Giving Up (Avatar: The Last Airbender)
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The Divide
Fulcon
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The following is a fanbased work of fiction. Avatar the Last Airbender is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koniezko. Please support the official release.
---
“Your movements are still a little too direct, Zuko,” Aang corrected idly from his seat on a rock.
Zuko noted with annoyance that his eyes were closed, but that didn’t matter. A bending master could tell when something was off and to someone who had mastered the styles over and over again over the eternities, it probably seemed buffoonish.
However, he felt like he was being singled out for mistakes than Katara, who was also practicing the exact same forms that he was, with just as many mistakes. But still, being singled out meant you were getting the impurities burnt out faster, so the Prince didn’t complain.
It was still annoying.
“You’ve gotten way better since we’ve started practicing together, though,” Katara quickly complimented, smiling wide, still going through the water whip.
Katara, for her part, seemed to really enjoy practicing with Zuko. Just the way he used Water forms to bend their campfire around seemed endlessly fascinating to the girl, likely just as much as watching a waterbender bend with Fire forms would be to him.
“Thank you.”
It seemed easier to hold the fire in whatever shapes he could make with his limited understanding, which Zuko attributed to the fact that he was starting to put down roots again. Well, not put down roots, just watering the ones he already had; he already enjoyed Firebending and learning a new style was something he had been wanting to do for months.
His drive was coming back.
Slowly.
Aang seemed a little more annoyed after Katara spoke, but otherwise didn’t say anything.
For his part, Zuko thought he understood the dynamics of the group he found himself traveling with. Aang was a pretty carefree individual who tried to avoid direct confrontation at any cost. He had a crush on Katara and as a consequence of avoiding direct confrontation, he had no idea how to act on those feelings. Sokka was very intelligent and had a fairly good handle on how things went, if only limited by his lack of experience. He was able to quickly let go of ideas that proved themselves erroneous, which was more than could be said for some hardened generals. Katara wanted to become a Master Waterbender more than anything else in the world and saw things in black and white. Either you were good, or you were evil. No in-between.
Aang was annoyed at Zuko for not teaching him something fun, which Firebending was supposed to be for him. And it was fun, until you accidentally burned one of your friends. Katara looked at Zuko like a weird gem, a ‘Good Firebender’ that needed to both be shown to the world and protected lest he fall back into step with his countrymen. Sokka was neutral, though he recognized the value of having a competent sparring partner that knew how to fight without bending on hand.
Zuko, though, still wasn’t sure how he fit into the group. He was a Firebender without drive, a traitor in secret, a sifu who was waiting for his student to be ready, a man who didn’t know what he wanted out of life. Until those things were fixed, Zuko was merely a passenger on their journey to the North Pole, a passive hanger-on that provided some support in the form of a different perspective and skills, a tourist interested only in seeing new sights.
He was a parasite, in a way, though a benign one.
“So what’s our next stop, again?” Sokka asked, speaking up from his breakfast of cooked fish. The way he wolfed those down, Zuko was surprised he hadn’t grown to be eight feet tall. “The Great Divide?”
“Yeah!” Aang got excited, hopping off of his rock to sit next to Sokka in a single, airbending fueled leap. “I’ve only been there once and it was amazing! I can’t wait to show all of you!”
Zuko started to smile. A new horizon was always a way to lift his spirits.
---
“Here it is!” Aang cried happily, gesturing forward with his hand at the canyon below. “The Great Divide! Largest canyon in the world!”
Zuko looked down at the canyon, a huge crack in the ground created as if some giant earth bender had stomped and forced the very world itself to break beneath the pressure. The canyon stretched out for miles, and curved around the horizon.
“That’s,” Zuko began. “Awesome!”
“It’s incredible!” Katara said with awe. “I could stare at it forever.”
“I know right!” Aang said, turning to look at him with a huge smile. “It just goes on for miles! Here, I’ll take us down so we can see it closer.”
“That’s okay Aang, we don’t need to go down,” Sokka objected. “We can see it clearly as we’re flying away.”
“Nah, we need to get in close,” Zuko argued. “We might not come this way again, so we should make the most of it.”
“Fine, fine,” Sokka replied grumpily. “Just waste all our time, see if I care.”
“Well if you insist,” Katara snipped as Appa landed, allowing them all to get off and look at it from the ground.
The view from the ground was just as magnificent as seeing it from the sky. Even from here they could see licks of sand gusting across the ground and swirling as they flew over the cracks. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was shining bright and hot.
Zuko felt invigorated.
“Hey, out of my way!”
The source of their interruption shoved past the group, making his way down the path to a wooden shed that had been built at the Divide’s entrance. He was a young man with a long goatee that hung down his chin all the way to his white, immaculate shirt with gold trimmings. He looked at the group with a hostility, but one born out of fear, not malice. “If you’re looking for the canyon guide, I was here first!”
“There’s a guide,” Zuko repeated with an intrigued nod.
“Sounds informative,” Katara added with a grin.
“He’s not just a guide,” The man barked in a huff. “He’s an Earthbender! And he’s the only person who knows how to get across the ravine and he’s taking my tribe across first!”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Sokka said irritably. “You’re first. Calm down!”
“You try being calm when the Fire Nation burned your home down!” The man shouted, pointing at Sokka. “Now our only hope is to get to Ba Sing Se and wait out the war.”
Zuko did not wince when he heard that. But it took a lot of effort.
“Is that your tribe?” Aang asked, pointing down the road the man came from.
The Prince doubted that and he honestly had to stop himselves from laughing. Not at the haggard, savage looking tribes dressed in furs per se, but because the rude, stuffy stranger that had shoved past them reminded him of the stuffy nobles back home who honestly believed the commoners below them were subhuman.
“What? No!” The man cried. “That’s the filthy Zhang tribe!”
Their leader, an elderly woman with large muscles under a thick layer of fat, got irate. “Oh, it’s a Gan Jin. Move aside, we’ve got sick to get through the canyon.”
“I was here first!”
It then became apparent that the Zhang’s were the walking stereotype of the ‘filthy commoner’ he heard about in court. Rough, unsophisticated and didn’t look too bright. They started to argue for a minute, then the guide came out; an old, portly man with a thick, white mustache.
“I was here first and my party is on the way!” The rude man said.
“I can’t guide people who aren’t here.”
That did make Zuko snicker.
“Look, there they are!”
It was a mob of prim, proper and insufferably well put together people, led by an old man with long, immaculately brushed white hair and beard. It reminded him of the royal court so much he wanted to gag. They argued some more. Turns out they had elderly that needed to get across.
The argument was long and getting nowhere, until Katara spoke up.
“Listen up!” Katara shouted, stepping forward and gesturing to Aang. “This is the Avatar, and if you give him the chance, I’m sure he can come up with a compromise that makes everyone happy.”
It took a moment before Aang could actually say anything. “You could share the guide and travel together?”
That just reignited the argument and Zuko was getting sick of both of these two tribes already.
“Alright, that’s enough!” Aang shouted with authority.
The prince didn’t know he had it in him.
“Appa will fly the sick and elderly across the canyon. The rest of you are going down the canyon together! Does that sound fair?”
The two tribal leaders nodded.
“Just remember to eat what you can now, before we go into the canyon!” The guide said. “No food in the canyon! It attracts dangerous predators!”
Zuko resisted the urge to cover his ears when they started arguing again. But just barely.
---
Naturally, the worst happened. While they were traveling down the canyon, they were attacked. By giant insects called Canyon Crawlers. The guide got both of his arms broken and Zuko, to his very slight disappointment, was useless against the behemoth bugs with his twin Dao swords. Very slight, because he felt like he just needed the right strategy to beat them off.
Thankfully, Katara was able to put the bones back in their proper order so they wouldn’t be thrown too far up the creek, but the guide was absolutely livid. None of the Avatar’s group could blame him, either, so Aang sent Sokka and Katara to find out the cause of this feud so they could actually make peace between the two tribes.
“I’m amazed they’re still holding onto a hundred year grudge,” Zuko remarked with an amused shake of his head. “Then again, I really shouldn’t be.”
“I just hope I can get them to get along,” Aang said with a concerned expression up at the stars.
“Is that really your job, though?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“I’m the Avatar,” Aang replied. “Making peace and settling feuds is my job. So I have to try.”
Zuko just hummed. “Ten coins say that they both brought food.”
“No way,” Aang shook his head. “One of them did, sure, but both of them? They can’t both be that stupid.”
“Yeah, but I guarantee you they think the other tribe smuggled food in for whatever reason,” Zuko continued. “Which means they’re already going to have canyon crawlers bearing down on them so they might as well fight them off with full stomachs.”
“I don’t believe it,” Aang shook his head again. “They can’t be that dumb.”
“Men fail and come up short. But stupidity will always exceed your expectations and accomplish the impossible,” Zuko quoted with a wise voice. “My Uncle used to say that and he hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Sokka and Katara came back to their camp with fire in their eyes and a scowl on their faces and Zuko knew they were in for a fun conversation.
“Jin Wei was taking their sacred orb to the other side for their sacred ritual and Wei Jin ambushed him-”
“Ambushed him? Jin Wei was injured and Wei Jin was just trying to return it and they locked him up!”
“Yeah, for attacking Jin Wei and trying to steal the orb-”
“Quiet!” Aang shouted. “One at a time! Katara, you go first.”
She explained about the Gan Jin’s sacred rituals which took place at Sunrise and Sunset and how a Sacred Orb needed to be transported between two great gates to the east and west. During one such transition, Jin Wei was attacked by Wei Jin, who stole the Orb. The Gan Jin caught him and sentenced him to prison.
Then it was Sokka’s turn, who defended Wei Jin’s actions, stating that Jin Wei was already injured when Wei Jin found him and that Jin Wei implored Wei Jin to take the orb back to his village and that they would know what to do about the Orb. But the Gan Jin imprisoned Wei Jin for twenty years on a wrongful conviction.
“Okay,” Aang said, taking a deep breath. “How do we get them to let this go?”
“I don’t think they can,” Katara said, folding her arms.
“Yeah, I don’t think they should, either,” Sokka agreed. “Wrongful imprisonment is a big deal.”
“It wasn’t wrong-”
“Stop,” Zuko stated.
The siblings quieted down.
“Aang, what do you think about this?” Zuko asked, gesturing to the Avatar.
“I don’t know,” Aang said. “We can’t change what happened a hundred years ago and their feud is putting everyone in danger. What do you think, Zuko?”
Zuko cupped his chin. “I have questions.”
“Okay,” Katara started, straightening up just a bit.
“Number one, why is Jin Wei and Wei Jin just the same name, but backwards?” Zuko asked.
Both Sokka and Katara started to think about that, saying nothing.
“Number two, if Wei Jin really did attack Jin Wei, why would he go back to Gan Jin village?” Zuko asked. “He would’ve had to know that he just attacked their tribe’s Patriarch and would be swiftly incarcerated.”
Katara started to nod her head in thought, looking like she wanted to say something but holding her tongue for the moment.
“Finally, if Jin Wei really did ask Wei Jin to take the orb back to the Gan Jin village, couldn’t Jin Wei just clear up the misunderstanding once he got back to the village?” Zuko concluded. “I’m assuming he didn’t die since the Gan Jin didn’t execute Wei Jin.”
Sokka and Katara looked at each other.
“Their stories make no sense,” Katara stated.
“One of them has to be lying,” Sokka pointed out.
“Probably both of them,” Zuko said. “It was a hundred years ago and none of them were alive back then, so all they’ve got are the stories they were told by their parents and grandparents. Right?”
“So neither side really knows exactly what happened,” Katara pointed out.
“Which means we can give them a different story and resolve this peacefully,” Aang said with a grin. “I mean, I’m the Avatar, and I went all over the world a hundred years ago so whose to say I didn’t know Jin Wei and Wei Jin?”
“That’s a good plan,” Sokka nodded.
Zuko just shrugged. “Do what you got to do. By the way, did either of them bring food?”
“Oh yeah.” Sokka nodded.
“Uh huh,” Katara replied.
“Called it.” Zuko smirked.
“They both did?” Aang asked with a shocked expression. “How? No, no, why?”
---
The next day the nearly reached the end of the canyon. The guide was making good time since he still had his bending.
For his part, Zuko had really enjoyed the hike through the Canyon. It was pleasantly warm, had a nice breeze occasionally, seeing the incredible vistas, hearing the Guide’s stories. Zuko was smiling throughout the day.
At least until trouble struck.
Crawling over the top and coming down the walls were the Crawlers, massive four-legged insects with massive jaws. They had surrounded the large party before either of them could do anything.
Wish I had my Firebending… Zuko thought with a glare, brandishing his twin Dao’s. He looked ahead of the path and saw the canyon’s exit, blocked by a trio of crawlers.
Aang managed to blast one away with a rush of air, but two more charged him. The guide created pillars of earth beneath the crawlers, sending one flying, but the other simply grabbed the pillar with it’s legs and rushed forward unimpeded. Katara was letting water whip after water whip fly, only stinging the Crawlers and stopping them momentarily.
The Gan Jin and the Zhang were brandishing swords behind the Prince, with Sokka holding Boomerang aloft, preparing to throw it. All around them, the crawlers were rushing forward. Just in front of him, Zuko saw three of them, running at top speed to eat him for dinner.
But through the chill of terror, Zuko felt something inside himself ignite. Something that had been completely dead was rushing back to life, however briefly and filling his limbs with heat.
As far as motivators went, wanting to live was a pretty good one.
He dropped his swords and for the first time in weeks, Zuko let sapphire flames rip out from his fists; creating a wall of fire in front of the bugs, sending them running in squeals. Zuko’s head snapped to the left, where the back of the group was getting harangued by four of the beasts. The Prince jumped over and started letting loose. Bursts of flame pushed and shoved the crawlers, each of them screeching and squealing as the flames slapped them and burned their hides.
Zuko extended the wall he had made earlier to create a half circle, completely closing off that part of the canyon and sending the crawlers running. One remained, scrambling and crawling, trying to get around the wall of flame.
That thing is going to jump over my wall if I don’t do something, Zuko thought, bringing his fingers together. This should send a message to the rest of the Crawlers, though.
He had thought he was apathetic to his bending. Like it didn’t really matter to him that it was gone, because he had other things instead. But here? Now? With lightning coursing through his arms and forming a closed circle in front of him, cracking and snapping with power?
The lightning bolt swift, true, and merciless. It struck the crawler on the head, making it explode in a mess of blackened flesh that let off thin, black trails of smoke that were scattered by the breeze.
Zuko realized how much he missed his bending.
He centered his chi, and turned to the group. All the refugees were staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. “We should get going now.”
“Who are you?” The guide sputtered.
“The name’s Lee,” Zuko replied loudly and evenly. “I’m the Avatar’s firebending instructor.”
When they heard that, they all calmed down. It was fine, he was the instructor. He was a good guy and not going to burn them down like the Fire Nation burned down all their homes.
Aang, Katara and Sokka were also staring at him.
“That was amazing!” Katara gushed. “You got your bending back!”
“Yeah, you were like,” Sokka jumped forward, miming Zuko’s forms with exaggerated panache. “Boom! Fwoosh, fwoosh boom! Then at the end the bug was like kaboom! Aang, did you know you could bend Lightning? Because I sure didn’t!”
“Thanks,” Zuko smiled. “I just got some of my drive back is all. I wanted to live.”
“So you’ll be able to actually show me how the forms go?” Aang asked him with a smile.
“Yes I can,” Zuko said. “But can you see why I want you to do things in the right order?”
Aang leaned to look around Zuko, staring at the electrocuted corpse of the Canyon Crawler for a moment before returning to his instructor. “I think I do, yeah.”
“Glad you figured that out,” Zuko said with a small smile. “I was afraid you were going to have to accidentally burn something before it sunk in that fire is a dangerous toy.”
“Hey, I’m glad we’re all safe, but can we get out of here before they come back?” The Zhang leader pointed at the exit with her thumb.
“As much as I hate to agree with a Zhang, I agree,” The Gan Jin leader said. “We need to hurry to Ba Sing Se as quickly as possible, before the Fire Nation catches up with us.”
Aang sighed in annoyance. “Yeah, let’s go.”
That’s almost too bad, Zuko thought with some dismay. Then again, resolving hundred year old feuds takes more than a day, doesn’t it?
---
Author’s Notes: I admit, I didn’t want to cover the Great Divide and to be honest, I didn’t get much in the way of character development here. Just Zuko getting his drive back; I’m toying with the idea of him losing it again now that his life isn’t in danger, but I’m not going to do that because that would be repetitive and annoying.
Maybe I should've skipped over the Divide, but my OCD was like 'but you need to cover it' and I was like 'no I don't and...OCD won. Should've skipped it to milk Zuko being without his bending for a while longer.
Also, the Zhang’s and the Gan Jin make me want to rip my arteries out through my eyeballs. They are so annoying.
Hope you guys enjoyed it!
