A/N: So as this story goes on, sort of starting in this chapter, there is going to be arguing between a colonialist and a native-coded woman about whether or not colonialism is bad. Given that the pro-colonialism arguments are coming from a character who's eventually going to become a beloved and enlightened mentor figure, that might be uncomfortable to read and I understand it! The thesis of this story is that Iroh spent almost all of his life wrapped up in cognitive dissonance, skillfully making the world a worse place while perceiving himself as a hero, so I just wanna be up front about a few things: Colonialism and imperialism sucks, Iroh, while in many ways always a likable and kind person, is still a villain at this point in time no matter how good he is at convincing himself otherwise, and no native coded women written by me are going to die, go to jail, or agree that colonialism is good.
I am interested in the transition during Iroh's life from perceiving himself as a just hero with a grand destiny to realizing that he has, at least until the events of canon, always been a villain. This story is part of that overall tale. With sensitive cultural themes upcoming I just wanted to make the course I'm charting clear.
I try to respond to every review I can, but since the PM function doesn't work when someone reviews as a guest, I'll address those reviews in author notes at the end of each new chapter!
Belatedly I've decided to start using chapter titles based on my working playlist for writing this story. This chapter title comes from Castaway, by King Deco. watch?v=tnWwjIaefF0
If anyone's interested, I'll pop the whole playlist up on Spotify at the end of the story, since the full thing right now could provide a few spoilers ;)
Chapter 3
You Don't Want to Hurt Me Baby, You Don't Want to Make Me Cry
Iroh woke up automatically with the sunrise.
The sound of the sea was a long, slow rush of waves curling gently, like meditative breath, slow in and slower out. His damp clothes itched with drying salt water. The sailor was still passed out face-down on the sand beside him.
He sat up and stripped his sand-caked layers as he surveyed the beach. The sailor had beached her boat on the white sand, where the ebbing tide left it high on the shore. The beach was narrow, palm trees and dense jungle growing a few yards from the water. South, a low outcropping of dark rock cut the beach off, jutting into the bay. Waves flowed over in a periodic rush that had left it porous, and hermit shrimp flickered in and out of the limestone. Beyond that the bay coast ran on for miles in a curve west, rising into towering black cliffs. North, the arm of the bay stretched a mile of white sand out to a reef where waves broke in towers of whitewater. The waves that reached the beach were clear and sparkling fingerlings of energy, folding gently over themselves in sand full of broken shells and fragments of coral.
The beauty of the bay under sunrise didn't escape him, but he was thirsty again, itching with salt, hungry and exhausted. He could have dropped back to the sand and gone right back to sleep, but the rising sun would soon be overhead, burning him and the sailor as she slept.
Iroh regarded the unconscious woman for a moment. Her long-sleeved uniform covered her skin, and her hair covered her ears. She wouldn't burn if he left her for the shade.
But the heat of direct sunlight would wake her up sooner than later. He could wake her and walk her to the shade, but she had saved his life not once, but minute after minute, hour after hour through the previous night. His sleep on the fastboat hadn't been restful, but he'd still had any at all, while she'd been slapping herself to stay awake and sail him to safety through a hurricane. It would be inconsiderate to wake her unnecessarily.
Iroh set off for the jungle to build her a shade.
The forest had plenty of bamboo to choose from. He seared a flexible green staff into three pieces, and seared two pieces at an angle so that they stabbed deeply and easily into the sand. He burned holes through the third bamboo staff so that it wedged firmly on the other two, then laid his robe over the light frame. The shallow lean-to wouldn't have kept a drop of rain off them, but it shaded the woman, and cast enough for him to lie in too.
He spread his less sandy inner clothes on the sand and lay shirtless next to her, still in the light trousers he'd kept underneath the stolen Earth Kingdom robes. Thirsty as he was, he still drifted easily into the sleep he needed, breathing with the soft tumbling of the waves.
He awoke with the sun nearly overhead, barely still in the shade. A breeze rustled the palm trees against the blue sky. The sailor was not next to him.
He sat up, his mouth blazing hot with thirst, and looked down the beach. The fastboat was still high on the sand, a familiar folded green uniform on the deck. On the other side of the fastboat, the sailor stood with her back to him knee-deep in the shallow water, wearing only a spring green sarong as a short dress as she showered, rinsing out her long, dark brown hair under a raincloud sized for a single person.
The pieces clicked into place.
