#i never latched on to zuko though for some reason but i think that has to do with atla not being part of my childhood | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreamteamspace · 4 years

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They really went there huh

/rp (good lord I rly hyperfixated on this essay huh)

torture tw, abuse tw, manipulation tw, gaslighting tw

So the Dream SMP built a character, once maybe morally gray, who slipped straight into villany with little to no desire to change, and willing to cause a LOT of pain to get his way. Despite this, he doesn’t question what he does enough to stop, justifying his actions with a good intent that doesn’t come close to justifying what he’s done.

C!Dream is unremorseful of what he’s done, he’s quite literally manipulated and gaslit (like actually, not in the way everyone keeps throwing the word around) c!Tommy, almost drove him to take his last life- like, jesus christ. That’s not even to mention blowing up L’Manburg three times, encouraging c!Wilbur, wanting the discs JUST to have power over c!Tommy, etc.

SO, he gets thrown in a box for it so he doesn’t hurt anybody anymore, making his own hubris his downfall (narrative consequence my beloved). This leads us to a good finale - the bad guy, the person who’s caused objectively the most pain and destruction, is now unable to do so anymore, taken down by the person whom he tried to weaken. It is also revealed he was planning on blackmailing and threatening pretty much everyone, but now everyone gets their stuff back.

Good, right?

Especially for the finale, yeah! The message of the finale is good, c!Tommy manages to escape his abuser with nothing more but his clothes on his back and fights his way back to c!Tubbo and his home.

He doesn’t let his trauma (which is still very present!) let him become a terrible person (arguably the way that c!Dream DID let his frustrations make him a terrible person, c!Tommy, despite bearing quite a heavy weight, recognizes when he begins to turn that way and actively works against it).

It shows that while alone, c!Tubbo and c!Tommy were outfought by Dream, but because c!Tommy went the length to ask for help (which he didn’t even really seem to be relying on actually showing up), he wins! It truly is a good message.

C!Tommy escapes his abuser and manipulator, refuses and fights his trauma to not become someone he doesn’t want to be, and defeats his abuser by asking for help and receiving it, even more than he thought he’d get. He refuses to play c!Dream’s “game”, refuses till the very last moment to let c!Tubbo die, to surrender and say goodbye to him.

So, great! Good finale! C!Dream The Villain is boxed like a fish in a prison of, quite literally, his own making. It sent a good message to people. C!Tommy wasn’t expected to forgive him and did, in fact, axe him down twice, causing c!Dream to finally fall from his high horse.

Most media would stop at this point, say the villain is now defeated and never show them again, or have them come back another one or two seasons later, escaped and seemingly unharmed and worse than ever.

Alternatively, there’s a throwaway line, (or, in good media, a genuine, reasonable backstory, complete with remorse and bad role models and complicated situations), that allows the villain to be redeemed.

In GOOD redemption arcs (See: Zuko from avatar tbh), the villain was already never quite as heartless, or stressed their good intent, or felt remorse for what they felt they “had to do”. Then, ideally, the villain takes a looooong time adjusting their habits, regretting their actions and changing until they’re considered redeemed.

Not on the Dream SMP, though.

They don’t stop at c!Dream’s defeat.

He doesn’t dissapear off-screen and is never spoken of again. His life continues on, everyone’s does, just like it would in reality. He doesn’t magically want to become a better person, far from it. So no redemption. But he doesn’t dissapear, either.

They go on to, slowly, stress how awful the conditions in Pandora’s Vault are. c!Bad says c!Dream should be imprisoned, but at least at slightly better conditions. We’re in very VERY morally gray territorry here. Nobody says c!Dream is a good person, of course not, but even c!Bad - who knows Dream was planning on keeping c!Skeppy in a cage to control him with - goes, “yeah, he should stay boxed, but does he really need to like... suffer suffer?”

Still, c!Dream seems to be kindof inconsistent in his behavior. Is he faking his pain? Is he not? His actions don’t fully make sense for either take. He acts differently to each person, but at the same time some things he does don’t make sense if he were just fishing for pity.

Then c!Sam admits to trying (and thinking he succeeded) to “break Dream’s will”, to quite literally starving him for weeks.

Okay, so now we’re a step further. C!Dream is now suffering even more, although already boxed and unable to hurt anyone. Pandora’s Vault is one thing, but now c!Sam just seems to be out for revenge and nothing more. Instead of spending his time with c!Tommy, he spends his time pickaxing(?) c!Dream.

C!Sam isn’t an angel, and we should all know that by now. He does what he thinks is right, but he’s deeper than that, all characters on the DSMP are.

He cares deeply for the Badlands, and would always choose them above anybody else. He’s a capitalist. He built the prison because it would benefit the Badlands resource-wise, despite knowing Dream would probably use it on his enemies, and it was no secret that ALL members of L’Manburg, especially c!Tommy, are his enemies. C!Sam, undoubtedly, knew that. He still built it.

Arguably, he didn’t know about c!Dream’s attachment obsession at the time, but the point still stands.

People have already latched onto the untold story happening between c!Dream and c!Sam, and frankly, we barely know enough about it. Does c!Sam torture him regularly? Do they talk? Does c!Dream try to verbally fight back? CAN he fight back? We don’t know! We’ve gotten proof for both, between c!Sam saying that c!Dream is terrifying even in prison and c!Dream going silent to go on strike. We don’t have enough of an idea how bad or how good it truly is.

So the people who prefer to humanize c!Dream and explore morality imagine c!Sam to downright torture him, people that prefer to see c!Dream as nothing but evil due to his actions imagine prison on the DSMP to not be equivalent to real life prison, and thus nowhere near as torturous as people are making it out to be.

Now all that is thrown out the window as c!Quackity quite literally tortures him.

So now the internet is faced with a question that, judging by some of the impulsive reactions *cough cough* celebrating torture *cough*, it didn’t turn out to be ready for.

Tell me.

How far do we go?

C!Dream hurt a LOT of people. He did a lot of things that caused irreparable damage. Now what? Do we torture him forever? Why? Because he deserves it? How do we determine that without comparing one kind of pain to another?

It’s custom and kindof generally respectful not to compare people’s pain too accurately, because different things vary greatly in severity depending on the person that experiences them.

At what point do we say he’s suffered enough without comparing exile to the prison?

And if we DO compare, does that even make the question easier to answer?

And if he’s never suffered enough ever, killing them would be a mercy...

At what point has a person done enough damage that they “deserve” to die? What if someone only did half of the things c!Dream did. But if c!Dream gets infinite punishment, and half of infinity is still infinity, do they ALSO deserve endless suffering?

Do you think every person that did something you can’t emphasize with deserves to suffer for eternity and die?

I’m not saying we SHOULD emphasize with c!Dream. He did things we cannot justify, that NOTHING can justify. He did things that were, by their nature, unjustified.

I’m also not saying anybody should forgive him. I think it’s a GOOD thing that c!Tommy doesn’t want nor is narratively pushed to forgive c!Dream.

But c!Dream doesn’t need c!Tommy’s forgiveness to be... a person.

There’s a saying that I’m sure you know, that goes “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”, because there’s things you wouldn’t want any human being to experience. Not because you like them, not cause you think they’re right, but because they’re human.

And perhaps this is my personal opinion, but I don’t think c!Dream being a bad person justifies dehumanizing him, because then we get into an area where someone needs to meet criteria just to be human.

I met someone once, whom, because of outside circumstances I knew I probably wouldn’t meet again. We’d been getting along just fine for people who just met, and were both getting into an interesting discussion about morality. They kept insisting upon something I kept refuting, so they said they needed to get something off their chest.

They proceeded to tell me that they had, years ago, while a teen, manipulated someone in a relationship, pushed boundaries and tried to convince them to do things they didn’t really want to do to get what they wanted.

They cried, while telling me, too terrified to tell anybody they know, terrified nobody would ever speak to them again, insanely regretful of their actions. They didn’t know whether to go back and apologize or just stay as far away as humanly possible, didn’t know which one the right thing to do is.

It had been years, by then, and I talked them through it. I said that what they did was bad, and there’s no going around that. But I also said what I saw, which is someone who would never do something like that ever again. I saw a human being. Someone who regrets a mistake they did and now, after enough time has passed, would do anything to make it undone.

Someone who is too terrified to be close to anybody in fear that they would do it again. I don’t remember if they already went to therapy or not, but it was definitly on the table, or in the near future.

They asked me how I could possibly even keep talking to them after they told me all that. They implied they felt like some kind of monster despite literally chocking back tears, firmly convinced they don’t deserve to be close to anybody in their life ever again.

I never swerved from the fact that what they did was wrong, and harmful. But I also told them they’re human. The universe isn’t keeping score. They want to be a better person now, and they were never going to learn how if they never let themselves be close to anybody.

I told them to seek therapy, and to slowly, carefully, try. Assured them that the fact that they regret it so strongly will at least help them in not falling back into the same pattern, and if they do, they can learn to recognize that.

They thanked me after the conversation, genuinely, especially for the fact that I didn’t sugarcoat what happened, because I know otherwise it would’ve felt like I was lying, like I was just sparing their feelings. I wasn’t. I was thinking about how to make sure they get to live without hurting anybody.

As per the circumstances, we didn’t speak again after that, which we knew basicly from the very start.

I still think about that conversation a lot.

Do you think they should’ve been locked up for life after it happened, instead?

Do you think this real human being, that I spoke to, that took years to realize their mistake - and never would have realized it if they hadn’t had the time to, if they’d been killed right afterwards - deserves to suffer forever?

Let me tell you something, from someone who’s been in more than one abusive situation: People that hurt you are human.

That doesn’t mean you have to forgive them. That doesn’t mean you have to like them. That doesn’t mean you have to make an effort to understand them. That doesn’t mean you need to go anywhere near them ever again.

You can hate them. You can be angry at them. You can (and should) go as far away from them as possible, and/or defend yourself.

But that doesn’t mean you have to dehumanize them.

You’re allowed to hate and dislike people that are human, because you’re human, especially if they hurt you. That’s how life is.

And to go back to my original point - c!Quackity torturing c!Dream is not something that should be celebrated.

There’s a difference between necessary measures (locking c!Dream up so he doesn’t hurt anyone), and torturing people for fun.

It’s not right. It’s never going to be right, and do not justify literal torture on human beings, and do not make someone lower-than-human to justify torturing them.

Taking revenge on someone for what they did tenfold is romanticized, I know, but I promise you it’s not actually as cool as it sounds.

#dreamwastaken #quackity #awesamdude #dream smp #dream smp analysis #dreamteamspace speaks #negativity #fandom critical #its finished and Im finally free #c!Dream #c!Quackity crit #c!Quackity critial

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muertawrites · 4 years

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Fireside (Zuko x Reader)

Word Count: 1,775

Author’s Note: I am so deeply sorry this took so long to post. I don’t know what happened but after Thanksgiving the creative part of my brain completely shut down and all I could do was lay in bed and play video games. But it’s back now so 🎉🎉🎉 happy new year to all of us!

I got this request a WHILE ago and had written something else for it but after reconsidering, I totally hated it, so this is the rewrite for some cozy, wintery goodness. I also love this idea because I’m constantly cold - my feet and hands are always freezing and even in summer I’ll wear sweaters and hoodies because aircon can get pretty chilly when you have the body temp of your average vampire.

Now for a little update: in the new year, I’ll be focusing more on original works than fanfiction. I’m still going to finish Two Halves, and I’ll still write fanfiction (because it’s still super fun) but I have so many ideas for original works that are taking over my brain that it seems only fitting to shift that direction. If you’re on my subscriber list and would like to only receive alerts for fanfic, let me know and I’ll add you to a separate list.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful holiday, taking time to relax and spend time with loved ones, and generally just glad to have survived this shithole of a year. Here’s hoping that 2021 goes better - 2020 set the bar pretty low so it shouldn’t be too hard. 🥂

Snow was a rare occurrence in the Fire Nation. Summers typically scorched, followed by peaceful autumns and mild winters; a little rainfall was all one typically expected during the colder months in the Imperial City.

This year, however, was much different. The mountains that bordered the villages and towns throughout the island were white capped under gray skies; streets were slickened by thick layers of ice that settled between cobblestones and creased the panes of windows; bracing breezes swept through landscapes unaccustomed to such unforgiving weather, carrying flurries of snow that bit at cheeks and cloaked the world in a dull ivory veil. Winter came to the Fire Nation seeking a cruel, unwarranted vengeance.

You woke in the middle of the night to find the fire beside your bed had died, leaving your borrowed room in a state of bitter, slicing cold. It wasn't the first time the Firelord’s palace had left you uncomfortably chilled since your arrival for his New Year’s celebrations, as the building was never meant to withstand this type of climate - sweeping ceilings, open breezeways, and tall windows with thin shutters ensured that the cold had its way. Being from the Northern Earth Kingdom, used to sturdy wooden lodges with massive fire pits that could burn an entire tree trunk with one lighting, this strange change of the typical season made you ache for home.

Knowing there were no matches beside the hearth (given the sheer amount of fire benders that resided in the palace), you gathered up your courage and begrudgingly rolled from your mattress, taking the blankets with and wrapping them tightly around yourself. The walls around you creaked, shifting under the push of moaning winds, as you slipped into the hallway in search of your host.

You were thankful that Zuko decided to keep his personal wing of the palace confined to a space that was mostly enclosed; the only breezeways in this part of the sprawling estate surrounded its courtyards and gardens, and were blocked by sets of heavy wood doors that shielded the inner parts of the building from being overcome by the elements. As you walked, traipsing through the corridor under your mound of blankets like some sort of shadowy, death-bringing phantom, you passed one of the windows that overlooked the gardens, and found it frosted under heavy white tufts of snow; puffy, clumped flakes whirled down from the sky, falling haphazardly as they escaped the grip of the whipping wind. Even in the relative warmth of the palace, your body shivered thinking of how frigid the air outside must be.

Because of the abnormal cold, Zuko moved his mattress out of his bedroom and into his sitting room, where a large, decorative fireplace stood nestled into the far wall. You approached his sleeping form with gentle, quiet steps, being careful not to startle him; you lay a hand on his shoulder and he jolted awake, drawing a sharp breath in as he twisted to face you, blinking blearily to make out your features in the dark.

“What are you doing?” he muttered.

“I'm cold,” you whispered in response. “My fire went out.”

Zuko sighed, fixing you with an irked, exhausted expression.

“Seriously?” he groaned. “This is the third time this week.”

“It's not my fault nobody has any friggin matches in this place,” you quipped. “And besides, why bring a servant all the way up here when I have one of the world’s greatest fire benders down the hall?”

Zuko huffed, then rolled back over in an attempt to shove you off.

“There should be more blankets in your closet,” he grumbled.

“I'm wearing all of them,” you retorted.

You stood above him, waiting, but got no response. Shivering, and with an exasperated sigh, you pulled back the blankets around him, shuffling between them and nestling into his back; he snapped his head around once more, eyeing you suspiciously.

“... Isn’t this a little uncomfortable?” he wondered.

“Not really,” you replied. “We used to do this all the time when we were teenagers.”

