Pro-Bending Circuit | Finals

Team & Position:Laogai Lion Vultures, waterbender

Part D: Choosing the Prince & the Princess

Prompts Used: (title) Seven | (restriction) End with the following: "Thinking back, he/she wondered if he/she would have done things differently. A smirk came across his/her lips. He/She wouldn't."

Bonus:Use of my element (water)

Word Count:2,428

Summary: In line with the Butterfly Effect, myself and three other writers have explored Iroh's choices around what to do once he returns from his failure at Ba Sing Se. Will he be able to change the course of destiny? Heads up: This is an angsty story. This is Avatar darkverse. This is a big steaming pile of nihilistic depressing. I wrote it this way because of a great proverb I heard recently: 'There is medicine in my shadow.' In the darkness, you can often find light and valuable lessons to learn. Especially in fiction, where no one truly gets hurt! Enjoy!

Seven

The Tale of the Seven-Headed Dragon

One day, a man came to a house where all were weeping, and learned that the last daughter of the house was to be given to a dragon who came to the seashore yearly to claim a victim. Determined to help, the man went with her. He laid in wait, while the girl enticed the dragon from the icy water, and then attempted to slay the monster. But once he parted the creature's head from its neck, a second head reared, snarled, and attacked. Upon dispatching the second head, he thought to himself: There, the deed is done. The creature is slain. But from the dragon's distended shoulders sprung a third head. Upon dispatching this new abhorrence, he thought to himself: There, the deed is done. The creature is slain. But from the dragon's swollen shoulders sprung a fourth head. Upon dispatching this new horror, he thought to himself: There, the deed is done. The creature is slain. But from the dragon's gnarled shoulders sprung a fifth head. Upon dispatching this new menace, he thought to himself: There, the deed is done. The creature is slain. But from the dragon's twisted shoulders sprung a sixth head. This, too, he parted from the creature's shoulders. Here the man rested, the monster laying silently at his feet. He trusted his eyes to see its death. He trusted his ears to hear its stillness. He trusted his nose to smell its blood. Thus, the man turned his back on the beast to journey home with the maiden. As he did, the creature's seventh head reared and engulfed the man in searing flames of white and man died with seven curses on his lips.

Seven

Sake is no aid to a mentor. The dependant mentor will say, Sake is the philosopher's brew, as the leech says of blood. His need to cover the rot in his heart means the palace's monthly orders rise upon the general's return, swelling and bloating with his thirst. He is a strong man, it is said, he can hold his liquor. Look at him at the coronation feast, there draped in resplendent mauve and detached attention, next to General Ming. But inside, the former general is drowning.

Iroh seeks only to dull the freshness of a burn no ointment can soothe.

There is a small memorial held for Lu Ten by the fire sages and the few friends at court who remember his kindness and former position. The new Firelord does not attend. The young princess watches the room with calculated indifference. The Crown Prince is stiffly sober.

Iroh is drawn to the children with the same weak greed that draws him to sake. Their faces are red, healthy blurs in his sight. Their shoulders are like sparrowkeets under his hands, fragile things charged with the responsibility of their people's lives.

'Have you been crying, Uncle?' Azula's lip curls with a hint of her father's displeasure.

'Shut up!' her brother hisses, his own eyes gleaming. 'Uncle's a great warrior! He doesn't cry!' Conspiratorially, the boy turns to Iroh. 'Don't listen to her, Uncle, she doesn't know what she's talking about.'

The sake in the broken man's veins shocks him to clarity with the darkness of the sudden daydream. He releases the children, backpedaling across the room as though caught in the ocean's pull. He wonders at the wisdom of the flask under his robes when the liquor makes him ponder to which spirit he could apply to trade these two sparrowkeets for his eagle-hearted son.

Six

Perhaps it's guilt for entertaining the thought of his niece and nephew's death, maybe his fool's heart still has room for more pain, maybe he's as insane as the palace believes him to be. But after witnessing their father's love for them, in a fist of fire over spilled wine at dinner, former general Iroh summons the children to the palace gardens at dawn.

He arrives early. He has not meditated on his breath in weeks, so much so that he can barely control his inner fire. And he can hardly claim to want to mentor the young prince and princess — even if the firebending lessons are a ploy for time alone with them — if his own bending is in as volatile a state as a madman's.

