Passages: Chapter 24
Even having forgotten to mention mayhem, which involves dismemberment and is the obvious crime with which to charge someone who harvests bodily organs without permission (urban myths frequently find their way into law school exams; go figure!) I still managed to pull my best grade of my first year in law school in my criminal law class. That and contracts, which actually makes a lot of sense. Oh. My worst grade? Writing. Seriously.
Okay. It's been so long since I posted anything, let's see if I still remember how to do this...
____________
He would have liked to enumerate all the reasons he’d built up over time to hate the Water Tribe peasant. Seriously. He couldn’t though, primarily because he lacked the breath for it, as he heaved and sighed while those around him leapt to bring fire-bending’s evaporative force against the stream while others manhandled the fallen stones out of the water’s path.
Zuko knew, although he certainly couldn’t say how, that this particularly unseasonable flood was somehow due to his Water Tribe companion’s efforts. He hadn’t actually heard any explosions, per se, just a frantic yell and the crash and dull rumble of falling rock, followed by the suddenly ominous shift in the sound of the stream from a low rustle to more of a slap and humming as it rose up against the haphazard dam and banks. So he didn’t actually suspect Sokka of having somehow secreted explosives from their prison break to use for no apparent reason now. At this point it wouldn’t have exactly surprised him to learn that Sokka had put aside a few impact grenades for just such an occasion. Except that they could have used such things against Jet and his thugs, or maybe the stupid wreckers - well, no, that would have been a waste - or certainly to get out of the warehouse. So why would he wait until now, when it really wasn’t necessary?
So he really didn’t think Sokka had somehow blown up the bank of the stream and caused the flood. Not really. Nonetheless, Zuko was still sure that Sokka was responsible somehow! And he suspected the reason for the strange “accident” of fate was to give him a break in his test of skills against the fire-bending master Jeong-Jeong. As if he needed such a break.
Damned interfering Tribesman!
In a moment or two, as soon as he’d caught his breath and he’d managed to impose his will over his aching muscles and that throbbing in his shoulder that suggested - no, insisted! - that he’d torn open that stupid spear thrust again, he would work his way over to where Sokka was assisting the repair effort. And then he’d find a way to trip him up into the water just to let him know that he wasn’t getting away with this. No chance.
---------------------
Jeong-Jeong gently drew in a sigh of relief as his men’s cries of concern brought a halt to the bout with the Fire Prince. For some minutes he’d been seeking a face-saving way of bringing the display to an end, but the ferocity shown by the prince had confounded him in all respects.
It wasn’t that he’d regretted his challenge - it had been highly instructive to see how well versed the young man was in the fire-bending arts, how disciplined his form was, and how much his pride and passion lent to his overall skill. Jeong-Jeong remembered the rumors that had circulated among the military upon the conclusion of the prince’s Agni Kai with the Fire Lord. The boy had been dismissed in favor of his enormously talented sister, both for his lack of apparent “ferocity” against his father and his lack of obvious talent.
But Jeong-Jeong had already begun to devalue the utility of ferocity, a trend initiated by his best student’s blindness to the need to wed passion to discipline. This had started a slow erosion of his confidence in the purity of his devotion to bringing out the power in fire-bending over all else. By the time of Prince Zuko’s Agni Kai, Jeong-Jeong was well into questioning the toll on his soul of his relentless devotion to improving the art of fire-bending. It was an easy leap for a man of his discipline to then question the toll fire-bending itself took on a man’s soul.
He had loved fire-bending. By sheer talent and dogged study Jeong-Jeong had raised himself from the ranks of the enlisted to the Fire Nation’s elite, consorting at one point with the crown prince himself in the heady environment of those who could wield true power, not just fire-bending. But for Jeong-Jeong, it had always been the guided release of the passion inherent in fire-bending, the power coursing through his veins like some stimulant beyond all others. Reined to his personal whim, it was intoxicating even as it left his head incredibly clear.