There was no salt-reactive air-cooling formula. This woman had not been hired for her ability to pull an oar, even if she'd done so in the course of her work.
She turned to him, her eyes distinctly blue, bright even at this distance. Iroh was shocked he hadn't put those pieces together sooner, now that they formed the picture in front of him.
"Mornin'," she said. She looked his shirtlessness up and down, not bothering to disguise her approval. His shock gave way just enough for him to return her open look of appreciation. The waterbender had hidden a wide-hipped figure under her uniform, and a waist-length fall of dark brown hair beneath her hat. She was an enemy of his people and she was beautiful, water running all down her dark skin. "Thanks for the shade. You must be salty. Want to rinse off?"
He had faced so many waterbenders on the road from Fort Iruka to Leijiang. None of them had been beautiful women, smiling, their hands outheld, inviting him to shower with them.
"Sure," he said, his mouth catching up to his eyes. His skin itched with salt and sand. He walked around the fastboat to stand nearer and the waterbender shifted smoothly around with her wrists limp, lifting and upturning her hands so gently that he felt certain the raincloud would not respond to such a gentle suggestion. But the cloud that had poured down on her floated to him, and ran gentle, cool fresh water through his hair and down his shoulders.
He sighed at the relief of the salt being washed from his skin, yet nearly shuddered at the sudden terror of allowing a waterbender to bring water in such close proximity to his body. In absolute vulnerability he stood, letting the water wash him clean at this woman's command, this woman who'd saved his life, without knowing whose life she had in her enemy hands.
If she knew who she held so vulnerably in her grasp, would the raindrops turn to daggers?
His heart beat so fast as the cool rain washed him clean that he thought he might stop breathing. He stepped out of the shower, reaching up to run a hand over his hair, askew from its Earth Kingdom style bun. He tore his hair down and, as she kept smiling so bright eyed and charming, tilted his head into her raincloud once more to let the fresh water slick his black hair down his back and over his shoulders.
The peasant sailor who had no idea how much of a fugitive she had just become shifted out of her stance and dissipated the raincloud, drawing her graceful hands back down to her hips. "First of all," she said, in a comforting tone, "Everyone else got on the lifeboats safely so you don't have to worry about your friends."
Her assurance struck him, as he thought of Huaji bleeding on his shoulder. She couldn't know for certain he was all right -
"The oarsmen kept them out of the current that caught you, so they should make landfall by sunrise," she said.
That was more promising than if the sergeant had no hope of reaching landfall at all. Iroh breathed deeply against his recollection of the night.
"You took your time finding that flare," the waterbender said. "Good thing you still had it. What happened to your float vest?"
She'd mistaken his firebending for the flares. He opened his mouth to say - to say what? But she waved him off.
"Oh it doesn't matter. Nobody died. Second thing, is -" she smiled an apologetic, appeasing smile. "We're gonna be here for a while."
"How long is a while?" he asked. She didn't know he was a firebender, and she didn't know he was the Crown Prince, so what motive would she have to lie?
"The currents around these islands are . . . unique," she said, gently. "In about a month they'll shift towards the mainland instead of away from it, but if we try to leave now, best case scenario, the wind is not entirely against us and nothing goes wrong and we're still out of provisions by the time we tack into Changbao. Worst case scenario the wind and the currents are both entirely against us and and we get swept out to open sea."
A month. A month? He couldn't be AWOL for a month. He'd miss the anniversary. He might even miss the end of the Leijiang campaign. He looked at the tiny sailboat and the thought of being stuck on it in the open sea almost made his headache return. "Could a powerboat cut through these unique currents?"
"Well sure, but I don't think we're gonna get any powerboats out here," the sailor said. "Ain't no shippin' lanes runnin' south, and the water to the north is too shallow for Fire Nation boats for miles."
"Will your crew know to search this part of the sea?"
"Sure they will, but if you got a handful of rice and one grain had an ant on it, and you scattered that handful on your kitchen floor, could you pick out the grain with the ant? 'Cause that's what the islands are like here." There was sympathy, but amusement, in her smile. "Don't worry about it. I'm still employed by the Swordfish, you're still an honored guest, and I ain't gonna let an honored guest die out here." She grinned, confidence in her smile. "Trust me. You couldn't ask be stuck on a deserted island with a better companion."
He nodded.
"Because you're a waterbender." No wonder the company had such a strong reputation for speed and safety. No wonder she'd picked him up and sailed successfully in the middle of a storm, no wonder he'd coughed all that water up, no wonder the air belowdeck had always been so cool -
"How'd you guess?" she asked.
