OMG LOOK I'M POSTING ON A WEDNESDAY FOR ONCE! :D
Okay important notice - I've been trying to reply to some PMs and reviews for a few days but FFdotnet keeps timing out and telling me there's a gateway error. Idk why that keeps happening. I've even tried sending a PM by going thru profiles instead of replying, and it still isn't working. I'm guessing this is FFdotnet's issue, not mine. So I'm gonna keep trying to send these things until they WORK, and in the meantime if you hear radio silence from me I do apologize, I want to reply to you, and in particular Aqualys I'm sorry I apparently didn't reply to you last week, I THOUGHT I DID but apparently it did not go out. DX
Sooooooo many thanks to Stingrae for being such an awesome beta and helping me with storytelling decisions and other betaly things, she is the BEST!
WARNINGS FOR
-Nanyue
-War crimes
-Murder and harm to children/child death
-Allusions to PTSD and cultural ableism when it comes to mental health
When she is eighteen, Kenta and Lu Ten are off besieging Ba Sing Se, and the three of them write each other constantly. The boys' letters are filled with excitement and adventure, and the occasional wistful introspection - Ba Sing Se's wall and army are proving to be worthy adversaries, and there's more to war than glory. They write about the battles they've fought, and some of those accounts can get emotional, but they never overburden their letters with depressing thoughts, nor do they insult Min Lee by telling her she ought to be grateful she's stayed home. The closest Kenta gets to doing so is constantly lamenting the Earth Kingdom's pitiful supply of coffee and insisting that she must never, ever, ever take their family's easy access to coffee beans for granted ever again.
Min Lee keeps them updated on the goings-on at home and sends them care packages - fire flakes and fire gummies and cocoa, coffee for Kenta, tea for Lu Ten. Lu Ten sends her strange Earth Kingdom flowers pressed between the pages of his letters and jewelry made of green jade - necklaces, bracelets, hairpins twisted into the shapes of foreign flowers she doesn't recognize. They clash horribly with her predominantly-red wardrobe. Min Lee smiles at the useless accessories and consigns them to the farthest corner of her jewelry box. Her littlest sister Ty Lee thinks that's a shame and points out that they'd go well with pink.
The letters are nice, but more than anything Min Lee wishes she could be there. Iroh's Siege will surely be the Fire Nation's greatest victory in the entire war, and she's unable to take part. New recruits are shipped out to bolster Iroh's forces every day, yet Min Lee is forbidden from joining. She voices her displeasure whenever she can, though not as often as she'd like - Uncle Shigeru and Aunt Ryoko have spent the entire campaign so far worried about their son, and Min Lee knows that pestering her uncle too much will get her nowhere when he's already on edge.
For now, she still has her standing in Home Guard, and her letters.
It's while she's handing one such letter off to a servant for delivery that Uncle Shigeru suddenly accosts her.
"Min Lee," he says, "if I could have a moment?"
Min Lee waves the servant away with the letter and looks at her uncle. "What is it?"
Something about him looks awkward, and his aura is anxious. "We need to talk," he says.
"About what?"
"A lot of things," he hedges. "Do you have time?"
She does. Uncle Shigeru leads her out to the garden porch, and they sit down on plush red cushions to drink coffee and play pai sho. Min Lee blinks down at the game, confused. Her uncle enjoys it well enough, but why he thought it necessary to play during a conversation was beyond her.
"So what's this about?" she asks, sipping her coffee.
Uncle Shigeru takes a deep breath. "The war," he says. "And our family." He gestures at her to take the first move, and Min Lee places one of her jasmine tiles as her first spring flower. Uncle Shigeru mirrors it on his side of the board with his own jasmine tile. "I know you still want to join the military," he begins.
Min Lee chooses a rhododendron tile as her second spring flower and places it.
Uncle Shigeru follows her example and continues, "I also know that you think it's unfair that Kenta is off fighting in the Siege and you aren't. I hope you realize that I want Kenta out there just as much as I want you out there. Which of course is not at all."
Min Lee snorts and places a chrysanthemum tile as her final spring flower. "Don't worry," she says dryly, "Kenta and I have both noticed."
Uncle Shigeru grimaces and places his own chrysanthemum tile in silence.
Min Lee gauges the colors of his aura and wonders if she dare ask. Well. Her uncle wants to talk. Maybe he'll finally talk. "What happened in Nanyue that made you so...scared of sending us off to fight?"
Uncle Shigeru's aura immediately turns the awful browns, blues, and grays that crop up whenever Nanyue is mentioned, but he takes a swig of coffee and looks her straight in the eye. "Nanyue," he says, "was a bloodbath."
Min Lee puts a lily tile into play with the vague idea of eventually harmonizing it with her jasmine tile. "Isn't all war bloody?"