Shout out too RichardWhereat, who I also need to apologize too because he became a Super Patron last chapter and I forgot to include him. Thank you, again, for all your support.
Shout out goes out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran and Russel Beatrous. Your continued support makes this possible!
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
---
“Your movements are still a little too direct, Zuko,” Aang corrected idly from his seat on a rock.
Zuko noted with annoyance that his eyes were closed, but that didn’t matter. A bending master could tell when something was off and to someone who had mastered the styles over and over again over the eternities, it probably seemed buffoonish.
However, he felt like he was being singled out for mistakes than Katara, who was also practicing the exact same forms that he was, with just as many mistakes. But still, being singled out meant you were getting the impurities burnt out faster, so the Prince didn’t complain.
It was still annoying.
“You’ve gotten way better since we’ve started practicing together, though,” Katara quickly complimented, smiling wide, still going through the water whip.
Katara, for her part, seemed to really enjoy practicing with Zuko. Just the way he used Water forms to bend their campfire around seemed endlessly fascinating to the girl, likely just as much as watching a waterbender bend with Fire forms would be to him.
“Thank you.”
It seemed easier to hold the fire in whatever shapes he could make with his limited understanding, which Zuko attributed to the fact that he was starting to put down roots again. Well, not put down roots, just watering the ones he already had; he already enjoyed Firebending and learning a new style was something he had been wanting to do for months.
His drive was coming back.
Slowly.
Aang seemed a little more annoyed after Katara spoke, but otherwise didn’t say anything.
For his part, Zuko thought he understood the dynamics of the group he found himself traveling with. Aang was a pretty carefree individual who tried to avoid direct confrontation at any cost. He had a crush on Katara and as a consequence of avoiding direct confrontation, he had no idea how to act on those feelings. Sokka was very intelligent and had a fairly good handle on how things went, if only limited by his lack of experience. He was able to quickly let go of ideas that proved themselves erroneous, which was more than could be said for some hardened generals. Katara wanted to become a Master Waterbender more than anything else in the world and saw things in black and white. Either you were good, or you were evil. No in-between.
Aang was annoyed at Zuko for not teaching him something fun, which Firebending was supposed to be for him. And it was fun, until you accidentally burned one of your friends. Katara looked at Zuko like a weird gem, a ‘Good Firebender’ that needed to both be shown to the world and protected lest he fall back into step with his countrymen. Sokka was neutral, though he recognized the value of having a competent sparring partner that knew how to fight without bending on hand.
Zuko, though, still wasn’t sure how he fit into the group. He was a Firebender without drive, a traitor in secret, a sifu who was waiting for his student to be ready, a man who didn’t know what he wanted out of life. Until those things were fixed, Zuko was merely a passenger on their journey to the North Pole, a passive hanger-on that provided some support in the form of a different perspective and skills, a tourist interested only in seeing new sights.
He was a parasite, in a way, though a benign one.
“So what’s our next stop, again?” Sokka asked, speaking up from his breakfast of cooked fish. The way he wolfed those down, Zuko was surprised he hadn’t grown to be eight feet tall. “The Great Divide?”
“Yeah!” Aang got excited, hopping off of his rock to sit next to Sokka in a single, airbending fueled leap. “I’ve only been there once and it was amazing! I can’t wait to show all of you!”
Zuko started to smile. A new horizon was always a way to lift his spirits.
---
“Here it is!” Aang cried happily, gesturing forward with his hand at the canyon below. “The Great Divide! Largest canyon in the world!”
Zuko looked down at the canyon, a huge crack in the ground created as if some giant earth bender had stomped and forced the very world itself to break beneath the pressure. The canyon stretched out for miles, and curved around the horizon.
“That’s,” Zuko began. “Awesome!”
“It’s incredible!” Katara said with awe. “I could stare at it forever.”
“I know right!” Aang said, turning to look at him with a huge smile. “It just goes on for miles! Here, I’ll take us down so we can see it closer.”
“That’s okay Aang, we don’t need to go down,” Sokka objected. “We can see it clearly as we’re flying away.”
“Nah, we need to get in close,” Zuko argued. “We might not come this way again, so we should make the most of it.”
“Fine, fine,” Sokka replied grumpily. “Just waste all our time, see if I care.”
“Well if you insist,” Katara snipped as Appa landed, allowing them all to get off and look at it from the ground.
The view from the ground was just as magnificent as seeing it from the sky. Even from here they could see licks of sand gusting across the ground and swirling as they flew over the cracks. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun was shining bright and hot.
Zuko felt invigorated.
“Hey, out of my way!”
The source of their interruption shoved past the group, making his way down the path to a wooden shed that had been built at the Divide’s entrance. He was a young man with a long goatee that hung down his chin all the way to his white, immaculate shirt with gold trimmings. He looked at the group with a hostility, but one born out of fear, not malice. “If you’re looking for the canyon guide, I was here first!”
“There’s a guide,” Zuko repeated with an intrigued nod.
“Sounds informative,” Katara added with a grin.
“He’s not just a guide,” The man barked in a huff. “He’s an Earthbender! And he’s the only person who knows how to get across the ravine and he’s taking my tribe across first!”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Sokka said irritably. “You’re first. Calm down!”
“You try being calm when the Fire Nation burned your home down!” The man shouted, pointing at Sokka. “Now our only hope is to get to Ba Sing Se and wait out the war.”
Zuko did not wince when he heard that. But it took a lot of effort.
“Is that your tribe?” Aang asked, pointing down the road the man came from.
The Prince doubted that and he honestly had to stop himselves from laughing. Not at the haggard, savage looking tribes dressed in furs per se, but because the rude, stuffy stranger that had shoved past them reminded him of the stuffy nobles back home who honestly believed the commoners below them were subhuman.
“What? No!” The man cried. “That’s the filthy Zhang tribe!”
Their leader, an elderly woman with large muscles under a thick layer of fat, got irate. “Oh, it’s a Gan Jin. Move aside, we’ve got sick to get through the canyon.”
“I was here first!”
It then became apparent that the Zhang’s were the walking stereotype of the ‘filthy commoner’ he heard about in court. Rough, unsophisticated and didn’t look too bright. They started to argue for a minute, then the guide came out; an old, portly man with a thick, white mustache.
“I was here first and my party is on the way!” The rude man said.
“I can’t guide people who aren’t here.”
That did make Zuko snicker.
“Look, there they are!”
It was a mob of prim, proper and insufferably well put together people, led by an old man with long, immaculately brushed white hair and beard. It reminded him of the royal court so much he wanted to gag. They argued some more. Turns out they had elderly that needed to get across.
The argument was long and getting nowhere, until Katara spoke up.
“Listen up!” Katara shouted, stepping forward and gesturing to Aang. “This is the Avatar, and if you give him the chance, I’m sure he can come up with a compromise that makes everyone happy.”
It took a moment before Aang could actually say anything. “You could share the guide and travel together?”
That just reignited the argument and Zuko was getting sick of both of these two tribes already.
“Alright, that’s enough!” Aang shouted with authority.
The prince didn’t know he had it in him.
“Appa will fly the sick and elderly across the canyon. The rest of you are going down the canyon together! Does that sound fair?”
The two tribal leaders nodded.
“Just remember to eat what you can now, before we go into the canyon!” The guide said. “No food in the canyon! It attracts dangerous predators!”
Zuko resisted the urge to cover his ears when they started arguing again. But just barely.
---
Naturally, the worst happened. While they were traveling down the canyon, they were attacked. By giant insects called Canyon Crawlers. The guide got both of his arms broken and Zuko, to his very slight disappointment, was useless against the behemoth bugs with his twin Dao swords. Very slight, because he felt like he just needed the right strategy to beat them off.
Thankfully, Katara was able to put the bones back in their proper order so they wouldn’t be thrown too far up the creek, but the guide was absolutely livid. None of the Avatar’s group could blame him, either, so Aang sent Sokka and Katara to find out the cause of this feud so they could actually make peace between the two tribes.
“I’m amazed they’re still holding onto a hundred year grudge,” Zuko remarked with an amused shake of his head. “Then again, I really shouldn’t be.”
“I just hope I can get them to get along,” Aang said with a concerned expression up at the stars.
“Is that really your job, though?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“I’m the Avatar,” Aang replied. “Making peace and settling feuds is my job. So I have to try.”
Zuko just hummed. “Ten coins say that they both brought food.”
“No way,” Aang shook his head. “One of them did, sure, but both of them? They can’t both be that stupid.”
“Yeah, but I guarantee you they think the other tribe smuggled food in for whatever reason,” Zuko continued. “Which means they’re already going to have canyon crawlers bearing down on them so they might as well fight them off with full stomachs.”
“I don’t believe it,” Aang shook his head again. “They can’t be that dumb.”
“Men fail and come up short. But stupidity will always exceed your expectations and accomplish the impossible,” Zuko quoted with a wise voice. “My Uncle used to say that and he hasn’t been wrong yet.”
Sokka and Katara came back to their camp with fire in their eyes and a scowl on their faces and Zuko knew they were in for a fun conversation.
“Jin Wei was taking their sacred orb to the other side for their sacred ritual and Wei Jin ambushed him-”
“Ambushed him? Jin Wei was injured and Wei Jin was just trying to return it and they locked him up!”
“Yeah, for attacking Jin Wei and trying to steal the orb-”
“Quiet!” Aang shouted. “One at a time! Katara, you go first.”
She explained about the Gan Jin’s sacred rituals which took place at Sunrise and Sunset and how a Sacred Orb needed to be transported between two great gates to the east and west. During one such transition, Jin Wei was attacked by Wei Jin, who stole the Orb. The Gan Jin caught him and sentenced him to prison.
Then it was Sokka’s turn, who defended Wei Jin’s actions, stating that Jin Wei was already injured when Wei Jin found him and that Jin Wei implored Wei Jin to take the orb back to his village and that they would know what to do about the Orb. But the Gan Jin imprisoned Wei Jin for twenty years on a wrongful conviction.
“Okay,” Aang said, taking a deep breath. “How do we get them to let this go?”
“I don’t think they can,” Katara said, folding her arms.
“Yeah, I don’t think they should, either,” Sokka agreed. “Wrongful imprisonment is a big deal.”
“It wasn’t wrong-”
“Stop,” Zuko stated.
The siblings quieted down.
“Aang, what do you think about this?” Zuko asked, gesturing to the Avatar.
“I don’t know,” Aang said. “We can’t change what happened a hundred years ago and their feud is putting everyone in danger. What do you think, Zuko?”
Zuko cupped his chin. “I have questions.”
“Okay,” Katara started, straightening up just a bit.
“Number one, why is Jin Wei and Wei Jin just the same name, but backwards?” Zuko asked.
Both Sokka and Katara started to think about that, saying nothing.
“Number two, if Wei Jin really did attack Jin Wei, why would he go back to Gan Jin village?” Zuko asked. “He would’ve had to know that he just attacked their tribe’s Patriarch and would be swiftly incarcerated.”
Katara started to nod her head in thought, looking like she wanted to say something but holding her tongue for the moment.
“Finally, if Jin Wei really did ask Wei Jin to take the orb back to the Gan Jin village, couldn’t Jin Wei just clear up the misunderstanding once he got back to the village?” Zuko concluded. “I’m assuming he didn’t die since the Gan Jin didn’t execute Wei Jin.”
Sokka and Katara looked at each other.
“Their stories make no sense,” Katara stated.
“One of them has to be lying,” Sokka pointed out.
“Probably both of them,” Zuko said. “It was a hundred years ago and none of them were alive back then, so all they’ve got are the stories they were told by their parents and grandparents. Right?”
“So neither side really knows exactly what happened,” Katara pointed out.
“Which means we can give them a different story and resolve this peacefully,” Aang said with a grin. “I mean, I’m the Avatar, and I went all over the world a hundred years ago so whose to say I didn’t know Jin Wei and Wei Jin?”
“That’s a good plan,” Sokka nodded.
Zuko just shrugged. “Do what you got to do. By the way, did either of them bring food?”
“Oh yeah.” Sokka nodded.
“Uh huh,” Katara replied.
“Called it.” Zuko smirked.
“They both did?” Aang asked with a shocked expression. “How? No, no, why?”
---
The next day the nearly reached the end of the canyon. The guide was making good time since he still had his bending.
For his part, Zuko had really enjoyed the hike through the Canyon. It was pleasantly warm, had a nice breeze occasionally, seeing the incredible vistas, hearing the Guide’s stories. Zuko was smiling throughout the day.
At least until trouble struck.
Crawling over the top and coming down the walls were the Crawlers, massive four-legged insects with massive jaws. They had surrounded the large party before either of them could do anything.
Wish I had my Firebending… Zuko thought with a glare, brandishing his twin Dao’s. He looked ahead of the path and saw the canyon’s exit, blocked by a trio of crawlers.
Aang managed to blast one away with a rush of air, but two more charged him. The guide created pillars of earth beneath the crawlers, sending one flying, but the other simply grabbed the pillar with it’s legs and rushed forward unimpeded. Katara was letting water whip after water whip fly, only stinging the Crawlers and stopping them momentarily.
The Gan Jin and the Zhang were brandishing swords behind the Prince, with Sokka holding Boomerang aloft, preparing to throw it. All around them, the crawlers were rushing forward. Just in front of him, Zuko saw three of them, running at top speed to eat him for dinner.
But through the chill of terror, Zuko felt something inside himself ignite. Something that had been completely dead was rushing back to life, however briefly and filling his limbs with heat.
As far as motivators went, wanting to live was a pretty good one.
He dropped his swords and for the first time in weeks, Zuko let sapphire flames rip out from his fists; creating a wall of fire in front of the bugs, sending them running in squeals. Zuko’s head snapped to the left, where the back of the group was getting harangued by four of the beasts. The Prince jumped over and started letting loose. Bursts of flame pushed and shoved the crawlers, each of them screeching and squealing as the flames slapped them and burned their hides.
Zuko extended the wall he had made earlier to create a half circle, completely closing off that part of the canyon and sending the crawlers running. One remained, scrambling and crawling, trying to get around the wall of flame.
That thing is going to jump over my wall if I don’t do something, Zuko thought, bringing his fingers together. This should send a message to the rest of the Crawlers, though.
He had thought he was apathetic to his bending. Like it didn’t really matter to him that it was gone, because he had other things instead. But here? Now? With lightning coursing through his arms and forming a closed circle in front of him, cracking and snapping with power?
The lightning bolt swift, true, and merciless. It struck the crawler on the head, making it explode in a mess of blackened flesh that let off thin, black trails of smoke that were scattered by the breeze.
Zuko realized how much he missed his bending.
He centered his chi, and turned to the group. All the refugees were staring at him with wide, terrified eyes. “We should get going now.”
“Who are you?” The guide sputtered.
“The name’s Lee,” Zuko replied loudly and evenly. “I’m the Avatar’s firebending instructor.”
When they heard that, they all calmed down. It was fine, he was the instructor. He was a good guy and not going to burn them down like the Fire Nation burned down all their homes.
Aang, Katara and Sokka were also staring at him.
“That was amazing!” Katara gushed. “You got your bending back!”
“Yeah, you were like,” Sokka jumped forward, miming Zuko’s forms with exaggerated panache. “Boom! Fwoosh, fwoosh boom! Then at the end the bug was like kaboom! Aang, did you know you could bend Lightning? Because I sure didn’t!”
“Thanks,” Zuko smiled. “I just got some of my drive back is all. I wanted to live.”
“So you’ll be able to actually show me how the forms go?” Aang asked him with a smile.
“Yes I can,” Zuko said. “But can you see why I want you to do things in the right order?”
Aang leaned to look around Zuko, staring at the electrocuted corpse of the Canyon Crawler for a moment before returning to his instructor. “I think I do, yeah.”
“Glad you figured that out,” Zuko said with a small smile. “I was afraid you were going to have to accidentally burn something before it sunk in that fire is a dangerous toy.”
“Hey, I’m glad we’re all safe, but can we get out of here before they come back?” The Zhang leader pointed at the exit with her thumb.
“As much as I hate to agree with a Zhang, I agree,” The Gan Jin leader said. “We need to hurry to Ba Sing Se as quickly as possible, before the Fire Nation catches up with us.”
Aang sighed in annoyance. “Yeah, let’s go.”
That’s almost too bad, Zuko thought with some dismay. Then again, resolving hundred year old feuds takes more than a day, doesn’t it?
---
Author’s Notes: I admit, I didn’t want to cover the Great Divide and to be honest, I didn’t get much in the way of character development here. Just Zuko getting his drive back; I’m toying with the idea of him losing it again now that his life isn’t in danger, but I’m not going to do that because that would be repetitive and annoying.
Maybe I should've skipped over the Divide, but my OCD was like 'but you need to cover it' and I was like 'no I don't and...OCD won. Should've skipped it to milk Zuko being without his bending for a while longer.
Also, the Zhang’s and the Gan Jin make me want to rip my arteries out through my eyeballs. They are so annoying.