“We haven't done this since we were teenagers.”

You hummed, recalling your time together during the war. Even on the hottest days, your body was cold, your fingers always reasonably corpselike to anyone who happened to touch them - Zuko was one of those unfortunate people, and the lack of circulation in your limbs came as quite a worry to him. Throughout the day, he would take one of your hands in his, heating his palm until your skin took on a more lively temperature. When he noticed how much you layered at night when the air became cooler, he started sleeping nearer to you, eventually curling up around you to keep you warm. After the war, when he got into the habit of visiting you around the winter holidays, you still found yourself seeking him for warmth, tucking your hands into the sleeves of his robes or curling his palm around your icy fingers, finding sanctuary in the way he heated his skin to appease you. While it was true you hadn't slept together since you were younger, you hadn't ever needed to - desperate times called for desperate measures.

“I should have remembered that you get so grumpy when you're tired,” you teased him, rubbing your feet against his; he hissed, but didn't pull away.

“You're freezing,” he commented. “I should have remembered you're dead on the inside.”

You giggled, sighing happily as the familiar heat of his skin warming like a furnace chased the chill from your toes. You slid your feet up along his ankles, causing him to shiver; his body tensed for a moment, then eased into your touch, quickly finding comfort in its familiarity.

“Aang used to assume we were a couple because of this,” Zuko mumbled. “He still does.”

“You're just a good friend,” you replied. You nuzzled your face into the broad, solid expanse of his back, breathing in his scent of scorched wood and sea salt. He felt like home. “Good friends don't let their friends freeze to death.”

Zuko chuckled, taking hold of your hands that lay on his waist and cupping them within his own; he held your knuckles up to his mouth and huffed warm, smokey air onto them, heating them until they no longer felt cold. He tucked them beneath the fabric of his tunic, keeping them tepid between the fabric of his undershirt.

“Uncle says the same thing,” he mused. “He says we treat each other like lovers, whether we realize it or not.”

“My neighbors have asked me what my husband does that takes him away for so long out of the year...” you commented, eliciting another breathy laugh from your companion. “But I think I'd know if you were in love with me.”

Zuko rolled over, turning to face you; his arm latched at your waist, his chest almost pressed to you and your noses grazing each other in the small space of his mattress. You blushed, the color blending with the soft, balmy glow of the low hearth behind him.

“What makes you think I'm not in love with you?” he wondered.

You paused, watching the flames flicker over the angular features of his face. Though he was silhouetted, and so close he seemed to envelop all of you, you could make out a tender gleam in his eye; could feel the flutter in his chest as he split it open, tentatively revealing his heart to you.

“... I'd like to think you would have mentioned it,” you answered after a moment, “but I know you better than that.”

Zuko grinned; you watched the curve of his cheek as it swelled with the action.

“I might have mentioned it,” he murmured, his voice lilting with a gentle mirth. “Just not to you.”

“Of course not,” you teased. You mirrored his smile, easing into him as his foot began to stroke against your ankle once more. “Either way, I know you don't love me.”

“And why is that?” Zuko whispered.

“Well… you never write to me about anything exciting,” you replied. “You always seem so content to write to me about your thoughts, or what plays you've seen recently, or your conversations with Iroh. You never tell me about the impressive, world-altering Firelord stuff or your incredible exploits as a warrior.”

Zuko smirked, raising a hand to brush some hair away from your face. His fingers were calloused and lukewarm, tracing over your temple with consideration and care.

“Why else?”

“You've never tried to kiss me,” you noted, “or touch me like a lover. You never try to push our boundaries past anything that's comfortable for us. Even right now - I'm laying in your bed, but you refuse to touch me in a way you're unsure of.”

“Then you don't love me, either,” Zuko added. His body had gravitated flush to yours, your legs braided together under the pile of blankets you'd buried him in. “You only want to sleep with me when you're cold. You could just as easily call a servant for help.”

“And you only want to keep me warm out of obligation,” you agreed. “It wouldn’t make you look very good if I died of hypothermia on your watch.”

For a long moment, Zuko gazed at you. You basked in his silence, the easiness of his form so close to yours, the native feeling of his arm around your waist and his breath tickling your cheeks. The fire snapped quietly in its hearth, its flames rising and falling in time with his inhales and exhales.

“I’ve missed this,” Zuko admitted in a whisper. “Laying with you. I wish we could do it more often.”

“I’ve missed it, too,” you affirm. “I always used to sleep better with you.”

“And that’s it?” Zuko teased.

“That’s it,” you giggled back.

He chanced a kiss to your forehead, pressing his lips between your brows and letting them linger there, savoring the coolness of your skin. You shut your eyes, giving yourself entirely to his touch.

“In the new year… do you think we could be lovers?” he asked as he pulled away.

“... I think your uncle is right,” you murmured. “I think we already are.”

With a faint, bashful smile, Zuko pulled you closer (if the act were even possible), hugging you tightly to him; you held him close, pressing the whole of your body to his and soaking in his steady, comforting warmth. As the wind howled outside, shaking the flimsy wooden eaves of the feeble shelter around you, you fell asleep in the heat of his fireside, safe in the knowledge that his arms held you.

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today-only-happens-once · 4 years

Text

clarity

Word count: 5463

Summary: Hakoda had been hearing rumors about the Fire Lord's son for years. That doesn't mean he is ready when the truth finally comes to light... especially when the truth only confirms the worst. Companion piece to “out of focus” but can be read separately.

Warnings: injury/burns, angst, some mentions of trauma and PTSD, canonical child abuse/mutilation, Sokka gets angry protective and yells a little, blink-and-you-miss-it mention of nausea, please let me know if I missed anything.

A/N: Turns out, I really wanted to explore Hakoda’s POV of the events in “out of focus”. So much so that not only did I write this, but’s longer than the original. Woops. Hope you enjoy it!

Read on AO3.

...

His son is good at many things, Hakoda thinks, but his poker face is not one of them.

He’d had never been particularly good at it, if Hakoda is being honest. He’d usually been able to tell with one glance when Sokka was at fault for something breaking and would blame Katara, and Kya had been even better at reading the micro-expressions of their son. Sokka is older now—and in more ways that Hakoda is comfortable with, he carries those extra years around like a weight on his shoulders—but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of subtlety. It was something he’d need to work on if he wanted to be chief of the Southern Water Tribe one day.

Sokka shifts in his seat across from him, his brows pinched slightly in evident annoyance. Hakoda sees the shared glance between his son and the Fire Lord. Zuko’s mouth twitches in something like amusement.

“I want immediate release of all war prisoners,” the Earth Kingdom ambassador, Bashi, beside Sokka demands.

Hakoda inclines his head. “I second that. I have men in those prisons that haven’t seen their family in a decade.”

Hakoda couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Two years apart from his children had caused him to feel like he’d already missed out on so much of their lives. The idea of going five times that without any news from the outside… Suffice it to say that Hakoda did not envy those men.

“Of course,” the Fire Lord says, but his voice is nearly swallowed by the loud demand down the table, “Absolutely not!”

The hard glare that Fire Lord Zuko sends down the table at the Fire Nation Admiral makes Hakoda grateful that he is not on the receiving end of it. “Admiral, people who were arrested as prisoners of war have no need to remain so after the war has ended.” Zuko meets Hakoda’s gaze, the heat in his glare lifting at the redirection of attention. “I’ll draft that mandate tonight and will ensure its circulation as soon as possible.”

The Fire Lord—dressed in the traditional royal robes and his hair pulled into a top knot—is a stark contrast to the first time Hakoda had met him back in Boiling Rock. At the time, Zuko had been Fire Nation public enemy number 2 behind Aang. The tattered red tunic of Fire Nation prison uniforms had hung off his thin, borderline-malnourished frame. He looks better now, a little. Zuko is still lean, but not quite as gaunt as he’d looked in the Fire Nation prison. Hakoda’s biggest concern when it came to the Fire Lord’s well-being these days was the dark circles around his eyes that, though he tries to hide it, indicate too many sleepless nights.

“This is an outrage!” The admiral slams his fist against the table, leaping to his feet.

Hakoda feels his jaw clench in frustration. He has little patience for men who try to assert themselves through aggression and yelling rather than calm rationality. Even so, it doesn’t surprise him, exactly. Hakoda had been around long enough to know that Fire Nation men had long been taught there was power through anger, and to wield it as they see fit.

Zuko rises to meet his feet, slowly and deliberately. “Admiral--”

“Where is the justice for the Fire Nation families whose sons and daughters were slaughtered by those criminals?”

Hakoda presses his hands together to keep them from curling into fists. Did the Admiral not realize just how many Fire Nation soldiers walked free after slaughtering innocent people, let alone soldiers? Even the person who killed Kya--

“Admiral.”

“I remember a time when you cared about Fire Nation soldiers! And it’s hard to believe you’ve forgotten, seeing as you ought to be reminded every time you so much as look in the mirror--”

Hakoda frowns. The comment rings vague bells in his head, though he can’t remember why…

“Enough!” Zuko snaps sharply. “You will watch your tongue or you will be escorted out. You approach insubordination.”

“You are a child,” the admiral says, spitting the word child like it disgusts him, “though one that ought to know a thing or two about insubordination, given your father’s attempts to brand you with a permanent reminder of its consequences--”

“Warriors!”

“Then again, he always was twice the leader you never will be. Long live the Phoenix King!”

Sokka is suddenly on his feet. “Zuko—!”

“Sokka—!”

Hakoda leaps up just as the admiral punches a fireball at the space between his son and the Fire Lord. His heart jumps to his throat, but Zuko is fast. He shoves Sokka’s shoulder down with one hand and dispels the fireball with the other. Hakoda leaps over his chair as he sees the glint of his son’s boomerang hook through the air.

The admiral’s gaze locks onto him for a moment and Hakoda instinctively ducks, diving underneath a bolt of scorching flames. He feels the ground tremble, hears the roar of dying flames above him. Hakoda risks a glance towards his son just in time to see Zuko step in front of him, bending the burst of flames to split on either side of them, rather than hit Sokka straight on.

The door ricochets open. Two Kyoshi Warriors spill into the room, and in a flurry of quick strikes, the admiral drops to the floor. Limp.

Bashi unbinds his feet with the bending from earlier—it’s only now that Hakoda realizes that tremble in the ground a moment ago had been earthbending—and the admiral hurls insults at Zuko as he’s dragged unceremoniously through the doors.

The silence that follows echoes in the room.

Hakoda takes a quick, calculating sweep of the room. Kovrik, the Northern Water Tribe ambassador, is wide-eyed but appears unharmed. Bashi is panting but standing upright. Sokka is hidden behind Zuko who shifts awkwardly in the silence.

He clears his throat. “Apologies for the, uh, disruption. It won’t happen again.” He looks, for all the world, genuinely apologetic. Embarrassed, even.

Which is foolish, Hakoda thinks. Zuko couldn’t reasonably be expected to have weeded out all of the Ozai sympathizers in a month. Ozai may have been one person but there was an entire ideology and system that allowed his tyranny in the first place. A sixteen-year-old couldn’t be asked to single-handedly dismantle it all, and certainly not so quickly.

“It’s not your fault, Fire Lord Zuko,” he tells him.

“I appreciate that, Chief Hakoda,” Zuko says. Behind him, Sokka sucks in a breath through his teeth and Hakoda feels his chest twinge in concern. He had fought in a war long enough to hear the pain laced through the noise. Zuko turns around to look at him, then turns back around sharply to address the room. “We will adjourn the meeting for today. We will reconvene tomorrow.”

Zuko hides it well, Hakoda thinks, but there’s an urgency to his words hidden behind a carefully constructed mask of stoicism that leaves no room for doubt in Hakoda’s mind. Sokka is hurt.

“But Fire Lord Zuko—”

“I think we could all use a breather, Kovrik,” Hakoda jumps in, not eager for another argument to break out. “Coming back tomorrow with a clear head is a good decision.” Besides, the sooner he can clear the room of other people, the sooner he could check on Sokka who Zuko was—almost protectively—keeping from view.

“Yes,” Kovrick acquiesces, though Hakoda can tell he’s still not pleased. “Yes, I suppose that’s fair.”

Zuko nods his appreciation. Kovrik, Bashi, and the few other dignitaries that had been in the room bustle out the door. Hakoda waits until it’s latched shut behind them before he turns his full attention towards his son. Zuko has already turned his full attention to him, saying something in a low voice.

Hakoda can sees the clench of his son’s jaw and the slight wince as he places his hand in Zuko’s. Hakoda steps up behind the Fire Lord, peering over his shoulder. His chest tightens a little in sympathy when he sees the blistering, angry red skin on the back of his son’s hand.

“Do you have anything that can help?” he asks of the Fire Lord, frowning. He thinks briefly of calling Kovrik back in before he remembers that the Northern Water Tribe’s men, even when benders, didn’t typically learn its healing abilities.

“Yes, sir,” Zuko replies, not taking his gaze from Sokka’s hand as if he could heal it by staring at it hard enough. “Though it’s not quite as immediate as waterbending healers. But it should help with the pain and prevent infection. Follow me.”

Hakoda follows as Zuko guides Sokka by the elbow out the door of the meeting room and through a network of hallways. There’s something almost jarring about it to Hakoda. The image of the Fire Lord leading his Water Tribe son through the palace to get him help, rather than as a prisoner, has a part of Hakoda’s mind reeling. Sokka’s blue clothing stands out against the dark reds and blacks that adorn the walls and pillars around them.

How quickly times had changed.

Hakoda thinks back to the conversation in the meeting a few moments ago as he watches the back of Zuko’s head, moving quickly down the corridor with Sokka in tow. Rumors and propaganda about the Fire Nation, and especially about its leader, flew quickly amongst the ranks of soldiers in the war. It had been difficult to know fact from fiction, especially as it related to the royal family.

A year ago—the memory comes crystal clear to Hakoda now—one of the men on his crew named Horrak had told him what he’d been certain was an exaggerated, hyperbolic story. Something about the Fire Lord and his thirteen-year-old son. On Tui and La, I swear it’s true. Heard it from the mouth of a Fire Nation soldier myself who was actually there.

He’s a tyrant and cruel, Hakoda had said, rolling his eyes because the idea was just… incomprehensible, but there’s no way Ozai would do that to his own flesh and blood. He’s too proud of his bloodline anyway.

Zuko glances over his shoulder at Sokka, and Hakoda sees the angry scar across half of his face. The words of the admiral in the meeting whisper in the back of Hakoda’s mind in a way that makes his stomach turn. Your father’s attempts to brand you… Hakoda had thought that surely, surely, even Ozai had a line in the sand when it came to his own family.

He’s less confident of that now.

Zuko says something to two of the guards stationed at the set of double doors that Hakoda doesn’t quite catch, and then slips through the door. Hakoda follows close behind.

“Wait here,” Zuko says, and then vanishes through a door on the far side of the room.

Hakoda glances around the room. It was a bedroom, but Hakoda had a hard time believing it was Zuko’s. It seemed too simple of a room to belong to the Fire Lord. Then again, Zuko had been full of surprises from the very first time Hakoda had met him.

