"I'm sorry. My hands are officially tied." General Iroh glanced down at his hands, which though unrestrained suddenly felt heavy and hot. He could hear President Raiko's ringing footsteps as he departed the battleship. Having issued the order for Iroh and his forces to stand down in the Water Tribe civil war, the President had left quickly. Iroh imagined Raiko had been on the other side of the Avatar's wrath too often to want to overstay his welcome. Leaving him, Iroh, to face her instead.
He forced himself to look Korra in the eyes. It was the least he could do. It certainly felt like the least, at any rate. "I know it's not the outcome you wanted," he said.
Korra frowned. About average height and build, with brown hair in tails framing brilliant blue eyes, Avatar Korra looked to Iroh more like someone's kid sister than an elite fighter and the world's most powerful bender. But he'd seen her in action, and he wasn't fooled. If she'd come to the United Forces for help, the situation at the South Pole must be worse than reported.
Korra nodded her head after Raiko. "Coward," she spat, and scowled. Her blue eyes blazed in anger. "So we're on our own then."
"Wait, what?" Iroh asked, surprised. "What do you mean?"
Korra stared at him for a moment before replying. "I mean," she said slowly, "that we'll have to think of a better cover story than naval exercises."
Iroh narrowed his eyes. He had anticipated anger from Korra, but disobeying the order hadn't crossed his mind. He frowned.
"You would have me disregard a direct order from my commander?" he asked. He gestured in the direction Raiko had gone. "Not one minute after he walked off my ship? He was utterly unambiguous, Avatar Korra. I'm sorry, but the United Forces can have no role in this fight, and neither can I."
Korra's eyes widened. "What? You're going to listen to that… that jackass?" She took a step forward, waving her arms in agitation. Iroh noticed her shift her feet slightly, centering her balance. He tensed. He thought she might not even be aware that she was bracing for a physical fight. "General, we can do this. We'll think of something. Mako, Bolin, Asami, even Tenzin, they all want to help. We can—"
"No," Iroh said, his voice firm. This was going worse than expected. Much worse. "I'm sorry, Avatar Korra."
"You're sorry? You're sorry?" Korra took another step forward, balling her fists, unconsciously closing the distance between them. "My people are dying, Iroh," she said. "I've tried diplomacy. I have nowhere else to go for help. The United Forces were my last resort."
"What would you have me do?" he asked quietly.
"I would have you protect the people you swore to protect!" The Avatar was shouting now, her face red with anger.
"I'm—" Iroh started.
"If you say 'I'm sorry' one more time I swear… I swear…" Korra said. Suddenly she spun, unleashing a gout of flame at the wall to her right. Iroh saw the metal pucker under the intense heat. She turned back to face him, her eyes filling with tears. "How can you do nothing, you spineless sack of shit?" she screamed. She punctuated her curse with another blow, this time aiming a jet of air directly at Iroh. Surprised, it caught him full-on in the chest. He was a tall man, but the sheer force of her blast made him stumble backwards. By the time he recovered, she had turned and stormed off the bridge. She shouted back, her words amplified in the metal passageway, "I guess Raiko isn't the only coward here!"
Iroh blinked, stunned. He felt like he'd been slapped. Coward?
He ran his hand through his hair, a nervous habit he'd never quite kicked. The deck was deserted, the crew having had the good sense to make themselves scarce when the shouting started.
The Avatar's footsteps thudded distantly on the gangplank as she stomped off the battleship. As they echoed softly through the passageway, it sounded to Iroh as if every one of her past lives had turned their back on him in anger.
That night, General Iroh did something he hadn't done in a very, very long time. He got completely and utterly drunk.
Shortly after dinner he had allowed himself a small glass of brandy in his quarters to steady his nerves. The interaction with Raiko and the fight with the Avatar had bothered him more than he wanted to show, and he had made a point of recruiting bright and perceptive men to his command. The small glass, proving ineffective, had turned into a second, which had turned into a third, larger glass. After that he lost count.
Since joining the United Forces at 17, Iroh had mostly drunk tea, believing that modeling temperance would inspire that quality in his men. He hadn't had more than a beer or a polite social drink in the seven years since, and the brandy hit him hard. It was now well after lights out, and a cold breeze blew through the small square window he'd left open to the night. The bottle of expensive liquor, which he kept on hand to offer visiting dignitaries and rarely used, sat on the nightstand. It was three-quarters empty.
The room itself was small and spare, its gray metal walls bare. A narrow bed lay against one wall, a worn desk against the other. A wardrobe in-between doubled as a bookshelf. When he took command of the fleet, Iroh had insisted on using the larger and more lavish captain's quarters as a communal area for officers and occasional meeting room. Although he'd grown up in fairly opulent surroundings, he'd never understood why some people invested so much money in spaces where they were mostly unconscious.
Iroh himself lay stretched out on his back on the small bed, arms spread wide. He stared at the ceiling, which was slowly revolving as if dangled from a wire. At some point he'd dressed down to his shirtsleeves; his normally immaculate scarlet uniform lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Hours of running his hand through his dark hair had made it stick up in all directions, giving him the look of someone who'd been mildly electrocuted.
A gust of wind ruffled something to his right. Iroh slowly turned his head, looking for the noise. A haphazard stack of papers on the desk fluttered in the breeze. He took in the nearly empty bottle and rumpled uniform as well and grimaced. He'd been a surprisingly untidy child, and his quarters now looked more like the domain of his six-year-old self than the military man he'd become. He'd been doing something at the desk with those papers, too, but he couldn't quite focus enough to remember what it had been.
If I was my CO I'd throw me in the drink, he thought, and snorted softly aloud. The snort in the silent room struck him as even funnier, and was followed by a deep belly laugh. The laugh triggered a sudden lurch from the dangling ceiling however, and Iroh's stomach rolled with it. He shut his eyes tight and breathed in slowly, holding his breath for a few seconds before exhaling, willing the world still. It was a meditation trick he'd developed during his first few months at sea where, to his profound embarrassment, he was almost paralyzed by seasickness. He'd never admitted this to anyone, then or since, for fear they'd think him weak or unfit to serve. Healthy and athletic all his life, and from a long line of naval commanders, even now it was a surprisingly deep source of shame.
Shame, Iroh thought, still breathing in and out to counts of ten. Unfit to serve. Suddenly, Avatar Korra's words came back to him, squashing what remained of his good humor. Not the only coward here. He opened his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear it, his face darkening into a scowl. He didn't know why the argument had rattled him so much. He'd been in his share of firefights, both verbal and literal, and he'd never felt the need to drink himself into oblivion afterwards. And why connect Korra's insults with shame?
"Because part of me knows she's right, dammit," Iroh said to the empty room, an edge in his voice.
I would have you protect the people you swore to protect.
He sat up with a grimace. The room spun wildly, but he repeated the breathing exercise and steadied himself. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet cold on the metal floor, and made his way slowly to the desk. The papers were maps of the South Pole, pulled from the ship's intelligence files and incredibly detailed. The topmost map showed the capital down to the building level, each business and home to scale and neatly labeled. He also remembered what he'd been doing before he'd lost track of time. He'd been trying to estimate probable civilian casualties.
General Iroh of the United Forces stared drunkenly down at the drawing of hundreds of tiny homes. Homes that, in all likelihood, were already burning.
Coward.