Jeong-Jeong believed, for some few years, that fire-bending was the dividing line between men and gods. This belief survived his campaigns against the Southern Water Tribes, was even strengthened by his successes there. Until one day…
------------------------
The only mention anywhere as to how Jeong-Jeong received the disfiguring scars that made his visage so memorable, even before he abandoned his topknot for a deserter’s wild mop of hair, was in a medical report accompanying an account of the last battle of the Southern Water-benders.
It noted the clean lifting away of flesh by razor-thin blades of ice that had remained frozen against the skin long enough to permanently scar, mimicking the claws of beasts with the precision of man at a distance. The report, with its rather surprisingly vivid imagery, was lost among the more bizarre records of field examinations of an elite group of fire-benders that had accompanied Admiral Jeong-Jeong, and fallen, on that final mission. The autopsies, admittedly performed under less than ideal conditions in the rough seas and frigid air of the Pole, revealed vital organs engorged with blood even as limbs appeared desiccated.
The Admiral’s report detailed how the weather had abetted the water-benders’ tactics against them; how the long winter’s night without hope of sun had nearly defeated them. But that, thanks to their superior numbers, they had finally brought down the last defense of the South’s greatest stronghold.
The report did not mention how the cold had not only marked his face but had crept into his bones, daring the flame within his blood to drive it out. It did not say how the barrage of heat was answered by an avalanche of water that consumed troops as the ice melted.
Jeong-Jeong never told anyone that the last water-bender to face them was an elderly woman who annihilated his elite guard with a single graceful movement, sorrow writ starkly across her exotic features. That, alone, he had stood before her, raising a curtain of flame with what he believed was his last breath, only to have it thrust aside by a wave that became knives of ice against his skin, dropping him to the frozen ground.
He was in an agony of pain, numbness and despair.
She did not speak to him, but drew near enough to touch him. And, with a look in alien blue eyes he would never forget and never fathom, removed her mitten to touch one of the frozen blades imbedded in his face. Immediately the dull numbness of dying flesh was replaced with a tingling sensation suggesting warmth, only to disappear as Jeong-Jeong summoned a final burst of strength in a fire-ball that caught the old fire-bender in the throat, darkening those antarctic eyes with a skein of death.
And he did not tell the medic that his scars numbered one fewer than had been originally inflicted. That scar he did not bear on his face. Rather, it burned within his soul.
--------------------------
Leave it to Katara to seek out the chandler’s shop early on. Perhaps she was guided by the sight of a Water Tribe boat moored at the pier, although it had occurred to none of them that Sokka would have had the luck to find passage with a fellow Tribesman.
Face it. They all knew Sokka’s luck was shitty. Case on point, take his love life. He’d fallen for the Northern princess, who… died. He’d rebounded with Suki of Kyoshi Island. Maybe she wasn’t dead, but damn! She had definitely disappeared in fairly hopeless circumstances. Nobody would admit it, but they all felt guilty for believing just a bit that to fall under Sokka’s favor was, for a girl, the kiss of death. Okay, maybe that was a bit extreme, but frankly, as the lone girl at any potential risk Toph admitted to herself she was not prepared to tempt the fates - let alone her heart - for a silly infatuation with a goofy guy who couldn’t bend, for spirits’ sake!
Of course, Katara was fate-proof. Nothing like being a mere sister… And she simply refused to even think that Sokka’s lousy luck was particularly fatal to anyone else. That would simply be too cruel. Not just to Sokka, but to those who got involved with him! Fate simply couldn’t work that way. Could it?
The chandler’s story of the barque’s crew, involving a bout between two young soldiers against wreckage salvagers, certainly rang true enough, and she could almost see Sokka’s role in it. But Sokka was not an easy guy to win over; witness his initial distrust of Aang and his long-held suspicion of even Haru. A Water Tribe boat in Fire Nation controlled waters was highly suspect. Could Sokka have accepted so easily even another Water Tribesman under such short notice?
It was certainly true that war made strange bedfellows. But, according to the chandler, this Tribesman they were talking about had been golden-eyed, fair-skinned, and in search of non-descript clothing. There was simply no way that Sokka would be fooled into thinking a Fire Nation soldier had any right to a Water Tribe boat, come hell or high water!
