A/N: This chapter is very long and contains quite a bit of tense angst towards the end, but don't worry, it ends happily! I was considering leaving it on the tense cliffhanger, but I love you all too much to do that to you.
"Zuko."
It occurs to Zuko that he should say something. You know, as participants in normal conversation do. But it's been so long since he's participated in a conversation out loud, normal or paranormal, that he's not sure he remembers the conventions.
"You're beautiful," he says, because it rises to his mind, and he can't think of anything else to say. Given the aghast expression on Aang's flawless face, that obviously is not part of accepted social convention. Might as well condense myself back into the teacup and spare myself the embarrassment.
"Ngk," Aang says, then, more eloquently, "You can see me?"
"…yes. Can't you see me?"
"Yes, I can. Well, you're kind of see-through right now, but you're getting brighter." He motions towards the bowl, where the tea continues to steep, vapor pouring off its surface and feeding Zuko's image. He clucks in mock-concern. "Still no color in your cheeks, though; have you been eating properly?"
The only nourishment I need, Zuko thinks, is the pleasure of your company and the incandescence of your spirit. That, and water, sunlight, and soil, obviously. But he doesn't say any of this aloud, because he's already slipped up with "You're beautiful."
How can he see Aang if he himself remains a phantasm conjured of tea leaves and longing? He has no eyes, no physical brain to make sense of the image before him, but it doesn't matter. Even if he couldn't see Aang in the flesh, he would still find him beautiful and perfect as he is.
"You should taste the tea while the water's hot," he says. He looks down and finds that he has translucent hands with which he gestures towards the mostly full teapot. "Go on."
Aang pushes the bowl of tea across the table to keep Zuko in his field of vision and fills the second bowl with a clump of tea leaves. The water hisses and spits as he pours it in.
"Let it steep for a bit," he suggests. "There's no rush."
Aang looks back at him, his attention temporarily divided by the motions of pouring tea. "How is this possible?"
He shrugs, and there is no weight associated with the motion. Somehow, physical habits are entrained into his mind despite not having a body to boss around. He only knows that he has shrugged because he can see the motion of his shoulders up and down. It is beyond strange.
"I'm not a sage; you would know more of these matters, in that regard. But my guess is that my spiritual energy lingered in the field after I died, and now it's transmuting itself into the tea. And you happen to be able to sense me."
The tea has given off enough steam that he now has a complete though immaterial torso and legs, and he sits down across the table from Aang. Once again, the motion is unaccompanied by the perturbing absence of any actual mass on his haunches.
"Do you think other people could see you if they drank the tea?"
"Hm…" It might complicate matters if word got out that the long-dead Lee was haunting top-tier Longjing leaves. Certainly it would hurt Aang's business prospects. "Not sure. We could test it—take some tea leaves down to the market and give people samples. If they start screaming, we know we've got a problem."
"That, or they're just disgusted by my low-quality tea." Aang chooses to think more pessimistically.
"Don't be so glum," he cajoles. "I refuse to believe that someone who followed my crowning thesis so faithfully would be rewarded by subpar tea, even if you've never done this before. Try it now, it should be ready."
Aang does as he says, cupping the bowl between two hands and sipping slowly. A cautious smile blossoms across his face and across his soul, and he partakes more deeply, tipping the bowl and tasting its contents with pleasure.
"The first bowl moistens my lips and throat / The second bowl shatters my loneliness," Zuko quotes. "Lu Tong's famous ode, 'Seven Bowls of Tea.'"
"What do the next five bowls do?" Aang inquires mischievously. The tea brings a low flush to his cheeks, a livelier glint to his eyes. "Or maybe I should find out for myself?"
The Longjing is strong but not overpowering, delighting his taste buds and leaving him satiated. He drains the bowl and places it back on the table with a soft clink.
"What will you do now?" Zuko asks.
The puzzling non sequitur doesn't throw him, though it's hard to interpret what Zuko means. Now as in, this exact moment? Go to sleep, maybe. But in a more long-term sense… "I don't know," he says simply.
Zuko accepts this with equanimity. "Historically, a peaceful cup of tea has helped many people resolve unknowable quandaries."
"Mm…" He feels a little sleepy, the volume of tea inside him and the strange but wondrous spirit before him lulling him into a kind of drowsy happiness. Is this enlightenment? Or is this attachment of the earthliest form?
"If you ask me, you might as well sell the leaves in town. I've done it before; I'm sure I can be of great help to you."
"Sell it?" Aang blinks furiously, very not sleepy all of a sudden. "But, that would be like selling you!"
"You can't drink all this tea by yourself, and there's no point in letting it go to waste," Zuko says sensibly. "What is tea but a gift to be shared with joy and good will? Besides, I'm still here, bound to this field. I'm not going anywhere."
"But what if people see you when they drink the tea?"
Zuko ponders this. "I don't know that they will. Back when I had just died, some townspeople came by to survey the place, and they tramped all around the house and through the fields as well, where I was buried. But none of them gave any indication that they heard me or sensed anything awry. It might just be your being the Avatar, Aang. Your spirituality lets you sense what others cannot."
It's a logical line of thought, as much as logic has a place in this realm of spirits and the world beyond death, but Aang finds himself more distracted by the fact that Zuko said his name. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn't think he's heard his name in Zuko's voice up until now.
"We won't know until we try. I'll harvest some more leaves tomorrow so we'll have a nice big batch to bring into town later."