He looks to his son, noticing the tight grimace to his face and the very slight sway and grabs the chair beside the bed to get his son to sit before he falls face first into the floor.

“You had good reflexes in there,” Hakoda says. He’d dealt enough with injured Water Tribesmen to know that distraction was usually the best way to help them deal with the pain of a burn. He had no doubt that his son was no exception to that.

“Lots of practice,” Sokka replies, obediently taking a seat. He hisses out another breath as his grip around the arms of the chair stretches the skin across the back of his hand. He swears under his breath.

“Easy,” Hakoda says softly, bracing a hand on his son’s back.

The comment from his son makes his chest twist, but he can’t very well deny it. His son had seen more combat in the past year than he’d hoped he’d have to in his lifetime. Hakoda knows that it was an unreasonable expectation for his son to somehow be the exception to generations of pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Sokka would be able to handle the fight—Sokka always been able to hold his own—but could you blame a father for wanting to spare his son the experience of waking up from nightmares, haunted by the people he couldn’t save?

Hakoda dealt with that enough for the both of them.

“Wish Katara was here,” Sokka says.

“I know,” Hakoda tells him. “Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s coming to Caldera for a while. She’s still in Ba Sing Se with Aang.” She and Aang were working on their own negotiations of reparations and treatises. Caldera was only one location of many that were in the middle of such conversations.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sokka sighs. “Her magic water comes in handy, though… Get it? Hand-y?”

Hakoda snorts. That’s the kind of joke he used to make to get Kya to smile.

The door across the room opens again. Zuko emerges with his arms wrapped around a giant tub of water, several vials and rags gripped in his hands. He’d also pulled his hair out of the top knot so that it falls into his face, shaggy and unbrushed. It makes him look younger somehow.

Spirits, he really is only sixteen, isn’t he?

The Fire Lord seems to be studiously avoiding both his and his son’s gaze as he crosses back to him and sets the washbasin at Sokka’s feet. The realization twists uncomfortably in Hakoda’s stomach.

“Can I see your hand?” Zuko says in what is perhaps the softest voice Hakoda has ever heard come from the teen’s mouth.

Sokka blinks. “Yeah. Sure.”

Hakoda crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Zuko examines his son’s hand. The Fire Lord handles it with care, mindful of the injury even as he inspects closely. His brow is furrowed in concentration and there’s a long beat of silence. Sokka is almost uncharacteristically quiet, but Hakoda doesn’t miss the very slight way his shoulders seem to ease. There’s a familiarity between them, Hakoda realizes, and it makes him wonder in the back of his mind if maybe this wasn’t the first time they helped each other.

“I don’t think it’ll have permanent damage,” Zuko says eventually. “But I still need to treat it so it doesn’t get infected. It… might hurt a little. But then it should feel better.”

Hakoda sees his son swallow. “No permanent damage. That’s good.” He nods, evidently steeling himself. “Okay.”

Zuko looks for a moment like he’s about to say something else, but seems to change his mind. Instead, he busies himself with wringing a cloth in the basin of water, into which he had emptied the contents of the vials. Hakoda’s gaze flickers again to the scar on his face and wonders if he might be so intimately familiar with the care of burns from his own experience.

Hakoda wonders if there was someone else to help him and teach him. Perhaps that uncle that he and Sokka had mentioned. Iroh, Hakoda thinks his name is, though that would mean the uncle was General Iroh, as in the Dragon of the West. That seemed unlikely to the chief. No way this “wise old guy” who apparently spent his free time giving advice and making tea was also the same person who laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six-hundred days.

He watches Zuko press the rag gingerly to the back of Sokka’s hand and Sokka yelps, yanking his hand back.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says immediately with a bit of a grimace. “This part is painful, but it’ll stop hurting in a minute.”

Hakoda listens to the strained breathing of his son, taking a step towards him before Sokka manages, “Right. Right, sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Zuko tells him. “I know it hurts.”

Hakoda watches from behind Sokka as his son places his hand back in Zuko’s, who slowly but gingerly presses the rag back to his hand. There’s a casual intimacy to the way that Sokka willingly gives over his injury to the Fire Lord. An assured immediacy to Sokka’s movement combined with the extraordinarily careful way in which Zuko handles it that surprises him. He’d known, intellectually, that his children had become close with the Fire Lord. But the moments in which Hakoda got to be witness to that friendship sometimes still caught him off guard, even all these months later.

It even folded into the way they fought beside each other. Hakoda had gotten very fleeting glimpses of it back in Boiling Rock, but he’d seen it more clearly in the meeting room a few minutes ago. They watched each other’s back, protecting one another without getting in each other’s way, like it was a rehearsed dance. Hakoda had watched the way Zuko stepped in front of flames to protect his son and had seen the way Sokka had timed his boomerang through to ensure the next fireball directed at Zuko would be kicked wide.

For a long moment, the only sound heard in the room is the quiet splash of water as Zuko submerges the rag again and wrings it out. Hakoda glances at the Fire Lord’s face and wonders if Zuko had always had a habit of facing flames head-on.

“What did the admiral mean,” Sokka blurts out suddenly, breaking the silence, “when he talked about insubordination?”

Hakoda’s lips press into a thin line, his gaze flickering briefly to his son before flitting back to Zuko. Zuko’s eyes had gone wide, the rag in his hand frozen half-out of the bowl. He blinks. “What--uh. I, uh.” Hakoda sees his hand clench around the rag and the way he takes a careful, intentional breath. “When I was younger, I spoke out at a meeting.”

Zuko busies himself back to tending to Sokka’s hand. Hakoda, however, feels something sink like an anchor in his stomach. He goes very, very still.

“After the stuff at Ba Sing Se? When you went home?” Sokka asks, and Hakoda realizes that he hasn’t heard the same rumors he had. Rumors that were at least a little bit true, but surely not all of it. Surely--

“No, I uh.” Zuko coughs a bit. “Before that. Before… yeah. Earlier.”

“What happened?”

Hakoda stays quiet but he keeps his eyes on Zuko, who looks for all the world like a wild snow leopard caribou that had been cornered. His shoulders tense and Hakoda wonders, very briefly, if he might make a run for it. His jaw clenches, and he shifts to the balls of his feet.

Zuko doesn’t run.

Instead, he seems to focus even more on the administrations he’s giving to Sokka’s injury, as if healing something else might be able to protect him from his own old wounds coming under scrutiny.

“My uncle allowed me to attend a war meeting,” Zuko begins after a long beat as he wraps a fresh bandage around Sokka’s hand, “where they were talking about some battle strategies to use against an Earth Kingdom battalion. There was a general that wanted our newest fleet to serve as a distraction while we mounted an attack from the rear.”

Hakoda feels for a moment like he’s standing on cracking ice. He heard about that attack. The few members of that battalion spoke of how victorious they’d felt, decimating an entire fleet of rookie Fire Nation soldiers only to be attacked from the rear. Hakoda had spoken two years ago with one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that had escaped, had listened as she recounted the bloodbath it had been.

They must have known, she’d been saying with a haunted, far-away look to her eyes, that we’d win against a bunch of newbie soldiers. It was like they were served up as goat-dogs for slaughter. Just a… distraction. Ozai doesn’t even care about his own people.

That conversation had been two years ago. Which meant—

“That’s not fair,” Sokka says. “Your newest recruits? They’d be slaughtered by an experienced battalion like that.” Hakoda feels a brief flicker of pride through the growing tightness in his chest. His son is far smarter than he gave himself credit for.

“Exactly,” Zuko sighs, bitterness dripping from his voice like venom. “And that’s what I told them. I wasn’t thinking. I just… yelled at him.” Zuko secures the end of the bandage to Sokka’s palm slowly, as if reluctant to be done with the process. “My father didn’t… take it well. I was challenged to an Agni Kai, and I thought I would be facing the general in it, so I accepted.”

The steadily growing tightness in Hakoda’s chest snaps around his lungs like a steel band. So even the worst rumors—the ones he’d been certain couldn’t possibly be true, not about that, not even Ozai—had been true. And it was all because he tried to save people’s lives.

Hakoda does not have a weak stomach, but it rolls with the lead weight of realization.

Zuko still doesn’t look at either one of them. Unable to keep his attention on helping Sokka’s injury, he turns his attention instead to gathering the basin of water and the empty vials and used rags. Something to keep his hands—his attention—busy. Hakoda had seen some of the men he fought with do the same thing when talking about stories they mostly tried to forget.

“No…” Sokka says in a low voice, and Hakoda knows from the horror in his voice that his son is starting to put the pieces together too.

“It wasn’t the general,” Zuko confirms, his voice quiet and heavy in the silence around them. “It was my father.”

“You faced your father in an Agni Kai?” Sokka asks.

“Not exactly. I…” Zuko stares down at the bowl, his gold gaze looking a thousand miles away. “I couldn’t fight my own father. Instead, I begged him for forgiveness. I was met with a fist full of flames.” Zuko waves a hand towards his face.

I begged him for forgiveness.

Hakoda thinks of the version Horrack had told him. I heard the kid was kneeling in front of him when it happened—

“He--” Sokka also sounds at a loss of words, his voice choking off.

“I was banished after that,” Zuko continues and his voice is hollow in a way that ricochets like shrapnel. Hakoda watches him meet his son’s gaze. “I was told to bring the Avatar back and all would be forgiven, or to not come back at all. That was before you and your sister woke Aang up from the iceberg.”

He hears what Zuko won’t say. It was before there’d been confirmation that the Avatar was still around at all. He’d been banished from his home and told to chase a ghost. It was an impossible task. Ozai didn’t want his son to come home at all, Hakoda realizes. And from the tight way Zuko swallows, he’s pretty sure Zuko knows it too.

Hakoda clenches his grip into a fist to mask the tremble to his hands. Zuko had done the right thing at that meeting—had tried to spare lives—and had still asked for forgiveness. Begged for it. And Ozai had lit his hand on fire and… and… painfully mutilated his own son and then kicked him out, telling him to chase a legend. In some ways, Hakoda thinks, it was crueler than telling him not to come back at all.

Zuko is sixteen. But he is still a child, though saddled with the weight of righting a century of conflict on his back. And Hakoda knows that the Agni Kai had been three years ago.

“How old were you?” Sokka asks tightly.

Spirits above, he was only—

“Thirteen,” Zuko says, and Hakoda sighs, shutting his eyes against the confirmation.

“Thir--” Sokka cuts himself off, his voice strained. “Thirteen. Tui and La, when I was thirteen--” he breaks off again.

Hakoda knows what Sokka is thinking about. Sokka was thirteen when he’d left to join the war effort. He’d tried so hard to keep Sokka as safe as he could. Protect his childhood from being stolen more than the war and the loss of his mother already had. He’d seen the stubborn set to Sokka’s jaw when he’d chased after him onto the ship gangplank, and Hakoda knew that Sokka was just as protective as he was. He’d asked him to look out for the village, for Katara.

Hakoda would have done anything in the world to keep Sokka safe. He still felt that way, despite all the ways that Sokka had proven he could hold his own. He couldn’t help it. He wouldn’t want to. Sokka was his boy. Not so little anymore, not so innocent. He’d seen and been through too much, and Hakoda had missed most of it. But he’d tried. He’d tried to keep him safe for as long as he could manage.

At thirteen, Zuko had been hurt by a person he’d loved and then thrown out into the world with barely a second thought. The Fire Nation had robbed him, too, of so much. Too much.

Sokka takes a sudden step towards him and Zuko visibly tenses as if expecting a blow. Sokka freezes in place. “Zuko…”

Zuko shakes his head quickly, and there’s a small part of Hakoda that uncoils when he sees the way Zuko’s gaze doesn’t look quite so distant anymore. “Anyway. That’s--that’s what the admiral was talking about.”

“You…” Sokka sounds close to tears. “You were his kid.”

“Yeah, well.” Zuko looks at Sokka again. “He spent most of my life wishing I wasn’t.”

Hakoda’s jaw tenses. He looks at Zuko who looks, for all the world, like a sixteen-year-old kid, with his shaggy hair falling into his face and in Fire Lord clothes that are maybe just a touch too big for him. At thirteen—barely a teenager—he’d spoken up out of an intense desire to keep more people safe. To save lives. In Hakoda’s eyes, Zuko was a hero. Just for that.

How anyone could look at him and not be proud was far beyond Hakoda.

“Zuko,” he says, and Zuko’s gaze flashes over to him almost like he’d forgotten Hakoda was there in the first place. “I… hope you understand that you didn’t deserve that.”

The words fall short of what he wants to say, of what he means. But they feel important to him. Zuko deserved better from his nation and especially from his own father. Hakoda doesn’t know very much about the former royal family, but he doesn’t get the impression that Zuko heard that a lot. And if nobody else was going to make sure Zuko knows that he deserves better, Hakoda will at least try.

Something softens a little in Zuko’s gaze. “I know, sir,” he says. “It… I didn’t at first. It took me a long time to understand that it was wrong of my father to do that. But I know that now.”

Hakoda inclines his head. It is a small mercy against the tremendous pain the kid carries on his back, but it’s something. And as far as Hakoda is concerned, it’s not a small thing, either.

“Where is he?” Sokka demands in a near growl.

Zuko blinks, looking far more surprised by Sokka’s outrage than Hakoda is. “Where’s who?”

“Ozai.”

“Sokka, what are you going to do? Fight him?” Zuko looks completely bewildered. “He already lost.”

“Against Aang, not against—did Aang even know?”

“Um, I guess I don’t know. I never told him. I… never told any of you.”

“Yeah--and what’s that about, huh?” Sokka takes a step forward. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Hakoda takes a step towards his son. “Sokka,” he warns.

He wants to explain to him that sometimes things are hard to talk about. Spirits know there were things Hakoda had seen in his days involved in the war that he didn’t want to talk about and hoped he never would have to. He wanted to explain that events like that, things that linger on the edges of your nightmares and follow in lock-step with your shadow, had a nasty habit of strangling in your throat so that the words don’t come. That it is easier to carry those things close to your chest rather than lay them bare for the world to see.

But Sokka is fuming and cuts his father off. “What, did you think we wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Zuko hurls back at him, waving a hand towards the bedroom window. “My father already lost to the Avatar, Sokka. The war is over. The fighting is over. Aang took his bending. And that—I don’t know about you, but that’s the best, most justified end to his legacy I can think of.”

There’s a long, heavy moment of silence. Hakoda watches the way his son’s shoulders heave with angry breaths, his non-injured hand curled into a fist. Sokka had always been fiercely, desperately protective. It runs in the family, Hakoda thinks idly. But this wasn’t something Sokka could protect Zuko from. The damage had already been done.

Hakoda thinks, perhaps, that such a truth only makes it harder for his son to deal with.

“Wherever he is,” Sokka growls, “I hope he rots. He deserves worse.”

Zuko blinks, his eyes wide. Hakoda wonders briefly if Zuko has ever had someone be angry on his behalf, rather than angry with him.

Sokka evidently doesn’t understand his surprise. “Don’t tell me you disagree—”

“No,” Zuko says quickly. “I just… nothing.” He offers the barest hint of a smile at Sokka. The reminder of the familiarity between them relaxes some of the tightness in Hakoda’s chest just a fraction.