Hope you guys enjoyed it!
Shout out too RichardWhereat, who I also need to apologize too because he became a Super Patron last chapter and I forgot to include him. Thank you, again, for all your support.
Shout out goes out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran and Russel Beatrous. Your continued support makes this possible!
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
Woohoo! Another update! By all means, keep them coming. I love this story.
Fulcon
Well-known member
I'm enjoying the fact that my backlog lets me pump these chapters out every single day.
The Storm
Fulcon
Well-known member
The following is a fanbased work of fiction. Avatar the Last Airbender is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koniezko. Please support the official release.
---
“So you don’t control lightning the way you control fire,” Katara summarized, holding a cup of juice in her hand. “You control it like water. And that’s what you figured out the other day that let you understand Waterbending forms.”
It was later that night and the sun had long since fallen. The group were sitting around a roaring campfire, lit so helpfully by Zuko while Katara set the tents and Sokka hunted. Now, they were all eating before going to bed for the night.
“Now I’m just trying to figure out what water and lightning have in common,” Zuko replied. “Why do they act the same way and why do the principles of my opposing element work so well in bending it?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Sokka said, stroking his chin with a grin. “Still, bending lighting is cool. It’s definitely an advantage over the rest of the fire benders we’ll run into.”
“Not firebending,” Zuko responded, running a hand through his black hair, cut short to make him look less Fire Nation, who all wore their hair in topknots. “Not when fighting the Fire Nation, anyway. It’d be a dead giveaway.”
“Zuko, it’s going to come out eventually,” Sokka pointed out. “The sooner it does, the better for everyone.”
“I don’t want my Mother to know I turned traitor,” Zuko replied quietly. “She still loves the Fire Nation.”
“It’s okay,” Katara said kindly. “We’ve done pretty well without a master Firebender before, we can make do with a pair of extra swords.”
“Thanks, Katara.”
Aang looked vaguely annoyed for a second, before replacing the expression with a too happy grin. “Now we just need to figure out where to go next. We don’t really need to stock up on supplies, do we?”
“No, we’ve got plenty,” Sokka said with a pleased nod. “As long as you don’t accidentally splash them all down a river again, we’ll be fine.”
“Hey, that was only one time!” Katara snapped in anger. “One time!”
“I’m just pointing out that it’s happened before,” Sokka replied, looking annoyed. “And that you and Aang need to be careful when you’re splashing with your water.”
“We’re practicing waterbending forms!”
“It’s the same thing!”
“It is not the same thing!”
Zuko looked between the two siblings as they bickered and snipped at each other. Well, I guess it’s better than what Azula and I did before my exile. I wonder how she’s doing…
Aang looked at Zuko helplessly. Zuko just shrugged and took a bite out of the fruit in his hand. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good luck getting to sleep,” Aang replied.
“These two have nothing on the sailors I used to travel with,” Zuko replied with a shrug. “Good night.”
---
Zuko was awoken by the rise of the sun, as was normal. With a stretch, he got out of his sleeping back and rose to greet the day.
It was one of the few luxuries he still enjoyed, abandoning his ship and crew to travel with the biggest enemies of his people. He heat of the sun on his face as it banished the cold of night with it’s return to the sky was one of the most comforting things Zuko had, and it was something that he didn’t think could be taken from him.
Walking some ways off from the camp, Zuko began his practice. With his firebending restored, he needed to stoke his inner flames, as it were, and keep off the winds of apathy. He was the Avatar’s Firebending Instructor and he realized that he could want that. So, he burned that pyre. He wanted balance to the world to be restored. He wanted to live. He wanted Sozin’s efforts burned to ashes.
Zuko was also starting to realize that he wanted to make sure that Aang’s friends, Sokka and Katara, made it through to the end. They were good. Annoying, overly emotional and prone to stupid mistakes, but...
They were already better than the grand majority of people he knew back home.
He performed all the forms he had learned, Rising Dragon, Sweeping Phoenix, The Ember Box, even threw in the smoke bending forms that he and his uncle had devised, keeping great care to stop the clouds from descending over his friends camp.
It was during this exercise, that Zuko noticed that Aang was tossing and turning fitfully.
Nightmare, Zuko thought in sympathy. It’ll pass.
He continued his practice until Aang awoke with a shout.
Zuko dispersed the smoke. “Bad dreams?”
“Yeah,” Aang said, panting deeply, his eyes wide. He looked up at the sky. “Whew. No storm. An easy flight.”
Katara stirred from her slumber. “Huh? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Aang said quickly. “Sorry for waking you up.”
“You sure?” Katara asked, yawning deeply.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Aang said. “So, today I was thinking we’d head off to see the horse crabs over here on the map! If you play a drum near them, you can make them dance in unison!”
Sokka awoke with a shout. “I had a dream where food eats people!”
Zuko couldn’t stop his amused smile from spreading across his face. “Must’ve been some dream.”
“We should avoid all markets!” Sokka continued. “And farms! All the farms!”
“Don’t worry Sokka, we’re not going to the market today,” Aang replied with a chipper grin.
“Good,” Sokka sighed in relief. “Good.”
Then he fell back asleep.
Katara and Aang laughed affectionally.
---
“I can’t believe I forgot we didn’t have a pair of drums,” Aang said in annoyance as they flew right into town.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Sokka said, bright eyed and bushy tailed from his spot on Appa’s saddle. “That just means we can buy more stuff! Like a map! I love maps.”
Zuko hummed, and turned to the last passenger. “Katara?”
“Yes?” Katara perked up. “What is it, Zuko?”
“Who were the first Waterbenders?” Zuko asked.
Katara blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Firebending comes from the sun and the first Firebenders were dragons,” Zuko elaborated. “And Air is all around us, the first Airbenders were the flying bison. Right, Aang?”
“Yup!” Aang replied from his seat on Appa’s head, sounding surprised but delighted to be included in the conversation. He lifted up and turned on a miniature cyclone to take a seat next to them. “The first Monk’s saw how the Flying Bison bent the air and flew on the air currents and copied them.”
“Exactly,” Zuko nodded. “And Waterbending comes from the Moon. So...who were the first Waterbenders?”
Katara blinked. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s a type of fish?” Aang suggested. “Like Elephant Koi!”
“Maybe Waterbending came from penguins?” Sokka added. “I mean, they go into the ocean to eat and live on land.”
“Yeah, but they don’t really bend water,” Katara said. “Neither of those do. Sure, they swim through it, join the current, but neither really push or pull the currents like a Waterbender does.”
The bison landed in town and the group disembarked.
“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Aang said. “Now, we just need to find some drums!”
Zuko shrugged and looked around. Upon seeing a temple, he started for there. If anyone would know who the fist Waterbenders were, it would be a sage. He felt kind of stupid for not checking this during his voyage on the ship, but he didn’t think he’d need to go this far back into bending history to get even a scrap of information beyond a few forms for Waterbending.
The temple was, compared to some others, small. It was just a room with a single shrine to one of the Avatar’s built into the center. Standing at a podium to receive guests was one of the sages, an old man with the longest white beard he had ever seen in his life.
“Hello, young man,” The sage said with a bow. “Are you here to meditate?”
“Maybe, but I have questions as well,” Zuko started. “How much do you know about Waterbending?”
“Not much,” was the reply. “What little I know was told to me by a traveling waterbender from the Foggy Swamp.”
Right, I almost forgot about them, Zuko thought. “I really just need to know who the first Waterbenders were.”
“That would be the Northern Water Tribe,” The Sage responded.
“But where did they learn it from?” Zuko asked, his eyes narrowing.
“The Moon,” The Sage answered.
“I know that Waterbending comes from the Moon like Firebending comes from the Sun,” Zuko said, swallowing his irritation. “But that doesn’t tell me who taught the Northern Water Tribe.”
“Young man, you misunderstand,” The Sage replied. “The Moon is not just the source of Waterbending, it is also the instructor. The Northern Water Tribe beheld how the moon would push and pull the currents as it soured across the sky with it’s different faces over the long, polar nights.”
Zuko blinked, his head turning in place. “How did they do that?”
“You would have to ask them,” The Sage said. “If you can get there, at least. They’re a fairly insular community. Or, you can ask the Foggy Swamp, if you’re ever down there.”
“Thank you,” Zuko gave him a bow and moved toward the shrine.
It was rude to go to a shrine and not meditate, given the care and dedication the sages showed them.
---
“Hey! Wait!” Zuko shouted, running toward the flying bison that was making all due haste from the town. “Hold on! Don’t leave without me!”
But it was useless, the Bison was gone. Zuko caught sight of Sokka and breathed a sigh of relief. “Where’d they go?”
“So, Aang flew off and Katara’s flying after him,” Sokka pointed out. “Some rude fisherman guy accused Aang of abandoning everyone when the war started.”
“Ooh,” Zuko replied, looking up at the sky. He saw dark clouds on the horizon, flying across the sky. “There’s a storm coming.”
“Nah, I think it’s a few days off yet,” Sokka replied with a shrug.
“So if Katara flew off after Aang, what are you doing here?” Zuko asked.
“She left without me!” Sokka whined in anger. “At least I’m not all alone.”
“Oh,” Zuko replied. “I was almost afraid you all left me behind.”
“What? Nah,” Sokka said, shaking his head. “You’re irreplaceable. So, where did you go off too?”
“I found a shrine in the town, asked the Sage a few questions about Waterbending,” Zuko replied. “Turns out, the Moon can teach Waterbending.”
Sokka blinked rapidly in confusion. “How?”
Zuko shrugged.
---
The hours dragged on and like Zuko said, the storm arrived. The sun was blocked out and Zuko felt a chill run across his skin, the same one that happened every time a storm would hit them at sea. He hated it – it just felt unnatural.
To take cover, Zuko and Sokka checked into a hotel room, on Zuko’s leftover gold. They still had plenty left, but Sokka was starting to eye the coin purse with worry. The only thing left to do was either sketch, in Sokka’s case, or meditate, in Zuko’s case.
Outside, the sound of rain pouring on the town and paths filled the room, lightning snapped and cracked
The four candle’s Zuko brought with him sparked with every breath he took, rising and falling in time to the air entering and leaving his lungs.
Something that had always bothered me, Zuko was thinking. Was the question of ‘where did Firebenders learn to bend lighting?’ As far as I know, we don’t have any records of how it was learned and it was only recently rediscovered by my Grandfather. So...who was the first Lightning Bender? Who did he learn from?
Inhale.
But if you don’t need to learn from an animal, but could learn from just anything, what would teach Lightning bending? Zuko asked himself.
His question was answered when a loud crack of thunder threw open the windows of their room, allowing the wind inside to blow his candles out. Sokka startled so bad he drew a massive coal streak across the map of the town he was drawing.
Oh.
Sokka groaned in frustration and grabbed another piece of paper.
Zuko stood up. “I’m going out.”
“What?” Sokka asked. “Where are you going?”
“To test something,” Zuko answered. “Lightning related.”
“Test something?” Sokka asked, squinting in thought. “Wait, you’re going to try learning lightning bending from the storm?”
Zuko nodded.
“Okay, how do you plan on doing that?” Sokka asked critically.
“I’ll figure it out when I get there,” Zuko replied.
“But...you...” Sokka groaned in irritation. “I can’t stop you, can I?”
“No.”
“Alright, well,” Sokka started with a glare. “Don’t get yourself killed out there.”
“Thanks,” Zuko replied, walking out, down the steps and stopping right before he got to the rain.
It’s just a little rain, Zuko thought, walking out into the store. Immediately, he was soaked through with rain and it only got worse as he walked out of the harbor town and into woods past it. He crested a hill and looked up at the storm clouds, instinctively squinting to protect his eyes from the falling raindrops.
...I have no idea what I’m doing, Zuko realized with a shake of his head. How do you learn from an inanimate object?
He sat into a lotus position and tried to meditate. Tried. But from the rain soaking through his clothes to the sounds of thunder, so close he could taste the electricity, he couldn’t clear his head. With a grunt of anger, he stood back up.
Uncle used to say that bending was a spiritual connection to the elements, Zuko thought in annoyance, staring out across the town to the ocean. And Waterbending is, essentially, becoming one with the current and redirecting it. So...how do I get spiritually connected to the storm and then learn how to...redirect...it.
Zuko blinked, then slapped his forehead with a dripping wet palm. I need to get struck. I’ll finally be able to practice Lightning redirection, too. But how to actually get struck?
He couldn’t simply shout at it, the clouds were inanimate; they didn’t care in the slightest what the people beneath them said, as they were always louder. The prince went over what he knew about lightning, how in order to bend you, you needed to separate your chi into yin and yang and then join them back together to create the strike.
Natural lightning has to be the same way, Zuko thought. He started to bend a bolt of his own lightning and sent it up to the heavens. But something felt odd. He did it again and felt it; in the area around him was a high concentration of yin energy. Comparatively, there was an almost complete absence of yang. When he separated his yang energy and brought it out, he could feel the energy around him was being drawn to him, stopping when he sent the bolt up into the sky.
Zuko blinked. When you were bending lightning, you were separating then rejoining Yin and Yang to create a bolt of lightning. But the ground where lightning was striking was almost entirely Yin. Which meant...
“Yin,” Zuko said, pointing to the ground. Then he pointed to the sky. “Yang.”
He put his index fingers together, his hands vertical. “Lightning.”
So he began again. He seperated his chi into Yin and Yang with his motion, but he kept the Yang inside, allowing the Yin to join with the rest of the chi that suffused the hill he was standing on. It almost felt like he was being smothered by it.
Then it happened.
Like a spear of divine retribution, lightning came down from the heavens and struck Zuko. It was fire, it was freedom, it was the most exhilarating thing that he had ever felt in his entire life. First, it hit his finger, then he directed it down to his stomach, then out the other hand, just as his Uncle had instructed him all those months ago.
Zuko was breathing heavily, his exhales coming out as uneasy laughs as he processed what just happened. There was no Yin energy on the hill, now. Only a slight excess of Yang. Up above, the clouds were striking themselves with forked electricity. So, he tried again, first using Yin. But that didn’t work, so he swapped to Yang and was struck again.
His breathy, short laughs became fuller, and more manic as he was hit with another feeling of raw exhilaration. His legs gave way and he collapsed. As he rolled onto his back, the only thing he could do to the rain coming down upon him was laugh.
Because even as his body sang with the power he had just tasted, he realized that he had received two, very short but very complete lessons from lightning itself.
The first was that lightning was a current. Just like water. It was energy flowing from one place to another, searching for itself. While water was always flowing one direction, downward to more water, lightning was searching for the energy needed to correct it’s imbalances. Both took the path of least resistance simply because that’s the direction the current went. That was why lightning looked like it was a jagged spear or it was forking. It was jagged because that was the path it needed to take to find it’s opposing energy was jagged. It was forking because it was finding little bits of the opposing energy it needed outside of the main bolt.
The second lesson was that in order to master lightning, he would need to master the current. He could not control lightning, he could only guide it, as his Uncle said. But guiding it meant controlling the current. That’s why he was able to learn lightning redirection from Waterbender’s; manipulating the current was their bending art’s sole focus.
“Zuko!”
The prince found himself surprised when Katara was immediately kneeling over him, followed swiftly by Sokka and Aang. All of them looked gravely worried, as if they were watching someone die for the first time.
“We need to get him inside!” Sokka shouted over the din of the rain.
Zuko found himself unable to stop his smile when he heard the sound of thunder in the distance. He knew he couldn’t redirect another bolt of lightning, but he really, really wanted too.
“I’ll start working on his arms and legs,” Katara said, bending rain out of the air to rejuvenate Zuko’s arms.
“Appa, come over here buddy, we need you!” Aang shouted, running off somewhere where Zuko couldn’t see.
After Appa lumbered closer, Katara had finished with his legs and the two siblings pulled Zuko up to his feet as the world around the prince slowly faded to black.
---
Zuko awoke and with some annoyance, he noted that his throat was very, very sore. Well, that’s what he got for spending several hours out in a rainstorm. But it was worth it, what he learned was invaluable.
Master current, master lightning.
The door to his room opened and Katara entered, carrying a steaming tea pot.
Zuko couldn’t quite form words, so he just grunted and tried to sit up.
“Don’t try to get up,” Katara said, quickly taking a seat next to his bed. “Here drink this.”
Zuko was no stranger to medicinal teas. His Uncle had made many over the course of his exile and like a dutiful nephew, he had drank them all. Most of them even helped. The one Katara made was very mild, but it opened his throat up enough for him to talk.
“Thanks,” Zuko croaked out.
“Don’t mention it,” Katara said with a frown. “What were you thinking?”
“Did Sokka tell you what I learned yesterday?” Zuko asked, promptly devolving into a coughing fit.
When he was done, Katara poured more tea into his mouth. “No, actually. He just told us that you had been out in the storm for hours when Aang and I finally got back.”
“Well,” Zuko started. “Apparently, Waterbending isn’t just powered by the Moon. The Moon taught the Northern Water Tribe how to bend.”