"That's the spirit."
"No, you're the spirit." Aang flushes, feeling warmer than he has cause to despite the tea he's consumed. He hasn't felt so giddily overjoyed by another person's presence since… well, a very long time.
"Duly noted," Zuko retorts, and his features stretch wide in a translucent smile.
After some trial and error, Aang discovers a few things about Zuko's steamy tea corporation. It's largely tied to the vicinity of the tea bowl, as if the leaves themselves are holding the steam there. Zuko also starts to fade as the tea cools and the vapor disappears, so Aang has to pour out the cold tea and refill the bowl with hot water if he's to maintain contact with Zuko. Alternatively, he's also tried placing leaves in the pot itself and letting it simmer on the fire, steam brewing at a constant, gentle rate. Zuko's voice persists in the fields, so Aang leaves the tea bowls inside as he harvests more of the crop outside.
"Tell me something about yourself," he ventures midway through the morning, stricken by the monotony of plucking leaf after leaf after leaf. "I learned a lot about your military and political exploits from Onji, but I don't know how much of that reflects the real you. Tell me something I couldn't learn about you from a school textbook."
The voice hesitates thoughtfully. It's an unusual line of questioning: how many historical figures can a person approach in this fashion to demand knowledge of their private lives? Well, nothing about their circumstances has ever been usual.
I don't know what the textbooks say about me, but I imagine they wouldn't have written about my relationship with my sister, Azula, Zuko begins. They'd have a lot to say about her military genius and knack for court maneuverings, but if we were ever discussed conjointly, it would be to the effect of diminishing my talents and exaggerating hers, or speculating that she turned my father against me to claim my birthright. But our relationship was hardly so antagonistic.
He's not far off the mark. Onji's summaries of recent Fire Nation history for Aang's benefit had indeed mentioned Zuko's prodigious sister Azula, described as power-hungry and willing to do anything to succeed.
During the war, when we were on the front lines, she didn't like to give the impression that we were on good terms. But I know how many assassination attempts on me she foiled before they were even carried out. Extra supplies would find their way to me, always things that my men and I sorely needed—medicine, new gloves, waterskins, you name it. They were always undersigned by our commanding officer, but I knew if I bothered to trace their origin, I'd find Azula at the bottom of it. Heaven knows Shinu wouldn't care.
"Why did so many people want to kill you?"
Jealousy; spurious beliefs that Azula would make a better Fire Lord, which I won't debate; misplaced sense of nationalism. For some reason, all the other commanders felt very unnerved by the fact that I'd avoid harassing civilians in the Earth Kingdom or plundering villages to get what we needed. Maybe they didn't think I'd be stringent enough to impose our rule on the conquered people. I suppose they might have been right, considering the circumstances of my fall from grace.
Hearing the question in Aang's pause from his methodical harvesting, Zuko continues. It's a story for another time, but suffice to say, I was recalled from the front lines due to an incident in which I turned against my fellow countrymen in defense of our enemies. Azula came back as well; she tried to get me to defend myself in the war council or at least say something that wouldn't irreversibly damn my cause. But I refused. I couldn't lie to myself anymore—I hated the war, and the things I did in the war, and my father, and our glorious March of Civilization. I denounced my father before Azula and all the generals and councilors.
"And that's why you had to fight the Agni Kai against your father," Aang concludes.
And you know the rest. Azula never visited me here or initiated any sort of communication. Zuko sounds incorrigibly grumpy about this. Maybe she got what she wanted, in the end: my banishment and her elevation to Crown Princess. But I never thought she'd be capable of such artifice. She was calculating, but she wasn't cold.
"I've always enjoyed tea. Back in the air temples, we used to have bison milk tea with breakfast. It's very fortifying. We'd have butter tea as a treat on holidays or with visitors."[1] Aang's nose scrunches up as if watering at the mere recollection of the flavor. "It would warm you right up on a cold day ten thousand feet in the air, but somehow I think it'd be a bit excessive in this climate."
Zuko contemplates this as Aang packages tea leaves for sale. He twists in place, steam swirling with him and tracking Aang's movements. "That's an intriguing concept. The creamy lather of milk-fat versus the more reserved notes of Longjing… I fear that one would overpower the other."
"Yeah, we actually used Pu-erh leaves for the tea; they're pungent enough to hold their own. The nuns at the Eastern Air Temple had lovely tea farms ranging from the base of the mountains to halfway up the peaks. That's where I met my sky bison as well."
He listens carefully to the modulations of Aang's clarion voice. It hides the faintest edges of lingering grief for his people, his animal companion, even the loss of a culinary tradition. There can be no butter tea without sky bison, and Zuko has not heard tell of any remaining herds since before he was born.
"It's alright, though," Aang declaims spiritedly. "Your Longjing is in a class of its own, though that might not mean a lot coming from me. I'm less than a connoisseur."
"Nonsense. It means everything to me."
A soft blush paints Aang's cheeks, though maybe that's just the exertion of hefting tea wares around the house. If Zuko could blush, he's sure that his face would mirror Aang's.