There’s a long beat as Hakoda hears his son suck in a deep, slow breath. Zuko’s gaze falls from Sokka’s, drifting back to the basin of water beside him. Zuko’s fingers twitch at his side. He looks suddenly uncomfortable, Hakoda thinks. Nervous, almost.

“Thank you for helping Sokka’s hand, Firelord Zuko,” Hakoda says suddenly, and maybe it’s a foolish way to convey to him that this didn’t change their opinion of him. At least, not for Hakoda… and from his surge of protective anger, he’s pretty sure the same goes for his son. Zuko was still Zuko. And if maybe he made sure to call him Fire Lord as a quiet reminder that Hakoda did not think him less of a leader either, then maybe that was okay too.

Hakoda sees the slightly pink tinge to Zuko’s cheeks as he meets Hakoda’s gaze. But he reads the understanding in those gold eyes as well. “Oh. Uh, of course, sir. And… just Zuko is fine.” Thank you, is the unspoken words that flit across the teen’s gold eyes.

Hakoda smiles a little, inclining his head. “Understood.” He turns his attention then to his son. ”I should draft a letter to Bato tonight to update him on the treaty. Will you be okay without me?”

Sokka rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth is tilted up in a half-smile. “Yeah, dad. I think I can manage.”

Hakoda gives Sokka’s shoulder one last squeeze and a nod to Zuko before he ducks out of the room to give them both a moment to talk more. He closes the door behind him, pausing long enough to take a breath.

Generations of conflict had been ended a few months ago by a bunch of kids with too much weight on their shoulders and too many shadows clinging to their edges. But at their heart, they were good people trying to do good things. Spirits know they all had plenty of reasons to be otherwise. War had a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people, of demanding sacrifices to who you are. It could latch onto the darkest parts of you and pull until it was all that remained. He’s grateful that the group of kids that ended the Hundred Year War managed to keep the best of themselves despite everything, and that they continued to do so.

Hakoda had learned a long time ago that goodness is a choice. And he’s grateful that the world was in the hands of people like his kids, like Aang, like Zuko. Kids who, despite everything and all the ways people tried to pull their darkness out of them, continued to make that choice.

#atla #zuko #avatar the last airbender #atla fanfiction #hakoda #zuko fanfiction #hakoda fanfiction #injury #argument #child abuse #mutilation #please heed warnings #ptsd #trauma

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quarantineddreamer · 4 years

Text

@zutaraweek 2020 Day 1: Reunion

This is my first Zutara week since I am new to the ATLA fandom. For some reason I am very nervous to post this (I think because I spent my morning scrolling through the tag and OMG THE TALENT!!) but anyways, here it is!

Also posted on my AO3

Rating: G

Summary: “I’ll save you from the pirates” -Zuko Katara

Katara picked nervously at the corner of the scroll she bent over, eyes passing over the familiar handwriting for the hundredth time in the past hour alone. We’re boarding the ship shortly… meeting went really well, I think that any additional negotiations will… I’ve been counting down the days till I get to hold you in my arms again... by the time this messenger hawk reaches you it should only be two more nights spent apart... Love always, Zuko. The letter, detailing the success of the Fire Lord’s diplomatic visit to the city of Omashu where a few restless rebellions had arisen had reached Katara over a week ago.

The waterbender frowned as she reached for her tea -a soothing blend that Iroh had promised would help her sleep despite her worry. Still squinting at Zuko’s hurried penmanship, Katara’s fingertips found the steaming liquid instead of the sides of the porcelain teacup, and she cursed as she flinched, knocking the beverage all over her reading material.

“No, no, no!” she cried, waving her hands, pulling the water from the page rapidly so as to keep the ink from running. When at last she was certain she had managed to save the precious material, she collapsed into her chair with a heavy sigh. As she watched the shadows from the candle on her desk play across the walls of her office, she tried desperately to calm herself.

He’s probably just hit bad weather. An image of Zuko thrashing about in the merciless waves of a storm flashed in her mind. Nope! Nope! He’s, uh, just not caught the right wind. But of course, the Fire Nation vessel Zuko had boarded did not rely on a breeze and they couldn’t have run out of power, not with firebenders like Zuko to provide fuel. Not for the first time, she wished that her friends were not scattered across the globe -wished that, at minimum, Aang had been traveling with Zuko, both of them flying safely on Appa’s soft back. But Aang was with Sokka and Suki in the South Pole at the moment helping with restoration work, and Toph was in Ba Sing Se training a special force of Earth Benders to help take down the remnants of the Dai Li.

The last time Katara had felt anything close to this level of worry for Zuko, he had been lying on the ground motionless, remnants of his sister’s lightning dancing across his body. At least she had been with him then, to look after him. Now, she didn’t know where he was or what condition he was in, but she knew him, and she knew it was not nothing that would keep him from her -not with all they had fought through before...

Katara had never felt so alone, but it was Zuko who had asked that she remain behind. “It’ll only be a month!” She remembered his hand on her shoulder as he gave her a pleading look. “Please... While I am gone Uncle will need help keeping everything in check here. You’re the only person in the world I would trust.” When she had finally reluctantly agreed, the kiss he had given her had banished all sadness at the thought of his absence. What was a month apart when they had a lifetime to look forward to now that the war was over? But he was not here now to erase her fear and dispel the hard knot lodged in her stomach.

The month had gone by fast with plenty of ‘Fire Lady’ duties to take care of, but the days that had passed since his estimated date of arrival had dragged with agonizing slowness as though time itself were taunting her… Her fingers itched to drag the scroll towards her again, to scour its surface for clues. He wouldn’t just disappear, he would tell them if he was going to be late.

A soft knock on the door broke the typhoon of anxiousness tearing through her mind. “Yes?” she called.

Iroh’s face, normally so jovial, was grave as it peered into the room. “A soldier from Zuko’s guard just arrived at the palace.”

“Where is he?” She nearly choked on the question, sensing her worst fears were about to be confirmed.

“Their ship was ambushed by a group of pirates. Zuko has been taken hostage and is being held unless the Fire Nation delivers a significant sum to his captors.”

She barely heard the rest, the where, when, and how. All she knew was she was done waiting, fussing over words on paper as though that could bring him back. She should have trusted her instinct, the tightness in her chest, that had told her something was wrong. Should’ve gone with him to Omashu to begin with... She pushed her chair back and stood. “I’m going after him.”

“Katara, please, we have identified the particular ship that has him, we can send a fleet after him.” Iroh fiddled with the teacup and papers on her desk nervously.

“I can handle some lousy pirates. He’s been gone too long, Iroh! And we can’t have the Fire Nation knowing their ruler has been taken...” Already her heart was racing. She’d never admit it, but a dangerous, secretive, part of her missed this. The raw rush of adrenaline from imminent conflict was intoxicating, addictive. Diplomatic meetings had taken her all over the world, but paperwork and debate had nothing on this.

Iroh hung his head. “Peace is fragile. I am aware…” He hesitated, observing her expression intently before saying, “I suppose no one is better suited to chase down pirates, than the greatest Master Water Bender…”

“Hardly,” she quipped humbly, but he always knew how to make her smile. “I appreciate the compliment.” Already at the door she turned to ask, “May I borrow a small ship from the Fire Nation Fleet?”

“The girlfriend of the Fire Lord can have whatever she wishes.” His tone managed to be light, joking, but his eyes still held great sadness and concern.

Katara stepped towards the older man to give him a brief, strong hug, leaning back afterwards to fix him with an earnest gaze. “I promise I’ll bring him home.”

“Stay safe, brave, Katara. I will handle things here.”

“I know you will.”

Moments later she raced through the palace out into the humid night. She did not stop to catch her breath even as she stole past the guards onto the docks and untied the first boat she saw with sails -one she knew she could manage alone.

Yue watched over her and gave her strength as she furiously bent the ocean around her. Spirits help those damn pirates if they’ve so much as given him a papercut...

-----

Zuko groaned as he came to, vaguely aware of a swaying sensation as though he were about to fall, which he figured had something to do with the massive lump at the back of his head. Or maybe it was the movement of the ship he was on. He blinked, his mind slowly focusing and gaining awareness -and along with it an awful dose of pain. How long had he been out? A fog was beginning to lift inside him, but the lingering grogginess suggested he had potentially been drugged for quite some time.

His most recent memories were of chaos, arrows whistling through the air, latching onto the deck of their ship. He had tried to incinerate most of them, and had been successful, until something had struck him hard across the back and sent him instantly into the void.

Rope rubbed at his wrists and clutched at his chest as he struggled. He tried to bend, but found his movement to be too restricted and clumsy -disoriented as he was. A string of curses tumbled from his lips.

“Tsk, tsk. Not language very fitting of His Highness is it?” a voice called from the shadows of the ship’s hold.

Zuko recognized the voice… One of the advisors that had been traveling with him, Jian… Despite the remnants of drugs in his system it was beginning to become clear how their ship had just happened to fall victim to pirates and who had managed to catch Zuko from behind unexpectedly. “What do you want, Jian?” he asked sharply, glaring as the advisor drew closer.

“You are the last person our great nation should be led by,” he hissed.

Zuko’s lips curled in disgust at the man’s hot breath on his face, his nostrils flared as he exhaled smoke and frustration, pleased when Jian backed away, clearly fighting an undignified cough. “I trusted you. I thought you were helping us work to rebuild… The past year… and last week in Omashu. What changed?”

Jian laughed coldly. “This was always the plan. Your naivety will be the end of you young Fire Lord.”

“To hope for something better is not naive,” Zuko replied fiercely.

The former advisor scanned him for a moment then smirked, eyes shining with mania. “Look at where you are.” He lifted arms clad in elegant red silk to gesture at their dingy surroundings. “You will either die here, or in a cell in a Fire Nation prison unless a ransom is paid.”

Zuko snorted, a small flame escaping his nose. He wished, not for the first time in his life, that he had managed to master more fire breathing than that -something that would be useful in his current predicament- but that had always been more Azula’s specialty despite all of Uncle’s efforts. “Money? That’s what this is about?”

“That is only the beginning,” he whispered conspiratorially. Beady black eyes danced in lantern light as he regarded Zuko with intense hatred. “One day soon, the rightful Fire Lord will return to the Fire Nation throne and he will make you pay for your treasonous actions.”

Zuko rolled his eyes. Great, another Ozai loyalist. Just his luck that one had been insidious enough to work his way to this point. Maybe he was naive, though if Katara and the rest of his friends had taught him anything, it was that trying to find the good in others would never be a bad thing. He had everything to thank for their belief in that. Katara… He shut his eyes for a moment as a wave of longing washed over him. Arguably he had been in worse situations than this, but it had been years since he had faced them without her by his side. If only he had let her come along…but he had been so afraid to leave the Fire Nation unattended with all its troubles placed solely on his uncle’s shoulders.

A knock at the door interrupted Zuko’s thoughts of the Water Bender and the ache that he felt burying itself in his chest knowing she would be worried at his delay. He regretted the stress he would put her through. While Jian went to open the door Zuko tried to subtly tug at his bindings again. If he could just get enough motion in his fingers to firebend and weaken the rope… With Jian distracted he frantically tried to summon enough of the element, fighting the last of the drug’s haze...

“Yes?” Jian asked impatiently of the visitor to the hold, a short, skinny pirate with a large, floppy hat that Zuko could see extended beyond even the width of Jian’s frame that blocked the doorway.

Almost there… Zuko wiggled his wrists in small circles, wincing when a small jet of fire nearly set his pants aflame, missing the ropes entirely. Fortunately the hold’s wood was damp enough that the floor remained unlit. The firebender took a deep breath and tried again, thankful that Jian was still busy discussing something with the pirate at the door.

An image of Katara practicing her bending came to mind. He recalled the graceful, delicate, intention with which she waved every muscle in her hands. On his second attempt to burn the ropes he was careful to control his digits more precisely, and his efforts were rewarded when he felt a small heat pass along his palms and hit the rope.

The sounds of Jian bidding the pirate farewell and closing the door encouraged Zuko to rush his final pass at burning the ropes off. He fought back a hiss of pain as he felt flame pass over the delicate flesh on the inside of his lower arms. Seconds later when he gave the bonds one last tug and felt them fall away his injury was forgotten. He remained carefully still as Jian turned back to him, waiting for the perfect moment.

When the advisor strayed within arm’s reach Zuko suddenly lunged, seizing him by the shoulders and spinning the man, head-first, into the nearest wall. Jian collapsed with a soft, surprised exclamation and a solid thunk of skull colliding with wood, and Zuko, breathed a sigh of relief.

Wasting no time he rushed for the door, throwing himself through the opening and shooting glances down the short hallway. Luckily, it was clear. Quietly, he sealed Jian in the cell and padded softly towards a set of stairs illuminated with pale moonlight. He had no idea what awaited him on the deck. Whatever it was he would handle it then, though he had to shake Iroh’s admonishing tone from his head, ‘You never think these things through!’

When he emerged from the belly of the ship he was prepared for an immediate onslaught of pirate swords and other weaponry, but despite what he was sure were Jian’s desires, these were not Fire Nation soldiers. The crew was gathered around a makeshift table and their drunken cackles and bickering carried loudly above even the sea breeze and persistent slapping of water against the hull.

Zuko crouched behind a wooden crate and scanned the deck. There were more than a dozen pirates playing cards in the moonlight and who knew how many more aboard the ship. With the moon shining brightly in the sky Zuko knew Katara would have been a force to be reckoned with, but he could not say the same for his firebending, and he was disappointed in how weak he felt -from hunger, thirst, likely concussion, and not to mention residual effects of whatever Jian had been using to keep him unconscious.

He was contemplating the slim likelihood of stealing away unnoticed with one of the small boats tied to the side of the ship when the gull-rat squawked at him. At first, he ignored it -at any given moment any seaside town or boat was always under the assault of the persistent creature and its horrible fecal habits- but when it continued to tilt its head at him in curiosity he recalled the companions the pirates he had met several years ago kept…The gull-rat’s call was louder the second time and Zuko swore as its owner, walking away from the card table with a fistful of coins and a drunken grin, blinked at the sight of the prisoner wandering freely.

It was really not his day. Zuko sprinted for the boat he had been eyeing early, bending a blast of flame at the ropes that held it to the main ship and hoping he would not be far behind the vessel as it crashed loudly into the ocean below. The gambling crew were all armed now, and though a few teetered from the effects of what was decidedly not the calming tea Iroh was always drinking, many looked formidable opponents. A circle was already closing around Zuko who searched desperately for an opening.

The Fire Lord managed to dodge two pirates who swung rusty blades at him and pushed back three more with a ball of flame. Seeing an opening in the ranks, he dashed wildly for the side of the ship, glancing back only once when an arrow whizzed past his shoulder.

Once was one time too many. He crashed right into the short, skinny pirate that had stopped by his cell to speak with Jian and they collapsed to the deck in a painful twist of limbs. Before Zuko could roll away the short pirate had pinned him and grabbed both his wrists.

