More Than Blood Can Stand
I was born by myself but carry the spirit and blood of my father, mother and my ancestors. So I am really never alone. My identity is through that line.
-Ziggy Marley
Chapter 11: The Avatar and the Fire Prince
"Uh," said Zuko, the picture of royal eloquence. He stared at the boy, his brain insisting that there was something he should know about the kid. Something familiar about him, something that ought to ring a bell. "Jeong Jeong is in there. But I don't think he wants visitors…"
"That's okay," the kid - Aang, he'd said? - smiled. "I can wait out here until he's ready. Hey, are you one of his students?"
The kid was so earnest, Zuko wasn't sure he could stand it. "No, I'm not."
"That's why I'm here. I need a firebending master."
He raised an eyebrow. "And you couldn't find one anywhere else in the Fire Nation, so you came out to the middle of nowhere to find a deserter to train you?"
"Well," he shifted nervously, "I can't exactly go to the Fire Nation. The Fire Lord kind of wants to kill me."
Zuko's already raised brow climbed higher. "Is that so?" The kid was either an idiot or incredibly, shockingly naive. Based on the earnest smiles and easy-to-read face, he was guessing naive, but he wasn't ready to give up on idiot yet, either.
"Yeah, see, I'm the Avatar."
And then all at once everything slid into place for Zuko. The yellow and orange robes, the arrow tattoos, the bald head, the staff. The kid was an airbender. The last avatar, the one his great-grandfather and grandfather had spent their lives searching for, was said to be an airbender. Uncle had taught him everything he knew about both the avatar and airbenders, but he had never expected to actually meet one. They were extinct.
Not to mention that an airbender avatar should be over a hundred years old. Unless the cycle had gone around again, which was unlikely given how thoroughly the Fire Nation had been searching for signs of avatars in other nations - especially their own. They might have missed a waterbender or earthbender avatar, but there was no way they could have missed a firebender. This kid was, well, a kid.
"You should probably be more careful who you say that to, Avatar. You don't even know who I am; how do you know I wouldn't turn you into the Fire Lord?"
"Oh, but you're in Jeong Jeong's camp. That means you're a good Fire Nation person."
Zuko's eyebrows were getting quite the workout. Did the Avatar really not understand what being a deserter meant? Obviously not a good person. And if his father hadn't currently been on the throne and Zuko himself in hiding, he would have reported the Avatar. Immediately.
"So what's your name?" Aang went on, blissfully unaware of Zuko's inner monologue.
He folded his arms and cocked his head. "Zuko, son of Fire Lord Iroh. Crown Prince of the Fire Nation."
If Zuko had been the type to find situations like this funny, he would have laughed at the sudden change of expression on the Avatar's face. First his jaw dropped in disbelief, then his face went a funny grey color, and finally his face broke into a nervous grin. He brought his staff in front of him and took a step back.
"Oh. Well. Nice to meet you, Your Majesty. I'll just be going now."
But before he could make his escape, Zuko had grabbed the collar of his robes. "Not so fast, Avatar. You and I need to sit down for a little chat."
Zuko huffed as he turned over on his bedroll later that night. What cruel twist of fate had led to this child avatar showing up after a hundred years? The story Aang had fed him had been difficult enough to believe - I was hidden in an iceberg near the South Pole. For a hundred years. - but if the boy was really the Avatar anything was possible. With crazy powers come crazy origin stories.
But worse than that was the boy's ineptitude. Naturally, Zuko had assumed that if the Avatar was showing up at Jeong Jeong's front door to learn firebending, then he would have already mastered air, water, and earth. Because that's the way things were done. But, no. Apparently Avatar Aang was not aware of the reasons behind that convention, because he had only just started waterbending!
Zuko brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. Was this really the avatar his ancestors had feared so much?
The Avatar had given some trumped-up reasoning that Jeong Jeong was his only chance to learn firebending from a master, apparently not realizing that he was staring another firebending master in the face.
Zuko hadn't mentioned that fact in his reply, because unlike the Avatar, who apparently blabbed his deepest, darkest secrets to everyone he met, he knew how to be discreet. But he hoped what he had said to the boy would sink in by morning, and that the boy would see some sense.
You can't learn firebending out of fear; fire is not that kind of element. It requires intense discipline. If you rush into it, you are already in the wrong mindset, and you will fail.
He knew, and surely Jeong Jeong knew, that if the Avatar insisted on learning the bending disciplines out of order, there would be consequences. Perhaps severe ones.
Zuko supposed that as a loyal Fire Nation prince he ought to be more concerned about what a fully-realized avatar would do to his homeland than in the Avatar's successful training, but Uncle had always spoken of the Avatar with a good amount of respect. He said that having the Avatar as your enemy was a dangerous thing, and here fate had offered him an avatar who not only did not hate him, he seemed willing to have a civil, almost friendly, conversation with him. He would be a fool if he didn't take that opportunity.