This whole story was distracting them from their search.
Katara examined the boat. It was of Southern design. Sokka would have recognized it instantly. Everything about the boat screamed of her village, from the moorings to the rigging to the stowing of gear in the various compartments along the gunwales. She’d have sworn she recognized the handiwork of the carving along the bow, personal touches along the hatches, except that she associated them with graying men a far cry from either of the grim-faced teenagers who’d argued with the chandler about his prices for non-Water Tribe clothing or current maps.
Toph shrugged, accepting her ignorance regarding sea-lore. But she was ready to swear to the merchant’s veracity, honed as much by her ear for truth on the speaker’s part as her earthbender’s art of dissecting heart rate and electrical impulses within the bloodstream.
Katara didn’t happen to speak to anyone at the tavern. If she had, it might have occurred to her that one day her brother’s charm was bound to lead to more than blushes and an innocent kiss or two.
---------------------
Iroh looked back on the tavern with some vague fondness, not entirely due to the diligence of the tap-girl’s willingness to keep his tea-pot full or the surprising freshness of the fish on the menu.
The girl had been pretty - always a treat - and the grilled fish delightful, but the tea? Frankly, it was worse than insipid. Perhaps the leaves had been allowed to dry with a taint of mold?
Iroh shuddered.
Well. At least he’d known what to expect. He searched his memory for how many times An Dui had crossed the battle lines during his own tenure as a general, and chuckled briefly to note how little progress his brother had made in expanding the lines since he had “retired”. But then, he was above such petty reflections, wasn’t he?
-------------------------------
During the period when Aang and Iroh roamed the market in the village square Aang’s attention wandered. Iroh had disappeared uphill in the local tavern, leaving Aang to his own devices. The market itself was minute and, frankly, Aang was not intrigued by shopping for either food-stuffs or clothing. He did, on the other hand, wonder just what it was about fabrics that drew not only Katara’s eye but even Toph’s curt attention. It was something about girls, he was sure of that. And Aang was old enough to start wondering about anything that interested girls, maybe even more so when that the actual object of that interest, okay, he’d admit it, left him absolutely cold.
He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that at some point girls pretty much stopped caring about anything really interesting and paid attention to stupid stuff. The thing was, it was at about this same time that what girls paid attention to started to matter, when it never had before.
Only an idiot would fail to make the connection. Again, Aang was far from an idiot. He was, in fact, someone unusually sensitive to simple truth - a reasonable response on the part of the Avatar to the conflicting pulls upon one’s identity that the various forms of bending made upon the sensitive. That no one questioned the pull of air-bending or, for that matter, any of the other elements, upon his soul was a given. So why shouldn’t he be equally sensitive to the tides of human nature pulling upon each other? Wasn’t he supposed to have some exceptional form of understanding anyway? Well, there were certainly stranger things about him.
Aang was barely thirteen years old. He already knew he loved Katara, and his hormones had only just begun to confuse his senses with a chemical infusion beyond his ken. Even so, he knew enough from his training as a monk to question the utility of his attachment to the Water Tribe girl.
It certainly didn’t help to find his perceptions additionally confused by the much younger yet more forceful presence of his earth-bending master. Toph was his obvious peer, in age if nothing less. But in some strange sense he also saw in Toph’s resilience a response to his own readiness to run. A readiness that had left him entrapped for a century, unable to respond when his people had needed him most. It set him up to revere Toph on a level he’d never anticipated, certainly not merely as his teacher.
In his internal confusion he found himself retreating more to that monk’s training even as his straining adolescence itched at him to explore the stirrings he felt elsewhere upon thoughts of the girls he looked to as masters and friends.
His early confidence in Sokka’s wisdom and experience as an elder boy, although sometimes shaken by his occasional surliness and apparent self-absorbtion, had been boosted by Sokka’s easy confidence where girls were concerned. Where he might have disregarded this confidence as mere sham in anyone else, he’d noticed a tendency among young women in their travels to eye the Tribesman on more than one occasion, and the preference of Yue the Northern princess and the warrior Suki’s blatant favoritism simply couldn’t be denied.