"One of my friends, Jinju, couldn't tolerate any milk in his tea. It would make him have the worst stomach upset, and he'd have to drink his tea plain while the rest of us had nice frothy tea, mm… Pu-erh's not the most palatable drink first thing in the morning, especially on an empty stomach. He always looked so forlorn."[2]
Aang describes how he embarked on a quest to formulate a milk-like alternative for his unfortunate friend. Apparently barley or hazelnuts can be crushed and strained into a thick liquid with the consistency of milk but a nuttier taste. Zuko listens with amusement as the airbender weaves a thrilling tale of how his invented milk substitute became popular not just with Jinju, but the rest of the young monks as well, leaving the aged temple leadership to shake their heads in consternation as butter tea lost favor to barley milk tea.
It's late already, and Aang has finished his work for the day. Still, he seems reluctant to pour out the tea that remains untouched on the table, maintaining Zuko's corporation. He douses the fire and climbs into bed.
"I miss them all so terribly," he confesses. "I can't even put it into words… it's like being stabbed every time I'm reminded of their loss. It comes on when I'm unaware, and it doesn't dull with time. Sometimes it ebbs, but sometimes it comes back with so much force."
The steam from the tea is fading quickly, but Zuko doesn't worry. He does not need to see Aang to be able to hear and feel, and more importantly, soothe his pain.
"It gets better when you're talking to me. We're the same, you and I: remnants of a life that should have been extinguished long ago. Candles burning at the end of their wick… ghosts forgotten by everyone else."
It's an apt consideration, but Zuko knows this isn't true for Aang.
"It's not just my people," Aang continues. "The whole world has moved on. The masters I trained with in the other nations must have long since passed away. The friends that I met, the places I went… three generations at least have passed, three lifetimes of people who never hoped for the Avatar to change the world. And now I'm back, but I don't know what to do about… everything." He flails a hand blindly through the dark, the gesture as definitive as his uncertainty about his role in the world.
Zuko doesn't know either. Aang needs time to figure himself out, and hurrying him won't help matters. Selfishly, Zuko feels that they can wait. He's been dead for five years, and the Avatar has been lost to history for far longer than that. What do a few days or months matter in comparison to eons spent sunken in obscurity? He quashes the guilty whispers gnawing at the edges of his soul and settles in to watch over Aang's sleep.
Zuko's theory about people not being able to see him holds up when Aang sets up shop by the dumpling stand the next day. The vendor looks miffed at first but relents when she realizes that he's not selling the same thing.
"I haven't had a good cup of tea in years!" she exclaims, accepting a free bowl of tea gratefully. Aang bites the inside of his lip to keep from laughing as Zuko condenses into being and oozes away from her as quickly as the steam will allow.
"Do have a taste before you make any qualifications about good or not," he advises humbly. Zuko shoots him a dirty look.
"Oh, don't be silly; you're the one who's taken over Lee's tea farm, aren't you?" Word seems to have gotten around, unsurprising in a town of this size. "I'm glad to hear it. It was such a shame, letting that land go to waste." She sips deeply, smiling at Aang right through Zuko's translucent image. "Tastes just like old times."
That's a much warmer reception than I was expecting, Aang thinks with relief. Zuko preens, 'I told you so' radiating smugly from his gaseous form.
The dumpling lady lends him half a dozen extra bowls, citing his need to accommodate the midmorning rush, and she's not wrong. Before long, people are thronging to check out the new tea stand, which is really just a cart Aang found behind the house and fixed up to hold all his tea-making implements. He hands out bowls of tea like he can't get rid of them quickly enough. Zuko's steamy figure brightens as more tea is poured, but no one seems to notice him.
The Longjing tea cannot fail, it seems. Aang sells it by the ounce in small paper packets tied with twine and by the pound in large filter cloth bags. Before long, he's on the verge of selling out. Onji stops by on her midday break and buys some leaves, remarking how her father used to love Lee's brew. Rui Jing accepts a cup as well, proclaiming that he always knew Aang was destined for greater things than being a lowly stable hand.
"What should we do to celebrate?" Aang asks Zuko while Rui Jing is occupied with snarfing down his cup and getting back to business.
"I'd like to go to the West Lake and see the sights again. It always was my favorite place to relax."[3]
Before Aang can ask what or where that is, the stern visage of Gao Sheng, the county marshal, looms in his peripheral vision, two armed deputies flanking him.
"Well now, what's going on here? What do you think you're doing, selling tea in the market and muttering under your breath?" Gao Sheng's short mustache and shorter temper bristle in indignation. "Is this any way to comport yourself under my watch? Do explain yourself, young man."[4]
Aang blinks rapidly at the man's exaggerated interrogation, the hallmark of a small man in a smaller office thinking himself a giant. He chugs down his own cup of tea in a hurry, just in case Gao Sheng can somehow see Zuko, and the specter of Longjing disappears. "What's wrong with selling tea?"
"According to the Great Restoration, tea is an idle crop that does not fortify the body and mind for our glorious March of Civilization. You can't possibly be ignorant of…"
Guru above, this man can talk: spittle flying, hands waving, eyes bulging, deputies shifting awkwardly behind him, embarrassed on their shameless superior's behalf. They're too cowed to speak up, though, and Aang toughs it out, maintaining a bland expression falling just short of disrespectful, until Rui Jing intervenes.
"My man, do let me kick that soapbox out from under you. Listening to you go on makes me think you've got some kind of personal vendetta against all tea and teamakers!" He gesticulates with his half-full bowl of tea, spraying lukewarm water on the incredulous marshal. "A strong cup of tea will get you through a morning's labor better than nothing, and just as well as the weak porridge that your average poor man breaks his fast on."
"Don't get involved; this has nothing to do with you," Gao Sheng snaps, though there's little bite to his bark.