-----

“I’ll save you from the pirates,” she whispered, grinning as the confusion on his handsome face turned to joy when she removed the ridiculous hat she wore so he could see her. His smile was everything, she hadn’t realized just how much she had missed it -instantly warming her from the inside out.

“Katara!” He sat up and pulled her into a tight embrace, kissing the top of her head and breathing in the smell of her hair.

She was disappointed when he broke away to stand. It was understandable though. The pirates were racing towards them -even the gull-rat was giving chase.

“I knocked a boat into the water, if we can just swim to it…” Zuko eyed the railings of the ship unhappily, no doubt imagining the long drop.

“And then what?” Katara asked, drawing water from the ocean and forming two whips over both her arms.

“We, uh, we go?” Zuko offered.

She fought back a bubble of laughter. “You really don’t think things through. Zuko, they can just chase us! They’d catch us in no time in this larger ship. Was that really your plan?”

He fumbled for words, cheeks flushing furiously with embarrassment.

Katara lashed out at the first wave of pirates, tripping them with one long tendril of water. “Zuko, you’re a firebender, set the ship on fire!” She looked away as a stray pirate broke rank to try and shoot them with his bow. A jet of water aimed sharply by Katara eliminated that immediate problem. “You are the Fire Lord, how did you not think of this?” This time the laughter escaped her, his befuddled expression too cute to take.

“I, uh.. Okay, I’m pretty sure I have a concussion... and potentially still some drugs in my system?” he admitted, punching the air with his fists, sending fire at the pirates and the sails of the ship. Soon the entire deck was dancing with the dangerous orange glow.

“That’s our cue!” Katara declared, and grabbed his hand. “Ready?” She stepped up onto the railing of the ship and he followed.

They balanced precariously for a moment, her hair spinning wildly in the wind, before jumping into the air, stomachs dropping for a brief exhilarating second before Katara froze a wave to slide them towards the empty boat bobbing in the waves. A miscalculation on her part landed them in frigid ocean water that stole both their breaths away.

Katara was first to pull herself into the boat, flopping wetly into the wooden hull. She giggled at the sight of Zuko, hair spiked every which way by the ocean, arms flung desperately over the side of the boat kicking furiously to pull himself into the raft. Taking mercy on a Fire Bender out of his element, she helped him aboard. Together they looked back at the burning pirate ship, observing the frantic shadows of the crew moving about with buckets of water. Still, Katara did not wait long to begin moving their vessel to the small cove nearby where she had anchored her Fire Nation ship.

Only when they were confident that no one had pursued them to the sandy shores and were safely sailing towards home aboard her borrowed ship did they rest, allowing the wind to do the work for them. They collapsed, laying on the deck, staring skyward at a ceiling of stars, and Zuko gently pulled Katara against him. She reveled in the familiar beat of his heart beneath her as she settled her head on his chest.

She felt him shake as he laughed quietly. “I still can’t believe I didn’t think, to... Burn the ship?”

Katara reached for a small bit of water and it glowed as she reached a hand back to touch the side of his head. “Better?” she asked after a moment.

“Yeah, much. Thank you…” he sighed and leaned his scarred face into her healing palm. “I can’t say this was the reunion I was imagining.”

“I don’t know…” She looked up at him, the beginnings of a soft smile tugging at her lips. “We’re even now,” she teased, bumping him playfully. “And it was kind of fun... Reminds me of how far we’ve come.” How different things were since the last time they had encountered pirates -and not just his hair, though thank the spirits for that.

“Just another day in the life of the Fire Lord I guess,” Zuko replied wistfully, a hand playing with the end of one of her curls.

“I mean, I’m not saying you should do it again… ”

“Not without you... “Never without you,” he promised -and to Katara’s delight, sealed the oath by placing his lips against hers.

#zutara #zutara week 2020 #zuko #katara #reunion #zuko x katara #zutara fanfic #zutara week #zutara fanfiction #ao3 fic #b writes #zukos-calming-tea

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crashingmeteorz · 4 years

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the ba sing se bimbos all become older siblings entirely by accident

remember the child trafficking ring they broke up? well, a lot of the kids scattered. but not all of them. some of them don’t have homes, or don’t know their homes, or are too little to understand what’s going on.

jin, song, and zuko are in varying degrees of distress when they realize they have to care for five young kids, aged 4-9. song is panicking because “we can’t even take care of ourselves, guys!” jin is like “i really don’t want this responsibility but somehow i know we’re going to end up looking after for these little brats”. zuko is like “look kids like me for some reason but i am Not Good At This.”

jet, meanwhile, feels more at home with a bunch of misfit kids than he has in his entire time at ba sing se. he plays games with them and sings to them and calms them down while the other bimbos debate what to do. they watch jet interact with the children from afar and are like wow this is...wholesome? it’s a whole different side of him they never knew existed.

when the kids have all relaxed a little, jet’s just like “so, we’re adopting them, right?” and everyone’s like jet you’re the oldest and you’re not even 17 No We Are Not Adopting Them.

“they’re not pets, jet!” song hisses. “i know that!” jet hisses back. “but someone has to take care of them!”

“let’s just ask mushi and song’s mom,” jin says inching away from a totally silent six-year-old boy who is Staring At Her And Not Blinking. “they’re good with kids, probably.”

everyone agrees this is a good idea and they’re stupid for not immediately doing that, except jet, who still does not understand that children shouldn’t have to parent other children, but hey, he trusts mushi and song’s mom at least.

so they parade the children back to song’s mom’s house, zuko and song holding one each by the hand, and jet holding one on each hand and carrying one on his back. i cannot explain to you how delighted these children and jet are by each other. it’s so cute song and zuko are just like infatuated with jet for a full hour. jin also thinks it’s cute, but in the way that makes her want to throw up, mostly because the six-year-old whose hand he’s holding is Still Staring At Her.

song’s mother opens the apartment door to find more than twice as many children as she had fed that morning, lets out a very long sigh, and then just says “you’re lucky i always make extra food. come in.”

(song has to fight the urge to roll her eyes. caring for children is her mother’s favorite thing in the world.)

they find out that there’s: a giggly four-year-old who calls herself ila. a pair of siblings who’s parents are from the si wong desert tribe, six-year-old sandbender abbas and his nine-year-old non-bender sister faiza. finally there’s shy and sweet seven-year-old ning and her boisterous twin brother rong.

over time, the bimbos work to get the kids back home. it proves tough - ning and rong know that their parents are dead. abbas and faiza have no idea how to get home, or if their parents are alive, and ila doesn’t seem to even know what they’re asking. she claims she never had parents to begin with, but in a confusing four-year-old way.

but they form a plan anyway. they’re going to try and bring abbas and faiza back to the desert tribe, and when ila reveals herself as a waterbender, they at least have a clue of where she might have come from.

while they try and figure all this out, song’s mother takes the twins and ila, while iroh takes the desert kids. the bimbos are around them all the time, obviously, and whether they mean to or not, they all become really close to the kids.

all the kids love jet, but the twins in particular find him to be amazing. he has patience for ning’s mumbling speech, he has the energy for rong’s constant need for attention, he is always willing to play with and listen to them both. they tell him, eventually, about how they lost their parents in a forest fire caused by the fire nation. he holds them and listens and says he went through something similar. that it’s unfair, but that he won’t let anything bad happen to them again. song’s mother and mushi both try to tell him that’s a big promise to make when he’s only a boy himself. he disagrees, of course.

ila is obsessed with song. she thinks song’s silky hair is fun to play with, she thinks song’s warm arms are the perfect place to sleep, and she thinks that song smells sweet and welcoming. song melts over the little girl, often carrying her in her arms or on her shoulders. ila has the sweetest laugh, and song loves tickling her to produce it. song never wanted a sibling before, but these kids are beginning to change her mind. ila ends up being a natural healer, healing her own parchment-cut with ease. delighted, song teaches ila as her mother used to teach her, balancing the little girl on her hip and explaining what each vial and herb means and does.

faiza, brave and protective, gets along really well with zuko. she thinks he’s funny when he doesn’t mean to be, and begs him to teach her how to use duel swords, which, eventually, he does. she’s ashamed of being a non-bender, but zuko assures her it’s really not all it’s cracked up to be. faiza teases zuko right along with the rest of the group, but zuko lets her. she’s just too adorable to get mad at. faiza secretly thinks zuko’s super cool, but she doesn’t tell him that.

the strange and silent six-year-old abbas latches on to jin like glue. you know that scene in the office when angela shows up at dwights side and he’s like “ah fuck!”? that’s jin every time abbas shows up next to her. she could be dangling off a rooftop and then abbas is just staring at her through the nearest window. how did you escape iroh’s apartment? how did you even get in there? do you even blink? eventually, it turns out abbas can talk, he just doesn’t like to do it a lot. everyone adjusts. jin comes to love this kid like a brother. whenever anyone comments on how weird he is she smacks them. it could be an old lady. it could be another kid. she doesn’t discriminate with smacks. the other bimbos often have to stop her from smacking.

the kids find their way home, as they must - first faiza and abbas, after the bimbos take a long journey into the desert to find their home. it turns out their parents have passed away, but their loving aunt and uncle have been worried sick. zuko and jin promise the children they’ll stay in touch. faiza whisper to zuko that she actually thought he was cool the whole time. abbas also whispers in jin’s ear. everyone asks what he said but she’s too busy crying to tell them.

then ila talks about how she and her mother left home because “mommy didn’t like that she couldn’t waterbend”. zuko puts together a few things: there are practically no southern waterbenders, there were only male waterbenders in the north. they figure out where she must be from. they travel around the city, looking for women who may have fled the north pole - and they find her. ila’s mother has been searching for ila right in this same city, and when they reunite it’s beautiful to behold. song gives ila’s mother her address, and they visit from time to time.

in the end, though, rong and ning have nowhere to go. song’s mother, who has come to love them as her own children, takes them in permanently. the bimbos are relieved. saying goodbye to the other kids was almost too difficult. slowly, jet learns how to be less of a dad to the twins and more of an older brother. he finds that it’s not so bad.

actually, it’s kind of nice.

the second ba sing se bimbos post as requested for my 100 Followers Celebration!!! thank you as always to @azenkii for coming up with this amazing idea.

masterpost

#the ba sing se bimbos #100 follower celebration #jinjetsongko #jin #jet #song #zuko #iroh #song’s mother #ba sing se #atla #avatar the last airbender #my stuff

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zutaradreams · 5 years

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Day 18: Caught Undressed

Written as Part 5 to the All Along universe, but I feel like this one can also stand alone. Zuko helps Katara with some gaps in her memory.

Read on AO3 here

@zutaramonth

“Katara, this is our roommate, Jet. Jet, my little sister, Katara. She’s a first-year. Just moved into her dorm.”

“Cool shirt,” Jet says.

Katara looks down at the shirt she’s wearing. “Oh, thanks. I don’t even remember where I got this from. I’ve never even been to any of their concerts.”

“So not a fan of the Airbenders then?” this third roommate asks, chewing on the cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

For some reason, Katara feels like she’s said the wrong thing. “Um, well, I am. I’ve just never been to any of their concerts.”

Jet smirks. “I’m sure they’re playing somewhere around here soon. I’ll have to take you.”

“Hold on a second,” interjects Sokka. “You’ve known her for two minutes. You can’t just ask her out.”

Jet shrugs. “She’s cute. Looks nothing like you..”

Katara giggles. “Yeah, let me know if they’re playing. I’d love to see them.”

Sokka rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Come on, Katara, we’re going to get smoothies.”

“But, Sokka-”

“Smoothies!” her brother exclaims, latching onto her arm and dragging her out of the apartment, far away from Jet.

“Katara, you do not want to get tangled up in that,” her brother warns, though the words go in one ear and out the other. “I have to listen to his phone calls. Believe me, he’s a mess.”

“You’re the one living with him, not me!” she exclaims defensively, crossing her arms over her chest, directly over the shirt that started it all. She’s still trying to remember where it came from.

“Only because Suki and I couldn’t afford it by ourselves.”

“Well, why didn’t you ask Zuko?”

“We did, but he lives with his uncle.”

That’s right. He moved into the apartment above his uncle’s tea shop right before she graduated high school. He had worked there all through the summer, never coming home once.

“Hey, do you want to go to the tea shop instead of the smoothie place? Zuko’s working right now.”

Katara smiles. “Yeah! I haven’t seen him in ages. Is it close by?”

“A few blocks away from campus. Not far at all.” So she walks alongside her brother with her tiny purse strewn across her shoulder. It’s the perfect day for a walk. She thinks about how when she sees Zuko, she’s going to rub in his face how he has to work while she enjoys the nice weather. No matter how much time passes between their visits, they always fall right back into the comfortable friendship they worked so hard on.

“Welcome to the Jasmine Dragon,” calls Zuko from behind the counter when the two of them walk in. He doesn’t look up, though.

“Nice apron,” Katara says back.

Zuko’s head snaps up comically and his face finally relaxes into a full blown smile. “Hey, guys. Uncle, Sokka’s here.”

Zuko’s Uncle Iroh appears through the doorway from the front counter to the kitchen, wearing an apron similar to Zuko’s. “Sokka, it has been too long.”

“I know, Uncle Iroh. This is my sister, Katara. She just moved into her dorm today.”

“How exciting! It is very nice to meet you, Katara. Zuko, take your break. I’ll take over the counter. Anything you and your friends want is on the house.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Sokka protests, though Katara knows this new apartment is putting a strain on Sokka’s extra spending.

“Nonsense. Can Zuko get the two of you anything before he takes his break?”

“I’ll take a chai latte please,” says Katara sweetly.

“And two of those tea cakes for me, man.”

“Two tea cakes and one chai latte coming right up.”

“Alright. I’m going to go to the bathroom real quick. Katara,” he stares at her meaningfully, “I will know if you so much as lick one of those cakes, okay?”

“I’m not going to disturb your food. Just go to the bathroom,” she huffs. When Sokka disappears, she stalks over to the counter to pester Zuko while he works.

“Just so you know, it’s really nice outside.”

“It looks nice out.”

“When do you get off?”

“Not till closing.”

She pouts. “Bummer.”

He hands her a finished chai latte. When he holds it out to her, he looks at her like he’s noticing her for the first time.

“You still have the shirt,” he says.

She looks down at the mystery concert tee tucked into her jean cutoffs. “Do you know where this came from? It just appeared in my closet one day.”

“It’s mine.”

“It’s yours?”

“Yeah,” he answers, somewhat nervously, fiddling with the strings of his apron.

“How did I end up with it?”

“Three words: drunk as fuck.”

Her face flushes. There’s only one time she’s been that drunk - the one and only Kyoshi Sorority Party Suki dragged her to just after she turned 18.

“Oh.”

He laughs. “You don’t remember it at all?”

“That night’s a blur,” she admits guiltily.

“Well some Chin Fraternity guy spilled beer all over your shirt, and you were so drunk you took your shirt off.”

“Oh, my God!” Her cheeks are burning. “I can’t believe I did that.”

“Don’t worry, I doubt anyone remembers.”

“Ugh, does Sokka know?”

“He punched the guy who spilled the beer on you and the first guy who wolf whistled.”

“This is so humiliating.”

“Katara, believe me, there have been worse college parties.”