Among all the other reasons he wished Sokka was back in their midst, none the least was his desire to consult his friend as to how best to expand his relationships with the two most interesting girls of his young experience.
That one happened to be Sokka’s sister complicated the equation a bit, but then, wasn’t the Avatar supposed to be able to find the balance in all things? He’d worry about that later…
-----------------
Although he felt terribly stupid about the whole affair, given the potential loss to mold, mildew and who knew what all of a good field of root vegetables thanks to untimely flooding from the confusion among Jeong-Jeong’s men as the creek backed up behind Sokka’s impromptu dam, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the sparring session between the Fire Prince and the renegade had ended in a draw.
Given what he regarded as Zuko’s tendency to glare furiously at Sokka regardless of his most innocent of actions, Sokka felt relatively safe from retribution even as he felt the heat of the other’s suspicious eyes upon him as the two of them joined a line of men working to haul stone away in clearing the dam.
Sokka quietly inserted a suggestion here and there as to the safest way to proceed (“no, pulling stones away from the downstream side of the dam willy-nilly could result in yet another landslide coupled with a sudden inundation of water, likely to drown all involved.” Nuts, didn’t these soldiers ever deal with managing simple hydrology in the Fire Nation? He knew how to smother a brush fire - couldn’t they create a spillway?) as Zuko strode assertively across the rock face itself to point out exactly which stones should be shifted to release pressure upstream immediately, lowering the impoundment before it spilled over the stream’s banks.
Sokka stifled a sigh as he noted the group’s willingness to follow Zuko’s lead over his own remarks; it wasn’t that he actually disagreed with Zuko. He had just been trying to stop a couple idiots from getting themselves killed, while Zuko had looked to actually solving the problem of the dam itself. After all, Sokka hadn’t really wanted to draw attention to himself anyway. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have figured out what to do.
He meandered his way on across the rocks towards Zuko, muttering under his breath. So he really wasn’t expecting the sudden elbow in his ribs as he shifted his balance from one rock to another.
Sokka was just glad that Zuko had chosen to wait long enough for sufficient water to pond behind the dam to allow him a good dunking instead of a hard fall on the rocky creek bed itself. Somehow he wasn’t sure such concerns had entered the prince’s calculations.
He pulled himself back out of the water, having kicked away from Zuko and the men struggling to dislodge the rocks to make the spillway out of a healthy regard for not getting pulled into the flow likely to rush on downstream as those rocks gave way (didn’t I say that somebody could get drowned that way? I sure as hell didn’t mean for that someone to mean me!). Sokka understood perfectly why Zuko had pushed him into the water; he didn’t appreciate Sokka’s interference in what he’d perceived as his own business. Fine. So now maybe they were even.
Except that Sokka’s pride had been challenged. All those many months ago Zuko had made a fool of Sokka in their first encounter. In all the times the two had met before their imprisonment it had been impossible to really determine which one had bested the other - after all, most of the time either Aang or Katara had actually confronted Zuko as much or more than Sokka had. Since then, there had been so much give and take that Sokka was truly confused as to where the balance lay between them. Sokka liked to think he’d held the upper hand throughout, by pushing Zuko to romance Ling-Ling into helping them out of the prison; providing the boat and provisions, thanks to his father’s rescue effort just days after the prison break; teaching Zuko sailing, sort of, and fishing; and restraining the Fire Prince from more flamboyant acts that would have put the Fire Nation onto their trail immediately… But then, it was Zuko who’d actually convinced Ling-Ling to set them free, Zuko who’d ensured the fall of the prison; who’d fought Jet to a standstill and intimidated the wreckers into leaving them alone. And it was Zuko who’d earned them a welcome with Jeong-Jeong.
I should leave, now, while no one thinks to care what I do. But shit. I don’t want to leave it like this. I’m pretty sure Zuko’s not gonna go after Aang again, and I’d swear he’s figured out that we all gotta find a way to live together now that doesn’t involve the Fire Nation lording it over the rest of us. Is that enough? Dammit, I want him to appreciate us, the Water Tribe! Fuck it, I want him to admit he owes me. I guess I’m just now sure he still does.
