Zuko followed Aang reluctantly as he made his way up to the top of a hill. He surveyed the landscape, then nodded to himself, satisfied. "Perfect."
Zuko looked at the view. It was nice, of course. They were nearing the northern tip of the Earth Kingdom, so they could see the ocean on the edge of the horizon, and before that was a stretch of seemingly unending grasses on rolling hills, which stretched out in all directions around them. Very few trees and very little cover, especially when they were at the top of the hill like this.
"Don't you think we're a little…visible up here?" Zuko asked nervously.
"Do you see anyone watching us?"
"No, but if someone comes—"
"Then we'll be able to see them easily. This place is perfect. Just stand for a second and feel the breeze."
Zuko did have to admit that it was pretty nice. The air felt very present here, but not in a demanding way, just a gentle reminder of what most people normally took for granted. Usually, the air was invisible, practically imperceptible unless you paid very close attention, but here, he didn't even have to hone into that strange, special awareness he'd been developing since his very first airbending lesson. The air made itself known through all five of Zuko's senses.
He could see it in the light blue sky, dotted with occasional white, puffy clouds that floated by on gusts far overhead, and in the grasses all around, which rippled and swayed in the gentle yet persistent breeze blowing in from the ocean to the north. He could feel it as it tousled his hair and his clothes, and smell the salty scent of the ocean that it carried with it. He thought he could taste that salt, too, just faintly, and he could hear the way it whooshed between him and Aang and over the hills.
"Okay," he said reluctantly. "So what are we here for, then?"
"I think you're ready for something a little more advanced."
Zuko nodded. He'd been catching onto most of the stuff Aang had been teaching him pretty easily so far—surprisingly easily, actually. Airbending seemed to come much easier to him than firebending had. He was trying not to let it get to his head, but he was starting to feel maybe a little overconfident in his airbending skills. Why shouldn't he try something a little more advanced?
"I wish I could figure out a way to get you your own glider, because that's really what I want to teach you how to do, but for now, I'm going to teach you something I made up a while ago." He grinned mischievously. "I call it an air scooter, and this place is the perfect place for us to try it out, look at all these hills!"
"Uh…what is it?" Zuko asked.
Aang's grin widened even more, and he began to swirl his arms around each other in a circular motion. Zuko felt the air around him shifting in response to Aang's bending, and then suddenly there was a medium-sized ball of air hovering in front of Aang. Aang jumped on top of it, balancing on it with one foot while he crossed his other leg over his thigh, and took off down the hill.
He did some pretty impressive moves, using the hills like ramps and walls to kick off of and do flips and other aerial tricks, before returning to Zuko at the top of the tallest hill and letting the air scooter dissipate.
Suddenly, Zuko's confidence in his skills was far less than it had been. "Uh, I don't know if I can do that, Aang."
"Sure, you can! It's easy. Here, let me show you a little slower." As he spoke, he began to move his arms in the same way he had before, but he kept talking as he did, explaining what he was doing. "You form a little ball of air, like this, and then you hop on top of it and balance there." This time, instead of shooting off down the hill and doing tricks, he just stayed there next to Zuko, perfectly balanced atop his little air ball. "See? And you can move it around by tilting a little in the direction you want to go." He demonstrated by tilting his body slightly to the left and right, then back and forth, making the ball move in the direction he indicated.
Zuko looked at his hands. "Okay."
He turned away from Aang and formed a ball of air—that part wasn't very hard, he'd made similar things in former lessons with Aang. The problem came with trying to balance on it and control it at the same time. As soon as he hopped up onto it, he started to spin around on it until he got so dizzy that his concentration dropped and he fell onto his butt.
Aang laughed as he hopped down from his own scooter and let it dissolve. "You almost got it! Just try one more time. Copy my movements."
This time, Zuko and Aang did the motions together, but while Aang jumped up onto his scooter with no trouble whatsoever, Zuko's seemed to reject him. He knew it wasn't an agility problem. He could get onto the ball without much issue, and he could even balance. It was just controlling the air enough to make it hold him up and let him move around that was the issue.
After a few fruitless attempts, Aang said, "Maybe let's table that one for now. I'll try you on a different move."
"No," Zuko started to say. "I almost got it. Just—"
"Let it simmer until our next lesson. You're just gonna get frustrated if you keep trying right now."
Zuko gritted his teeth, but nodded his acquiescence. "Fine."
But for some reason, though they were out there for several hours, none of the techniques Aang tried to teach him seemed to be working right. The wind had become familiar to him, but today it fought him at every turn, and Zuko found himself getting more and more frustrated despite Aang's reassurances.
When they eventually decided to call it quits for the day, Zuko started to angrily stomp back toward camp, but Aang grabbed his arm.
"Hey, you're just having an off day. It happens to everyone sometimes. I'm sure you'll get it tomorrow."
But Zuko did not "get it tomorrow." As the group continued to travel north for the next few days, as they eventually left the main Earth Kingdom continent behind and began hopping from island to island on their way north, Zuko and Aang had lessons every day, and nothing Zuko tried worked. Even the easier airbending techniques he'd already learned were harder to pull off now than they had been before. He made Aang promise not to tell Katara and Sokka that he was having trouble. It took some convincing, but Aang eventually agreed.
The last thing Zuko wanted was for Katara, especially, to find out his training had stagnated, mostly because part of him thought the problem had to do the conversation he'd had with her by the river.
The tension that usually floated between them was still there, but ever since their talk, it felt different somehow. He didn't know how it was affecting her, if it was at all. She did seem to glare at him somewhat less, and she was a little less openly antagonistic when he made suggestions during group discussions, but they mostly continued the same routine they always had, ignoring each other unless they had to speak. Still, the moment had rattled him. They'd shared a instance of vulnerability, and he kept coming back to it, over and over.
When they were making camp to sleep each night, Zuko would flash back to how she'd called him a coward, how she'd accused him of refusing to accept who he really was—and even there, in his own thoughts, he couldn't bring himself to actually think the word. Avatar. He'd think of how she'd said she wanted to help the people in the towns they passed, and that the Avatar was meant to help people.
He'd thought that by agreeing to train with Aang and go to the Northern Water Tribe, he'd accepted his role—but if he really examined himself, deep down, he knew that wasn't totally true. Katara had been right. He was a coward, hiding behind lies and hiding from the people he was supposedly destined to save.
Uncle Iroh had always said that bending power was tied to the spirit. When there was something wrong with your emotional state, that could manifest in your bending. Zuko had never really believed that was true, but this seemed like proof.
He didn't know how he was supposed to fix it, though. Because the truth was, though he had decided to follow this path out of a sense of obligation and guilt, he didn't want to be the Avatar. He didn't see how he would ever truly want it. Deep down, part of him still believed that being the Avatar meant he was a traitor to his family and to his country. Despite all the terrible things he'd seen his people do, he didn't know how to separate himself from his Fire Nation identity and from his father. It was everything he had known for the first sixteen years of his life, and because of that, he knew that there were wonderful things about the Fire Nation, too. How could he reject that?
"We'll find a way to get you past this block," Aang said to him, after yet another fruitless lesson. Even he sounded a little unsure. "Don't worry too much about it."
But the real problem was that Zuko needed to get past himself, and that was going to be much harder.