She still feels so embarrassed. When Sokka comes back to collect his tea cakes, and the three of them sit down at one of the corner tables, she tells her brother, “So I figured out where this shirt came from. Zuko gave it to me on the night I apparently made a fool of myself at the Kyoshi party.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess that is the one.” He claps Zuko on the back. “This is a good friend right here. He covered you up with the shirt off his back.”

“Yeah, thanks for helping me out. I’m so mad I did that.”

“Don’t worry about it. Seriously,” he assures her.

“Maybe Jet should ask you out, Zuko.”

“Excuse me?”

“Jet hit on my little sister here as soon as she walked in the door, all because of this Airbenders tee shirt. Can you believe the nerve of that guy?”

“I don’t think it’s the shirt, Sokka. It’s more of how she looks in the shirt.”

Katara blushes once again, much more pleasantly this time, as Sokka gags on his tea cake. “Okay, conversation over.”

“I don’t know. I kinda like it. Zuko, tell me more about how I look in this shirt,” she teases.

Now it’s Zuko’s turn to blush. “Your brother said conversation over.”

She rolls her eyes playfully. “Sokka doesn’t make the rules.”

“Just drink your latte, Katara. I slaved over it for you.”

She takes a sip. “It tastes like you could’ve slaved a little longer.”

“Woooow!” Sokka exclaims. “You know, I missed this. We all need to hang out more. Us three, Suki, even Toph and Aang,” he tells them. “Not Jet.”

“Jet’s not too bad,” Katara protests.

“Yes, he is.”

“Do you know him, Zuko?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you let your little sister date him?”

“Azula, sure. I’d tell him good luck, actually.” Then he takes a sip of his jasmine tea, looks her over head to toe, and adds, “But you’re not Azula.”

It’s so offensive to her that these two think they can control who she does and doesn’t date. Once upon a time, Zuko could have controlled it. Once upon a time, he had been the only one she daydreamed about. But the way these two are acting now make her want to date Jet more.

“If I want to go to an Airbenders concert with him, I’m going to go to one!” she asserts.

“Do they even have any shows coming up?”

“Jet said they did.”

“Oh, Jet said,” Zuko repeats mockingly. “Tell you what, if there’s a concert, and you still want to go, I’ll take you. Leave the cigarette chewing asshole out of it.”

“Maybe I want the cigarette chewing asshole.”

“How long have you known him again?”

“Grand total of two minutes,” answers Sokka. “I’m gonna go ask Iroh for another one of these tea cakes. These are too good.” He stands up and walks over to the line forming around the front counter.

Katara knows she looks angry, and she can tell by the twinge of Zuko’s jaw, that he’s not too happy either. “I don’t want to be mad at you. I just want you to know that you don’t get a say in who I date.”

“I know that.”

“I get enough of it from Sokka. You’re not my big brother, even though we grew up together.”

“I know that too.”

“Good.”

“But I am your friend,” he reminds her. “Forgive me for looking out for my friend.”

The statement strikes a chord in her and she looks down at the tee shirt given to her in a vulnerable moment that could have turned into a very bad situation. Some people don’t exactly hesitate to take advantage of drunk girls walking around without their shirts on. Zuko had looked out for her then, and he is looking out for her now, in his own twisted way. Still, it relieves her of her sour mood.

“I’m gonna hold you to what you said. You’re taking me to the next Airbenders concert.”

He smiles. “Okay.”

“And I’m keeping the shirt.”

“Fine by me.”

#zutara month 2020 #zutara #zutaradreams #all along #da #y18

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carnistcervine · 5 years

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Sun Spirit Sokka AU

So I got this idea like, in the fandom we always talkin bout shipping the sun and the moon right? I mean we usually use that in reference to zutara, but what about the actual sun and moon? Yue is connected to the moon spirit, so what if Sokka was connected to the sun spirit? Like not only would Sokka be all frustrated because he doesn't like all that spirit nonsense, but also(and especially) because Agni is a Fire Nation deity. Lets not forget, sun and moon power couple. Just. Yes.

-While he's still quite small, Sokka falls through the ice.

-Agni comes to little Sokka's aid, trying to hold his spirit to his body. But Hakoda isn't able to get his boy out of the water before lethal hypothermia sets in. Rather than let the child die, Agni imparts some of his life into Sokka, reviving him.

-Hakoda is relieved to see color starting to return to his son's face as he coughs, sucking in breaths once more. He bundles him up and rushes him back home, despite Sokka's protests that he's too hot.

-From Sokka's perspective, after falling through the ice he felt the cold closing in around him. Then he suddenly felt a hand grabbing him, only the hand felt wicked hot, like fire itself had latched onto him. He tried to open his eyes, but all he could see was a man with a face as bright and white hot as the sun. The hand kept pulling him towards the bright, radiating heat, until he could no longer feel the freezing ocean around him. The hand held onto him, and he could hear the crackling of fire, however the world was fading from view. Just before he slipped from consciousness he felt like fire was flowing into his mouth, it burned its way down his throat until it reached his stomach were it got hotter and hotter until it felt like he had a tiny sun inside of him. He forced his eyes open to see his father's concerned face, wrapping him in furs to keep him warm. But Sokka already felt like he was burning from the inside-out, and squirmed and moaned in protest.

-The next week or so, Sokka remained inside, being cared for by his mother and grandmother. His sister also stayed by his side, worried that he might not be there is she left. But there was also another person who watched over him during this time. A strange man dressed in fine reds who seemed to have his face constantly obscured by some bright glow. He radiated just as much heat as the fire pit, and strangest of all, he spoke like the crackling of fire. But no one ever addressed the mysterious firebender in the room. So Sokka simply assumed he was a hallucination and left it at that.

-The night before Sokka's fever finally broke, the strange man stood up and walked outside, the taking the life of the flames with him and leaving Sokka in the cold dark.

-The next morning Sokka felt better than ever. He went back along with his life, casually ignoring the faint sensation of the sun blazing within him. He couldn't feel any literal burn, so he reasoned that there wasn't actually anything there.

-After the whole ordeal though, Sokka noticed some of his fellow tribe members giving him a wide berth. He was very confused at first, until Katara explained to him that his eyes had turned to a very firey-looking gold color.

-While even Hakoda had some concerns about his son's sudden eye color change, Sokka proved quick enough that he was the same kid he'd always been. It's not long before people go back to treating him normally.

-Soon after the event, Sokka notices that not only does he have a newfound affinity for fire, but also he wakes with the sun, and while he feels much more sensitive to the cold, he found that he's better able to keep himself warm. He convinces himself that since he can't throw flames from his fists, he's not a firebender.

-Sokka becomes deathly ill during the Long Night(polar winter). He feels icy cold on the inside, and becomes increasingly lethargic as the earth tilts further away from the sun's light. Katara stays by his side the whole time(because siblings who care deeply about one another are my bread and butter.) Each time it happens, Katara grows more and more concerned that Sokka won't survive. However, he promises her that he won't leave her and he'll always be there to protect her.

-When the Southern Raiders come, Hakoda makes Sokka go hide with his sister. He's never seen Sokka produce fire, but deep in his gut, he knows that once the firebenders take one look at Sokka's golden eyes, they'll drag him away and corrupt the poor boy.

-After loosing his mother, Sokka goes off by himself to cry when he feels a warm hand on his shoulder. He quickly wipes his tears and pulls himself together before turning around to see a man dressed in fine reds. He can't see his face, it's somehow obscured by the sun(or maybe it is the sun). Sokka pulls away venomously. In a fit of rage, he attempts to strike the man, but before his fist can connect, he's not there anymore. In fact, it was like he was never there in the first place. Freaked out, Sokka sulks away.

-When Zuko comes on his ship, he takes one look at Sokka with his blazing gold eyes and Water Tribe looks and has several questions. However instead of using words like a normal person, Zuko throws fire at Sokka. Having fire thrown at his face, Sokka lapses into instinct and cancels the attack out with a fireball of his own. Zuko keeps throwing fire at Sokka, who responds by somehow bending the flames away. Sokka's not sure how he's using fire magic, but if it can stop him from getting burned he'll take it. The most major questions in Zuko's mind are, is this boy a half-breed, or-

-His question is answered when Aang bursts in a penguin-otter. Well, partially answered at least. Zuko gets a strange feeling from Sokka though. Normally he can sense other firebenders through their inner flame, but this one seems to have an inner sun. He commands his men to take both the Avatar and the strange firebender with them.

-Of course Iroh is able to see right away that Sokka has been touched by the sun. Iroh is subtle about it and decides to have tea and pleasant conversation with Sokka.

-Iroh looks the other way when Sokka and Aang escape with Katara.

-As much as he doesn't like the Fire Nation, Sokka has to admit that Iroh is very pleasant to talk to. He seems like such a nice old man, and as much as Sokka wanted to think it was an act, he can't ignore that Iroh intentionally let them get away.

-Being the embodiment of the sun nearly ends badly for poor Sokka on Kyoshi.

-Skipping ahead a bit~

-Once they reach the North Pole, they recognize Sokka as a firebender right away, but Yue comes to his rescue.

-Tui speaks through her and scolds the guards for trying to drown Agni. Sokka's confused as to why this pretty girl just called him Agni, but if it stops him from being drowned he's a-ok with it.

-Yue and Sokka connect with one another right away. While Sokka is immediately smitten, Yue doesn't start to fall for him until she starts to get to know him.

-At first Yue doesn't see a problem with hanging out with Sokka, as she's just getting to know him as a friend, but she starts to feel bad when she develops feelings for him. Seeing as she's already engaged.

-Sokka stays with Katara and Yue while Aang seeks out the aid of the spirits.

-When Zuko comes, Agni speaks through Sokka and commands Zuko to stand down. When Zuko refuses, Tui takes control of Yue and she and Katara freeze Zuko to the wall.

-When Yue explains her back story and how she came to embody the moon, she explains to Sokka that the sun spirit, Agni had imparted some of his life into Sokka to save him.

-Sokka's lowkey frustrated that the patron spirit of the Fire Nation lives within him.

-When Zuko comes to at dawn, Sokka's ready for him and has Agni command the prince to stand down once again. Feeling the full force of the sun, Zuko reluctantly complies and the group tie him up.

-When Zhao tries to kill Tui, Agni pushes Sokka into action and he attacks Zhao. Katara, Sokka, Yue and Iroh manage to defeat all of Zhao's firebenders before Sokka throws another fire blast causing Zhao to nearly fall into the spirit pool.

-Sokka tries to get Agni to tell Zhao to stand down, when a dark pair of arms reach out from the spirit pool and drag him under. The group look all over for the man, but Agni tells Sokka that Zhao is gone.

-Sokka feels a deep, dark dread at that.

-Iroh takes Zuko with him, and Yue ends up joining the Gaang.

-Sun and Moon power couple fuck yeah.

-Being one with Agni grants Sokka fire power, and being one with Tui grants Yue water power. However, the two of them have to rely on Tui and Agni until they can learn to properly bend themselves. Yue has a little bit of bending experience, and Katara ends up with two students instead of one. Sokka just has what little Jeong-Jeong could teach him. So Agni takes Sokka on as a student, imparting his knowledge of fire onto his mortal emissary.

-Sokka being connected to Agni does get back to the Fire Nation, and uh... They're not just gonna stand by and let the chosen emissary of their patron deity get paraded around by a bunch of Water Tribe.

#ATLA AU #Avatar AU #Sun Spirit Sokka AU

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skaylanphear · 6 years

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I didn't realize you were so critical of Voltron's writing. Is there anything you think the writers did really well?

Not… really?

The one episode that sticks out to me as having been well-written was an episode in season 3–the one where Keith is leading them into that planet and all their tech gets screwed to hell. It works on a lot of levels because it introduces Lotor as a scary villain, establishes Allura as inexperienced while giving her the chance to learn, and shows Keith learning a lesson while Lance gets to stretch his legs as an actual competent member of the team. What I loved about it though was the lesson Keith learned onscreen and how he learned it–we got to see actual development as well as him opening up to another member of the team other than Shiro. It’s one of the best episodes in the series and really goes to show what Voltron could have been if the writers actually knew what they were doing. I assume, at this point, that the episode was merely a happy accident.

Now that isn’t to say Voltron doesn’t have memorable moments for other reasons–the scene where Keith and Shiro fight was wonderfully animated and probably the most beautiful looking scene in the whole series, but that doesn’t mean how we got there was as good by comparison.

One of Voltron’s biggest problems (among other glaring issues) is that it relies heavily on concepts, but pretty much fails to expand those concepts into actual narrative development. We’re told via Hunk’s one episode in the Galra empire that he’s become quite the diplomat, but we never see that in action or see him struggling with that arc at any other point in the series. We’re told Lance has become a great member of the team by seeing his sword form during training, but we rarely get to see those skills in action. And yeah, Lance takes up giving commands when Keith and Shiro are busy, but it’s never highlighted. He’s never given his moment to truly prove himself to the audience. Which makes it all little different than telling the audience that development is happening offscreen, which you should NEVER do. Which brings me to Keith. Not only was Keith’s path through “development” poorly concocted, but we didn’t even get to see it. Why was he such a great leader after having spent time with his mother? What did that do for him? Fans can speculate all they want, but at the end of the day, Keith is one character when he left and another when he comes back, and WE DIDN’T SEE IT HAPPEN!

This leaves me with one of two conclusions: Either the writers were too lazy to put any effort into telling a proper character arc OR they simply don’t know how. And seeing how poorly every other character in the series is handled, I’d bet on the latter. The Voltron writers don’t know how to do their jobs on the most basic level. Even Shiro, the second-shining child of the series after Keith, doesn’t get any development. He’s got PTSD, sure, but he’s literally the exact same character he was in the beginning as he is now, much like the rest the cast. What would have made Shiro’s character really great would maybe be some regret on his end, or some self-doubt following his PTSD issues, or maybe a loss of confidence he had to overcome or literally ANYTHING! Instead he’s relegated to a plot device.

Which brings me to another glaring issues with Voltron alongside the character development–they’re taking what should be a character-driven narrative and pretending it’s a plot-driven narrative.

You want to know why Voltron was so promising from the start? Because it had a perfect premise for character building. It was like Avatar the Last Airbender but in space. You had a big baddy in the distance that the characters had to work their own skills up to in order to face. It gave the characters time to explore both themselves and the world around them, while still retaining a goal that implemented a sense of urgency. Which is why the originally episodic storytelling of Voltron in the first season worked so well and why the series seemed so promising. Each episode had a different character or couple of characters that had a problem they needed to overcome before the resolution of the episode, or a couple of episode as they sometimes did them in twos. This is a good format for storytelling with a big cast because it gives each character the turn they deserve, while still giving time for things like comedic relief and problem solving/conversations between characters, which is the FOOD of character development. Being able to have two character sit down and simply chat is the main course of character development and interpersonal relationships, hence Shiro and Pidge’s relationship was so precious in the first season, and why people latched onto Keith and Lance so hard, because they were constantly snarking at one another.