Okay. It's been so long since I posted anything, let's see if I still remember how to do this...
____________
He would have liked to enumerate all the reasons he’d built up over time to hate the Water Tribe peasant. Seriously. He couldn’t though, primarily because he lacked the breath for it, as he heaved and sighed while those around him leapt to bring fire-bending’s evaporative force against the stream while others manhandled the fallen stones out of the water’s path.
Zuko knew, although he certainly couldn’t say how, that this particularly unseasonable flood was somehow due to his Water Tribe companion’s efforts. He hadn’t actually heard any explosions, per se, just a frantic yell and the crash and dull rumble of falling rock, followed by the suddenly ominous shift in the sound of the stream from a low rustle to more of a slap and humming as it rose up against the haphazard dam and banks. So he didn’t actually suspect Sokka of having somehow secreted explosives from their prison break to use for no apparent reason now. At this point it wouldn’t have exactly surprised him to learn that Sokka had put aside a few impact grenades for just such an occasion. Except that they could have used such things against Jet and his thugs, or maybe the stupid wreckers - well, no, that would have been a waste - or certainly to get out of the warehouse. So why would he wait until now, when it really wasn’t necessary?
So he really didn’t think Sokka had somehow blown up the bank of the stream and caused the flood. Not really. Nonetheless, Zuko was still sure that Sokka was responsible somehow! And he suspected the reason for the strange “accident” of fate was to give him a break in his test of skills against the fire-bending master Jeong-Jeong. As if he needed such a break.
Damned interfering Tribesman!
In a moment or two, as soon as he’d caught his breath and he’d managed to impose his will over his aching muscles and that throbbing in his shoulder that suggested - no, insisted! - that he’d torn open that stupid spear thrust again, he would work his way over to where Sokka was assisting the repair effort. And then he’d find a way to trip him up into the water just to let him know that he wasn’t getting away with this. No chance.
---------------------
Jeong-Jeong gently drew in a sigh of relief as his men’s cries of concern brought a halt to the bout with the Fire Prince. For some minutes he’d been seeking a face-saving way of bringing the display to an end, but the ferocity shown by the prince had confounded him in all respects.
It wasn’t that he’d regretted his challenge - it had been highly instructive to see how well versed the young man was in the fire-bending arts, how disciplined his form was, and how much his pride and passion lent to his overall skill. Jeong-Jeong remembered the rumors that had circulated among the military upon the conclusion of the prince’s Agni Kai with the Fire Lord. The boy had been dismissed in favor of his enormously talented sister, both for his lack of apparent “ferocity” against his father and his lack of obvious talent.
But Jeong-Jeong had already begun to devalue the utility of ferocity, a trend initiated by his best student’s blindness to the need to wed passion to discipline. This had started a slow erosion of his confidence in the purity of his devotion to bringing out the power in fire-bending over all else. By the time of Prince Zuko’s Agni Kai, Jeong-Jeong was well into questioning the toll on his soul of his relentless devotion to improving the art of fire-bending. It was an easy leap for a man of his discipline to then question the toll fire-bending itself took on a man’s soul.
He had loved fire-bending. By sheer talent and dogged study Jeong-Jeong had raised himself from the ranks of the enlisted to the Fire Nation’s elite, consorting at one point with the crown prince himself in the heady environment of those who could wield true power, not just fire-bending. But for Jeong-Jeong, it had always been the guided release of the passion inherent in fire-bending, the power coursing through his veins like some stimulant beyond all others. Reined to his personal whim, it was intoxicating even as it left his head incredibly clear.
Jeong-Jeong believed, for some few years, that fire-bending was the dividing line between men and gods. This belief survived his campaigns against the Southern Water Tribes, was even strengthened by his successes there. Until one day…
------------------------
The only mention anywhere as to how Jeong-Jeong received the disfiguring scars that made his visage so memorable, even before he abandoned his topknot for a deserter’s wild mop of hair, was in a medical report accompanying an account of the last battle of the Southern Water-benders.