"On the contrary, I have a vested interest in keeping this tea shop open given how it's improved my morning. What're you bothering Aang for, anyways?" Rui Jing continues, undeterred. "You never bother Xu You when he comes home from the colonies to sell illegal imported tea."
The marshal sputters about something-something "licensed merchant," "valid trading permit signed off by powers higher than me," and other technicalities that Aang loses track of. Finally, he gives up on twisting himself into knots with his own hypocrisy and turns back to Aang.
"Very well, you're off the hook for now," he says, looking like every syllable costs him a drop of blood. "Just make sure you don't go around selling huge batches of it to any merchants or people from out of town—I don't need word about you getting back to the capital, or it'll be more than just your neck on the chopping block."
He storms off, his posse scuttling after him belatedly, as if they'd zoned out during his harangue and only just tuned back in. Aang turns to Rui Jing, perplexed. "Thanks for the rescue."
Rui Jing shakes his head and hands his bowl back to Aang. "Gao Sheng's just a bit tetchy; he doesn't like when things get shaken up in what he thinks of as his jurisdiction. Especially when the issue at hand is related to… you know."
Aang raises an eyebrow at him, trying to intuit what's unspoken. "You mean… Lee?"
"Exactly."
Imagine what he'd say if he knew "Lee" is right here with us. "I have a question: where could I find the West Lake? I've heard people talk about it, and I'd like to see it for myself sometime."
Rui Jing utters a short, bark-like laugh, pained and dry. "Well, that would make sense if those people were talking about how desolate and nonexistent it is as a lake nowadays." At Aang's questioning look, he explains further. "West Lake used to be the biggest source of water for rice farmers around Zuodu; they'd draw water from it to flood their rice paddies in the spring. But then Ozai put his Great Restoration plan into effect four or five years ago, if I remember correctly—you've heard about that, yes?"
Aang nods vigorously; his lessons with Onji haven't been for naught.
"It takes a lot of work to repurpose a field completely, plowing and sowing and changing all sorts of established routines, so of course people were resistant to the idea of converting to wheat crops as the Fire Lord wanted. At the time, he wasn't yet sold on the idea of holding a blade to the people's necks and forcing them to change their ways. He still wanted to give off the appearance of a benevolent sovereign." Rui Jing's voice dips low even as he scoffs, as if hoping to thwart any eavesdroppers who might overhear his less than benign evaluation of the Fire Lord.
"Still? Even after…" Aang starts to say, then cuts himself off as he realizes he was about to say, "after he had his son executed?" That's not supposed to be common knowledge.
Rui Jing doesn't notice his slip. "The navy had built a refinery up near the head of the Qiantang River, close to the source of the ore they mined for their battleships. The ships were constructed up there, but they'd have to sail downriver to get to the sea and then on their merry way to the Earth Kingdom. So what do you think they did?"
Aang thinks about it. "They needed the river to be wide and deep enough for the ships to sail down, so I imagine they would have taken water from the lake to boost the river's volume."
Rui Jing clucks with approval. "What a bright boy! Yes, they siphoned the West Lake, and what's more, they drained it dry. They made sure the river was absolutely overflowing, the byproduct of which was that the farmers didn't have enough water to fill their rice fields. Essentially, they were strongarmed into converting their fields to wheat, which requires much less water. According to the Fire Lord, it's all for a good cause, but the people are rather more of the opinion that it's for no cause."[5]
It is as Rui Jing said, Aang discovers when he visits the site of what was once the mighty West Lake, creatively named for its location west of the city. He glides over the eroded banks, the soil bleached dry by the sun after the water receded. Some vegetation grows halfheartedly here and there, hardy weeds that don't need much water. In the middle of the depression, he notices a few outcroppings of earth that represent small islands once surrounded by the peaceful lake.
Zuko is not with him at the moment, having poured out the tea and his ghostly image earlier when Gao Sheng stopped him on the street. Aang lands on the largest erstwhile island. The lake's dry basin is wide enough that he can't see the nearest shore clearly from here, though he can make out a fuzzy border, probably a small forest at the foot of a mountain range. He wonders if Zuko would like to see what's become of his favorite landscape, or if he'd prefer not to witness this desolation.
This war has taken so much from everyone, he ponders numbly. Not just from the Air Nomads, or the other nations. The Fire Lord's own subjects have suffered from this nonstop conflict, with no reward in sight. The lake, drained; their crops, seized; their men, drafted; their hopes, withered and dried up like this lake. He can't remain here any longer.
It's unexpectedly freeing to be able to fly on his glider like this. No one traverses these castaway parts, the lake having exhausted its purpose after the Fire Nation drained it. It's eerily quiet, without the chirp of birds or crickets, the ripple of tiny waves stirred by the wind, the rustle of trees in the breeze—nothing. He makes for the forested mountains beyond the shore, part of the range that extends to the tea plantation, Zuko's house nestled among the farthest members of those peaks. That way lies home.
Is this my home now? He wonders. I'm far from home—no, I have none, not anymore.
He rakes his gaze over the dense forest covering the mountainside whizzing beneath him, and his eyes alight on something that breaks the monotony of leafy darkness. He circles back to make sure he hasn't hallucinated it, but there below is a sight he wouldn't have expected in the forsaken Fire Nation. From between two mountains, a singular spire rises, its peak blunted and sloping into the roof of an ancient temple.