The problem comes with season 3, where the writers tried to change Voltron from an episodic format into a serial format while trying to retain the same tone. Serial storytelling has an overarching pot that the characters work toward the whole season–like all of a season is a single episode. Yes, Voltron already had an overarching plot, but it was secondary to the character story-telling. That was, until season three, when the writers decided that they wanted the story to be “epic all the time” instead of sticking to what was originally good.

Avatar the Last Airbender isn’t good because it’s epic all the time. It’s good because it’s well-balanced. Because the characters got the time to build themselves up so that when those epic moments finally happened, the audience actually cared. Voltron decided that they wanted to be edgy and took all of that away from us to make the show serial and focus more entirely on the end plot instead of each individual character’s struggles. They tried to retain a bit of this, but in contrast with the more serial episodes, it feels like whiplash. This is why season 3′s tone is so vastly different from season 1 and 2, and why so many people were so shocked. And why it feels so fast.

But the problem is that the writers clearly want to write an episodic show, they just don’t realize they do, which is why we’re getting TOLD character development instead of shown in favor of over the top battles and other “intense” mumbo jumbo that falls flat when anyone takes a moment to sit and think about what they’re watching.

This is why I got so infuriated when all those new characters were introduced in season 7–we don’t even know the characters we got originally and now I’m expected to care about these new ones? No, absolutely not. And this is also why I get angry every time we get a “filler” episode. Avatar had filler episodes, but Avatar was also episodic and used that filler to develop the characters, with the exception of Tales of Ba Sing Se, which was amazingly done for other reasons entirely.

Voltron made itself serial, which means we don’t have time for filler. It’s jarring and takes the viewer out of the experience. I don’t care about a stupid gameshow episode because the writers have made it overly clear that the situation is dire and serious and now I feel like I’ve been slapped. Especially when that filler does nothing for the characters. It’s a waste when they could have been using the time for something more worthwhile. Instead, they just wanted a Q episode, or a D&D episode, as if their storytelling had been good enough prior to earn them that wasted time.

Which brings me to yet another glaring issue that Voltron has–pacing. Not only did the change in storytelling alter the pacing in a way that was jarring for everyone, but they can’t keep up with the pace they decided to set, nor do they know how to keep tension going in the story so as to take advantage of that faster pace they forced on themsleves. Pidge, Lotor, and Zarkon are prime examples of characters whose arcs were slaughtered by this incompetence. Why was Pidge’s search for her brother concluded at the beginning of a season in a standalone episode that is so far outside the serialized plot? Well I can tell you why–because they didn’t know how to integrate it properly with the rest of the story. Which is why it feels like filler. Like fan service. Why it’s so out of the blue. Why is Zarkon’s death so lackluster? Because we’d been told that Zarkon was the big baddy the whole time and then they ended his reign in the middle of a season. Not only do we see Zarkon suddenly in the daylight outside his scary space darkness, but his entrance is lame and lacking impact. And then Lotor, a newer character by contrast, is the one to take him out. Suddenly, the show is without the big baddy that had been pushing it from the beginning, which is glaringly obvious in how disorganized the plot becomes after his death and Lotor’s subsequent defeat. Sorry, but by default of the role she had previously, Haggar is not as scary as Zarkon was, nor is Sendak. It’s like we’re supposed to now watch Voltron clean up the leftovers instead of fight a war, which is fucking stupid. And don’t even get me started on Lotor’s arc. They wanted to make him seem like Zuko and then pull an Azula? Well, sorry hons, but your storytelling capabilities aren’t strong enough to accomplish either.

Lotor was not made sympathetic or psychotic enough to pull off either act, which just makes him fall rather flat. The most interesting thing about him was his relationship with Allura, which was only interesting because we hadn’t gotten any romance yet in the show so everyone was super paying attention to how it’d unfold.

This pacing issue is continuous from season 3 onward. The story regularly takes detours it shouldn’t and focuses on things we don’t care about and interjects important plot-points at the wrong time while completely leaving out others. Like Haggar coming back in season 7. If we’d actually seen a bit of what she was up to, the addition of the last robot to the final fight might have been a little less stupid, but we didn’t see that, so it’s still just regular stupid.

So the characters in Voltron suck, the plot sucks, and the pacing sucks. The only thing that’s saving Voltron is the fact that it looks nice and that the fandom is happy to take concepts and run with them in fan works. There’s a reason the fandom is so happy to explain away everything in the series, because expanding the series for themselves is the only option they have. Voltron itself doesn’t do it on but rare occasions, and if the fan creators didn’t give the characters depth, no one would. Every piece of “character” we get in Voltron is a concept, not actual storytelling. They set up what could be something amazing and then dash it at the last moment by completely ruining everything. People say Voltron never ceases to surprise them, but this isn’t because they’re great storytellers, it’s because of the exact opposite. Voltron rarely follows through with minor plot points set up previously, instead settling to just tell you about them later in favor of laser battles. Lance is insecure? Just give him a sword, he’s fine. Hunk has no development? Give him a short, five minute moment about his family–a family he talked about one other time and a plot point that should have rightfully gone to Lance. Pidge’s “arc” is over? Just have her say a whole bunch of nonsense in the next scene. Need someone to do something cool? Better get Keith since that’s all he’s good for anymore due to his character being so inconsistent. Need some of that quality angst? Throw in Shiro too, because god forbid Keith relate to any of the other characters on a personal level and actually break out of the isolated existence that caused all his character problems in the first place. Oh, and don’t forget Allura, whose overpowered abilities have become such an expected norm and so unexplainable at this point that she’s nothing more than a bore-fest to watch.

Voltron had everything going for it–it could have been great, on par with Avatar the Last Airbender by sheer default of how the original premise was set up and how interesting the characters were to start with. And then the writers screwed it up because they didn’t know how to properly tell the story they’d set up in the first place.

This is why people who don’t watch Voltron or who don’t see anything special about it don’t understand why it’s such a big deal (and why comparing it to Avatar the Last Airbender is such an insult). Why it’s plain toast in comparison to other, better shows. Because anyone who actually takes a step back and looks at the show with more thought than “oh I like this character because of what they could have been,” they’d realize just how badly concocted Voltron is.

I know. I was once one of these people that had faith in the concepts that I eventually realized would never come to fruition. I was happy to ignore the faults in the show because I kept hoping it would get better. But then it never did and all that was left were the faults.

Voltron is not a good show. Like, it’s just literally not well done. The visuals are nice, which is part of the reason it’s gotten so popular. But even if the art is nice, at the end of the day, the writing has been and always will be the heart and soul of any narrative, and if that’s a pile of trash, the entire show will end up that way.

#skaylanphear replies #anonymous #voltron #vld #voltron legendary defender

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zvtara-was-never-canon · 1 year

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hello! I once heard the opinion that the zutara fandom (the loudest and most toxic part of it, of course, we are not talking about normal people who just enjoy their ship) has features of cultist, sectarian thinking and organization. I haven't thought about it much, but recently a friend of mine who understands quite a lot about cults and sects and to whom I showed the most popular zutara blogs and their meta tags here, tumblr (I didn't push him on this idea, we were just chatting about fandoms) said that according to the type of thinking zutara's fandom has features of a religious cult. this thought seemed interesting to me. what do you think about it?

I'd say it's true, but it does not apply solely to Zutara, or even to the ATLA fandom.

I lost count of how many times I've seen some legit insane news here in Brazil about angry fans of some soccer team violently beating, or straight up murdering, people that were wearing the "wrong" t-shirt after a game.

Harry Potter had the weird thing with the Snape wives, and now has the current cult-like TERF bullshit JK Rowlling encourages on a daily basis.

One of my cousins is VERY into K-pop and told me some WILD shit about some idols literally have to sign contracts that forbid them from dating (or at least publicly dating) anyone because half of the marketing around their persona is "You, regular person, could totally date them!" and faced some ABSURD backlash, including death threats towards them and their partners, when they were revealed to be in a relationship.

Anything, no matter how mundane, can be used by some disturbed people to excuse/encourage awful behavior. It's usually a result of desperate, lonely people needing to find ANYTHING that makes them feel like they belong, are part of a group, of a community, to the point that they shut off from anything else and become obsessed. That kind of thing has always existed, but BOY, has the internet made it sooooooooooo much worse.

I mean, seriously, just look at the things the "extreme" zutara fans do.

Creating whole conspiracies to justify why their was totally canon until some evil authority screwed it over, lying about anything and everything that happened both in canon and in the making of the show, even going as far as creating fake "evidence" of some huge power struggle between Bryke and other writers (mainly Ehasz).

Harrassing, bullying, doxxing and threatening anyone that has a different opinion, and justifying their actions with "Oh, but the people were doing this to ship Kataang/Maiko, which means they're all raging mysogynists, rape apologists, and 100% against interracial relationships."

The constant claims of "Bryke are creepy pedos because they only pushed Kataang because they are attracted to Katara, a cartoon character, and thus are attracted to real-life 14-year-olds! That's even the real reason why Aang is bald! To look like one of them!" that are not only ridiculous but could EASILY lead to a lawsuit, and ignores the fact that Zutara, like any popular ship, has tons of smut of it even though both characters are underage - make it make sense!

And, of course, the classic "This bad behavior people accused some of us of is completely false! I didn't see it, so it didn't happen! Nobody here would do that! Never one of us! Must have been one of them, the evil fans of kataang/maiko/(insert any ship for either Zuko or Katara here)!"

Some of the bad apples in the Zutara fandom are just entitled assholes, but I'm also pretty sure that some of these people legit need to see a mental health professional. There's being passionate about a ship and being upset that it didn't happen, and then there's being downright delusional.

And before anyone tries to pull the ableism card on me: I've been through this shit. Thankfully I've never reached the point of ever harming anyone in any way, but I was a mentally ill child/teenager that just latched onto the media I liked, and it made it my whole life.

I had full on panic attacks because the power went out and I couldn't watch my favorite TV show, and I'd cry for DAYS when something bad happened to my favorite characters. I legit started showing signs of depression because one of my favorite bands had broken up, to the point that my parents were really fucking scared. I got FURIOUS at an annoying classmate in school who talked shit about my favorite singer, to the point that I legit had to get away from them as fast as humanly possible because I was three seconds away from starting a physical fight - again, all because a random kid whose opinion on literally anything else wouldn't have meant a damn thing to me.

That is not being passionate. That is not being a loyal fan. That is a clear sign that something is VERY wrong and that you need some help FAST. See a therapist, deal with whatever it is that is pushing you to act like that, THEN engage in fandom stuff as much as you want. But don't ever make this your whole personality.

#anti zutara #mental health #personal

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unexpectedreylo · 6 years

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Bendemption Song Part 2: The Villain’s Redemption Arc/The Anti-Hero’s Journey

First, we have to ask: what kind of redemption arc is Ben getting? Mythcreants.com lists three kinds: sacrifice, temptation, and forgiveness.

A sacrifice arc is one where the redeemed villain does something good and ultimately sacrifices his/her life because of the gravity of the villain’s crimes. Darth Vader is given as an example: Vader kills Darth Sidious to save Luke, but in the process is mortally wounded. I would sort of put Gollum in this category and maybe Severus Snape too. In Ben’s case, a sacrifice arc is possible. I know those of us in Reylo-land don’t want to think about it, but I wouldn’t say it’s totally off the table. But to make you all feel better, I think there are problems with a sacrifice arc in this situation. Of all of the potential redemption arcs to use, this one is the easiest because it just repeats what was done in ROTJ. And “easy” usually carries the least amount of payoff. Two, it’s debatable whether Kylo’s crimes are so great, he cannot be allowed to survive. Fans who want revenge for Han’s death might have one view, Reylos might have another. It’s apparent though that Kylo’s rap sheet isn’t as long as his grandfather’s and Kylo is already showing far more remorse, regret, and conflict than Vader ever did. It’s also clear that Kylo was victimized as a youngster in a way Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker never was. Palpatine was a manipulator but he used flattery and kindness to snare Anakin while what Snoke did went back to when Ben was a fetus and it’s clear it wasn’t all “nice.” Three, it would collide with some narrative brick walls I will discuss in the third part of my Bendemption Song series.

The temptation arc and the forgiveness arc could end with the death of the character, but unlike the sacrifice arc, these two arcs also allow for the possibility of the character’s survival. Kylo’s arc could follow either one.

The temptation arc is where the character feels pulled to the good side as well as the bad and is in a battle to decide where he falls. Zuko from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and Spike from “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” are given as examples. Kylo’s line in TFA, “I feel it again, the pull to the light,” signals his own struggle. He’s always being described as “conflicted.” I think this arc is a really good fit for him for this reason. If this is the route they go in IX, ultimately he will choose “the light,” or at least reject the dominance of the dark side over his entire personality. He will learn to integrate his shadow self, to use a Jungian term, and recognize the light side aspects of his personality are a strength, not a weakness.

The forgiveness arc is where the character has already forsworn villainy but has blood on his hands. Furiosa from “Mad Max: Fury Road” is given as an example. I would add Bucky Barnes and Loki from the Marvel Cinematic Universe as further examples. Most of what they are doing is trying to make up for past crimes, earning the trust and forgiveness of others, and reaching the point where they can forgive themselves. Had Kylo turned in TLJ, this would’ve been his arc for sure in IX. It’s still possible, but it would depend on how soon he turns. If it’s early in the movie, then a forgiveness arc might happen. If it’s in the second or third act in the film, then it’s too late for a forgiveness arc to occur and it will likely be a temptation or sacrifice arc instead.

When the writer has chosen the arc for the villain, there are certain things the writer must do to establish redemption.

The anti-hero is at first presented as purely villainous.

TFA largely shows Kylo Ren The Villain Who Does Bad Stuff. He kicks off the movie by killing Lor San Tekka, taking Poe prisoner and torturing him, and ordering his troops to burn down a village. He kidnaps Rey and attempts to enter her mind. He is shown later on as conflicted but he works up the nerve to kill off Dear Old Dad, then he fights Finn and Rey.

The anti-hero is humanized, often through a tragic backstory or showing they have good intentions.

Basically, everything that happens in TLJ. Kylo discards his mask and humanizes himself to Rey and by extension to us. The books reveal Snoke had been messing with Ben since he was in the womb. We learn of the tragic murder Luke almost commits, which turned Ben Solo into Kylo Ren.

Start Dropping Hints

This has already happened in TFA and TLJ. Hints include Kylo’s perpetual conflict, his less-than-enthusiastic reaction to committing Han-icide, his refusal to kill his mother, his lack of enthusiasm for blowing up planets, his bouts of gentleness/empathy/compassion for Rey, etc.. If you want an early sign in IX that Bendemption is going to happen, keep an eye out in the first act for the “Supreme Leader” to do something uncharacteristic for an evil despot. He might refuse to commit an atrocity against innocents, he might save a group of children (to counterpoint Anakin’s Great Youngling Massacre), or he might start to question the whole enterprise of the war. Perhaps he always makes sure Rey and her friends escape the First Order. Maybe he’ll be a “Fulcrum!” You never know.

Introduce A Good Influence

Obviously, that’s Rey. She can’t pick him up and drag him from the Dark Side, as she learned the hard way in TLJ, but she shows him just as she doesn’t have to live in anger, hurt, resentment, and fear, neither does he. She offers him forgiveness and the possibility of life beyond and better than what he has. If there’s any incentive at all for Kylo to change, it’s her.