She swept through a form. Several mangoes laid out on a banana leaf next to her suddenly shriveled, yellow juice flowing around her in a spiral to pool in a sphere over her fingertips.
"You must be thirsty." She held her hand out to him. "Hope you like mango juice. It's the end of the season, so we better go through 'em before they rot."
Did anybody not like mango juice, Iroh wondered, realizing that he must have still been staring in frankly undignified surprise. He stepped forward, staring at the sphere of juice, wondering how one drank without drinking from a cup -
He put his hand underneath hers, tipping her fingers just slightly closer to his mouth so he could watch her for judgment as he touched his lips to the sphere. She'd cooled the juice until it was nearly ice. The refreshing shock sent him reeling back a moment before he leaned in to finish. He was parched.
Her smile never wavered as he finished his drink. She seemed pleased by the chance to show her skill. "You look like you seen a ghost. Never met a waterbender before?"
She asked it as a joke, as if of course he hadn't, but he had. Iroh struggled over the memory of the last waterbender he'd met, painted like a wolf and screaming in his armor. The battles on the road to Leijiang reinforced the respect he maintained for the Northern warriors, despite their barbaric ways. He'd met waterbenders alright, but never one half-dressed with a smile on her face, offering him cool sweet refreshment, having just saved his life.
When he didn't answer, she went on in that same playful lilt. "I'd have kept it secret, but there's no way we're gonna survive here if I don't do any bending, and I figure there's no Fire Nation around for you to sell me out to -"
He did the math on lying. She couldn't find out his identity, not when she was in the perfect position to execute him, or abandon him to death, or take him as a hostage, or leave him to return with reinforcements, but the best lies were mostly true. The more truth he told her, the less likely she'd be to look for the entire truth.
A skilled waterbender on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, who knew how to sail the only boat available, as well as possibly the only source of drinking water - if she decided to take him hostage, he wouldn't be in much of a position to bargain his way out. She could want vengeance upon the Fire Nation. She could decide to try and kill him, but even in the middle of the ocean, a waterbender was vulnerable to lightning - and often surprised by it.
She was still letting him hold her hand. Her eyes were fixed on his, her smile appealing, the way a woman smiled at a man she was happy to have the prospect of uninterrupted time with.
He smiled back, happy to have been saved by her.
He needed her to trust him, and he needed her not to think there were any questions left for her to ask.
"Since we're being honest -" he said, stepping back, taking a defenseless position, his hands held up in surrender. "I have no intention of selling you out to anyone, but -" he ignited a flame over his palm.
The quantity of fear that filled her face probably shouldn't have surprised him. She backed up in a defensive stance, the sea rushing up around her shoulders and arms.
"Please, stop!" he said, cutting the flame off. He knelt before the woman. "I'm not stupid enough to try and fight a powerful waterbender in the middle of the ocean."
He waited to see if the flattery had landed. She didn't come out of her defensive stance, but she didn't move to attack him, either.
"If we're going to be here a while," he said, "We ought to trust each other. You trusted me with your identity. It's only right I trust you with mine." At least partly. "Surviving will be more comfortable if I don't have to pretend to light every fire by hand."
She breathed heavily, but relaxed by a fraction. A few breaths in, she said, "Just so we're clear, I'm gonna drop you off a whole day's walk from any port." The coat of water over her arms and shoulders stayed, shifting. A few black-and-white striped fish swam through it.
"So long as I'm alive, you can drop me as many days' walk away as you think is fair," Iroh agreed.
She held her position another few seconds. Then she relaxed, the sea pouring off her shoulders. She covered her mouth with one hand, eyes wide and staring into the water. She pointed at him. "You better not even think of hurtin' me," she said. "There's no fresh spring on this here rock and all the mangos'll go bad before the month's out if I don't take the water out of 'em."
"My life is in your hands," he agreed. She had no idea how many people would have sacrificed their own allies to be in her position. This common sailor suddenly held a significant percentage of the power of the world, and she'd never be aware that she did.
He went back to appreciating her near-naked form. Technically, whether she knew it or not, she held him prisoner. Being a prisoner missing in action usually did not involve being held hostage by a pretty woman in beachwear. More people would go missing in action if it did, he thought, and and chuckled at the joke.