It noted the clean lifting away of flesh by razor-thin blades of ice that had remained frozen against the skin long enough to permanently scar, mimicking the claws of beasts with the precision of man at a distance. The report, with its rather surprisingly vivid imagery, was lost among the more bizarre records of field examinations of an elite group of fire-benders that had accompanied Admiral Jeong-Jeong, and fallen, on that final mission. The autopsies, admittedly performed under less than ideal conditions in the rough seas and frigid air of the Pole, revealed vital organs engorged with blood even as limbs appeared desiccated.
The Admiral’s report detailed how the weather had abetted the water-benders’ tactics against them; how the long winter’s night without hope of sun had nearly defeated them. But that, thanks to their superior numbers, they had finally brought down the last defense of the South’s greatest stronghold.
The report did not mention how the cold had not only marked his face but had crept into his bones, daring the flame within his blood to drive it out. It did not say how the barrage of heat was answered by an avalanche of water that consumed troops as the ice melted.
Jeong-Jeong never told anyone that the last water-bender to face them was an elderly woman who annihilated his elite guard with a single graceful movement, sorrow writ starkly across her exotic features. That, alone, he had stood before her, raising a curtain of flame with what he believed was his last breath, only to have it thrust aside by a wave that became knives of ice against his skin, dropping him to the frozen ground.
He was in an agony of pain, numbness and despair.
She did not speak to him, but drew near enough to touch him. And, with a look in alien blue eyes he would never forget and never fathom, removed her mitten to touch one of the frozen blades imbedded in his face. Immediately the dull numbness of dying flesh was replaced with a tingling sensation suggesting warmth, only to disappear as Jeong-Jeong summoned a final burst of strength in a fire-ball that caught the old fire-bender in the throat, darkening those antarctic eyes with a skein of death.
And he did not tell the medic that his scars numbered one fewer than had been originally inflicted. That scar he did not bear on his face. Rather, it burned within his soul.
--------------------------
Leave it to Katara to seek out the chandler’s shop early on. Perhaps she was guided by the sight of a Water Tribe boat moored at the pier, although it had occurred to none of them that Sokka would have had the luck to find passage with a fellow Tribesman.
Face it. They all knew Sokka’s luck was shitty. Case on point, take his love life. He’d fallen for the Northern princess, who… died. He’d rebounded with Suki of Kyoshi Island. Maybe she wasn’t dead, but damn! She had definitely disappeared in fairly hopeless circumstances. Nobody would admit it, but they all felt guilty for believing just a bit that to fall under Sokka’s favor was, for a girl, the kiss of death. Okay, maybe that was a bit extreme, but frankly, as the lone girl at any potential risk Toph admitted to herself she was not prepared to tempt the fates - let alone her heart - for a silly infatuation with a goofy guy who couldn’t bend, for spirits’ sake!
Of course, Katara was fate-proof. Nothing like being a mere sister… And she simply refused to even think that Sokka’s lousy luck was particularly fatal to anyone else. That would simply be too cruel. Not just to Sokka, but to those who got involved with him! Fate simply couldn’t work that way. Could it?
The chandler’s story of the barque’s crew, involving a bout between two young soldiers against wreckage salvagers, certainly rang true enough, and she could almost see Sokka’s role in it. But Sokka was not an easy guy to win over; witness his initial distrust of Aang and his long-held suspicion of even Haru. A Water Tribe boat in Fire Nation controlled waters was highly suspect. Could Sokka have accepted so easily even another Water Tribesman under such short notice?
It was certainly true that war made strange bedfellows. But, according to the chandler, this Tribesman they were talking about had been golden-eyed, fair-skinned, and in search of non-descript clothing. There was simply no way that Sokka would be fooled into thinking a Fire Nation soldier had any right to a Water Tribe boat, come hell or high water!
This whole story was distracting them from their search.