Katara blinked. “How?”
“I guess they just watched how the Moon moved the water and emulated it,” Zuko shrugged. “Or something. But I wanted to try it myself and it seemed that Waterbending applied the most to Lightning so...”
“You tried to learn Lightning bending from the storm,” Katara blinked. “Or water, or...that’s not the point. The point is we watched you get struck by lightning, throw it back into the sky, and then fall to the ground!”
“You saw that?” Zuko asked. “That was the second time I got struck.”
“The second time?” Katara retorted incredulously. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was!”
“Yeah,” Zuko croaked out.
“Promise me you won’t do that again.”
“No.”
“Zuko!” Katara snapped. “You’re Aang’s firebending instructor! If you die doing that, Aang might not ever find someone to replace you! You can’t take pointless risks like that!”
“I needed to practice Lightning redirection,” Zuko replied.
“Why?” Katara asked. “When will that ever actually be needed?”
“My father bends lightning,” Zuko pointed out idly. “Aang might want to know how to beat the technique.”
Katara fell quiet, pursing her lips in anger as she continued to feed Zuko tea, freeing his throat up more with every mouthful. At the end, with the pot empty, Zuko was able to sit up. Katara picked up the pot and stood to leave.
At the entrance, Katara paused. “Zuko, I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You’re a part of our family now and we’re all glad we met you. So...just keep that in mind, alright?”
She left the room and Zuko was able to take a breath.
Katara has a point, Zuko thought with a sigh. I want the Fire Nation to take a dive, I can’t just go doing dangerous things just because I feel like it.
---
Author’s Note: Not really a whole lot to say about this chapter. Sadly, I've only got one more in the pipe after this, burning out before I even got to the North Pole. Really sad, but I intend to see my projects through. I hope you guys are enjoying it...I know some of you are, but there's a bug on FFnet where most of my readers are that left me unable to read the reviews on my latest chapters.
Perhaps that's for the best. Still...it'd be nice to make sure you guys are suitably entertained.
Shout out goes out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran and Russel Beatrous. Your contributions continue to make this possible! Thank you!
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
---
“So you don’t control lightning the way you control fire,” Katara summarized, holding a cup of juice in her hand. “You control it like water. And that’s what you figured out the other day that let you understand Waterbending forms.”
It was later that night and the sun had long since fallen. The group were sitting around a roaring campfire, lit so helpfully by Zuko while Katara set the tents and Sokka hunted. Now, they were all eating before going to bed for the night.
“Now I’m just trying to figure out what water and lightning have in common,” Zuko replied. “Why do they act the same way and why do the principles of my opposing element work so well in bending it?”
“It’s a puzzle,” Sokka said, stroking his chin with a grin. “Still, bending lighting is cool. It’s definitely an advantage over the rest of the fire benders we’ll run into.”
“Not firebending,” Zuko responded, running a hand through his black hair, cut short to make him look less Fire Nation, who all wore their hair in topknots. “Not when fighting the Fire Nation, anyway. It’d be a dead giveaway.”
“Zuko, it’s going to come out eventually,” Sokka pointed out. “The sooner it does, the better for everyone.”
“I don’t want my Mother to know I turned traitor,” Zuko replied quietly. “She still loves the Fire Nation.”
“It’s okay,” Katara said kindly. “We’ve done pretty well without a master Firebender before, we can make do with a pair of extra swords.”
“Thanks, Katara.”
Aang looked vaguely annoyed for a second, before replacing the expression with a too happy grin. “Now we just need to figure out where to go next. We don’t really need to stock up on supplies, do we?”
“No, we’ve got plenty,” Sokka said with a pleased nod. “As long as you don’t accidentally splash them all down a river again, we’ll be fine.”
“Hey, that was only one time!” Katara snapped in anger. “One time!”
“I’m just pointing out that it’s happened before,” Sokka replied, looking annoyed. “And that you and Aang need to be careful when you’re splashing with your water.”
“We’re practicing waterbending forms!”
“It’s the same thing!”
“It is not the same thing!”
Zuko looked between the two siblings as they bickered and snipped at each other. Well, I guess it’s better than what Azula and I did before my exile. I wonder how she’s doing…
Aang looked at Zuko helplessly. Zuko just shrugged and took a bite out of the fruit in his hand. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good luck getting to sleep,” Aang replied.
“These two have nothing on the sailors I used to travel with,” Zuko replied with a shrug. “Good night.”
---
Zuko was awoken by the rise of the sun, as was normal. With a stretch, he got out of his sleeping back and rose to greet the day.
It was one of the few luxuries he still enjoyed, abandoning his ship and crew to travel with the biggest enemies of his people. He heat of the sun on his face as it banished the cold of night with it’s return to the sky was one of the most comforting things Zuko had, and it was something that he didn’t think could be taken from him.
Walking some ways off from the camp, Zuko began his practice. With his firebending restored, he needed to stoke his inner flames, as it were, and keep off the winds of apathy. He was the Avatar’s Firebending Instructor and he realized that he could want that. So, he burned that pyre. He wanted balance to the world to be restored. He wanted to live. He wanted Sozin’s efforts burned to ashes.
Zuko was also starting to realize that he wanted to make sure that Aang’s friends, Sokka and Katara, made it through to the end. They were good. Annoying, overly emotional and prone to stupid mistakes, but...
They were already better than the grand majority of people he knew back home.
He performed all the forms he had learned, Rising Dragon, Sweeping Phoenix, The Ember Box, even threw in the smoke bending forms that he and his uncle had devised, keeping great care to stop the clouds from descending over his friends camp.
It was during this exercise, that Zuko noticed that Aang was tossing and turning fitfully.
Nightmare, Zuko thought in sympathy. It’ll pass.
He continued his practice until Aang awoke with a shout.
Zuko dispersed the smoke. “Bad dreams?”
“Yeah,” Aang said, panting deeply, his eyes wide. He looked up at the sky. “Whew. No storm. An easy flight.”
Katara stirred from her slumber. “Huh? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Aang said quickly. “Sorry for waking you up.”
“You sure?” Katara asked, yawning deeply.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Aang said. “So, today I was thinking we’d head off to see the horse crabs over here on the map! If you play a drum near them, you can make them dance in unison!”
Sokka awoke with a shout. “I had a dream where food eats people!”
Zuko couldn’t stop his amused smile from spreading across his face. “Must’ve been some dream.”
“We should avoid all markets!” Sokka continued. “And farms! All the farms!”
“Don’t worry Sokka, we’re not going to the market today,” Aang replied with a chipper grin.
“Good,” Sokka sighed in relief. “Good.”
Then he fell back asleep.
Katara and Aang laughed affectionally.
---
“I can’t believe I forgot we didn’t have a pair of drums,” Aang said in annoyance as they flew right into town.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Sokka said, bright eyed and bushy tailed from his spot on Appa’s saddle. “That just means we can buy more stuff! Like a map! I love maps.”
Zuko hummed, and turned to the last passenger. “Katara?”
“Yes?” Katara perked up. “What is it, Zuko?”
“Who were the first Waterbenders?” Zuko asked.
Katara blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Firebending comes from the sun and the first Firebenders were dragons,” Zuko elaborated. “And Air is all around us, the first Airbenders were the flying bison. Right, Aang?”
“Yup!” Aang replied from his seat on Appa’s head, sounding surprised but delighted to be included in the conversation. He lifted up and turned on a miniature cyclone to take a seat next to them. “The first Monk’s saw how the Flying Bison bent the air and flew on the air currents and copied them.”
“Exactly,” Zuko nodded. “And Waterbending comes from the Moon. So...who were the first Waterbenders?”
Katara blinked. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe it’s a type of fish?” Aang suggested. “Like Elephant Koi!”
“Maybe Waterbending came from penguins?” Sokka added. “I mean, they go into the ocean to eat and live on land.”
“Yeah, but they don’t really bend water,” Katara said. “Neither of those do. Sure, they swim through it, join the current, but neither really push or pull the currents like a Waterbender does.”
The bison landed in town and the group disembarked.
“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Aang said. “Now, we just need to find some drums!”
Zuko shrugged and looked around. Upon seeing a temple, he started for there. If anyone would know who the fist Waterbenders were, it would be a sage. He felt kind of stupid for not checking this during his voyage on the ship, but he didn’t think he’d need to go this far back into bending history to get even a scrap of information beyond a few forms for Waterbending.
The temple was, compared to some others, small. It was just a room with a single shrine to one of the Avatar’s built into the center. Standing at a podium to receive guests was one of the sages, an old man with the longest white beard he had ever seen in his life.
“Hello, young man,” The sage said with a bow. “Are you here to meditate?”
“Maybe, but I have questions as well,” Zuko started. “How much do you know about Waterbending?”
“Not much,” was the reply. “What little I know was told to me by a traveling waterbender from the Foggy Swamp.”
Right, I almost forgot about them, Zuko thought. “I really just need to know who the first Waterbenders were.”
“That would be the Northern Water Tribe,” The Sage responded.
“But where did they learn it from?” Zuko asked, his eyes narrowing.
“The Moon,” The Sage answered.
“I know that Waterbending comes from the Moon like Firebending comes from the Sun,” Zuko said, swallowing his irritation. “But that doesn’t tell me who taught the Northern Water Tribe.”
“Young man, you misunderstand,” The Sage replied. “The Moon is not just the source of Waterbending, it is also the instructor. The Northern Water Tribe beheld how the moon would push and pull the currents as it soured across the sky with it’s different faces over the long, polar nights.”
Zuko blinked, his head turning in place. “How did they do that?”
“You would have to ask them,” The Sage said. “If you can get there, at least. They’re a fairly insular community. Or, you can ask the Foggy Swamp, if you’re ever down there.”
“Thank you,” Zuko gave him a bow and moved toward the shrine.
It was rude to go to a shrine and not meditate, given the care and dedication the sages showed them.
---
“Hey! Wait!” Zuko shouted, running toward the flying bison that was making all due haste from the town. “Hold on! Don’t leave without me!”
But it was useless, the Bison was gone. Zuko caught sight of Sokka and breathed a sigh of relief. “Where’d they go?”
“So, Aang flew off and Katara’s flying after him,” Sokka pointed out. “Some rude fisherman guy accused Aang of abandoning everyone when the war started.”
“Ooh,” Zuko replied, looking up at the sky. He saw dark clouds on the horizon, flying across the sky. “There’s a storm coming.”
“Nah, I think it’s a few days off yet,” Sokka replied with a shrug.
“So if Katara flew off after Aang, what are you doing here?” Zuko asked.
“She left without me!” Sokka whined in anger. “At least I’m not all alone.”
“Oh,” Zuko replied. “I was almost afraid you all left me behind.”
“What? Nah,” Sokka said, shaking his head. “You’re irreplaceable. So, where did you go off too?”
“I found a shrine in the town, asked the Sage a few questions about Waterbending,” Zuko replied. “Turns out, the Moon can teach Waterbending.”
Sokka blinked rapidly in confusion. “How?”
Zuko shrugged.
---
The hours dragged on and like Zuko said, the storm arrived. The sun was blocked out and Zuko felt a chill run across his skin, the same one that happened every time a storm would hit them at sea. He hated it – it just felt unnatural.
To take cover, Zuko and Sokka checked into a hotel room, on Zuko’s leftover gold. They still had plenty left, but Sokka was starting to eye the coin purse with worry. The only thing left to do was either sketch, in Sokka’s case, or meditate, in Zuko’s case.
Outside, the sound of rain pouring on the town and paths filled the room, lightning snapped and cracked
The four candle’s Zuko brought with him sparked with every breath he took, rising and falling in time to the air entering and leaving his lungs.
Something that had always bothered me, Zuko was thinking. Was the question of ‘where did Firebenders learn to bend lighting?’ As far as I know, we don’t have any records of how it was learned and it was only recently rediscovered by my Grandfather. So...who was the first Lightning Bender? Who did he learn from?
Inhale.
But if you don’t need to learn from an animal, but could learn from just anything, what would teach Lightning bending? Zuko asked himself.
His question was answered when a loud crack of thunder threw open the windows of their room, allowing the wind inside to blow his candles out. Sokka startled so bad he drew a massive coal streak across the map of the town he was drawing.
Oh.
Sokka groaned in frustration and grabbed another piece of paper.
Zuko stood up. “I’m going out.”
“What?” Sokka asked. “Where are you going?”
“To test something,” Zuko answered. “Lightning related.”
“Test something?” Sokka asked, squinting in thought. “Wait, you’re going to try learning lightning bending from the storm?”
Zuko nodded.
“Okay, how do you plan on doing that?” Sokka asked critically.
“I’ll figure it out when I get there,” Zuko replied.
“But...you...” Sokka groaned in irritation. “I can’t stop you, can I?”
“No.”
“Alright, well,” Sokka started with a glare. “Don’t get yourself killed out there.”
“Thanks,” Zuko replied, walking out, down the steps and stopping right before he got to the rain.
It’s just a little rain, Zuko thought, walking out into the store. Immediately, he was soaked through with rain and it only got worse as he walked out of the harbor town and into woods past it. He crested a hill and looked up at the storm clouds, instinctively squinting to protect his eyes from the falling raindrops.
...I have no idea what I’m doing, Zuko realized with a shake of his head. How do you learn from an inanimate object?
He sat into a lotus position and tried to meditate. Tried. But from the rain soaking through his clothes to the sounds of thunder, so close he could taste the electricity, he couldn’t clear his head. With a grunt of anger, he stood back up.
Uncle used to say that bending was a spiritual connection to the elements, Zuko thought in annoyance, staring out across the town to the ocean. And Waterbending is, essentially, becoming one with the current and redirecting it. So...how do I get spiritually connected to the storm and then learn how to...redirect...it.
Zuko blinked, then slapped his forehead with a dripping wet palm. I need to get struck. I’ll finally be able to practice Lightning redirection, too. But how to actually get struck?
He couldn’t simply shout at it, the clouds were inanimate; they didn’t care in the slightest what the people beneath them said, as they were always louder. The prince went over what he knew about lightning, how in order to bend you, you needed to separate your chi into yin and yang and then join them back together to create the strike.
Natural lightning has to be the same way, Zuko thought. He started to bend a bolt of his own lightning and sent it up to the heavens. But something felt odd. He did it again and felt it; in the area around him was a high concentration of yin energy. Comparatively, there was an almost complete absence of yang. When he separated his yang energy and brought it out, he could feel the energy around him was being drawn to him, stopping when he sent the bolt up into the sky.
Zuko blinked. When you were bending lightning, you were separating then rejoining Yin and Yang to create a bolt of lightning. But the ground where lightning was striking was almost entirely Yin. Which meant...
“Yin,” Zuko said, pointing to the ground. Then he pointed to the sky. “Yang.”
He put his index fingers together, his hands vertical. “Lightning.”
So he began again. He seperated his chi into Yin and Yang with his motion, but he kept the Yang inside, allowing the Yin to join with the rest of the chi that suffused the hill he was standing on. It almost felt like he was being smothered by it.
Then it happened.
Like a spear of divine retribution, lightning came down from the heavens and struck Zuko. It was fire, it was freedom, it was the most exhilarating thing that he had ever felt in his entire life. First, it hit his finger, then he directed it down to his stomach, then out the other hand, just as his Uncle had instructed him all those months ago.
Zuko was breathing heavily, his exhales coming out as uneasy laughs as he processed what just happened. There was no Yin energy on the hill, now. Only a slight excess of Yang. Up above, the clouds were striking themselves with forked electricity. So, he tried again, first using Yin. But that didn’t work, so he swapped to Yang and was struck again.
His breathy, short laughs became fuller, and more manic as he was hit with another feeling of raw exhilaration. His legs gave way and he collapsed. As he rolled onto his back, the only thing he could do to the rain coming down upon him was laugh.
Because even as his body sang with the power he had just tasted, he realized that he had received two, very short but very complete lessons from lightning itself.
The first was that lightning was a current. Just like water. It was energy flowing from one place to another, searching for itself. While water was always flowing one direction, downward to more water, lightning was searching for the energy needed to correct it’s imbalances. Both took the path of least resistance simply because that’s the direction the current went. That was why lightning looked like it was a jagged spear or it was forking. It was jagged because that was the path it needed to take to find it’s opposing energy was jagged. It was forking because it was finding little bits of the opposing energy it needed outside of the main bolt.
The second lesson was that in order to master lightning, he would need to master the current. He could not control lightning, he could only guide it, as his Uncle said. But guiding it meant controlling the current. That’s why he was able to learn lightning redirection from Waterbender’s; manipulating the current was their bending art’s sole focus.
“Zuko!”
The prince found himself surprised when Katara was immediately kneeling over him, followed swiftly by Sokka and Aang. All of them looked gravely worried, as if they were watching someone die for the first time.
“We need to get him inside!” Sokka shouted over the din of the rain.