"What's so funny?" she asked, warily. "I ain't kidding! You ain't gonna have an easy time here if you do anything shifty."
"No, I know that," he said, reassuring. "I was thinking that you did a good job until now of covering up how beautiful you are."
She blushed, looking to the side wide-eyed, but her half-smile as she looked back at him was self-assured. "Aww, you noticed."
"Beautiful and funny and a powerful bender?" Iroh gave her his most charming smile. "If every captor had your qualities, more men would go missing in action."
She was trying to frown but smiled anyway. "Are you this sweet to all your enemies or should I be flattered?"
If he was finding it a bit exciting to be at the mercy of a powerful and beautiful woman, maybe she hadn't missed that she had power over him, and maybe she was a little bit excited by that too. That just excited him a little more. He composed himself with a breath. "Who says we're enemies?"
"Everything the Fire Nation's done to the southern tribe," she said, with a tone of 'obviously.'
"I haven't done anything," Iroh pointed out. He hadn't. The southern campaign was his father's life's work. Ba Sing Se would be his. "Maybe I was omitting things when we met, but nothing I have ever said to you hasn't been true."
The waterbender pushed a lock of wet hair back over her shoulder. "What's your name?"
This was a risk - but if this month went as he hoped it would, if she were ever breathlessly gasping a name to him, he wanted his true one from her mouth. "Iroh."
She didn't show any recognition. His name wasn't well spread among the Earth Kingdom. His title tended to get whispered more, and sons of the Fire Nation were still often named as he was, in honor of the hero his maternal great-great grandfather had been.
"I'm Sana," she said. "Sana Bel."
"Sana Bel," he repeated. "It's a pleasure to be your prisoner."
She covered her mouth again and looked away, absolutely failing to conceal her smile, her hand on her hip, her stance no longer defensive but canted to show off the curve of her hip. She had to know that was one of her best features. Common women who knew their beauty were an incredible amount of fun.
"We're in an unusual position," he pointed out. "I'm not sure when the last time was that a waterbender and a Fire Nation soldier found themselves in such close company."
"I suppose," she said, playing with the hem of her fringed sarong.
"Did your crew know?"
Her expression flattened. "No they did not," she said, in a way that told him yes, they definitely knew, but she wasn't going to sell them out by admitting it.
"How could they not?"
"You will never hear me say it," she promised.
He decided to leave off that tack. She was not from the north. She was not from the south. Another tribe of waterbenders existed somewhere in the Earth Kingdom and he was primed to find out about it. He might not have an air cooling system to bring to his father, but he could have something even more monumental.
"Fair enough," he said. "But how did you end up working for an Earth Kingdom ferry? Your tribe can't be from this coast, everyone would know about a third Water Tribe."
Her eyes widened in panic as he mentioned her tribe. "I'm from the Northern tribe," she blurted out. "I dunno what you mean, third."
"With that accent?" he chided.
"All northern water tribe folk talk like this," she lied.
"None of the Northern Water Tribe men I've fought did."
She cast her glance aside. "Fine," she said, with an air of admission. "I only learned from the Northern Tribe. My folks was real surprised when I turned out to bend the wrong element, so they sent me north to train."
"Uh huh." Iroh smiled at the lie. "That must have been quite the shock, a waterbender born to Earth Kingdom parents."
"Oh, it was," she confirmed, nodding.
"Must have been even more of a shock when you went all the way to the Northern Water Tribe just to find out they don't train their women," Iroh said, chuckling a little as he crossed his arms.
Sana deflated as her lie lost its last breath of life. "So you know about that," she muttered, defeated.
Avatar Roku had written of it extensively, this dishonor afforded to Northern Water Tribeswomen. "Avatar Roku wondered in his journals, had he been born female, would they have taught him?"
Sana frowned, and looked away. "You ain't gonna find out where I'm from," she stated, flatly. "You should get used to that."
"Fair enough," he said. "Are you composing your ransom note in your mind?"
She looked surprised. "I ain't gonna ransom you," she said.
"You could make a fair amount of money," he said. That was a lie. She'd only be killed for her impertinence. "I'm noble born." That was an understatement.
She looked mildly insulted. "That ain't right. Who do you think I am?"
He raised his hands. "Not a ruthless pirate, I suppose! Can you blame me for asking?"
She softened. She looked out to sea.
"I'm gonna keep you alive," she declared. "I ain't a murderer. But I ain't gonna trust you none, not when I know what you done to my kin in the south!"