Katara examined the boat. It was of Southern design. Sokka would have recognized it instantly. Everything about the boat screamed of her village, from the moorings to the rigging to the stowing of gear in the various compartments along the gunwales. She’d have sworn she recognized the handiwork of the carving along the bow, personal touches along the hatches, except that she associated them with graying men a far cry from either of the grim-faced teenagers who’d argued with the chandler about his prices for non-Water Tribe clothing or current maps.
Toph shrugged, accepting her ignorance regarding sea-lore. But she was ready to swear to the merchant’s veracity, honed as much by her ear for truth on the speaker’s part as her earthbender’s art of dissecting heart rate and electrical impulses within the bloodstream.
Katara didn’t happen to speak to anyone at the tavern. If she had, it might have occurred to her that one day her brother’s charm was bound to lead to more than blushes and an innocent kiss or two.
---------------------
Iroh looked back on the tavern with some vague fondness, not entirely due to the diligence of the tap-girl’s willingness to keep his tea-pot full or the surprising freshness of the fish on the menu.
The girl had been pretty - always a treat - and the grilled fish delightful, but the tea? Frankly, it was worse than insipid. Perhaps the leaves had been allowed to dry with a taint of mold?
Iroh shuddered.
Well. At least he’d known what to expect. He searched his memory for how many times An Dui had crossed the battle lines during his own tenure as a general, and chuckled briefly to note how little progress his brother had made in expanding the lines since he had “retired”. But then, he was above such petty reflections, wasn’t he?
-------------------------------
During the period when Aang and Iroh roamed the market in the village square Aang’s attention wandered. Iroh had disappeared uphill in the local tavern, leaving Aang to his own devices. The market itself was minute and, frankly, Aang was not intrigued by shopping for either food-stuffs or clothing. He did, on the other hand, wonder just what it was about fabrics that drew not only Katara’s eye but even Toph’s curt attention. It was something about girls, he was sure of that. And Aang was old enough to start wondering about anything that interested girls, maybe even more so when that the actual object of that interest, okay, he’d admit it, left him absolutely cold.
He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that at some point girls pretty much stopped caring about anything really interesting and paid attention to stupid stuff. The thing was, it was at about this same time that what girls paid attention to started to matter, when it never had before.
Only an idiot would fail to make the connection. Again, Aang was far from an idiot. He was, in fact, someone unusually sensitive to simple truth - a reasonable response on the part of the Avatar to the conflicting pulls upon one’s identity that the various forms of bending made upon the sensitive. That no one questioned the pull of air-bending or, for that matter, any of the other elements, upon his soul was a given. So why shouldn’t he be equally sensitive to the tides of human nature pulling upon each other? Wasn’t he supposed to have some exceptional form of understanding anyway? Well, there were certainly stranger things about him.
Aang was barely thirteen years old. He already knew he loved Katara, and his hormones had only just begun to confuse his senses with a chemical infusion beyond his ken. Even so, he knew enough from his training as a monk to question the utility of his attachment to the Water Tribe girl.
It certainly didn’t help to find his perceptions additionally confused by the much younger yet more forceful presence of his earth-bending master. Toph was his obvious peer, in age if nothing less. But in some strange sense he also saw in Toph’s resilience a response to his own readiness to run. A readiness that had left him entrapped for a century, unable to respond when his people had needed him most. It set him up to revere Toph on a level he’d never anticipated, certainly not merely as his teacher.
In his internal confusion he found himself retreating more to that monk’s training even as his straining adolescence itched at him to explore the stirrings he felt elsewhere upon thoughts of the girls he looked to as masters and friends.
His early confidence in Sokka’s wisdom and experience as an elder boy, although sometimes shaken by his occasional surliness and apparent self-absorbtion, had been boosted by Sokka’s easy confidence where girls were concerned. Where he might have disregarded this confidence as mere sham in anyone else, he’d noticed a tendency among young women in their travels to eye the Tribesman on more than one occasion, and the preference of Yue the Northern princess and the warrior Suki’s blatant favoritism simply couldn’t be denied.
Among all the other reasons he wished Sokka was back in their midst, none the least was his desire to consult his friend as to how best to expand his relationships with the two most interesting girls of his young experience.