The stillness comes to him like a trusting eel-hound, lured from the turbulence of his heart and mind by the familiar rounded mala beads in his hand, the strength of his lotus position, the bellows that are his lungs. Power in firebending comes from the breath, not the muscle. Relax. Inhabit the air as the nomads did in their temples so long ago…

'Shut up, Azula!'

'I'm only looking out for you, dumb dumb. Father's embarrassed by your pathetic displays. You're lucky Uncle's going to try and teach you a trick or two. You need it.'

'I said shut up!'

Iroh sighs and returns the mala beads to his pocket, opening his eyes as the young prince and princess come around the cherry blossom and pass under the maple. Irritation stirs in him, but he quiets it with forbearance. How can this hope to succeed? his despair whispers. With patience, he replies.

The children bow before him, but he takes them both by surprise with a departure from traditional decorum. He hugs them.

'Thank you for meeting me here, nephew, niece. And on such a beautiful morning.' He gestures to the faint pink buds on the blossom. 'Your smiles warm my heart more than the brilliant cherry blossom.'

Neither child smiling, Zuko sits cross-legged to his uncle's right. 'Er, right.'

Azula watches the old man through narrowed eyes; she is gripping both her elbows as though she has embraced a boarcupine rather than her uncle. 'The servant told us to come to you for firebending lessons, not attacks on our person.'

Iroh smiles brightly because he knows it frustrates her when people do not cower before her. 'The servant told you truthfully. I want to teach you stronger firebending than either of you have been capable of before now.'

Azula's eyes gleam with greedy delight, Zuko's with hope. 'What sort of technique?' the princess demands.

'Master Gasho has us working on phoenix flares,' Zuko asserts guardedly.

'This is not something Master Gasho will have thought to teach you.' The old man lures them in like a pair of hungry koi. 'For no one student of fire can harness this power.'

'We don't have time for your lengthy anecdotes, Uncle,' Azula drawls, though curiosity lurks in the darkness of her eyes.

Iroh ignores the comment, another smile crawling up his cheeks. 'It is the power of coming together,' he reveals in a low voice. 'Neither one of you is as strong alone as you could be united.'

Zuko gives his sister such a look of disgusted disbelief that the despair in the former general's heart trumpets his defeat. 'Fire bend together?'

Azula sighs. 'Uncle, this is why you lost the siege on Ba Sing Se.'

'Have I ever told you of the chariot painting?' he asks over their indignation, deaf to their complaints. Too much depends on their cohesion.

Both children narrowly avoid rolling their eyes. 'Uncle…'

'In the painting, a conquering hero stands in his chariot of victory,' the old man begins, settling back against a white pine. 'A great city before him. Perhaps this is the city he has captured, or perhaps it is the city of his birth, awaiting his triumphant return. For the moment, he contemplates his achievement and how it fits into the flowing river of his life's experiences. His chariot is drawn by two dragons, one black and one white. The light and dark dragons represent the positive and negative forces that drive him. His motivation to succeed may spring from a desire to serve or a desire to subjugate. His pride, power, and ambition are matched by humility, generosity, and nobility.' He eyes them meaningfully. 'All these qualities must pull together in harmony for ultimate success, for the hero to choose his own destiny.'

'What painting is it?' Zuko always did like the stories with brave heroes.

Azula sighs and sits impatiently on the stone bench. 'Who cares? Didn't we come here to practice firebending? Even if it is some chummy, hand-holding form…'

Iroh's grin is all that keeps his despair at bay. 'Start in the lotus position…'

Five

'He's lost it.'

'No, he hasn't! He's just… got a different way of seeing things.'

'Face it, Zuzu—'

'Don't call me that!'

'—Uncle Fatso's lost his edge. Everyone's talking about it.'

'Just because he's not a monster like you, doesn't mean he's not a good son of the Fire Nation.'

'You're just sore because people always say you're like he was when he wasn't so decrepit.'

'You're sick, Azula.'

Four

'How long are we going to sit like this?' Zuko growls, his jaw tense as an Agni Kai; the boy is clearly not following the relaxing breathing technique Iroh is coaching them in. The young prince and princess sit in a spill of orange sunrise, their legs crossed beneath them and their backs pressed up against one another. With each inhalation, their hands travel from their sides, up over their heads until they're little more than a hair's span apart from each other. The exhale separates their pale skin, sending the impatient hands back to the earth, all to the soothing trickle of water and the splash of turtle-ducks in the nearby pond.