He crooked his mouth in a smile. He wondered what the reaction of his guard would be to finding out he was planning on befriending the Avatar.
The next morning Zuko and Aang met in a clearing in the middle of Jeong Jeong's camp, like they had agreed the night before. Zuko had decided it would look too aggressive to appear in front of the Avatar and his friends with a large guard, so he had come with only Hinata and Toph.
Zuko and Aang bowed to each other. Hinata and Toph, though neither of them had been happy about this meeting, also bowed. The Water Tribe girl and boy flanking the Avatar, however, did not. They were wearing murderous looks on their face.
"What are you doing here," the girl practically spat.
"I'm trying to-"
"To, what? Capture Aang? Get information on the Southern Water Tribe so you can finish destroying us?" She drew water from a pouch at her side and took an aggressive waterbending position. Surely, the girl wasn't going to fight him? Both sides tensed, and everyone except Aang and Zuko adopted a fighting stance. Hinata stepped in front of him.
"We have no intention of destroying your tribe or capturing the Avatar," Hinata said firmly, "But if you attack Prince Zuko, we will not hesitate to retaliate with full force."
"Stop, stop!" The Avatar flew in between the two groups and held his hands out. "Katara, Sokka, calm down! I want you to hear what they have to say."
Katara and Sokka did not look pleased, but they lowered their hands. The Avatar walked over to Zuko directly and bowed again. "I am sorry for how my friends reacted, Your Highness. They have had really bad experiences with Fire Nation soldiers before."
"Bad experiences," Katara tutted. "If that's what you call murdering our mother."
Zuko felt a jolt of pain go through him. He understood, to an extent, the feeling of losing a mother. He knew on a logical level that war was impersonal, and that her mother had just been a casualty of the war, but it still shocked him to think of it. Somehow, he had never connected those casualty figures the generals were always crowing about to actual people, to someone's mother or father or son or daughter.
He bowed to her. "I am sorry for the loss of your mother."
"Oh, sure you are." She rolled her eyes. "I'll bet you celebrated when you heard about it."
He... probably had.
"Katara," Sokka put a hand on her arm. "He was probably just a kid when it happened."
But she shrugged his hand off. "Stop humanizing him, Sokka. His family ordered the raids. He's a monster, and I bet if he lost his own mother, he wouldn't feel a thing!"
There was a stunned silence in the clearing. Everyone seemed to realize that Katara had gone too far.
"That's enough," Hinata said in a steely voice. "This isn't going to work out, Avatar Aang. You and your friends can leave right now, and you will not show your face before Prince Zuko again. The minute you do-"
"Stop, Hinata," Zuko said quietly. "She has a right to be upset." He pushed himself past Hinata and came to stand in front of Katara, looking her in the eyes. "You wouldn't know this, but the Fire Lord took my mother away, too."
She turned her head aside, refusing to meet his gaze, but not before he'd seen a flash of shock and pity in them, and perhaps a bit of regret. He pushed on, unsure of why he was taking the time to try to convince this Water Tribe peasant of anything, but he was unable to stop himself. "I was eleven years old, and it was the defining moment of my life. I still have nightmares about it."
"Please, sir," Hinata ground out. "Stop. She isn't going to listen to this. It won't make a difference."
"No," Toph said thoughtfully. "Keep talking."
He looked back at her. She had her heartbeat-detector face on; maybe he was getting through to Katara after all.
"She is still alive, but I was ordered never to speak of her again, or to refer to her as my mother. I know it's not the same thing," he continued, "but I hope you can see that I am sorry for the loss of your mother."
Katara turned to look at him again, and there was still fire in her eyes and a scowl on her face, but he thought it was maybe a little less than it had been before. "Why are you doing this? What do you want from us?"
"I need the Avatar's help. The Fire Lord has been overthrown by his brother, Ozai, and he wants me dead so he has a direct path to the throne. All I have right now is the small group with me in this camp. I want Ozai gone and Fire Lord Iroh on the throne again."
"Katara!" Aang cried. "That's what Roku told me, remember? That I have to stop Ozai and put the right Fire Lord on the throne!" He bowed to Zuko. "I think I am supposed to help you."
He turned back to his friends. "What do you think, Sokka?"
Sokka still had his boomerang out, but the hard look had vanished from his face. "Will Fire Lord Iroh stop the war?"
"I can't promise that," Zuko said. "But I can give you the same promise I gave Toph: I will do my best to convince him, and I will promise to end the war when I am Fire Lord."
Sokka considered, then shrugged and put away his boomerang. "If Roku says we need to defeat Ozai, and you're going to help us do that, I say that's good enough for me."