"Again, not me," he pointed out.
"I ain't risking my freedom for no man."
"Nor would I," he agreed.
"If you get that, we can - well we can get through this month fine," she said.
This would be the ultimate test of his ability to charm people who were not already obligated to like him. "I hope we can," he agreed, smiling at her. "I'd hate to know a woman as beautiful as you and not be able to get along with her."
She looked aside, fire beneath her dark cheeks again.
He cleared his throat softly. "If you don't mind," he said, "I'm still thirsty."
"Oh." She dropped her uncertainty and swirled her arm about herself, pulling water straight from the humid air. He understood - seeing a person in need, hearing a request for help, and not granting it? He had no idea how others did it. She might feel the same.
The sphere of water hovered over her fingertips. He put his hand under hers, and tilted her fingertips up to bring the water to his lips. The art of sipping out of the air was easy to master, and he drank from midair over her fingertips, his hand just touching hers. When the sphere of water was all sipped up, and he still had her fingers in his hand, he caught her brilliant blue gaze and kissed her fingertips, soft and deliberately.
The blush spread across her cheekbones again, her eyes wide and still astonished.
She withdrew her fingertips from his hand, inhaled slowly. "You can do that again," she said.
Her smile was growing as she walked past him to the fastboat.
Iroh felt good about his prospects for the island.
—
A/N: Sana's name is completely a Florida Woman joke. If I'm honest, this won't be the last one.
SmellyFarts asked: "I hope you're open to a little bit a feedback from me, but feel free to ignore if you think I'm missing a crucial component of your world-building. I find your representation of women in this society a bit unbelievable. I don't think we saw much military power or personal autonomy held in the hands of women in the show, so I usually expect that to be part of the conflict or at least represented in the narrative. Perhaps you find this stale and want to take a different approach? Either way, just a difference of opinion."
I'm really glad you brought that up because I am always 100% down to talk about the treatment of women - especially named adult women - in A:tLA. The show has a diverse range of settings which repress women in different ways, but we did see SOME personal autonomy from women in the show. Not as much as the writers of the show perhaps believed they were implying, but some.
We see women with autonomy in the Earth Kingdom more than we see them anywhere else, in positions as healers, with Jun as a bounty hunter, the nuns who appear in that same episode, and the Kyoshi Warriors, who still at the start of the series choose isolationism. We see women with the dubious autonomy that comes from being allowed to serve in the military in the Fire Nation, in an example of lightened repression for bad reasons. These troops are restricted to the homefront, and doubtless only allowed to serve because the Fire Nation's endless militarism requires countless bodies available to throw on the sacrificial fire of war. And here's where I think the series failed to drive home one of its own points: We get the most implied autonomy for women from the Foggy Swamp and Southern Water Tribes, but when we see women from those tribes who waterbend, they're voiceless, nameless background characters, or villains (Hama).
So far in this story I've done a few things the show didn't, whether intentionally or not. I made the (Earth Kingdom) captain of a successful sailing enterprise a woman. I have implied Fire Lady Ilah was Captain Ilah of the Fire Nation Army before she married (and yes there will be a lot more on her later). I have a wandering waterbender from the Foggy Swamp Tribe who's been able to travel and gain employment without a man's support. I think that Captain Fang had to work twice as hard to get what she has got from her life in a society that respects women less, and Sana on her journey from the Foggy Swamp has faced obstacles that a man wandering out of the same tribe has not, but I also think that they fit within the cultures that the show presented to us.
Historically, in every repressive society, there have been women who explored, who made great scientific discoveries, rose to positions of political and economic power - they're just not given as much of a spotlight as they could be. The failure of the show to include women doing all these things when they had perfect opportunities (cough The Swamp) is as artificial as the erasing of women from real world history is. The writers of A:tLA wanted to work themes of gender inequity into their story, and did it about 75% effectively. Simply having more Named Adult Women Waterbenders in the Foggy Swamp tribe would have dialed up their success percentage so much for me. Maybe having women in the Earth Kingdom army would have helped, too, but women's rights to serve in the military are not the indication of gender equity that I think many people mistake it for.
Anyway, themes of gender inequality ARE going to play heavily into the rest of the text of the story, as a man from a nation which allows women to serve in the military (but not out of a belief in women's rights) argues against a woman who is from a far more gender equitable society, with the Northern Water Tribe's rigid sexism still on the fringes of her culture and identity. Thanks again for bringing it up!