Aang swoops down closer. He has his suspicions, his heart pounding in his throat, and his pulse stutters for a moment as he notes the unfamiliar style of the temple's architecture. Compared with the Southern Air Temple, its buildings squat low to the ground, three stories high at most, and the roofs flare out broadly, less pointed than the turrets that the Air Nomads favored. He lands in a wide courtyard, looking around himself with interest.
"Hello?" he calls out, but only the echo of his own voice answers. "Is anyone here?"
Tentatively, he makes a circuit of the courtyard, which is centrally located within a compound of several halls and chambers. Unlike the temples that he's frequented, which were built proudly against the heavenly expanse, this place is shrouded in shadow, nestled among the bosom of the mountains, with trees growing all around it and even between the buildings of the temple complex. They hid it effectively from his sight at first, and he wonders if he was meant to find this place.
Aang enters the main hall, noting the inscription over the entrance: 'Lingyin Temple.' He strains to remember his history lessons from decades ago, affairs that tested his patience and eagerness to get away to more pleasurable activities like playing airball or baking fruit tarts with Gyatso. Lingyin Temple, if in fact it was founded by Air Nomads, can't possibly have been important enough to recall so many years later.[6]
The statue of a great sage is seated at the head of the hall, a long procession of alcoves lining the walkway to his throne. Many of their recesses are empty, Aang notes as he treads silently up the hall. Upon closer inspection, the wood and stone floors of several of the alcoves are abraded and scuffed, as if there had been a struggle to remove their contents.
They were looted, he realizes. It is different from when he walked through the diminished Southern Air Temple soon after his awakening. Despite destroying most of the structure, the attacking armies could not take much of value with them—what use would they have for prayer beads or ancient texts, those that weren't incinerated, that is? Nor could they haul away massive statues of esteemed gurus as the spoils of war. Whatever wasn't destroyed, simply remained untouched for decades as a memento to Aang's disgrace.
This Lingyin Temple did not escape the eyes of thieves and opportunists, though. The statues of old names and revered sages must have been taken from their pedestals; those of bronze or gold to be melted down, and those of stone or wood to be carved and repurposed into other goods, perhaps.
He has some recollection of learning about this place now. Its founding predates Avatar Yangchen, and it was constructed by wandering nomads from the Northern Air Temple, going on to become one of the wealthiest repositories of Air Nomad relics in the world. Monk Pasang, the head monk of the Southern Air Temple, had frowned upon their extravagance back while teaching Aang and his peers, but now it's a breath of fresh air to him, a reminder that his people once existed. He gazes up at the carved wood statue at the front of the hall, its expression peaceful, almost vacant. He doesn't know who it is, and if there was an inscription, it's long gone as well. It might be the temple's original founder, another name lost to Aang's memory, or an ancient sage of old, deified by the centuries, or someone else entirely.
"Zuko, do you know who used to live here?"
Well of course, he can't expect Zuko to answer without boiling some tea. That presents a bit of a dilemma until he notices a small bench to the side of the statue's dais, on which are set a bronze brazier and a dusty pot with a spout. With water from his canteen and a smattering of loose twigs gathered from the courtyard, he strikes a flame under the pot and waits for his tea to boil. The statue's eyes track sightlessly down the hall, and Aang shivers under its unknowable intensity.
There's something odd about this place. He examines the vessels closely; the bronze is not discolored and decrepit as he would expect after seventy years of disuse, neither is the pot cracked at all. Nearby on a table, two incense holders carved in the shape of lotus flowers sit staidly, wooden petals uncracked, incense sticks still glossy, standing upright as if someone had just placed them as an offering. This temple is so well-kept for a place that's supposedly been abandoned for years.
None of the townspeople would likely drag themselves out here on a regular basis to see to the temple's upkeep, he reasons, and no Air Nomads exist to carry on its legacy. He seats himself before the statue with his bowl, leftover leaves in hand, and feels a profound sense of disquiet.
"Is everything alright?" Zuko asks as he blossoms into being. "You disappeared so quickly. Where are you now?"
"I'm fine," Aang reassures him. He relates to Zuko what he's learned about the West Lake, what he saw that remains of the once-great beauty of Zuodu. He tells him about the strange temple he found hidden in the mountains, a relic of bygone days when Air Nomads soared the open skies.
"It's strange," he finishes, nearly breathless from the length of his narrative. "It's like stumbling off of a cliff when you thought you knew how many paces you were from the edge. I mean, what's a thousand-foot drop to an airbender with a glider? Still, it's unexpected and more than a bit unnerving."
Zuko has said nothing in reaction to Aang's long spiel. His ghostly conversationalist avoids his eyes, gaze darting all around the hall. Stumped, Aang takes a long sip from his own cup of tea while trying to unravel this puzzle. "Well?" he says at last.
"Er… well, what?" Zuko asks.
"What do you think of this place? What do you know, if anything, of its previous occupants? Rui Jing didn't mention much to me about the sites around the lake, so I have no clue when the last time anyone lived here was. And my grasp of ancient Air Nomad history isn't great, despite practically being a fossil myself."
"Ah, well… um." Zuko pauses, and now Aang is confused. What about this place doesn't merit a straight answer? Either Zuko doesn't know anything about it, in which case he would say, "I don't know," or he knows something but doesn't want to tell Aang. What could it be?
"Zuko, what aren't you telling me?"