Zuko found himself unable to stop his smile when he heard the sound of thunder in the distance. He knew he couldn’t redirect another bolt of lightning, but he really, really wanted too.
“I’ll start working on his arms and legs,” Katara said, bending rain out of the air to rejuvenate Zuko’s arms.
“Appa, come over here buddy, we need you!” Aang shouted, running off somewhere where Zuko couldn’t see.
After Appa lumbered closer, Katara had finished with his legs and the two siblings pulled Zuko up to his feet as the world around the prince slowly faded to black.
---
Zuko awoke and with some annoyance, he noted that his throat was very, very sore. Well, that’s what he got for spending several hours out in a rainstorm. But it was worth it, what he learned was invaluable.
Master current, master lightning.
The door to his room opened and Katara entered, carrying a steaming tea pot.
Zuko couldn’t quite form words, so he just grunted and tried to sit up.
“Don’t try to get up,” Katara said, quickly taking a seat next to his bed. “Here drink this.”
Zuko was no stranger to medicinal teas. His Uncle had made many over the course of his exile and like a dutiful nephew, he had drank them all. Most of them even helped. The one Katara made was very mild, but it opened his throat up enough for him to talk.
“Thanks,” Zuko croaked out.
“Don’t mention it,” Katara said with a frown. “What were you thinking?”
“Did Sokka tell you what I learned yesterday?” Zuko asked, promptly devolving into a coughing fit.
When he was done, Katara poured more tea into his mouth. “No, actually. He just told us that you had been out in the storm for hours when Aang and I finally got back.”
“Well,” Zuko started. “Apparently, Waterbending isn’t just powered by the Moon. The Moon taught the Northern Water Tribe how to bend.”
Katara blinked. “How?”
“I guess they just watched how the Moon moved the water and emulated it,” Zuko shrugged. “Or something. But I wanted to try it myself and it seemed that Waterbending applied the most to Lightning so...”
“You tried to learn Lightning bending from the storm,” Katara blinked. “Or water, or...that’s not the point. The point is we watched you get struck by lightning, throw it back into the sky, and then fall to the ground!”
“You saw that?” Zuko asked. “That was the second time I got struck.”
“The second time?” Katara retorted incredulously. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was!”
“Yeah,” Zuko croaked out.
“Promise me you won’t do that again.”
“No.”
“Zuko!” Katara snapped. “You’re Aang’s firebending instructor! If you die doing that, Aang might not ever find someone to replace you! You can’t take pointless risks like that!”
“I needed to practice Lightning redirection,” Zuko replied.
“Why?” Katara asked. “When will that ever actually be needed?”
“My father bends lightning,” Zuko pointed out idly. “Aang might want to know how to beat the technique.”
Katara fell quiet, pursing her lips in anger as she continued to feed Zuko tea, freeing his throat up more with every mouthful. At the end, with the pot empty, Zuko was able to sit up. Katara picked up the pot and stood to leave.
At the entrance, Katara paused. “Zuko, I just don’t want to see you get hurt. You’re a part of our family now and we’re all glad we met you. So...just keep that in mind, alright?”
She left the room and Zuko was able to take a breath.
Katara has a point, Zuko thought with a sigh. I want the Fire Nation to take a dive, I can’t just go doing dangerous things just because I feel like it.
---
Author’s Note: Not really a whole lot to say about this chapter. Sadly, I've only got one more in the pipe after this, burning out before I even got to the North Pole. Really sad, but I intend to see my projects through. I hope you guys are enjoying it...I know some of you are, but there's a bug on FFnet where most of my readers are that left me unable to read the reviews on my latest chapters.
Perhaps that's for the best. Still...it'd be nice to make sure you guys are suitably entertained.
Shout out goes out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran and Russel Beatrous. Your contributions continue to make this possible! Thank you!
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
Super awesome update. Love the lightning bending and the revelation around it. Cant wait to see the discussions between Zuko and Sifu Paku at the North pole.
Fulcon
Well-known member
Frozen Frogs
Fulcon
Well-known member
The following is a fanbased work of fiction. Avatar the Last Airbender is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koniezko. Please support the official release.
---
Zhao held the letter in his hands, a grin painting itself across his face until it morphed into a full-on smile, as he read the contents, Colonel Shinu reading over his shoulder.
“It appears that I have been promoted to Admiral,” Zhao said, turning to the colonel while wearing his grin. “My request is now an order.”
Shinu bowed.
Finally.
Zhao had been waiting for his promotion for months and now he had everything he needed to start pulling everything he could for his passion project, the one that got him promoted to the post of Admiral in the first place, in addition to all his loyal and competent service: The Invasion of the North Pole.
Zhao the Moonslayer. He could already see it now. The parades in his honor and for the honor of the men in his command. The Northern Water Tribe subjugated and beaten, their foul waterbenders in chains.
But still, he had two very important tasks to take care of before the Invasion could truly be considered foolproof.
The first, the capture of the Avatar and execution of his two friends.
The second, the safe return of the exiled Prince Zuko before he was delivered to the Northern savages or the Earth Kingdom.
Plus, if the Prince Zuko, now by all reports a calm, collected and spirits preserve them, dignified Prince of the Fire Nation caught the Avatar thanks to Zhao’s efforts, the future Firelord would be in his debt.
If he were still that mouthy, cowardly child who earned the scar over his eye, Zhao wouldn’t even consider helping him. The Firelord would have Zuko assassinated before he could take the throne because of the danger his rule would present to the Nation and possibly himself because they would apparently be ‘close allies’.
“From the most recent reports, the Avatar was seen traveling in this area,” Zhao said. “I want the Archers to go hunting.”
It was time to capture this giant spanner in the works of his plan.
---
“He’s got a raging fever,” Katara said, holding the back of her hand against Sokka’s forehead. “The tea hasn’t worked, so he’ll need something stronger.”
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, bend the sickness out of him?” Aang asked with worry.
“I can try,” Katara said, bending water out of her water skin and slipping it into Sokka’s sleeping bag. Her face screwed together in concentration for a moment, before she gave up with a sigh. “It’s no good. It’s like his chi has been infected and I don’t know how to clean it.”
She replaced the water and Sokka started coughing in his sleep.
“Well, at least he’s not muttering about how Appa can talk,” Zuko said with a bemused smirk.
“Hey, Sokka’s really sick so can you lay off the jokes?” Katara snapped.
Zuko just shrugged, and said nothing further.
“If we could get-” Katara began, only to be cut off by a coughing fit.
“You okay?” Aang asked, now very concerned.
“It’s just a little cough,” Katara replied with a fake cheer. “Nothing to worry about.”
The two healthy members of their party were unconvinced.
“There’s an herbalist institute not far from here,” Aang said, extending his gliders wings. “At least, there was one a hundred years ago. If it’s still there, they’ll know how to treat you both. Zuko, could you look after them?”
“Sure,” Zuko replied as Aang flew off. “Not like I can do anything else.”
He looked up then sighed and started muttering to himself. “Alright, Zuko. Lets get some more tea going...going to need some more water...”
He grabbed the water skin that had been left on the stone floor of the ruins and turned to Katara. “Hey, I’m off to get more water. Try to take it easy, alright?”
“Alright,” Katara nodded, coughing some more. She slid, slowly and carefully into her sleeping bag. “We’ll be here.”
Zuko was pretty disappointed. The ruins of Taku were always a great place to sight see; the old city had once been a vibrant city of commerce, transporting cargo trading, people going in and out on their ways out, before the Fire Nation had ransacked the city. The history of this place was thick enough to taste...and the two siblings had to spend the trip sick.
He had been here once before, so he knew that there was a stream that ran through the town where he could refill the skin. As he left their campsite, Momo hopped on Zuko’s shoulder to accompany him, making the Prince pause for a moment before he continued on.
---
“But I need it now!” Aang shouted in exasperation.
“Ah ah, patience young man,” The elderly herbalist lightly tapped the Avatar’s nose with a small, wooden spoon. “Your friends will be fine and these things take time. Now, as I was saying...”
---
“Thank you,” Katara croaked out as Zuko tipped the tea into her mouth.
“Don’t mention it,” Zuko replied. “I owe you one, remember?”
“No, you don’t,” Katara rebutted weakly. “We’re supposed to look out for each other.”
He just hummed in response, taking a seat by the fire and started to meditate, causing it to rise and fall in time with his breathing.
“Zuko?” Katara started. “I’m sorry Roku threatened you.”
“What do you mean?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“When we first met,” Katara clarified, starting to cough. “You didn’t want to join the group and then Roku showed up and threatened doom and...”
She devolved into a full on coughing fit and Zuko set the pot of water on the rack above the fire. “It’s fine, Katara.”
“No it’s-” Katara coughed again. “Not.”
“Look, Roku threatening me wasn’t the reason I joined you guys,” Zuko replied with an annoyed grunt.
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Then why did you join us?” Katara asked.
Zuko stoked the fire a moment, thinking. “Because I saw a way out.”
“Of the Fire Nation?” Katara asked.
Zuko hummed before responding. “Yes...and no.”
Katara grunted in confusion.
“When we met, I was stuck,” Zuko continued. “I was floating without a real purpose or any way forward. It’s why I lost my bending. I wanted to keep exploring the world, but news of the Avatar’s return made that difficult, because the crew of my ship took the news of the Avatar’s return as a sign that they might be able to return home. To finally finish their mission, go back to the Fire Nation as heroes. But I wanted nothing to do with it.”
Katara blinked, but was listening.
“I wanted to see the world, keep learning about bending...but beyond that, I didn’t know what I wanted.” Zuko poured some more tea and moved over to Katara and feed her some more. “I knew I wanted the Fire Nation to lose, but I didn’t want everyone to know I was a traitor. I didn’t want to be tied to my crew anymore, but I didn’t want to lose my Father’s coin.”
Zuko took the cup back and made sure she got it down. “But then I met you and you, well, gave me the ability to move on. You gave me the ability to see the world without my Father’s coin and the ability to learn the other Bending arts. All at the cost of faking my death.”
“I’m sorry,” Katara croaked out.
Zuko shook his head. “I didn’t ever want to go back anyway.”
“But you didn’t want your Mom to know,” Katara coughed out. “Right?”
“Right,” Zuko replied with a nod.
It was at this point that Katara fell asleep, her eyes falling closed as the conversation had taken its toll on her. Zuko looked down and shook his head.
“But now I’m wondering which one is worse...”
---
“What happens when they thaw?”
“They’re useless!”
---
With both Sokka and Katara asleep, Zuko had decided to practice his water forms. With the campfire lit and licking the teapot suspended over the campfire with heat and smoke, Zuko took the flames and bent them in rings around his shoulders, flipping it around his arms and between his legs in one smooth motion.
But he wasn’t just practicing just for a sake of it, he needed to understand something.
When you performed Waterbending, you were joining the flow of water and redirecting it. It ‘obeyed’ you and went where you wanted it too because that’s where the current was flowing and for all intents and purposes it was going over there anyway, and there just happened to be in your best interests.
If this idea of ‘current’ could be applied to fire and lightning, what else could it affect? Could it affect the way a person’s life turned out? Could it change the outcome of a series of events? Could this finally be the thing that gave Zuko control over his own destiny?
Destiny.
That old albatross around his neck, the manacle he couldn’t dislodge, his Uncle’s favorite word as of late. Zuko honestly couldn’t think of a worse pestilence of filth and disease hanging over his head than the thing that ruled his every move. Even Avatar Roku had claimed destiny when he told Zuko to join Aang.
Or at least very close too it.
It aggravated him, now that he was thinking about it, but getting angry could wait.
If destiny was a current, if life was a current, it had an ending. A river or an ocean or a puddle that it would flow into. A conclusion that happened at the end as a result of the actions that he had taken or been forced into. So what was the end of this road Zuko was on?
He would go on adventures with the Avatar, meeting members of the Northern Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom. He’d go on making friends, possibly close friendships with members of each group and teach Aang Firebending when he was ready. Then, when Aang had defeated his father, there would need to be a new Firelord. A Firelord who desired peace, who had diplomatic connections to the other nations and could be trusted on both sides of the negotiation.
That person would be Zuko.
His Uncle even said it was his destiny to become Firelord.
Zuko took a deep breath, the fire circling his body flaring out in strength and power.
Now that he saw where the current led, he needed to know how to change it. Of course, the way to do that was obvious.
He had to separate from the Avatar.
Zuko fed the fire back into the flame pit and pulled out another stream.
But the problem was that he wanted to teach the Avatar Firebending. He did. Aang seemed like an eager student with a lot of potential and if anything, the Avatar was the perfect person to see if anything he was learning about bending actually held water. Eventually, Aang would be teaching him Water or at least Earthbending.
What he wanted now versus what he wanted in the future.
The same dilemma he was in when he met Aang.
He now had the drive but not the means to accomplish all of his goals and it was maddening.
Besides, if he left now and the Fire Nation came to their campsite with Sokka and Katara too sick to do anything, he would be kicking himself until the end of time.
So he’d bide his time until the opportunity came to change the current came along. Besides, he needed to get good at changing currents first and he’d hate to mess this up.
---
Aang hated being jailed.
He couldn’t tell what was worse, being contained in a box or having all of his limbs chained to posts so he couldn’t bend.
The door in front of him opened and in entered a Fire nation guy, with sideburns so thick he wondered if they could be considered tiny jungles growing on the sides of his face.
“Well, well. The Avatar,” Sideburns said, glaring down at him. “When I sent the Yuyan Archer’s out to hunt for you, I didn’t think they’d just magic you out of a hat.”
“I guess they’re just that good,” Aang snipped, glaring up at him. “Who are you, anyway?”
“My name is Admiral Zhao. And while I’d love to sit here and bicker with a child all night, I have important things to do. Where is Prince Zuko?”
“Oh, uh,” Aang started, looking around the room while he tried desperately to recall what they did. “Didn’t he die in the, uh, explosion?”
Zhao smirked. “I’m afraid your trick with the Dragonlily juice failed. I know you kidnapped him. Now answer the question, Avatar. Where is he?”
Aang’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know!”
“You don’t know,” Zhao repeated, decidedly unimpressed. “Why not?”
“Because,” Aang began. “We dropped him off with the Earth Kingdom after we left the pier. I don’t know where he is! You’ll never find him!”
Zhao’s eyebrow raised in irritation. “Is that so?”
“Yeah!”
“When did you drop him off?” Zhao asked.
“Uh,” Aang stopped. “I don’t remember?”
“Perhaps we can jog your memory?” Zhao said, frowning deeply and glaring dangerously down at the twelve year old.
Whatever the Admiral had in mind was stopped dead in its tracks when a frog hopped out from the inside of Aang’s collar. Then another. And another. “What? No, no! Please! Go back to being frozen!”
Zhao blinked, looking at the frog and then at Aang.
“What are the frogs for?”
“My friends are sick!” Aang started to plead. “Please, they’ll die if they don’t suck on those frogs!”
Admiral Zhao had used stranger remedies. “Is that so? Well, I’ll offer you a deal, Avatar. You tell me where Prince Zuko is, or give me every possible detail you can remember to lead to his safe retrieval as well as the location of your camp, and I’ll send a detachment of troops out to retrieve some frogs for them. They’ll even deliver.”
“But-” Aang started.
“I wouldn’t take too long to decide,” Admiral Zhao said over his shoulder. “I imagine those frogs won’t be frozen during daylight and as you so poignantly pointed out, your friends don’t have much time.”
The Cell door shut behind Zhao and Aang was left to his thoughts.
He hated being locked up.
Aang tried to meditate, but the sound of the croaking frogs only drove the message that he needed to escape into his skull, forcing him out of his trance each time he tried. A frog leaped out of his collar, another out of his sleeve.
“Wait! No! Stop!” Aang pleaded with the amphibians as they jumped around the cell, croaking and dragging their frozen arms and legs on the ground. “Go back to being frozen! My friends need you!”
This continued until Aang had no more frogs.
He couldn’t just tell the Fire Nation where Sokka and Katara were. If Zuko didn’t fight them off, he’d just get captured.
The boy monk froze in his binds.
Katara is going to die.
Then the Avatar’s cell filled with light.
---
It had happened so quickly.
First, the explosion. Cries of panic and war as the garrison rallied to contain the threat.
Then, the hurricane winds billowing through the fort, blowing dust and dirt in cyclones, ripping the Fort apart like knives were cutting through the air. A tidal wave broke through the southern wall and in the center of the chaos floated the Avatar.
His tattoos glowing with spiritual energy. His clothes whipping and snapping in the wind. His twelve year old face twisted to show wrath that was older than time itself.
Just as quickly as it started, it ended.
Fort Pouhai was in ruins. The walls were completely destroyed and the main tower with them.
At his feet, the wooden ruins of the fort where strewn about to the treeline. With a roar of anger, the debris was set ablaze. With a roar of rage and frustration, the flames became an inferno.
Zhao felt like he should have seen this coming. He had seen it before, after all; at the Fire Temple on Winter Solstice. He had assumed that invoking the power of past Avatars was a one time thing, something he could only do at places of high spiritual power.