"Yes," Uncle Shigeru sighs, "but not like Nanyue." He puts a rose tile into play. "I saw rivers run red, Min."
Min Lee frowns. "But we won," she points out, moving her jasmine piece. She knows her history. Prince Iroh had squashed the Nanyuese army and destroyed the rebellious Trung family who'd led them, and the region had been pacified. "We didn't even lose very many people, given the size of the campaign."
"I didn't say it was our blood, Min," Uncle Shigeru says tiredly. He doesn't bother moving his rose tile yet - instead he puts a white jade tile on the board.
Min Lee looks at him, nonplussed. What was that supposed to mean? The Fire Nation had won - of course they'd killed the Nanyuese insurgents to do it.
"Look," Uncle Shigeru begins. "A lot of things happened in Nanyue. Terrible things. I...did things. I...killed...a lot of people."
His aura is a horrid gloomy gray, and Min Lee tries to think of something encouraging to say as she adds another rhododendron tile to the board. "Uncle, you...you were fighting for your country. It's alright."
He grimaces. "No, Min," he says. "It's not. To fight in a battle is one thing, but what happened in Nanyue...there was no honor in that." It's his turn, but he doesn't make his move. He's staring at the board like he isn't really seeing it. Maybe he isn't.
"You were a soldier, Uncle," Min Lee insists. "You did your duty to your country and you overthrew our enemies, and I know you had to kill people but it was war, they were soldiers too and - "
"Min, I killed children."
Min Lee falls silent and stares at him. "...What?" she asks after a moment.
"I killed children," he repeats, finally moving his rose tile to immediately harmonize it with his chrysanthemum piece. "Also unarmed civilians. And old people."
"...Why?"
"Because I was a soldier," Uncle Shigeru says ruefully, "and I was following orders."
"But - but you're a hero," she insists, moving her rhododendron piece. He might never talk about it himself, but she's heard about it from other people. "You were there when Prince Iroh took their last stronghold, you helped rid the world of the Trung family - "
"Yeah, and you want to know how I did that?" Uncle Shigeru asks. "I kept General Nguyet Trung's grandchildren bound and chi-blocked until Prince Iroh decided against keeping them alive."
Min Lee scrambles for an explanation. "So...so he decided they were dangerous - "
"The girl was about Ty Lee's age, I think," Uncle Shigeru says, idly picking up a pai sho tile and turning it in his fingers. "The boy wasn't much older."
"...they'd be dangerous in the future," Min Lee decides. It makes sense. They'd gotten rid of potential future enemies before they'd become a problem. It makes perfect political sense.
"That was Iroh's reasoning," Uncle Shigeru sighs. "And Fire Lord Azulon wanted it to be public. So they were burned at the stake."
"You didn't kill them, though," Min Lee says. He couldn't have. Uncle Shigeru wasn't a firebender.
"No," he says. "But I watched." He takes a sip of coffee. "Those kids died horribly. And yet I saw plenty of other Nanyuese children go through even worse before they died." He grimaces. "Some of the kids I killed, I killed because I knew if I didn't, someone else would, and they'd make it even worse."
"So you were merciful," Min Lee says.
Her uncle scowls. "Dammit, Min, you aren't listening."
"What should I be hearing?" she asks, frustrated. The pai sho game sits between them, forgotten, but Uncle Shigeru still holds a pai sho tile in his hand.
"Bad things happened in Nanyue, Min," he says. "Terrible things. Things that never should have happened under any circumstance. And Nanyue may have been the bloodiest campaign we've had, but things like that happen elsewhere, too. They'll happen for as long as this war continues. And when the Fire Nation is responsible for such things, and when we hold the people who do them up as heroes, it ought to make you wonder if - "
He breaks off because Min Lee is staring at him, wide-eyed and horrified. She doesn't want to believe what she's hearing, despite the vibrant blues and reds in her uncle's aura that mean he's telling the truth and he's resolute about it. She doesn't want to be complicit in such thoughts. "Uncle," she says shakily. "Uncle, this sounds very unpatriotic."
He looks at her in silence, his aura fading back to muted, disappointed grays. "It does," he says after a moment, "doesn't it?" He looks down at the pai sho piece in his hand. It's the white lotus tile, Min Lee realizes, and she wonders why he's bothering to play the weakest piece of them all. "I want you to be better than me, Min."
"Let me join the army," she offers. "I will be."
He only shakes his head.
There's a long moment of silence that Min Lee isn't sure how to break - offer reassurance? Continue her argument? Uncle Shigeru doesn't seem to want to break the silence at all - he only gazes at the white lotus tile, his aura despondent.
Father suddenly steps out on the porch. "Ah," he says, looking at his brother. "There you are. Ryoko's looking for you."