That one happened to be Sokka’s sister complicated the equation a bit, but then, wasn’t the Avatar supposed to be able to find the balance in all things? He’d worry about that later…
-----------------
Although he felt terribly stupid about the whole affair, given the potential loss to mold, mildew and who knew what all of a good field of root vegetables thanks to untimely flooding from the confusion among Jeong-Jeong’s men as the creek backed up behind Sokka’s impromptu dam, he consoled himself with the knowledge that the sparring session between the Fire Prince and the renegade had ended in a draw.
Given what he regarded as Zuko’s tendency to glare furiously at Sokka regardless of his most innocent of actions, Sokka felt relatively safe from retribution even as he felt the heat of the other’s suspicious eyes upon him as the two of them joined a line of men working to haul stone away in clearing the dam.
Sokka quietly inserted a suggestion here and there as to the safest way to proceed (“no, pulling stones away from the downstream side of the dam willy-nilly could result in yet another landslide coupled with a sudden inundation of water, likely to drown all involved.” Nuts, didn’t these soldiers ever deal with managing simple hydrology in the Fire Nation? He knew how to smother a brush fire - couldn’t they create a spillway?) as Zuko strode assertively across the rock face itself to point out exactly which stones should be shifted to release pressure upstream immediately, lowering the impoundment before it spilled over the stream’s banks.
Sokka stifled a sigh as he noted the group’s willingness to follow Zuko’s lead over his own remarks; it wasn’t that he actually disagreed with Zuko. He had just been trying to stop a couple idiots from getting themselves killed, while Zuko had looked to actually solving the problem of the dam itself. After all, Sokka hadn’t really wanted to draw attention to himself anyway. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have figured out what to do.
He meandered his way on across the rocks towards Zuko, muttering under his breath. So he really wasn’t expecting the sudden elbow in his ribs as he shifted his balance from one rock to another.
Sokka was just glad that Zuko had chosen to wait long enough for sufficient water to pond behind the dam to allow him a good dunking instead of a hard fall on the rocky creek bed itself. Somehow he wasn’t sure such concerns had entered the prince’s calculations.
He pulled himself back out of the water, having kicked away from Zuko and the men struggling to dislodge the rocks to make the spillway out of a healthy regard for not getting pulled into the flow likely to rush on downstream as those rocks gave way (didn’t I say that somebody could get drowned that way? I sure as hell didn’t mean for that someone to mean me!). Sokka understood perfectly why Zuko had pushed him into the water; he didn’t appreciate Sokka’s interference in what he’d perceived as his own business. Fine. So now maybe they were even.
Except that Sokka’s pride had been challenged. All those many months ago Zuko had made a fool of Sokka in their first encounter. In all the times the two had met before their imprisonment it had been impossible to really determine which one had bested the other - after all, most of the time either Aang or Katara had actually confronted Zuko as much or more than Sokka had. Since then, there had been so much give and take that Sokka was truly confused as to where the balance lay between them. Sokka liked to think he’d held the upper hand throughout, by pushing Zuko to romance Ling-Ling into helping them out of the prison; providing the boat and provisions, thanks to his father’s rescue effort just days after the prison break; teaching Zuko sailing, sort of, and fishing; and restraining the Fire Prince from more flamboyant acts that would have put the Fire Nation onto their trail immediately… But then, it was Zuko who’d actually convinced Ling-Ling to set them free, Zuko who’d ensured the fall of the prison; who’d fought Jet to a standstill and intimidated the wreckers into leaving them alone. And it was Zuko who’d earned them a welcome with Jeong-Jeong.
I should leave, now, while no one thinks to care what I do. But shit. I don’t want to leave it like this. I’m pretty sure Zuko’s not gonna go after Aang again, and I’d swear he’s figured out that we all gotta find a way to live together now that doesn’t involve the Fire Nation lording it over the rest of us. Is that enough? Dammit, I want him to appreciate us, the Water Tribe! Fuck it, I want him to admit he owes me. I guess I’m just now sure he still does.