But of course it stood to reason that the Avatar had a defense mechanism. The cycle would’ve been broken long before Firelord Sozin was even a thought if it hadn’t.
Zhao allowed the flames to die down, even as his fists were still trembling with rage.
He should have seen this coming.
What use did a force of nature have for bargains?
This was his fault.
At that moment, the Admiral vowed that he would not make this mistake again.
He turned on his heel and came face to face with Colonel Shinu. “Start looking for survivors! I want the wounded to get treatment immediately!”
---
“Zuko!” Aang shook his instructor awake.
Zuko was awake immediately. “Aang? About time! What took so long?”
“I got captured,” Aang said quickly. “But listen, they know you’re not dead.”
“Wait, what?” Zuko asked, alarmed. “How?”
“The Admiral there, Zhao,” Aang spoke quickly. “He saw through the dragon-lily juice.”
Zuko blinked. “Zhao’s an admiral?”
Aang nodded.
“Okay then,” Zuko said with some dismay. “So the Fire Nation knows I turned traitor after all. That...isn’t good.”
“Well, not exactly,” Aang replied. “They think we kidnapped you.”
Zuko froze, then busted out laughing. “Oh wow...well, it’s better than nothing.”
He looked up from his impromptu resting spot against Appa and saw Sokka and Katara...with something in their mouths. “What are they sucking on?”
“Frogs!” Aang said cheerfully.
Zuko had used stranger remedies. “Well, they’re going to be in for a shock when they finally wake up...”
---
Author’s Note: This takes place in the same timeline as The Blue Spirit in canon. In this case, Zuko actually didn’t have his blue spirit gear, having left it with his Uncle in the Pier. Actually, we haven’t seen Iroh in a while. Hm.
Also, this is the last chapter in the backlog. A while ago, I was inspired to actually write this story by another fic that had Aang be captured and then have Zuko's infiltration gambit work, bringing Aang to the firelord. I thought 'oh, this is cool but...wouldn't the Avatar State have gotten him out of jail?' so...here we are. Where the Avatar State got him out of jail. Updates are going to be sparse from now on, or at least as often as I can get out.
Shout out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran, Russel Beatrous and Richard Whereat. Thank you for your continued support.
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
---
Zhao held the letter in his hands, a grin painting itself across his face until it morphed into a full-on smile, as he read the contents, Colonel Shinu reading over his shoulder.
“It appears that I have been promoted to Admiral,” Zhao said, turning to the colonel while wearing his grin. “My request is now an order.”
Shinu bowed.
Finally.
Zhao had been waiting for his promotion for months and now he had everything he needed to start pulling everything he could for his passion project, the one that got him promoted to the post of Admiral in the first place, in addition to all his loyal and competent service: The Invasion of the North Pole.
Zhao the Moonslayer. He could already see it now. The parades in his honor and for the honor of the men in his command. The Northern Water Tribe subjugated and beaten, their foul waterbenders in chains.
But still, he had two very important tasks to take care of before the Invasion could truly be considered foolproof.
The first, the capture of the Avatar and execution of his two friends.
The second, the safe return of the exiled Prince Zuko before he was delivered to the Northern savages or the Earth Kingdom.
Plus, if the Prince Zuko, now by all reports a calm, collected and spirits preserve them, dignified Prince of the Fire Nation caught the Avatar thanks to Zhao’s efforts, the future Firelord would be in his debt.
If he were still that mouthy, cowardly child who earned the scar over his eye, Zhao wouldn’t even consider helping him. The Firelord would have Zuko assassinated before he could take the throne because of the danger his rule would present to the Nation and possibly himself because they would apparently be ‘close allies’.
“From the most recent reports, the Avatar was seen traveling in this area,” Zhao said. “I want the Archers to go hunting.”
It was time to capture this giant spanner in the works of his plan.
---
“He’s got a raging fever,” Katara said, holding the back of her hand against Sokka’s forehead. “The tea hasn’t worked, so he’ll need something stronger.”
“Can’t you just, I don’t know, bend the sickness out of him?” Aang asked with worry.
“I can try,” Katara said, bending water out of her water skin and slipping it into Sokka’s sleeping bag. Her face screwed together in concentration for a moment, before she gave up with a sigh. “It’s no good. It’s like his chi has been infected and I don’t know how to clean it.”
She replaced the water and Sokka started coughing in his sleep.
“Well, at least he’s not muttering about how Appa can talk,” Zuko said with a bemused smirk.
“Hey, Sokka’s really sick so can you lay off the jokes?” Katara snapped.
Zuko just shrugged, and said nothing further.
“If we could get-” Katara began, only to be cut off by a coughing fit.
“You okay?” Aang asked, now very concerned.
“It’s just a little cough,” Katara replied with a fake cheer. “Nothing to worry about.”
The two healthy members of their party were unconvinced.
“There’s an herbalist institute not far from here,” Aang said, extending his gliders wings. “At least, there was one a hundred years ago. If it’s still there, they’ll know how to treat you both. Zuko, could you look after them?”
“Sure,” Zuko replied as Aang flew off. “Not like I can do anything else.”
He looked up then sighed and started muttering to himself. “Alright, Zuko. Lets get some more tea going...going to need some more water...”
He grabbed the water skin that had been left on the stone floor of the ruins and turned to Katara. “Hey, I’m off to get more water. Try to take it easy, alright?”
“Alright,” Katara nodded, coughing some more. She slid, slowly and carefully into her sleeping bag. “We’ll be here.”
Zuko was pretty disappointed. The ruins of Taku were always a great place to sight see; the old city had once been a vibrant city of commerce, transporting cargo trading, people going in and out on their ways out, before the Fire Nation had ransacked the city. The history of this place was thick enough to taste...and the two siblings had to spend the trip sick.
He had been here once before, so he knew that there was a stream that ran through the town where he could refill the skin. As he left their campsite, Momo hopped on Zuko’s shoulder to accompany him, making the Prince pause for a moment before he continued on.
---
“But I need it now!” Aang shouted in exasperation.
“Ah ah, patience young man,” The elderly herbalist lightly tapped the Avatar’s nose with a small, wooden spoon. “Your friends will be fine and these things take time. Now, as I was saying...”
---
“Thank you,” Katara croaked out as Zuko tipped the tea into her mouth.
“Don’t mention it,” Zuko replied. “I owe you one, remember?”
“No, you don’t,” Katara rebutted weakly. “We’re supposed to look out for each other.”
He just hummed in response, taking a seat by the fire and started to meditate, causing it to rise and fall in time with his breathing.
“Zuko?” Katara started. “I’m sorry Roku threatened you.”
“What do you mean?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“When we first met,” Katara clarified, starting to cough. “You didn’t want to join the group and then Roku showed up and threatened doom and...”
She devolved into a full on coughing fit and Zuko set the pot of water on the rack above the fire. “It’s fine, Katara.”
“No it’s-” Katara coughed again. “Not.”
“Look, Roku threatening me wasn’t the reason I joined you guys,” Zuko replied with an annoyed grunt.
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Then why did you join us?” Katara asked.
Zuko stoked the fire a moment, thinking. “Because I saw a way out.”
“Of the Fire Nation?” Katara asked.
Zuko hummed before responding. “Yes...and no.”
Katara grunted in confusion.
“When we met, I was stuck,” Zuko continued. “I was floating without a real purpose or any way forward. It’s why I lost my bending. I wanted to keep exploring the world, but news of the Avatar’s return made that difficult, because the crew of my ship took the news of the Avatar’s return as a sign that they might be able to return home. To finally finish their mission, go back to the Fire Nation as heroes. But I wanted nothing to do with it.”
Katara blinked, but was listening.
“I wanted to see the world, keep learning about bending...but beyond that, I didn’t know what I wanted.” Zuko poured some more tea and moved over to Katara and feed her some more. “I knew I wanted the Fire Nation to lose, but I didn’t want everyone to know I was a traitor. I didn’t want to be tied to my crew anymore, but I didn’t want to lose my Father’s coin.”
Zuko took the cup back and made sure she got it down. “But then I met you and you, well, gave me the ability to move on. You gave me the ability to see the world without my Father’s coin and the ability to learn the other Bending arts. All at the cost of faking my death.”
“I’m sorry,” Katara croaked out.
Zuko shook his head. “I didn’t ever want to go back anyway.”
“But you didn’t want your Mom to know,” Katara coughed out. “Right?”
“Right,” Zuko replied with a nod.
It was at this point that Katara fell asleep, her eyes falling closed as the conversation had taken its toll on her. Zuko looked down and shook his head.
“But now I’m wondering which one is worse...”
---
“What happens when they thaw?”
“They’re useless!”
---
With both Sokka and Katara asleep, Zuko had decided to practice his water forms. With the campfire lit and licking the teapot suspended over the campfire with heat and smoke, Zuko took the flames and bent them in rings around his shoulders, flipping it around his arms and between his legs in one smooth motion.
But he wasn’t just practicing just for a sake of it, he needed to understand something.
When you performed Waterbending, you were joining the flow of water and redirecting it. It ‘obeyed’ you and went where you wanted it too because that’s where the current was flowing and for all intents and purposes it was going over there anyway, and there just happened to be in your best interests.
If this idea of ‘current’ could be applied to fire and lightning, what else could it affect? Could it affect the way a person’s life turned out? Could it change the outcome of a series of events? Could this finally be the thing that gave Zuko control over his own destiny?
Destiny.
That old albatross around his neck, the manacle he couldn’t dislodge, his Uncle’s favorite word as of late. Zuko honestly couldn’t think of a worse pestilence of filth and disease hanging over his head than the thing that ruled his every move. Even Avatar Roku had claimed destiny when he told Zuko to join Aang.
Or at least very close too it.
It aggravated him, now that he was thinking about it, but getting angry could wait.
If destiny was a current, if life was a current, it had an ending. A river or an ocean or a puddle that it would flow into. A conclusion that happened at the end as a result of the actions that he had taken or been forced into. So what was the end of this road Zuko was on?
He would go on adventures with the Avatar, meeting members of the Northern Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom. He’d go on making friends, possibly close friendships with members of each group and teach Aang Firebending when he was ready. Then, when Aang had defeated his father, there would need to be a new Firelord. A Firelord who desired peace, who had diplomatic connections to the other nations and could be trusted on both sides of the negotiation.
That person would be Zuko.
His Uncle even said it was his destiny to become Firelord.
Zuko took a deep breath, the fire circling his body flaring out in strength and power.
Now that he saw where the current led, he needed to know how to change it. Of course, the way to do that was obvious.
He had to separate from the Avatar.
Zuko fed the fire back into the flame pit and pulled out another stream.
But the problem was that he wanted to teach the Avatar Firebending. He did. Aang seemed like an eager student with a lot of potential and if anything, the Avatar was the perfect person to see if anything he was learning about bending actually held water. Eventually, Aang would be teaching him Water or at least Earthbending.
What he wanted now versus what he wanted in the future.
The same dilemma he was in when he met Aang.
He now had the drive but not the means to accomplish all of his goals and it was maddening.
Besides, if he left now and the Fire Nation came to their campsite with Sokka and Katara too sick to do anything, he would be kicking himself until the end of time.
So he’d bide his time until the opportunity came to change the current came along. Besides, he needed to get good at changing currents first and he’d hate to mess this up.
---
Aang hated being jailed.
He couldn’t tell what was worse, being contained in a box or having all of his limbs chained to posts so he couldn’t bend.
The door in front of him opened and in entered a Fire nation guy, with sideburns so thick he wondered if they could be considered tiny jungles growing on the sides of his face.
“Well, well. The Avatar,” Sideburns said, glaring down at him. “When I sent the Yuyan Archer’s out to hunt for you, I didn’t think they’d just magic you out of a hat.”
“I guess they’re just that good,” Aang snipped, glaring up at him. “Who are you, anyway?”
“My name is Admiral Zhao. And while I’d love to sit here and bicker with a child all night, I have important things to do. Where is Prince Zuko?”
“Oh, uh,” Aang started, looking around the room while he tried desperately to recall what they did. “Didn’t he die in the, uh, explosion?”
Zhao smirked. “I’m afraid your trick with the Dragonlily juice failed. I know you kidnapped him. Now answer the question, Avatar. Where is he?”
Aang’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know!”
“You don’t know,” Zhao repeated, decidedly unimpressed. “Why not?”
“Because,” Aang began. “We dropped him off with the Earth Kingdom after we left the pier. I don’t know where he is! You’ll never find him!”
Zhao’s eyebrow raised in irritation. “Is that so?”
“Yeah!”
“When did you drop him off?” Zhao asked.
“Uh,” Aang stopped. “I don’t remember?”
“Perhaps we can jog your memory?” Zhao said, frowning deeply and glaring dangerously down at the twelve year old.
Whatever the Admiral had in mind was stopped dead in its tracks when a frog hopped out from the inside of Aang’s collar. Then another. And another. “What? No, no! Please! Go back to being frozen!”
Zhao blinked, looking at the frog and then at Aang.
“What are the frogs for?”
“My friends are sick!” Aang started to plead. “Please, they’ll die if they don’t suck on those frogs!”
Admiral Zhao had used stranger remedies. “Is that so? Well, I’ll offer you a deal, Avatar. You tell me where Prince Zuko is, or give me every possible detail you can remember to lead to his safe retrieval as well as the location of your camp, and I’ll send a detachment of troops out to retrieve some frogs for them. They’ll even deliver.”
“But-” Aang started.
“I wouldn’t take too long to decide,” Admiral Zhao said over his shoulder. “I imagine those frogs won’t be frozen during daylight and as you so poignantly pointed out, your friends don’t have much time.”
The Cell door shut behind Zhao and Aang was left to his thoughts.
He hated being locked up.
Aang tried to meditate, but the sound of the croaking frogs only drove the message that he needed to escape into his skull, forcing him out of his trance each time he tried. A frog leaped out of his collar, another out of his sleeve.
“Wait! No! Stop!” Aang pleaded with the amphibians as they jumped around the cell, croaking and dragging their frozen arms and legs on the ground. “Go back to being frozen! My friends need you!”
This continued until Aang had no more frogs.
He couldn’t just tell the Fire Nation where Sokka and Katara were. If Zuko didn’t fight them off, he’d just get captured.
The boy monk froze in his binds.
Katara is going to die.
Then the Avatar’s cell filled with light.
---
It had happened so quickly.
First, the explosion. Cries of panic and war as the garrison rallied to contain the threat.
Then, the hurricane winds billowing through the fort, blowing dust and dirt in cyclones, ripping the Fort apart like knives were cutting through the air. A tidal wave broke through the southern wall and in the center of the chaos floated the Avatar.
His tattoos glowing with spiritual energy. His clothes whipping and snapping in the wind. His twelve year old face twisted to show wrath that was older than time itself.
Just as quickly as it started, it ended.
Fort Pouhai was in ruins. The walls were completely destroyed and the main tower with them.
At his feet, the wooden ruins of the fort where strewn about to the treeline. With a roar of anger, the debris was set ablaze. With a roar of rage and frustration, the flames became an inferno.
Zhao felt like he should have seen this coming. He had seen it before, after all; at the Fire Temple on Winter Solstice. He had assumed that invoking the power of past Avatars was a one time thing, something he could only do at places of high spiritual power.
But of course it stood to reason that the Avatar had a defense mechanism. The cycle would’ve been broken long before Firelord Sozin was even a thought if it hadn’t.
Zhao allowed the flames to die down, even as his fists were still trembling with rage.
He should have seen this coming.
What use did a force of nature have for bargains?
This was his fault.
At that moment, the Admiral vowed that he would not make this mistake again.
He turned on his heel and came face to face with Colonel Shinu. “Start looking for survivors! I want the wounded to get treatment immediately!”
---
“Zuko!” Aang shook his instructor awake.
Zuko was awake immediately. “Aang? About time! What took so long?”
“I got captured,” Aang said quickly. “But listen, they know you’re not dead.”
“Wait, what?” Zuko asked, alarmed. “How?”
“The Admiral there, Zhao,” Aang spoke quickly. “He saw through the dragon-lily juice.”
Zuko blinked. “Zhao’s an admiral?”
Aang nodded.
“Okay then,” Zuko said with some dismay. “So the Fire Nation knows I turned traitor after all. That...isn’t good.”
“Well, not exactly,” Aang replied. “They think we kidnapped you.”
Zuko froze, then busted out laughing. “Oh wow...well, it’s better than nothing.”
He looked up from his impromptu resting spot against Appa and saw Sokka and Katara...with something in their mouths. “What are they sucking on?”
“Frogs!” Aang said cheerfully.
Zuko had used stranger remedies. “Well, they’re going to be in for a shock when they finally wake up...”
---
Author’s Note: This takes place in the same timeline as The Blue Spirit in canon. In this case, Zuko actually didn’t have his blue spirit gear, having left it with his Uncle in the Pier. Actually, we haven’t seen Iroh in a while. Hm.