You might have noticed these movies seem to be big on “girl power.” It’s as though the power of the feminine—all but destroyed by the end of the prequels, corrupted in the “Solo” era, and missing but for a few key figures in the original trilogy—is making a roaring comeback in the sequels. You might also have noticed that Kylo has a big problem with male authority figures (Han, Snoke, Luke) and male rivals (Hux, to some degree Finn). Yet who is the one relative to escape his wrath? His mother. Who does he finally open himself up to? Rey. This tells me Kylo is receptive to the power of the feminine and it’s likely his maternal ties and his deep connection with a woman will play an important part in his redemption.

I believe the original plan for IX was for Kylo to atone with his mother and this part of the story is so fundamental, there was no way to get around it ergo they are going to use footage of Carrie Fisher shot for TFA and TLJ. How they’ll use it is still a mystery. We’ll just have to see.

Less obvious is another good influence, and that’s Han Solo. Not only is Han genetically encoded in Kylo anyway, Han’s actions at the end of their encounter left an indelible mark on him in both a negative and a positive way. I think we’ll see the true beginning of his turn was at that moment; in fact it’s obvious from watching TFA Kylo almost left with his father.

Subtle Shift In Loyalty/The anti-hero goes through a phase of internal conflict, or their inner conflict is revealed/amplified. This is when he is waffling between good and evil./This internal conflict drives him toward Team Good.

While Kylo shows no inclination yet to join the Resistance, his loyalty in TLJ shifts from Snoke to Rey. It’s as close to Team Good as he has gotten in this trilogy so far. Of course, the shift wavers and he retreats to lead Team Evil. But his connection to and feelings for Rey remain, as demonstrated in his last scene in TLJ. This gives us hope for IX.

The anti-hero isn’t ready to be redeemed and he falls back toward Team Evil. This is often due to their own desires or temptations of another character. This usually involves a betrayal. The betrayal leads to them achieving a goal they had become evil in the first place to obtain.

Kylo doesn’t betray anyone besides Snoke but he decides he’d rather be Supreme Leader than be the Resistance’s new lightsaber-swinging hero, which breaks poor Rey’s heart.

Villain Becomes Unhappy With Team Evil/The anti-hero realizes he made a mistake. The goal isn’t what he wanted after all or it backfires on him.

Kylo’s going to find that heavy is the head that wears the crown, isolated and having to watch his back at all times. I don’t see Kylo as an ideologue as I see him as using the First Order to get back at his family and their value system and latching onto Snoke because he feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere else. In IX, that family will be mostly gone and Snoke’s dead. The only things holding Kylo to the First Order would likely be his desire for power and control, despair, guilt, and fear of being on his own. But even those may not be enough. Kylo could question further the First Order’s goals and methods. In addition, I predict Hux will stage a coup against Kylo by turning the First Order’s leaders and money guys, and possibly even the Knights of Ren, against him.

This realization leads him to repent and seek to fight for Team Good.

I think he will likely approach Rey first and once she indicates she is willing to forgive him, he will come to fight alongside her.

The Villain Must Stop A Great Evil And Make A Great Sacrifice

While a new, hitherto unknown threat could be the great evil in IX, I doubt they will introduce one this late in the game. Likely the great evil will be the First Order or something connected to it.

Dave Filoni said during The Clone Wars panel at SDCC 2018 the true conflict in Star Wars was between selfishness and selflessness. In order to be redeemed, Kylo MUST do something selfless. It will likely be something very risky to life and limb to correct his error and stop the First Order. The greater the error, the greater the potential sacrifice will be. I will stress that a willingness to sacrifice your life isn’t an automatic death sentence in film and literature.

It will show tremendous growth if he is also willing to sacrifice the possibility of a life with Rey. As Yoda said in ROTS, you must let go of everything you fear to lose. Think back to how possessive Anakin was with Padmé in ROTS (“you will not take her from me”) versus how Han Solo was willing to let Leia choose Luke, not knowing they’re twins, if that’s what would make her happy. I could see Kylo letting Rey choose another, if anyone, if that’s what she wanted or asking Finn or Poe to take care of her if something were to happen to him.

A willingness to abdicate power, wealth, and status are great sacrifices as well. So is a willingness to completely change your value system and goals. I think Ben will do all of the above.

The Villain Must Show Remorse

In Ben’s case, this is VERY important. I think one reason why some fans are very unforgiving of him is because they don’t think he yet shows sufficient remorse. Regardless, the audience has to believe his turn is sincere by witnessing him acknowledge his misdeeds and express mourning, sorrow, and regret for committing them. The signs are there in TLJ and TFA but we need to see more. I’m talking about big ugly sobbing here. At the same time, he cannot wallow for long in despair and guilt or else he’ll be at best worthless and at worst, he can be drawn back to the Dark Side. He can’t punish himself by refusing forgiveness, kindness, or mercy. Showing remorse has to be cathartic, it cannot be a perpetual state of existence.

I predict that a significant part of IX will be about Ben integrating his shadow self, Kylo. How will he do this? He needs to release his anger, resentment, and hurt instead of clinging to them like a security blanket. He has to forgive those who have hurt him: Luke, his parents, Rey, even Snoke. Most importantly, he has to forgive himself. Once he has done these things, he can finally be in control of his emotions, letting himself feel freely but without being overtaken by them.

The villain finds direction, a problem in need of solving; humbles himself

For a character like Ben, this probably means taking on an insane, undoubtedly suicidal mission on behalf of Team Good, providing insider information on Team Evil, and of course putting his Force-skills—likely in conjunction with Rey’s—to work. He won’t do it expecting thanks; this is to prove his worth, earn trust, and of course, attempt in some way to make up for what he has done.

The villain is forgiven

Rey will happily forgive Ben if he decides to side with her. It seems she has already forgiven him for his pre-TLJ crimes and will forgive him again when the time comes. The question is whether anyone else will. Leia, if she’s alive by that time, definitely. I think Chewie will come around and when he reconciles with Ben, there won’t be a dry eye in the theater. It’ll be a big moment if/when Ben reclaims everything that had once been his or should’ve been his: a relationship with Chewie, the Falcon, Artoo and Threepio, his mother’s cause, etc..

Would Finn forgive Ben? Maybe, especially if it’s for Rey’s sake. Poe would be a hard sell. Kylo Ren had brutally tortured him and he’s not likely to just forget all about it. On top of that, he’s a True Believer. I can see him being very skeptical of Ben turning and not exactly willing to let bygones be bygones. But that’s okay. Not everyone needs to forgive Ben by the time the credits roll.

And then what?

The very end of the arc is the question of whether the redeemed villain lives or dies. I will answer that question in the next part, “Live Or Let Die.”

Check out Part One if you haven’t already!

#reylo #reylo fam #meta #kylo ren #ben solo #redemption #bendemption #episode ix

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 7 years

Text

I’ll Meet You At The Bottom (Part 24)

This one’s a bit of a shorter kind of filler chapter before things start to get more intense.

Azula was still dazed well into the afternoon after. Zuko remained at her bedside, keeping a quiet eye on her physical state. She was so tired and about to become more so.

She made Sokka a promise.

She made herself a promise.

She didn’t know which she should value more. It didn’t really matter though when she remembered that she left herself with no option to back down. The regret she had anticipated upon doing so, hit her in full. She tugged the covers over her head and groaned to herself. “Water?” Zuko offered. She reached an arm out from under the covers and waited for him to set the cup into her grasp. With the blankets still draped over her head, she sat up and downed the whole glass. Having swallowed it too fast she coughed. “Take it easy.” Zuko took the cup back.

“Don’t tell me what to do.” She grumbled, flopping back onto the bed.

“I miss cuddly Azula already.” Katara remarked.

“What is that supposed to mean?” She asked

“Don’t worry about it.” Zuko replied. Such words only escalated her concern.

“What did I do last night?” She asked.

“Well for starts, you wandered out of the place again.”

“Wonderful.” She muttered, her voice brimming with sarcasm. “Just perfect. Where was Sokka?” She wracked her brain, knowing that he was with her as she took the tears. “Oh right, he was nagging me about taking the tears…” she trailed off.

“And then?” Katara asked. Azula could see it in her eyes that this was an answer she’d been waiting to hear, probably since the night before.

“I asked him what his problem was, he reminded me that I’m the one with the problem, delivered the worst sassy punchline I’ve ever heard, and left.”

“He’s been in a pretty bad mood lately.” Katara noted.

Zuko was more concerned with other matters. “What was the punchline?”

“Something about being packed and having a nice trip. It was ridiculous.” To herself she had to admit that it had amused her slightly. “But yes, I would agree he’s been unbearably uptight.” Not that she was any better. At least not that morning. She didn’t feel up to conversation and was surprised she had made it so far into one. Only a few hours without her fix and she was already feeling dreadful. She danced between flashes of hot and cold and sometimes both at once. All of which were unpleasant in their own way. “Tell him to come in here.”

“He might like it better if you were the one asking.” Katara suggested.

Azula, deciding that a demonstration of just why that wouldn’t work would be more persuasive, got out of bed. It registered a hair too late that she ought to let go of the bedsheets. Pulled back by the weight of the mattress they were tucked under she tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. A very successful demonstration she had to say. Painful, yes. Humiliating, even more so. But effective all the same. Grumbling to herself she unraveled her body from the sheets and clawed her way back onto the bed.

“Alright, I’ll go get him.” Katara replied as she conjured up a few chunks of ice. She wrapped them in a towel and handed it to Zuko.

Upon the waterbender’s exit, Zuko took his sister’s arm and held the ice to her elbow which was throbbing to compete with her head. It was probably the closest they’d come yet to doing something normal siblings would.

.oOo.

Sokka eyed the painting. Now that it was done, the lighting touched up and a few new shades added to her skin and robes, he thought of destroying it. Slashing it up came to mind but that seemed to permanent. He also thought of painting over it. That’s what he would do, he would add some truth to the painting, show her for who she really was…

A light tapping on his door pulled him away from destroying his hard work. Quickly he hid the painting again. He greeted his visitor.

“Azula asked me to tell you she wanted you.”

“Oh, now she wants me?” Sokka asked.

“Yes, she does.” Katara replied. “Like Aang said, she was just having a bad trip. She wasn’t mad at you.”

“Then why isn’t she here?” He asked.

“She uhh. Let’s just say she tried.” Katara smiled.

Seeing the princess again stole the resentment out of him. From the looks of it she had dozed off. She lie on her side with her arms splayed out in front of her and a tangle of hair obscuring her eyes and upturned cheek. He found out she wasn’t quite as asleep as he had assumed upon accidently sitting on her foot. With the other she offered him a decent kick to the rear. “You have all of this bed space, you don’t have to sit on me.”

“Sorry.” He winced.

She waved it off and readjusted the position of her head on the pillow.

“Want some alone time?” Zuko asked.

“Please.” Sokka gave a weak smile.

Zuko nodded and motioned for Katara to join him.

“Sorry.” Sokka said again.

“You sat on my foot, people have done me worse.”

“About last night.” He elaborated. “Or, uh, last morning. I was…I’ve been angry lately.”

“Yes, obviously. I thought that, that was my role.” She kept her eyes closed, he had a feeling she would for the duration of the conversation.

His mood began to lift, if only a little. She didn’t seem furious at all. Even so he had to know, “I didn’t make you feel bad, did I?”

“You didn’t make me feel anything I didn’t already.” She sighed. “Some would argue that I don’t feel at all anyways, so I guess it doesn’t really matter now does it?”

“It does to me.” He replied. “Because you do have feelings.”

“Yes, how do I get rid of them? I don’t want them.”

He wished that he had the answer, if he did, his own would have been gone long ago. Maybe if he didn’t have feelings, he wouldn’t keep hurting the people he loved or causing them to hurt themselves. Lost in thought it took him a moment to realize that she was crying softly to herself. His heart plummeted, “I was that awful, huh?”

“I got rid of them, Sokka.”

“Got rid of who?”

She kicked him again, “the tears, you idiot!”

Sokka smiled, “so why are you upset, that’s a good thing?” It seemed that she was doing better, and on her own too. He wanted to be wholly proud but instead he got a twinge of fear. Of hurt; she really didn’t need him anymore.

“No.” She whispered. “No, now everything will just keep hurting.”

Shoveling his inner fears away, he agreed, “maybe for a little while.” He paused, trying to come up with something else to say. “But once the pain goes away, you’ll be better off, won’t you?”

Azula pulled the blankets up to her neck. “I don’t know what I’ll be.”

.oOo.

More than the process itself, Azula feared what she would become. The tears were practically a part of her these days. Without them, when all was said and done, who would she be? What would she have? Her resentment, her power, her ambition…she had grown to lack most of herself. With the tears gone, she wondered if there would be anything left of her at all. She didn’t want to change, she didn’t want to be different. Especially when assessing what change had made her into presently. Yet she had found a painful and uncomfortable comfort zone in the tears and in her anger. And she was losing them both.

She was losing herself again.

“Why are you angry?” She asked, wanting to take her thoughts away from herself. Sokka locked his lips together. “It’s my fault isn’t it?” She pressed, somehow, she found a sort of masochistic pleasure in blaming herself. It has become a habit as of late. “You were fine before you started bothering with me.”

“I already told you, I was having trouble before that. That’s why I was excited when I found inspiration painting…something new.”

He may have mentioned something like that, but the reason he spoke seemed so long ago. She was probably high or drunk—or both when he had told her. Something about Suki, was it? It must have been, she thought. She brushed her fingers through her hair wincing when they snagged in a knot and at the pinch when she pulled them through, plucking a few strands of hair in the process. Something about Suki…but what? She tried to think it over, maybe he hadn’t elaborated at all. Her eyes were feeling heavy again. “You will tell me eventually.” She murmured. It relieved her to know that she wasn’t the source of his problems. It made her feel that much less burdensome. She latched onto it, trying to snatch at the confidence she was feeling a few days prior. The confidence that her fearful anticipation was taking away again.

“Do you care about my problems?” Sokka asked.

Azula thought for a moment. “I might,” she replied knowing very well that she did. He had put in so much effort to care for her, she couldn’t find it in herself to not return the favor. However hard she tried not to. She didn’t want to care, she wanted to go back hating Sokka. She was going soft. She wanted to go back to hating everyone, it was easier that way; less confusing. It made her less vulnerable. She supposed that, in her current condition, she was going to be vulnerable no matter what she did. She tapped her nails upon the mattress, she had too much to think about and wanted to dwell on none of it. She was asleep before she could even try.

Her dream was vivid but in waking she would never recall it. Not even whether it was pleasant or horrific.

Such was the first twenty-four hours.

A deceitfully serene, almost asymptomatic, twenty-four hours.

The first Twenty-four hours of what would be the longest three months Azula had ever spent. Three months…

Two thousand, one hundred and ninety hours. And perhaps then some.

#Sokkla #Azula #Sokka #Aang #Zuko #Katara #Toph #Avatar #Fanfiction

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