And yet…

'Uncle, it's not working!'

Patience, his weary mind begs. 'Patience,' his steady voice advises. 'Feel the heat of the sun. Let it raise your inner fire. The static between you will create fire like no other, you just need to let it flow like water.'

Azula sighs loudly. 'I'm bored.'

Patience, Iroh. 'Apply your focus to the breath, Princess Azula. Find your brother's chi flowing with life behind you. Let it slip into flow with yours.'

The girl sighs again, but closes her eyes in concentration. Iroh nods his approval, shifting his inspection to his stiff, red-faced nephew. He is blind to the girl's smirk.

The flash of blue fire is sudden and hot. It engulfs Zuko's hands and the boy bellows like a wounded animal. Iroh recoils as the flash of wild fire brings Lu Ten to mind; did his son scream as he died? The dead boy is pushed from his thoughts as Zuko curls forward over his blistering fingers, tears streaking from eyes squeezed shut in silent supplication. Make it stop, the living boy mouths.

'To the pond, Zuko,' the former general advises, taking the boy gently by the shoulders. 'Water soothes fire's bite.'

Behind them Azula watches on, coolly.

Three

Azula makes several more "mistakes" that almost always end in Zuko being burned. The time she conjures lightning while sitting with her back firmly pressed against her brother's, only Iroh's quick redirection of the deadly bolt saves his nephew's life.

Despair's familiar fog is like heavy, low-hanging mist during a miserable drizzle of rain. The fertile fields of his mind and spirit are damp and rotting. But still, Iroh perseveres. These two children will shape his country. He must try.

The next day, Zuko is permanently scarred. His left eye and ear.

The boy's father tells his son he should be ashamed.

Two

'You're doing it on purpose! Stop it or I'll tell Dad!'

'Like Dad will care.'

'He will…'

'You're on your own, Zuzu. You and Uncle Fatso, the shame of the family.'

'I wish it were you. I wish Mother had stayed and you were the one gone or dead.'

'Careful what you wish for, Zuko.'

One

The former general has stopped drinking sake. He refuses it at every meal. The palace cellars are suddenly overflowing with Shu Jing's best vintage. The servants are wise enough to conceal this from the Firelord and his treasurer.

Azula's lack of respect for her uncle — her belief in his lack of wits — is obvious now. It's in her every move. Her fiery fingers waft his way more than once. Perhaps he should have known. Perhaps he should have seen. The girl has had enough of his lessons. She sees no value in her brother, does not see the boy's potential, their potential, if only they would honour each other's strengths.

Azula is alone when Iroh arrives for their morning lesson. She grins, somehow without mirth. 'Good morning, Uncle.'

'Princess Azula.' He takes his seat by the dry boxwood shrubs. 'Where is your brother?'

'At a meeting with Father and his generals,' she replies airily, but the sharpness of her displeasure is clear in the tundra of her tone. 'He doesn't have time to breathe in the gardens today.'

Iroh wonders at the wisdom of including the young, passionate prince in a war meeting. 'Then you and I have the pleasure of each other's company.' He gestures to the grass beside him. 'Please.'

The girl moves to his side with the slinking grace of the southern tundra's predatory tiger-seal. She adopts her posture, smiling sardonically. 'More breathing?'

He grins to displease her, but she doesn't seem touched by his trick. 'More breathing. Place your hand over mine and focus on the movement of the air into your chest. Your lungs are the tinder for your inner fire.'

Her hand on his is a vice and heats far quicker than her breath. Breath is control in fire bending. You stoke the flames with it. But Azula is forcing a wildfire. Flames erupt from his sleeve, his tunic, his shoes and the Fire Princess d0es nothing but smile, her eyes glinting darkly with the flames.

Some part of Iroh is relieved. Some part of him falls, burning, into the river of life and surrenders to its directions.

Thinking back, his despair hadn't been despair at all. It had been wisdom. Warning.

Thinking back, he knew this was inevitable.

Thinking back, he wondered if he would have done things differently. A smirk came across his lips. He wouldn't.

If you'd like to examine the alternate timelines spawned by Iroh's decision to help his niblings, check out the rest of the series posted on my teammates' accounts!

Part A: The Decision | One for All by ManofManyHats

Part B: Choosing the Prince | The Gray Beach by myself and misszeldasayre

Part C: Choosing the Princess | Her Name Was by misszeldasayre

Part D: Choosing both | You are here!