The tea spirit sighs, a chilling sound that sets Aang's teeth on edge. There is so much despair and self-denigration in that one sound—this doesn't bode well.
"This temple was founded by one Monk Huili hundreds of years ago. I don't know where he was from, but I heard tell that this place was plundered by the locals several years before the war even began. Any Air Nomads who used to live here fled at that time. No abbot has been in residence since then."
Aang nods. That much is in line with what he's guessed, so what constitutes Zuko's reluctance to tell him more?
"However, it hasn't always been empty. The townspeople avoid it like the tea plantation—superstitions, fear of ghosts, the usual, but I used to come here in the early days of my banishment. There's a beautiful spring about halfway between here and the house. It's not like Longjing, sequestered underground, and before I discovered the well, I'd go to the springs to bathe and draw water. Even after that, I'd still come to the temple sometimes to meditate or have some quiet time away from my work."
Okay… still, nothing surprising. Zuko used to visit here, and no Air Nomad, Aang included, would begrudge him that. What's the catch?
Zuko breathes in deeply, the action no longer tied to the necessity of air, but a reflection of a nervous habit. Aang suddenly feels very worried.
"I wasn't the only one. Five years ago, I stumbled upon a group of Air Nomads, six or seven of them, who had taken refuge in the temple. They were afraid at first, but I promised I meant them no harm. They did not wear Air Nomad robes or bear the tattoos of airbending masters, but they carried glider-staffs like yours. I learned that they were the descendants of those who had survived the genocide seventy years ago."
The air, Aang thinks, is suddenly very sparse and thin, and they're not nearly high enough in the mountains for that to be an issue.
"They were trying to hide in plain sight and had roamed the more far-flung parts of the eastern Fire Nation for many years," Zuko continues. "They were drawn here to Lingyin Temple, remembering their ancestral founder. Nostalgia counts for a lot, and after all, no one would suspect the descendants of a dead people still inhabited the land, much less the land of the nation that vanquished them. They would have gone unnoticed, too, but my father somehow found out. He sent highly trained secret agents, the Yuyan archers, to arraign the Air Nomads.
"I tried to hide them in my house, but we were tracked down, and I bade them escape before they were captured. They fled on their gliders while I held off the Yuyan archers, until they overcame me." He laughs, a sour, wry chuckle that leaves no room for true mirth. "There was never any chance of me escaping. My father must have celebrated the excuse to definitively deal with me. I'm sure he would have come up with something in due time, but this was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
"So now you know," he concludes simply. "They escaped, though of course, I don't know what became of them. In the span of five days, I met a group of Air Nomads thought to be long dead, betrayed my nation by protecting them from capture, and was beheaded for my efforts. There's a chance that they're still alive, somewhere out there. I gave them a very good head start."
Aang is silent, the words thrumming through his mind too violent and unrestrained to utter. Zuko can't fail to notice, of course. "What's wrong, Aang? I don't mean to sound bitter about my death. I'm not, and I don't blame them for it either. I did what I knew was right, and I'm glad to have helped them."
"Did you know this to be right, too?" Aang says, voice brittle, more broken and dry than the lifeless lake outside. "Not telling me about the existence of living Air Nomads until now?"
Zuko is shocked into silence, and Aang feels a rush of vindictive pleasure. He almost relishes that sinful rage, his anger boiling over like the teapot on the fire. "All this time I've been living here, thinking I was the only one of my kind left in the universe. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The air temple that was my home stood completely empty. No one in Zuodu had ever seen an airbender in living memory. My people were lost to history, or so I thought, until you revealed that as recently as five years ago, they walked in this very place where we are now. All this time, I've been wasting my days planting tea when I could have been looking for the remnants of my people, whom I failed!"
And you… you failed me, he does not say, but he knows that Zuko understands this. It's plain in the recoil of his shoulders as his gauzy image blurs, Aang's breathless tirade disturbing the steam.
Enough of this. He turns to face the doorway, having sprung to his feet in rage at some point, and briefly considers upending the tea bowls and extinguishing Zuko for a long, traitorous moment. In the end, he does not, and instead storms out of the temple to be elsewhere with his fury.
Behind him, a languorous tea spirit sinks to its knees between two bowls, prostrating itself before the sage of the temple, who looks on, unknowing of the cares projected onto its timeless features.
He clutches his glider staff in a tight fist, tendons taut with barely suppressed anger. How could Zuko not have told him? His brethren, wandering and lost in a strange land, abetted by the son of their enemies, himself an outcast. Before this, Aang had had no hope of ever finding the dregs of his fellow Air Nomads. The townspeople hadn't seen the refugees in question and believed that Lee had been falsely accused. Now Aang knows that some are still out there, but he does not feel so hopeful as furious.
Lost in seething, he throws himself out the main temple gate, seeking the enclosed forest, old trees drawn tight together over years. He gradually intuits a path between the dense vegetation without a care as to where he is going. Before long, he hears the sound of bubbling water, its merry tinkle soothing against his abraded nerves. A low gate emerges from the darkness, the moon barely sufficient to illuminate the words carved above the entrance: "Tiger Dreaming Spring."[7]
This must be the spring Zuko was talking about. It would have served as a source of water for the monks who used to live here. Aang stoops through the gate, finding his way up a set of shallow steps that lead towards a small pool, still and serene. Its rectangular bounds are enclosed within a stone basin, at the head of which is carved a statue of a cheerfully reclining man flanked by two tigers. The inscription below his likeness reads: "Master Daoji of Lingyin Temple," followed by his dates of birth and death, some two hundred years ago, well before the war.[8]
Here now is some history Aang can recall from air temple preschool. Daoji was something of a rogue monk: he took his vows at Lingyin Temple and was ordained as usual, but after that, he began behaving eccentrically, indulging in meat and wine, failing to keep his attire orderly, and wandering the land helping the poor and needy without regard for his personal pursuit of enlightenment. He was expelled from the temple but nevertheless remained kind of soul and strong of heart, with many stories surrounding his legend.