Aang looked to his other side, "Katara?" he said quietly.
"I don't trust them," she said, indicating Hinata and Toph, "and I don't trust him at all. But if you and Sokka agree to it, I don't see what choice I have." She folded her arms. "I'll stay to protect you."
Aang beamed, as if everything was smoothed over and settled. "Great! We're a team then!"
Sokka did not like this. No, he did not like it, not one little bit. Why wouldn't anyone listen to him? It had been bad enough parading through a Fire Nation town with nothing but their hoods for disguises, bad enough trekking through the woods to a crazy firebender's camp, but did they have to add teaming up with Prince Scarface to the list?
And granted, Katara had been on his side for this one, and yes, eventually he'd had to give in and agree to it for the sake of saving all of their skins, but that would have been completely unnecessary if they had just listened to him in the first place.
He was walking around the perimeter of the camp, just inside the treeline, kicking rocks and leaves and swiping branches off nearby bushes with his machete. Because he was frustrated, okay?
He glared at a squirrel toad watching him from the branch of a tree. Ugh, even the animals were judging him now.
"I think I see some more pebbles over there for you to take your anger out on."
He spun around to see Prince Zuko's blind guard leaning against the back of a tent and tossing a rock in her hand.
"Angry?" he spluttered. "Who, me? I'm not angry! I'm only… checking the perimeter for safety threats."
"Uh-huh," the girl grinned. "Those squirrel toads are the worst."
He scowled. "Yeah, well, what are you doing out here?"
"Keeping an eye on you. You're my observation target for the day."
That put Sokka in an even worse mood. They had assigned the blind girl to keep an "eye" on him? He had never been so insulted in his life. "Who's guarding Katara?"
"Oh, she's got both Yuto and Aki tailing her. She seems to be the most dangerous in your little group."
"I'm dangerous, too!" he protested.
"Calm down, Captain Boomerang. I just meant she's the one who seems most likely to try to kill His Royal Princeliness."
Sokka stared at the girl, then shook his head. "I don't get it. Why does he have you as a guard, again? You're a little kid, you give him stupid nicknames, and you're literally blind! How do you get around? How did you even know I was here?!"
"I can feel the vibrations in the earth," she grinned. "I see with earthbending."
Sokka did a double take. "No way." What was Scarface doing with an earthbender? More importantly: what was an earthbender doing siding with a prince of the Fire Nation? He leaned in closer to her and whispered, "Is he holding you hostage? We can help you escape."
"Relax, Ponytail. I'm here because I want to be."
"But WHY?"
The blind girl shrugged. "He's not so bad for a firebender. And he's had a hard life. I guess I thought he deserved some help."
"Oh, boo hoo, poor Fire Nation prince has had a hard life in his big palace far away from the war. He's not so bad for a firebender? Well tiger sharks don't change their stripes. He's bad news, you'll see."
She shrugged again (and it was driving Sokka crazy; didn't she have any other reactions?), and said, "You don't have to like him. Just don't hurt him." She dropped the rock she'd been tossing on the ground. The impact caused a crack in the earth that ran along the ground until it reached the edges of his toes. "Or you'll hear from me."
Mai was sitting by the river and throwing knives at a tree branch that hung past the shoreline. She had not been invited to Zuko's little tête-à-tête with the Avatar, and given the choice between solitude by the river and keeping her mother and brother company in the tent, solitude would win every time. Even though the riverbed was muddy, and she hated getting messy.
The knives made a satisfying thud when they struck the branch. There was a creaking noise as it wobbled back and forth that was almost soothing in its way.
She released another knife. The cat jay in the tree behind her cawed and fluttered away. She turned towards the tree, and found Jeong Jeong standing on the path.
"Where is Prince Zuko?" he asked in his too-intense voice. Really, Jeong Jeong was almost too much intensity for Mai to handle.
"I don't know," she said, going back to throwing her knives. "He was talking with the Avatar earlier."
"You must leave here. Tonight."
She paused mid-throw, but did not look at him. "All of us?"
"Yes. There have been search parties sent out to catch the Blue Spirit. The commander looked very foolish with all the trouble at the festival, and he wants to avenge his honor by capturing him."
"And they're getting too close to your camp for comfort?" Thud.
He grunted. "You should head for the Northern Water Tribe. Master Pakku will help. The Avatar needs to learn waterbending."
"And how will we get there? We can't exactly walk across the ocean."
"There will be a ship waiting for you at the place where the river meets the northern ocean."
Thud. "You really should tell Prince Zuko this yourself. He doesn't trust me."
"Hmph," Jeong Jeong grunted. "You have more influence than you realize."
"No, I don't. Not yet." Thud. "But one day I will."
