems inevitably to follow.
“This is the question I pose to you, Avatar. This is the problem I hope you can help me solve. If the Fire Nation is driven back into our borders, it will only be so long until a new leader seeks to expand them. War upon war, generation upon generation.
“Many years ago, I almost lost my son outside the walls of Ba Sing Se. As I kept vigil by his bed-side, I asked myself, is this balance? Or is there not another way, one that embraces the beneficial aspects of our element? A world in which each of the nations can devote themselves to what comes most naturally?”
“That’s the world we had before the Fire Nation started a war.”
The Fire Lord hums. “Perhaps. But your experience was somewhat unique, was it not? As the Avatar, you traveled between the nations, experiencing each of their charms. From what I have studied of the time, that was not typical. The nations lived largely in isolation aside from the brief exchanges of traders. I do not think that kind of world is an ideal one. Our differences strengthen us. Have you not found that to be the case?”
Aang bobs his head hesitantly.
The Fire Lord spreads out his arms. “I do not claim to have all the answers. That is why I want your help, Avatar. You see a nation of aggressors and believe that we neither want your help nor need it, but in fact, we need it most of all.” A sudden smile crosses his face. In a far less serious voice, he adds, “Though if you let my tea get any colder, you may learn why they have called me the Dragon of the West!”
Aang stares at him. Then he picks up his tea cup and takes a cautious sip.
~water~
“That’s it?”
It’s Sokka who speaks. Katara can’t seem to manage words. The anger’s sloshing and pounding inside of her like all the world’s oceans have found their way into her lungs, into her heart.
“After all this, you’re going to just, what, let the Fire Nation rule the world? Because, stop me if I’ve got this wrong, it’s been a bit hard to follow this insanity—all the rest of us are destined to be subjugated? What part of that is balance, Aang?”
Aang looks upset.
Aang looks upset, and he looks twelve, and when his mouth twists beseechingly, it’s the Fire Lord’s hand that comes to rest comfortingly on his shoulder, not Katara’s.
“There doesn’t need to be any more fighting,” Aang says.
“There doesn’t need to be any more death,” Aang says.
“There’s been so much harm done, but it can end today,” Aang says.
“Revenge isn’t balance,” Aang says, looking at her, the Fire Lord smiling behind him, and that is—how dare he—
Katara’s arms move like twin snakes. The Fire Lord’s smile freezes.
It’s easy, as easy as it’s ever been, to pull here and twist there, so that the Fire Lord drops to his knees.
The gust of wind strikes her in the stomach.
“Don’t, Katara,” Aang says. His legs are spread out in a defensive stance. “I know you’re upset, but you’re not thinking straight.”
“There is nothing wrong with my thinking,” Katara grinds out. Still, she makes a show of keeping her arms at her sides as she stands up again. It’s enough to make Aang relax—the moment he does, she sends a rope of water lashing around the Fire Lord’s leg.
This wasn’t supposed to be her fight, but it’s always been her war. Aang has no right to decide that it’s over.
Aang doesn’t strike her again. Instead, he scrunches up his face and begins to tug at her water. He’s a less skillful waterbender, but in a straight tug-of-war, he’s strong. The rope snaps. As the water scatters into droplets, Katara twists her hands and transforms them into a volley of ice darts, which rise into formation behind her.
The Fire Lord does nothing. His arms are clasped together under his sleeves. He looks attentive and interested, like he has chanced into watching a particularly riveting play.
Katara hates him, in that moment, more than she has hated anyone in her life.
“I won’t let you hurt someone who’s not fighting back,” Aang says, his eyes pleading.
“Not fighting back? Do you even hear yourself, Aang? As we stand here, there are thousands of Fire Nation soldiers attacking my people in his name. It doesn’t make a difference whether he’s personally spitting fire at me or not!”
“It does make a difference,” Aang says. His voice is removed, a little soulful—that tone he gets when he thinks he’s talking about something lofty. “Peace starts with small steps. Everything else follows from that. I’m going to make it all better. Without fighting. That’s the air nomad way.”