Also, this is the last chapter in the backlog. A while ago, I was inspired to actually write this story by another fic that had Aang be captured and then have Zuko's infiltration gambit work, bringing Aang to the firelord. I thought 'oh, this is cool but...wouldn't the Avatar State have gotten him out of jail?' so...here we are. Where the Avatar State got him out of jail. Updates are going to be sparse from now on, or at least as often as I can get out.
Shout out too Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, Seij, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran, Russel Beatrous and Richard Whereat. Thank you for your continued support.
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
Last edited:
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
This is a rather excellent story and I look forward to more. Also why do I get the feeling that Zuko will end up being Firelord if only because people who don't want power are the ones who are best suited for it, and besides who is a better choice to reform the Fire Nation than the man who is disgusted at it's current state. Besides Azula isn't mentally fit for the throne even if she's in a better state than canon
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Mind you we know in canon that he rebelled against his nation and then became firelord and a quite successful one at that considering he's still around by the time of Korra albeit he retired and gave his offspring the job by the time of Korra. Also activate Ruby Rose cookie consumption mode
Fulcon
Well-known member
True, though in canon he never stopped wanting the job, even if it was in the back of his head.
Here's a different story.
Glad to be back at it again.
We've hit the end of the backlog, but I hope to see this fic to completion. So updates will be less regular than they were in the past.
The Fortune Teller
Fulcon
Well-known member
The following is a fanbased work of fiction. Avatar the Last Airbender is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koniezko. Please support the official release.
---
The moon hung over the starry sky like a coin of water tribe silver. Surrounded by a blanket of stars and shadow, she watched over the earth beneath as sentinel, calm and to the great frustration of those below her, silent.
Beneath her, working at the stream and impatiently fuming, was Katara.
“C’mon, Moon! Work with me here!” She shouted, holding her hands up like she were entreating the heavenly body to bestow great wisdom upon her.
Watching her trying to learn on the shore was Aang, who looked concerned, as well as Sokka and Zuko, who were both trying to avoid laughing. Sokka was biting his finger. Zuko was letting little dark clouds out the side of his mouth, like he was smoking a pipe.
Katara stood again, and tried to perform the water whip. The water emerged from the stream and once again, slapped her across the face. “Why are you like this?”
Sokka lost it, braying like a mule and clutching his stomach. Zuko accidentally swallowed the smoke he had been exhaling and dissolved into a coughing fit, but recovered fairly quickly.
“Uh...Katara?” Aang asked. “Are you okay?”
“No! No, I am not okay!” Katara fumed, storming up to the camp from the shore. “I don’t care what that sage said, the Moon is not a teacher!”
“Maybe you’re just a poor student,” Zuko snipped, grinning from ear to ear.
“A poor student?” Katara repeated with all the wrath of an offended goddess. “Now listen here you stupid little fire-flake, how is anyone supposed to learn from a giant, inanimate object flying through the sky that doesn’t talk to anyone?”
“I have no idea,” Zuko answered, still grinning.
“Then how am I a poor student?” Katara demanded, her face scrunched up like Momo’s when Sokka played keep-away with the berries for too long.
“Katara?” Aang tried to butt in, calmly and politely.
“You keep making the water smack you in the face,” Zuko pointed out, trying to avoid laughing again.
“That’s not my fault!” Katara retorted. “I just haven’t even been told how to do the technique properly!”
“Katara?” Aang tried to interject.
“The Avatar’s been showing you how to do it since you met me,” Zuko replied, an arched eyebrow joining his newly subdued grin.
Katara threw her hands up in the air and growled in rage before storming off.
“Katara?” Aang tried a third time.
Katara whirled to face Aang. “WHAT?”
Aang blinked and took a deep breath. “We need to meditate.”
“What good would that do?” Katara barked.
“You can’t receive spiritual instruction when you aren’t centered,” Aang started to stand just a little straighter. “If you’re letting yourself get frustrated and angry, then it becomes really hard to get in tune with the spiritual aspect of bending. So let’s go back down to the river and meditate. Okay?”
Katara let out a petulant breath. “Fine.”
They both walked down to the river bank and Zuko had a thoughtful look on his face.
Sokka looked up at his fire bending compatriot with a curious look on his own face. “Whatcha thinking about?”
“What Aang just said,” Zuko said with a shrug. “About anger getting in the way of the more spiritual side of bending.”
“What about it?” Sokka asked.
“Firebending, for the grand majority of the fire nation now, if fueled by anger,” Zuko explained. “But if anger just gets in the way, then it makes sense why there’s fewer benders in the fire nation.”
“I don’t get it,” Sokka replied, confusion coloring his face.
“Well, bending is inherently spiritual in nature,” Zuko continued. “So if anger just gets in the way of spirituality, and the fire nation is fueled by anger and hate, then there’s less spirituality and then, less benders.”
“But if anger just gets in the way of spiritual mumbo-jumbo,” Sokka pressed, looking annoyed as he tried to figure it out. “How does it fuel fire bending?”
“Well, the pure fuel of fire bending is drive,” Zuko explained. “Anger and hate bring a kind of drive. The drive to hurt someone, see them suffer. But it’s not as good as pure drive.”
“Then why did it take over as the fire nation’s bending fuel?” Sokka asked.
“Because a spiritually aware fire nation isn’t a fire nation that would fight a war against the whole world,” Zuko replied. “Which adds yet another reason to see Sozin’s war burn.”
“Did you need another?” Sokka asked with a smirk.
“Well, you can’t really have too many, can you?”
“Point.”
Down by the river, Aang and Katara were sitting on their knees in the soft sand.
“Deep breath in, deep breath out,” Aang said. “Just let your mind empty. Everything is okay. Feel the air around you. Hear the river course along. Just take a deep breath. Let the mind empty like a pitcher of water.”
Katara took a breath.
Then exhaled.
She took another breath.
Then exhaled.
Yet another breath.
Her snarl of frustration startled Aang.
“Just forget it,” Katara said, standing up and walking back toward the camp. “It’s not working, I’m not getting anything.”
“Katara,” Aang entreated.
“I said forget it!”
Zuko blinked in annoyance, but figured it was useless to try to talk to her right now.
“A fortune teller?” Aang asked, sounding kind of excited.
The group was gathered over Aang’s map, with Zuko’s additions added in charcoal marks.
“Yeah,” Zuko replied. “I thought about seeing her when I was feeling desperate.”
“Why didn’t you go see her at all?” Aang asked curiously.
“Because I had eyes, ears and a brain,” Zuko replied, deadpan.
“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Sokka said, animatedly gesturing toward the map. “It’s a load of platypus bear droppings. You can’t possibly predict the future.”
“I think it sounds fun,” Katara said, looking like she was feeling better since last night. “Let’s go, get our future read and see if any of her predictions come true!”
“Anything she gets right would just be a lucky guess,” Sokka argued. “Seriously, you can’t predict the future. That whole thing is just dumb.”
“Well, if people than bend the elements through spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Zuko began, echoing the water tribal’s words right back at him. “Then telling the future can’t be that far fetched.”
“Everything can be explained through rational and intelligent observation,” Sokka argued.
“And fortune telling,” Katara snipped with a smug grin.
“Hey, no! No!” Sokka snapped in annoyance. “All fortune telling is just a bunch of generalized predictions couched in vague suggestions and sometimes fancy pyrotechnics.”
“Sokka, is there a reason a fortune teller makes you this upset?” Zuko asked curiously.
“They're frauds!” Sokka snapped with a huff.
“I heard Old Man Jarko played a prank on him and some of the other kids by pretending to be an evil spirit that would roam through the village at night,” Katara explained. “He had them going for a whole week before our dad stepped in and put a stop to it. Since then, he’s never believed a word about spirit stuff.”
“Hey, he didn’t fool me,” Sokka denied with all the passion he could muster without screaming. “I knew it couldn’t have been an evil spirit because I kept calm and examined the facts. Everything can be explained by scientific examination. Including bending.”
“That scientific examination points to spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Aang said with a bright, mischievous smile.
Sokka groaned, getting right up in Aang’s face and tapping his chest with a finger. “You are not helping.”
“Besides, if it’s all fake, then what can it hurt?” Zuko asked, shrugging. “We can all use a good laugh.”
Sokka sighed in defeat. “Fine!”
The fortune teller was an old lady, called by the name of Aunt Wu. Uncle Iroh would’ve liked her, she was old and full of wisdom that she preferred to cloak behind a veil of mystery and mysticism. And, if he understood correctly, she had a reliable way of predicting the weather by watching the clouds.
Zuko was the last of the group to go see her. Aang had apparently gone to eavesdrop on Katara’s meeting and came back looking smug and triumphant, but wouldn’t say why. Sokka’s reading had taken place at their first meeting, and to Zuko’s delight, she had said that Sokka was someone heading for disaster, and it would be all his fault.
Zuko adjusted his seat in the dark room, the only light being the fire directly in the center.
“We cast the bone into the fire and watch the cracks,” Aunt Wu explained, holding a femur. “Those will tell us how things are going to turn out.”
“Go ahead,” Zuko said with a nod. He had no idea how that would actually work, but there were a lot of things that Zuko didn’t understand how they worked. Metallurgy, Tai Lee, the machinations of the royal court; but he didn’t need to understand them to accept that they existed.
Aunt Wu did so. Zuko watched closely as the bone started to crack down the middle, forking to two separate paths.
He could guess what those paths were. He sighed at the triteness of it all.
“You have a very set and defined road ahead of you,” Aunt Wu said. “Interestingly, both paths lead to royalty and family. See the crown at the end of both of them? Combined with the tree crack.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Zuko replied diplomatically.
Aunt Wu hummed. “Well, the first path you are already on, because it’s crack starts before the other. It’s a good one, relatively straight forward. You are traveling with the Avatar, but the alternative path will open it’s doors to you soon. It is marked, if I’m reading this right, by betrayal.”
“Why would I betray the Avatar?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“Given how thin the crack is, I don’t think it’s likely, but the start of the break has the Family Tree,” Aunt Wu said, pointing at the crack. “So, if you do decide down that path, then it will be due to family.”
Zuko rolled his eyes. “But both paths lead to Royalty?”
“They do,” Aunt Wu said. “You don’t don’t sound surprised.”
“I don’t want the crown,” Zuko replied. “I don’t want the crown. Or my family, even. Is there a way to change fate?”
Aunt Wu hummed. “Many in my profession would insist that there is no way to change your fate. But they would be lying. Fate can be changed. But it is a difficult thing, simply because so many forces are hurrying you along this path.”
“Like swimming against the current,” Zuko said, his frown deepening.
“A good metaphor,” Aunt Wu replied with a nod of approval. “Young man, fate is what we make of it. It is the long term consequences of our actions and behavior over a long period of time. Right now, your actions and behavior are setting you on this path. The reason fortune telling works, to a point, is because people don’t usually change.”
“You sure?” Zuko asked flatly.
“Don’t sass me, young man,” Aunt Wu replied, a smirk betraying her wry amusement. “A person may grow, their old wounds may heal and they might transcend their weaknesses, but their fundamental character remains the same. They are who they are.”
“So if someone changes, they didn’t really change,” Zuko said, reflectively staring into the fire. “They just grew.”
“Exactly,” Aunt Wu’s smirk grew to a smile. “A cunning gardener who cares for a tree may want their tree to grow a specific way and they be able to carry out their vision; but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot ignore the roots, or how the tree has already grown.”
“So I’m doomed,” Zuko said, glaring at the bone. “At least, that’s what the bone says.”
“No, no, no,” Aunt Wu shook her head. “Have you not been listening? Changing fate is possible. You just need to take charge of how you grow.”
Zuko’s glare toward the bone intensified.
Aunt Wu hummed in thought. “What does a Gardner do with a tree with branches that are growing out of line?”
Zuko shrugged, having not even the slightest idea.
“They prune them,” Aunt Wu replied. “By pruning branches that have grown out of line, the tree flourishes because it is able to put its energies into the growth of the trunk.”
“What if the trunk is the thing I don’t want to grow?” Zuko asked.
“A crown is not a trunk,” Aunt Wu replied, waving that off without so much as a pause for consideration. “It’s only a station. A profession. Something that you may be well suited for, a place where you may spare the world a great deal of pain and devastation, but merely a station. The thing about stations is that there are always multiple candidates for the position.”
Like Uncle Iroh, Zuko thought with a smirk. Then a thought occurred to him. “Do you know which crown we’re talking about?”
“From the scar, I guessed,” Aunt Wu said. “But don’t worry, young man. Your secret’s safe with me.”
Zuko just shrugged, and glowered down at the burning bone. “It’s just a scar.”
“Indeed,” Aunt Wu agreed.
“So...Zuko?” Aang began. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“No, I’m not going to show you how to make sparks by snapping your fingers,” Zuko droned with a thoroughly bored look at his bald pupil.
“No, no, no!” Aang rapidly shook his head in agitation. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s well...I don’t know. Uh...are you, I don’t know um...how do I say this?”
Zuko placed his hands behind his back and waited.
“Are you...do you have a girlfriend?” Aang asked.
“Is this about your crush on Katara?” Zuko asked trying and failing to keep the smirk off of his face.
“Not so loud!” Aang said, rapidly looking around in embarrassed fervor.
“Okay,” Zuko replied, indulging his student by lowering his volume. “But is it?”
The answer was strained, like it had to be forcibly wrung out of him like filth from a wet flag. “Yes.”
Zuko hummed. “Well, no. I don’t have a girlfriend. There was a girl back in the fire nation, but I haven’t seen her in years. And I’m not looking, anyway.”
“You’re not looking,” Aang repeated, relief washing the worry off of his face like a tsunami.
“Yeah. Not looking,” Zuko replied. “I’m really not in a position to be dating someone and honestly, it’d just be a distraction.”
“Whew! Okay,” Aang said with a grin. “Thanks, Zuko!”
“Why do you ask?” Zuko asked with a crooked eyebrow.
“Oh,” Aang froze, looking straight to the side. “No reason. I just, uh...wow, it’s getting late, isn’t it? I need to go grab some-”
“Aang,” Zuko pressed, grabbing him by the shoulder to stop him from leaving.
“Look, it’s no big deal,” Aang deflected, shaking Zuko off. “I was just curious because she talks about you a lot. There’s no way she really likes you or anything.”
Zuko blinked, taken aback. “Huh. Okay then.”
That made a strange amount of sense, but it didn’t change anything. Zuko still wasn’t interested, he had things to figure out.
“So, uh...see you!” Aang said, jumping away.
Zuko blinked, staring at him as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop like a flying lemur.
When it came to an erupting Volcano, Zuko was surprisingly disappointed. Not in the Volcano, watching it spew fire and molten death into the sky was the greatest thing that he had ever seen, but rather in himself; he had been completely unable to do anything.
There was a common misconception, Zuko had found, that fire benders could bend lava. He didn’t know if that was actually true, but what he did know was that he couldn’t do it. So the best he could do was watch his three friends turn away the very destruction that had claimed the life of Aang’s predecessor so long ago.
He could not assist the town’s earth benders as they dug a trench to redirect the lava currents. By the time he had found out about the disaster, Aang and Katara had formulated a plan to use the clouds to fool Aunt Wu.
Zuko couldn’t assist the Earth Benders as they dug a trench around the town. He couldn’t bend the lava away. They didn’t even have enough shovels for him.
Not for the first time, Zuko felt like an extra. A parasite.
Like he didn’t belong.
Even with his bending back, Avatar Aang wasn’t ready for instruction. Katara’s infatuation, if it actually existed or if Aang was merely imagining it, was causing a division in the group. Though, frankly, Aang was only hyper focused on her because she was a very pretty girl who would regularly talk to him.
Zuko wasn’t entirely sure that a tribal girl whose main worries were taking care of her village would do well permanently adopting the nomadic lifestyle of the Avatar. She might’ve, but he doubted it.
“Zuko, what are you thinking about?” Katara asked.
He had been sitting in the little lobby outside of all their rooms, and Katara had sat down beside him. Sokka had his door open, sketching on a piece of paper as a way to pass the time until Katara went to bed; very sly of him, Zuko noted. Aang had hid behind a corner in the shadows in a surprisingly well executed maneuver. In front of him was a small candle, which he had been planning to use for meditation, but that had gotten away from him.
Zuko looked straight ahead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You can trust me,” Katara said with a small smile.
He very nearly snapped at her for ignoring what he said. But that would be bad. How to handle this diplomatically? “Katara. I appreciate that you want to help. Thank you. But I...do not want help. If I want help, I’ll tell you, alright?”
Katara frowned like he had just hurt her feelings. “Are you sure? I can tell you’re upset about something.”
“You’re right, I am,” Zuko said with a nod. “And if I need help handling it, I’ll ask for it. But until then, I want to handle it myself.”
Katara sighed in disappointment. “Alright, fine I guess. I’ll go to bed.”
She stood up and walked off toward her room, muttering to herself. “Boys.”