"Is she?" Uncle Shigeru asks. He puts the white lotus tile back on the sideline of the board and stands up. Father looks at it curiously, but Uncle Shigeru only says, "Better go see what she wants, then." He heads back inside.
Father looks at Min Lee. "Everything alright?"
"I don't know," she says. She really doesn't. What even was that conversation? "Is Uncle Shigeru...is he okay?"
"How do you mean?"
"We were talking about Nanyue." Her father winces, and Min Lee asks, "He...he isn't a coward, is he?" For all the glory it brought their nation, the war could take its toll on even the most loyal of soldiers. There were many terms for the odd states of mind that often afflicted veterans - cowardice was one. Rock shock was another. So was melancholia. Min Lee had never thought her uncle to be affected in such a way, but now she's wondering.
"My brother," Father says, "is definitely not a coward."
Min Lee nods in silent agreement. Even if her uncle is - well, she won't see it. She won't let it bother her. It doesn't matter if her uncle thinks unpatriotic thoughts - Min Lee is going to forget this entire conversation ever happened.
She starts to put away Uncle Shigeru's pai sho set, but father insists on doing it himself and shoos her off. Min Lee heads back into the house, not really sure what to do next. It occurs to her that, after that whole debacle, all she really wants is more coffee, so she heads toward the kitchen.
Uncle Shigeru and Aunt Ryoko are already in there, their backs turned to the door as they share a fruit pie in silence, and Min Lee backs away before they see her. She does not, however, escape the notice of Sunshine. The ghost is lounging in a spill of sunlight that falls from a window across the counter, apparently watching Uncle Shigeru and Aunt Ryoko, but her head suddenly snaps towards Min Lee even as she steps away from the kitchen door.
For the split-second Sunshine remains in her view as she backs away, Min Lee holds the ghost's gaze. Sunshine stares back at her, expression flat.
Soooooooo whatcha think? Like, that was terrible, but I hope it was a well-written terrible and that y'all enjoyed it. If you did please leave a review!
NOTES!
Pai sho has no canonical rulebook that I know of, but Avatar fans have done their best to fill in that gap! When I wrote this section last year I believe I used two links as my references and probably fudged a bit more myself. Of course I can't put the links here on FFdotnet, but I'll be posting them on the gilded-green tumblr and/or the caelum-in-the-avatarverse tumblr, so you can check them out there when I get them up.
And cowardice/melancholia/shell shock rock shock is absolutely PTSD/depression but the Avatarverse is still new to the study of psychology so there isn't a proper name or diagnosis for it yet. Gee, if only I had a character who was half-decent at psychological whatnot and the study of the human mind...
There really aren't any other notes aside from the pai sho...this chapter didn't have many researchable elements. But hopefully now we can understand Shigeru a bit more...
And I'd like to take the time to assure everyone that I do love Iroh? A lot? Honestly! But canon is pretty clear that he's done stuff he regrets, and while it's easy to assume that means Ba Sing Se...Iroh didn't really accomplish anything at Ba Sing Se. He didn't get in until the end, and then he was "quickly expunged" according to General Sung. And he had a long military career before that. Nanyue is something I made up to help give Iroh's redemption arc even more oomph than what we saw in the series, and it was not a normal campaign - it was the Fire Nation finally deciding they'd had enough after decades of fighting the Nanyuese and making them an example, civilians and war crimes be damned. Iroh didn't necessarily want to go that hard, but Azulon did, and Iroh was a dutiful son and general and decided to follow his orders, and the Nanyuese were fierce fighters and he had to make sure the Fire Nation came out on top and there'd be no Nanyuese comeback this time, and once he was in that mindset there was no going back. It's not an excuse for Nanyue, but it is a reason. And in my headcanon this was the worst campaign Iroh had any part in, and the other campaigns he led were less riddled with sanctioned brutality. Still pretty terrible, but not like Nanyue.
Unfortunately for Shigeru and Masao and Ryoko, Nanyue was their first military campaign. Maybe if they'd had experience with the war beforehand, they would've been more desensitized and would've handled it differently. But as it is, Shigeru can see auras, and Masao and Ryoko had never used their bending to really kill anyone before, and Nanyue had a deep effect on all three of them...
(And if anyone has been wondering, yes, the Nanyue Massacre is very much based on the Nanking Massacre, aka the Rape of Nanking. I know the Fire Nation Is Not Japan, and Nanyue is based on Vietnam, not China (I'm sure I've made accidental potential allusions to the Vietnam War as well, I'll get some intended ones in later I'm sure), but a lot of the brutality I allude to in Nanyue has a basis in real life. If you are unfamiliar with the Nanking Massacre you should not go looking it up without understanding that it was worse than anything I've alluded to in my fics and it is very NSFW. It was WWII, there are photos, and they are all terrible.)