Aang seats himself at the edge of the pool, across from the statue, and meditates on the sound of bubbling water coming from farther upstream, the source of the spring. Legend has it that he once happened upon a village in danger of imminent destruction by a landslide. The people had not yet realized the danger, but Daoji had flown into the mountains and witnessed the crushing onslaught of the rocks. When he warned the villagers, they laughed and did not believe him, so he resorted to drastic measures. A wedding procession was going on, and Daoji abducted the bride and flew away with her on his glider. The groom and the wedding party ran after him, and soon, the entire village was in pursuit. They ran out past the village gates, and as soon as everyone had evacuated, the landslide came upon them and obliterated everything. Their lives were spared only because of his quick thinking.
"You were the epitome of what not to do as an Air Nomad," Aang intones to the unhearing statue. "Monk Pasang actually chastised Gyatso when he taught us your legend, saying that he shouldn't pollute our minds with examples of monks who strayed from the right path. All our lives, we strive to rid ourselves of earthly attachments, yet you embraced them fully.
"What's more, you understood very well what attachments secured other people to the world." Aang rises, restless again, and paces around the pool. "If I were in your position, what might I have done? Maybe I would've gotten my entire cohort, along with Appa and all our sky bison, and tried to fly the protesting villagers out of there. But you knew that the people would stop at nothing to rescue the abducted bride, because she was what they loved above all—the representation of new life, a new union, an age-old, rapturous, and visceral joy, one that many of us never experienced. How could we help people if we don't know what they value most?"
Daoji did not deny himself the pleasures of the flesh, but ultimately he was a good person, Aang reflects. He didn't fault the people outside of his monastic order for having earthly attachments either, but rather accepted them and used that knowledge to his advantage in performing acts of service for all.
According to Monk Gyatso, Daoji achieved enlightenment before his death, such that he was at peace with himself and all around him, even the birds and beasts. That would explain the tigers gamboling around him, the supposed patrons of this spring. Daoji was buried here at Tiger Dreaming Spring, near the temple—it's all coming back to Aang, his lessons of old. Too little, too late?
He sighs and shuffles around the pool, ambling in and out of the edges of the forest as he ponders his situation. A stand of hardy ferns brushes against him, and he idly pulls at a branch, unfurling its long strand and toying with the curled fronds. It bounces back into the same coiled posture when he lets it go.
"Unless you have spent years devoting yourself to releasing your earthly tethers, it's impossible not to develop attachments. To do so is to be human," Aang explains to Daoji. "We Air Nomads seek to transcend this humanity, but as the Avatar, I am both human and spirit. I can never achieve this, for the people I serve are human too. My duty to them constitutes my attachment to this earth. My spiritual needs can never be fully met, in that sense.
"Zuko's no different. He's human too, despite being suspended in a spirit state. I can guess why he didn't tell me about the Air Nomads. Maybe he didn't want me to leave and go off in search of them. He couldn't be sure if they're still alive and didn't want to give me false hope."
He understands now, crouched between the roots of an old magnolia whose petals litter one corner of the pavilion. Zuko's only attachments are the tea plantation, watered literally with his blood, sweat, and tears, and Aang himself. He's loath to cut these tenuous bonds because they are all that tether him to this earth and separate him from the great unknown. It's only natural that he'd hesitate to tell Aang the truth.
Aang treads a silent path back to the hall, vowing to bring an offering for Daoji later. The tea in the bowls has cooled, and the steam has disappeared completely, Zuko absent in all but spirit. Aang kneels before the unknown sage, guardian of this temple, and allows his thoughts to merge with the tendrils of energy that lace the sanctuary, threads of days long gone that still haunt this place.
He watches and hears the memories as if they are unfolding around him, the voices of the Air Nomads, a babble frightened and unsure. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run, we're trapped, we're trapped. What do we do? Where will we go? He says he won't hurt us, but even so… the rest of the world won't be so kind. Statues in the alcove, looking down at us, judging us. Undisciplined, unskilled benders, unfit keepers of the traditions, for shame.
Don't be afraid, a calm voice cuts through the clamor. Take what you can, what's left of value, little as it is. Don't bother with what your forebears think. You either survive to venerate them once more, or die penniless while their wealth gathers dust here.
The voice falls familiar on Aang's ears: Zuko's compassionate cadence, reassuring the Air Nomads that even if they must leave, they should not leave empty-handed. They have their gliders, but if they want to throw off their pursuers, they will need coin for the long haul, for food and lodging, for ship fare to sail away from these islands to the more welcoming Earth Kingdom, where perhaps they can start a new life.
Daoji wouldn't begrudge you these boons, Aang thinks, echoing Zuko's sentiments. Gold and precious stones meant nothing to him; the livelihood that they would have earned you, my brethren, meant everything to him.