Zuko looked down and started focusing on the candle wick.
With a breath, it grew brighter and taller.
With a breath, the room was plunged into darkness.
Author’s Note: Sorry this is so late, I actually wrote this chapter a while ago and failed, miserably, in posting it everywhere. I'm working on another fic right now and I'm probably going to be moving all of my fiction here as I wind up working on them. Thank you very much for your attention, here's to a happy transition.
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
---
The moon hung over the starry sky like a coin of water tribe silver. Surrounded by a blanket of stars and shadow, she watched over the earth beneath as sentinel, calm and to the great frustration of those below her, silent.
Beneath her, working at the stream and impatiently fuming, was Katara.
“C’mon, Moon! Work with me here!” She shouted, holding her hands up like she were entreating the heavenly body to bestow great wisdom upon her.
Watching her trying to learn on the shore was Aang, who looked concerned, as well as Sokka and Zuko, who were both trying to avoid laughing. Sokka was biting his finger. Zuko was letting little dark clouds out the side of his mouth, like he was smoking a pipe.
Katara stood again, and tried to perform the water whip. The water emerged from the stream and once again, slapped her across the face. “Why are you like this?”
Sokka lost it, braying like a mule and clutching his stomach. Zuko accidentally swallowed the smoke he had been exhaling and dissolved into a coughing fit, but recovered fairly quickly.
“Uh...Katara?” Aang asked. “Are you okay?”
“No! No, I am not okay!” Katara fumed, storming up to the camp from the shore. “I don’t care what that sage said, the Moon is not a teacher!”
“Maybe you’re just a poor student,” Zuko snipped, grinning from ear to ear.
“A poor student?” Katara repeated with all the wrath of an offended goddess. “Now listen here you stupid little fire-flake, how is anyone supposed to learn from a giant, inanimate object flying through the sky that doesn’t talk to anyone?”
“I have no idea,” Zuko answered, still grinning.
“Then how am I a poor student?” Katara demanded, her face scrunched up like Momo’s when Sokka played keep-away with the berries for too long.
“Katara?” Aang tried to butt in, calmly and politely.
“You keep making the water smack you in the face,” Zuko pointed out, trying to avoid laughing again.
“That’s not my fault!” Katara retorted. “I just haven’t even been told how to do the technique properly!”
“Katara?” Aang tried to interject.
“The Avatar’s been showing you how to do it since you met me,” Zuko replied, an arched eyebrow joining his newly subdued grin.
Katara threw her hands up in the air and growled in rage before storming off.
“Katara?” Aang tried a third time.
Katara whirled to face Aang. “WHAT?”
Aang blinked and took a deep breath. “We need to meditate.”
“What good would that do?” Katara barked.
“You can’t receive spiritual instruction when you aren’t centered,” Aang started to stand just a little straighter. “If you’re letting yourself get frustrated and angry, then it becomes really hard to get in tune with the spiritual aspect of bending. So let’s go back down to the river and meditate. Okay?”
Katara let out a petulant breath. “Fine.”
They both walked down to the river bank and Zuko had a thoughtful look on his face.
Sokka looked up at his fire bending compatriot with a curious look on his own face. “Whatcha thinking about?”
“What Aang just said,” Zuko said with a shrug. “About anger getting in the way of the more spiritual side of bending.”
“What about it?” Sokka asked.
“Firebending, for the grand majority of the fire nation now, if fueled by anger,” Zuko explained. “But if anger just gets in the way, then it makes sense why there’s fewer benders in the fire nation.”
“I don’t get it,” Sokka replied, confusion coloring his face.
“Well, bending is inherently spiritual in nature,” Zuko continued. “So if anger just gets in the way of spirituality, and the fire nation is fueled by anger and hate, then there’s less spirituality and then, less benders.”
“But if anger just gets in the way of spiritual mumbo-jumbo,” Sokka pressed, looking annoyed as he tried to figure it out. “How does it fuel fire bending?”
“Well, the pure fuel of fire bending is drive,” Zuko explained. “Anger and hate bring a kind of drive. The drive to hurt someone, see them suffer. But it’s not as good as pure drive.”
“Then why did it take over as the fire nation’s bending fuel?” Sokka asked.
“Because a spiritually aware fire nation isn’t a fire nation that would fight a war against the whole world,” Zuko replied. “Which adds yet another reason to see Sozin’s war burn.”
“Did you need another?” Sokka asked with a smirk.
“Well, you can’t really have too many, can you?”
“Point.”
Down by the river, Aang and Katara were sitting on their knees in the soft sand.
“Deep breath in, deep breath out,” Aang said. “Just let your mind empty. Everything is okay. Feel the air around you. Hear the river course along. Just take a deep breath. Let the mind empty like a pitcher of water.”
Katara took a breath.
Then exhaled.
She took another breath.
Then exhaled.
Yet another breath.
Her snarl of frustration startled Aang.
“Just forget it,” Katara said, standing up and walking back toward the camp. “It’s not working, I’m not getting anything.”
“Katara,” Aang entreated.
“I said forget it!”
Zuko blinked in annoyance, but figured it was useless to try to talk to her right now.
* * *
“A fortune teller?” Aang asked, sounding kind of excited.
The group was gathered over Aang’s map, with Zuko’s additions added in charcoal marks.
“Yeah,” Zuko replied. “I thought about seeing her when I was feeling desperate.”
“Why didn’t you go see her at all?” Aang asked curiously.
“Because I had eyes, ears and a brain,” Zuko replied, deadpan.
“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Sokka said, animatedly gesturing toward the map. “It’s a load of platypus bear droppings. You can’t possibly predict the future.”
“I think it sounds fun,” Katara said, looking like she was feeling better since last night. “Let’s go, get our future read and see if any of her predictions come true!”
“Anything she gets right would just be a lucky guess,” Sokka argued. “Seriously, you can’t predict the future. That whole thing is just dumb.”
“Well, if people than bend the elements through spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Zuko began, echoing the water tribal’s words right back at him. “Then telling the future can’t be that far fetched.”
“Everything can be explained through rational and intelligent observation,” Sokka argued.
“And fortune telling,” Katara snipped with a smug grin.
“Hey, no! No!” Sokka snapped in annoyance. “All fortune telling is just a bunch of generalized predictions couched in vague suggestions and sometimes fancy pyrotechnics.”
“Sokka, is there a reason a fortune teller makes you this upset?” Zuko asked curiously.
“They're frauds!” Sokka snapped with a huff.
“I heard Old Man Jarko played a prank on him and some of the other kids by pretending to be an evil spirit that would roam through the village at night,” Katara explained. “He had them going for a whole week before our dad stepped in and put a stop to it. Since then, he’s never believed a word about spirit stuff.”
“Hey, he didn’t fool me,” Sokka denied with all the passion he could muster without screaming. “I knew it couldn’t have been an evil spirit because I kept calm and examined the facts. Everything can be explained by scientific examination. Including bending.”
“That scientific examination points to spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Aang said with a bright, mischievous smile.
Sokka groaned, getting right up in Aang’s face and tapping his chest with a finger. “You are not helping.”
“Besides, if it’s all fake, then what can it hurt?” Zuko asked, shrugging. “We can all use a good laugh.”
Sokka sighed in defeat. “Fine!”
* * *
The fortune teller was an old lady, called by the name of Aunt Wu. Uncle Iroh would’ve liked her, she was old and full of wisdom that she preferred to cloak behind a veil of mystery and mysticism. And, if he understood correctly, she had a reliable way of predicting the weather by watching the clouds.
Zuko was the last of the group to go see her. Aang had apparently gone to eavesdrop on Katara’s meeting and came back looking smug and triumphant, but wouldn’t say why. Sokka’s reading had taken place at their first meeting, and to Zuko’s delight, she had said that Sokka was someone heading for disaster, and it would be all his fault.
Zuko adjusted his seat in the dark room, the only light being the fire directly in the center.
“We cast the bone into the fire and watch the cracks,” Aunt Wu explained, holding a femur. “Those will tell us how things are going to turn out.”
“Go ahead,” Zuko said with a nod. He had no idea how that would actually work, but there were a lot of things that Zuko didn’t understand how they worked. Metallurgy, Tai Lee, the machinations of the royal court; but he didn’t need to understand them to accept that they existed.
Aunt Wu did so. Zuko watched closely as the bone started to crack down the middle, forking to two separate paths.
He could guess what those paths were. He sighed at the triteness of it all.
“You have a very set and defined road ahead of you,” Aunt Wu said. “Interestingly, both paths lead to royalty and family. See the crown at the end of both of them? Combined with the tree crack.”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Zuko replied diplomatically.
Aunt Wu hummed. “Well, the first path you are already on, because it’s crack starts before the other. It’s a good one, relatively straight forward. You are traveling with the Avatar, but the alternative path will open it’s doors to you soon. It is marked, if I’m reading this right, by betrayal.”
“Why would I betray the Avatar?” Zuko asked with a frown.
“Given how thin the crack is, I don’t think it’s likely, but the start of the break has the Family Tree,” Aunt Wu said, pointing at the crack. “So, if you do decide down that path, then it will be due to family.”
Zuko rolled his eyes. “But both paths lead to Royalty?”
“They do,” Aunt Wu said. “You don’t don’t sound surprised.”
“I don’t want the crown,” Zuko replied. “I don’t want the crown. Or my family, even. Is there a way to change fate?”
Aunt Wu hummed. “Many in my profession would insist that there is no way to change your fate. But they would be lying. Fate can be changed. But it is a difficult thing, simply because so many forces are hurrying you along this path.”
“Like swimming against the current,” Zuko said, his frown deepening.
“A good metaphor,” Aunt Wu replied with a nod of approval. “Young man, fate is what we make of it. It is the long term consequences of our actions and behavior over a long period of time. Right now, your actions and behavior are setting you on this path. The reason fortune telling works, to a point, is because people don’t usually change.”
“You sure?” Zuko asked flatly.
“Don’t sass me, young man,” Aunt Wu replied, a smirk betraying her wry amusement. “A person may grow, their old wounds may heal and they might transcend their weaknesses, but their fundamental character remains the same. They are who they are.”
“So if someone changes, they didn’t really change,” Zuko said, reflectively staring into the fire. “They just grew.”
“Exactly,” Aunt Wu’s smirk grew to a smile. “A cunning gardener who cares for a tree may want their tree to grow a specific way and they be able to carry out their vision; but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot ignore the roots, or how the tree has already grown.”
“So I’m doomed,” Zuko said, glaring at the bone. “At least, that’s what the bone says.”
“No, no, no,” Aunt Wu shook her head. “Have you not been listening? Changing fate is possible. You just need to take charge of how you grow.”
Zuko’s glare toward the bone intensified.
Aunt Wu hummed in thought. “What does a Gardner do with a tree with branches that are growing out of line?”
Zuko shrugged, having not even the slightest idea.
“They prune them,” Aunt Wu replied. “By pruning branches that have grown out of line, the tree flourishes because it is able to put its energies into the growth of the trunk.”
“What if the trunk is the thing I don’t want to grow?” Zuko asked.
“A crown is not a trunk,” Aunt Wu replied, waving that off without so much as a pause for consideration. “It’s only a station. A profession. Something that you may be well suited for, a place where you may spare the world a great deal of pain and devastation, but merely a station. The thing about stations is that there are always multiple candidates for the position.”
Like Uncle Iroh, Zuko thought with a smirk. Then a thought occurred to him. “Do you know which crown we’re talking about?”
“From the scar, I guessed,” Aunt Wu said. “But don’t worry, young man. Your secret’s safe with me.”
Zuko just shrugged, and glowered down at the burning bone. “It’s just a scar.”
“Indeed,” Aunt Wu agreed.
* * *
“So...Zuko?” Aang began. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
“No, I’m not going to show you how to make sparks by snapping your fingers,” Zuko droned with a thoroughly bored look at his bald pupil.
“No, no, no!” Aang rapidly shook his head in agitation. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s well...I don’t know. Uh...are you, I don’t know um...how do I say this?”
Zuko placed his hands behind his back and waited.
“Are you...do you have a girlfriend?” Aang asked.
“Is this about your crush on Katara?” Zuko asked trying and failing to keep the smirk off of his face.
“Not so loud!” Aang said, rapidly looking around in embarrassed fervor.
“Okay,” Zuko replied, indulging his student by lowering his volume. “But is it?”
The answer was strained, like it had to be forcibly wrung out of him like filth from a wet flag. “Yes.”
Zuko hummed. “Well, no. I don’t have a girlfriend. There was a girl back in the fire nation, but I haven’t seen her in years. And I’m not looking, anyway.”
“You’re not looking,” Aang repeated, relief washing the worry off of his face like a tsunami.
“Yeah. Not looking,” Zuko replied. “I’m really not in a position to be dating someone and honestly, it’d just be a distraction.”
“Whew! Okay,” Aang said with a grin. “Thanks, Zuko!”
“Why do you ask?” Zuko asked with a crooked eyebrow.
“Oh,” Aang froze, looking straight to the side. “No reason. I just, uh...wow, it’s getting late, isn’t it? I need to go grab some-”
“Aang,” Zuko pressed, grabbing him by the shoulder to stop him from leaving.
“Look, it’s no big deal,” Aang deflected, shaking Zuko off. “I was just curious because she talks about you a lot. There’s no way she really likes you or anything.”
Zuko blinked, taken aback. “Huh. Okay then.”
That made a strange amount of sense, but it didn’t change anything. Zuko still wasn’t interested, he had things to figure out.
“So, uh...see you!” Aang said, jumping away.
Zuko blinked, staring at him as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop like a flying lemur.
* * *
When it came to an erupting Volcano, Zuko was surprisingly disappointed. Not in the Volcano, watching it spew fire and molten death into the sky was the greatest thing that he had ever seen, but rather in himself; he had been completely unable to do anything.
There was a common misconception, Zuko had found, that fire benders could bend lava. He didn’t know if that was actually true, but what he did know was that he couldn’t do it. So the best he could do was watch his three friends turn away the very destruction that had claimed the life of Aang’s predecessor so long ago.
He could not assist the town’s earth benders as they dug a trench to redirect the lava currents. By the time he had found out about the disaster, Aang and Katara had formulated a plan to use the clouds to fool Aunt Wu.
Zuko couldn’t assist the Earth Benders as they dug a trench around the town. He couldn’t bend the lava away. They didn’t even have enough shovels for him.
Not for the first time, Zuko felt like an extra. A parasite.
Like he didn’t belong.
Even with his bending back, Avatar Aang wasn’t ready for instruction. Katara’s infatuation, if it actually existed or if Aang was merely imagining it, was causing a division in the group. Though, frankly, Aang was only hyper focused on her because she was a very pretty girl who would regularly talk to him.
Zuko wasn’t entirely sure that a tribal girl whose main worries were taking care of her village would do well permanently adopting the nomadic lifestyle of the Avatar. She might’ve, but he doubted it.
“Zuko, what are you thinking about?” Katara asked.
He had been sitting in the little lobby outside of all their rooms, and Katara had sat down beside him. Sokka had his door open, sketching on a piece of paper as a way to pass the time until Katara went to bed; very sly of him, Zuko noted. Aang had hid behind a corner in the shadows in a surprisingly well executed maneuver. In front of him was a small candle, which he had been planning to use for meditation, but that had gotten away from him.
Zuko looked straight ahead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You can trust me,” Katara said with a small smile.
He very nearly snapped at her for ignoring what he said. But that would be bad. How to handle this diplomatically? “Katara. I appreciate that you want to help. Thank you. But I...do not want help. If I want help, I’ll tell you, alright?”
Katara frowned like he had just hurt her feelings. “Are you sure? I can tell you’re upset about something.”
“You’re right, I am,” Zuko said with a nod. “And if I need help handling it, I’ll ask for it. But until then, I want to handle it myself.”
Katara sighed in disappointment. “Alright, fine I guess. I’ll go to bed.”
She stood up and walked off toward her room, muttering to herself. “Boys.”
Zuko looked down and started focusing on the candle wick.
With a breath, it grew brighter and taller.
With a breath, the room was plunged into darkness.
* * *
Author’s Note: Sorry this is so late, I actually wrote this chapter a while ago and failed, miserably, in posting it everywhere. I'm working on another fic right now and I'm probably going to be moving all of my fiction here as I wind up working on them. Thank you very much for your attention, here's to a happy transition.
Until the next time!
~Fulcon
Very well done. I like this Zuko and I still want to see him get the Throne. But I want to see him wiser and a better man. This is the way.
Fulcon
Well-known member
Thank you! Honestly, I'm kind of waffling between whether Zuko takes the throne or not, but frankly, we just need to see what happens when we get there.
Have a cookie.
Fulcon
Well-known member
Thanks for the kind words! Have a cookie.
almostinsane
Well-known member
Very well-done.
Personally, I always thought Zuko and Katara complemented each other better...
Personally, I always thought Zuko and Katara complemented each other better...