“Katara.” Sokka’s hand is on her arm, his voice low in her ear. “This is hopeless. We’ve got to get out of here. Warn the others, tell them—”
“Yes,” she says, getting into position. “You go. I’ll distract them.”
“Katara—”
“Go,” she says, closing her eyes, and lets the ice shards fly.
*fire*
Aang leads the procession into the throne room. He looks different, but it takes Zuko a moment to work out why. It’s the robes. They’re made from Fire Nation fabrics, stiff and heavy. They don’t flutter with his every step the way his monk’s garb did.
Zuko once heard a story about an artisan so skillful that he was able to clothe a butterfly in gold. The butterfly looked beautiful; it never flew again.
Aang steps onto the dais. When he takes his place next to the Fire Lord and the Crown Prince, everyone bows.
Aang promises a new era of peace, prosperity, and balance. Behind him, the Fire Lord nods. Applause breaks out, loud enough to shatter walls.
After, there’s a feast.
At the royal table, Lu Ten ladles another heaping portion of hot pepper tofu over his rice and sighs. “I’ll miss this in Ba Sing Se,” he says between mouthfuls. “What do they even eat over there, dirt?”
His boisterous laugh rings through the hall. Zuko hunches over the table. Most days he prefers Lu Ten’s good-natured cheer to Azula’s honeyed barbs. Tonight, though . . .
“No,” he says quietly. “Not dirt.”
Mai’s hand wraps around his own under the table.
“Well, to hear Father go on about it, you’d think they didn’t eat at all—just drank tea, tea, tea, day in and day out.”
“Don’t act like you have it so bad, prince,” Azula interjects, smiling. “You’ll be ruling the jewel of the earth kingdom. If the food’s bad, you can just have them change it. I’m going to be stuck out in the South Pole signing the water tribe armistice. Nothing but oily fish for days.”
“We could trade,” Zuko says without thinking.
Mai’s grip on his hand tightens. Lu Ten and Azula both stare.
“I’d have thought you’d be happy to be home, Zu-zu,” Azula says with dangerous sweetness. “It was so forgiving of Uncle to let you return. I hope you’re not ungrateful.”
“I know administering the provinces doesn’t sound exciting, but it’s important work, Zuko,” Lu Ten chimes in. “When I’m Fire Lord, I’ll need to be able to delegate tasks like that to you.”
“You’re right,” Zuko says slowly. “I guess I’ve just gotten used to being on the move.”
“It’ll do you good to settle down,” Lu Ten declares. He glances between Zuko and Mai, and winks. “Children are good for that, I hear.”
This time it’s Zuko’s turn to take Mai’s hand under the table, until it relaxes from a fist.
The conversation moves on. Zuko looks around the hall, until he spots Aang and the Fire Lord, circulating between tables. No one has said where Aang will be going, or at least, they haven’t said it to Zuko. And Zuko hasn’t asked.
All the lamps have burned down in the house by the time he and Mai get back. Zuko relights a few with a half-hearted flick of his wrist. Mai sits down on the bed and begins to tease apart her braids.
There’s something simmering under his skin, a feeling or a sensation that he doesn’t seem able to name.
“The Northern Water Tribe,” he says finally. “Did my father really act alone?”
Mai’s hands pause their movements. “What do you want me to say, Zuko?”
“The truth.”
“Your father had no orders to do what he did,” Mai says firmly. Her voice drops to a whisper. “When you set a fire in a forest, you don’t have to tell it to burn.”
Zuko watches the torchlight flicker gold and red off Mai’s hair. “What do I do?”
“You come to bed. It’s late.”
“And after that?”
Mai’s silent for a long time. “Maybe Lu Ten’s not wrong,” she says finally. “Not about—that. But. We deserve a little happiness. After everything. We deserve it.”
“Yes,” Zuko says.
He quiets the torches and shutters the window.
They go to bed.
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