He opens his eyes and exhales deeply. Guru, Zuko should be made an honorary sage. A wave of regret floods Aang's heart as he remembers his cruel words. Returning to the pot of tea, he rekindles the flame underneath and reheats the water to boiling. He drinks the cold tea first and then refills the bowls with hot water.
"Zuko… I'm so sorry."
The tea spirit says nothing, but Aang has never seen a more broken expression on Zuko's face.
"I know you didn't mean to deceive me. And you helped my fellow Air Nomads at the cost of your own life; that debt can never be repaid. What I said was thoughtless and born of anger, and I hurt you."
He reaches a hand towards Zuko's glimmering form, a supplication for forgiveness. Slowly, the steam rearranges itself so that Zuko's hand envelopes his own, fingers faintly curling around his.
"You asked me before, what I missed the most about being alive. I didn't answer at the time, but I'll answer you now. I miss being with the people I love. There were never many to begin with, courtesy of being born into royalty, then spending my time either at war or in exile. So when the chance came, even beyond death, I wasn't going to shoo you away so quickly.
"But in doing so, I've wronged you too. You stayed, but now that you know there are still living Air Nomads, your heart won't let you tarry. If you want to go find them, you should go. Don't let a dead man keep you here."
"I'll take you with me," Aang promises. "Where I go, you go. What I see, you see."
"What if you run out of tea leaves?"
He thumbs through the pouch of leaves kept at his waist, Zuko's life and soul always close at hand. "Even if I do, you'll still be waiting here… won't you?"
An agonizing silence, their hands clasped even though Aang cannot feel a solid grip, can only trust his eyes and his soul to know that their hearts are bared to each other in this moment.
"I'll wait for you as long as you need me to," Zuko says. Forever, if need be.
Oh, Zuko. Aang can't help the tears that slip forth from his eyes and anoint their hands like watery kisses, falling through Zuko's incorporeal form and plinking onto the floor.
"Would you like to see the lake as it once looked, before it was depleted?" Zuko cannot cry, cannot experience that crushing relief that only comes through throaty sobs and soul-deep anguish. All he has are his memories, his past life, and hope for the present one that he spends with Aang.
Aang acquiesces, and as Zuko's memories overlay his own, showing him the West Lake in all its resplendence, he hides one singular thought away in the deepest recesses of his mind.
I love you. I love you, guru above, how did this come to be?
1) Butter tea: the butter tea derived from sky bison's milk is inspired by yak butter tea, a traditional Tibetan drink. It's made with black tea, salt, yak butter, and reaches more of a rich soup-like consistency than typical tea. I have never tried it myself as I'm pretty sure there is nowhere you can get yak butter in this hemisphere xD But it sounds very delicious.
2) I thought it would be ironic to make just one single person lactose intolerant (poor Jinju), in defiance of the many studies and med school curricula that cite up to 95% of Asians becoming lactose intolerant by adulthood… like first of all, what constitutes "Asians"? Did you mean the entirety of the extremely ethnically diverse continent of Asia, or did you just mean East Asians? . Also hello, I'm over here drinking milk and eating yogurt like there's no tomorrow, and so are most Asians I know. Idk, I just feel that disease processes taught in med school (in America, that is) about "Asians" is either nonexistent or grossly oversimplified.
3) Basically, the entire city of Zuodu is meant to be a stand-in for Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, where the Longjing tea strain is produced. West Lake (西湖）is a scenic lake in Hangzhou, with many famous natural and historic sites surrounding it, some of which will be touched on in this fic. I've never been; my parents have, but I hate going on vacation, especially with them, so I didn't go.
4) Gao Sheng: I'm honestly not sure what the political structure of Zuodu is; if there's a mayor or other magisterial seat, or if Gao Sheng is the highest power there is. If he is, then I don't know why he's personally running around trying to arrest street vendors without a license; he should just have his lackeys do the legwork. If he's not, then maybe he's just the highest martial power in the city, but has to report to a higher civilian authority? I don't know. It's not really important; it's just the kind of thing you start wondering after watching too many period dramas with questionable hierarchies and logistics.
5) Draining the lake: I don't know enough about environmental engineering or whatever to evaluate whether it's feasible for the Fire army to drain the lake into the river to make it deep enough to sail their ships down, or if it even makes sense for the ships to be built inland and then float to the sea. *throws hands up in despair* oh well. Historically, the real West Lake had dried up and been dredged and restored multiple times for various natural and manmade reasons, but I'm not going to get into all that.
6) Lingyin Temple: 靈隱寺，or Temple of the Soul's Retreat. Founded by one Monk Huili, a Buddhist monk from India, in the 4th century. The descriptions in this chapter aren't based on any specific sites in the temple itself, but it is deeply hidden in the mountains west of West Lake.
7) Tiger Dreaming Spring: 虎跑夢泉, can also be rendered as Dreaming of Tiger Running Spring. A natural spring south of West Lake, said to be discovered by a monk in a dream where two tigers dug it out of the earth and unearthed the pure water.
8) Daoji: 道濟禪師, the Chan (Buddhist) Master Daoji was as described in the chapter, an eccentric monk who lived a life of wild abandon, but nevertheless helped people selflessly wherever he encountered those in need. Many examples of him / characters inspired by him exist throughout classical and modern Chinese media, the archetypal rogue monk. He was buried at Tiger Dreaming Spring, but the statue of a dreaming monk lying between two tigers in the pictures above is not him; it is actually Monk Xikong who is said to have discovered the spring.