Giving Up (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

The following is a fanbased work of fiction. Avatar the Last Airbender is the property of Viacom, Nickelodeon, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Koniezko. Please support the official release.


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The moon hung over the starry sky like a coin of water tribe silver. Surrounded by a blanket of stars and shadow, she watched over the earth beneath as sentinel, calm and to the great frustration of those below her, silent.


Beneath her, working at the stream and impatiently fuming, was Katara.


“C’mon, Moon! Work with me here!” She shouted, holding her hands up like she were entreating the heavenly body to bestow great wisdom upon her.


Watching her trying to learn on the shore was Aang, who looked concerned, as well as Sokka and Zuko, who were both trying to avoid laughing. Sokka was biting his finger. Zuko was letting little dark clouds out the side of his mouth, like he was smoking a pipe.


Katara stood again, and tried to perform the water whip. The water emerged from the stream and once again, slapped her across the face. “Why are you like this?”


Sokka lost it, braying like a mule and clutching his stomach. Zuko accidentally swallowed the smoke he had been exhaling and dissolved into a coughing fit, but recovered fairly quickly.


“Uh...Katara?” Aang asked. “Are you okay?”


“No! No, I am not okay!” Katara fumed, storming up to the camp from the shore. “I don’t care what that sage said, the Moon is not a teacher!”


“Maybe you’re just a poor student,” Zuko snipped, grinning from ear to ear.


“A poor student?” Katara repeated with all the wrath of an offended goddess. “Now listen here you stupid little fire-flake, how is anyone supposed to learn from a giant, inanimate object flying through the sky that doesn’t talk to anyone?”


“I have no idea,” Zuko answered, still grinning.


“Then how am I a poor student?” Katara demanded, her face scrunched up like Momo’s when Sokka played keep-away with the berries for too long.


“Katara?” Aang tried to butt in, calmly and politely.


“You keep making the water smack you in the face,” Zuko pointed out, trying to avoid laughing again.


“That’s not my fault!” Katara retorted. “I just haven’t even been told how to do the technique properly!”






“Katara?” Aang tried to interject.


“The Avatar’s been showing you how to do it since you met me,” Zuko replied, an arched eyebrow joining his newly subdued grin.


Katara threw her hands up in the air and growled in rage before storming off.


“Katara?” Aang tried a third time.


Katara whirled to face Aang. “WHAT?”


Aang blinked and took a deep breath. “We need to meditate.”


“What good would that do?” Katara barked.


“You can’t receive spiritual instruction when you aren’t centered,” Aang started to stand just a little straighter. “If you’re letting yourself get frustrated and angry, then it becomes really hard to get in tune with the spiritual aspect of bending. So let’s go back down to the river and meditate. Okay?”


Katara let out a petulant breath. “Fine.”


They both walked down to the river bank and Zuko had a thoughtful look on his face.


Sokka looked up at his fire bending compatriot with a curious look on his own face. “Whatcha thinking about?”


“What Aang just said,” Zuko said with a shrug. “About anger getting in the way of the more spiritual side of bending.”


“What about it?” Sokka asked.


“Firebending, for the grand majority of the fire nation now, if fueled by anger,” Zuko explained. “But if anger just gets in the way, then it makes sense why there’s fewer benders in the fire nation.”


“I don’t get it,” Sokka replied, confusion coloring his face.


“Well, bending is inherently spiritual in nature,” Zuko continued. “So if anger just gets in the way of spirituality, and the fire nation is fueled by anger and hate, then there’s less spirituality and then, less benders.”


“But if anger just gets in the way of spiritual mumbo-jumbo,” Sokka pressed, looking annoyed as he tried to figure it out. “How does it fuel fire bending?”


“Well, the pure fuel of fire bending is drive,” Zuko explained. “Anger and hate bring a kind of drive. The drive to hurt someone, see them suffer. But it’s not as good as pure drive.”


“Then why did it take over as the fire nation’s bending fuel?” Sokka asked.


“Because a spiritually aware fire nation isn’t a fire nation that would fight a war against the whole world,” Zuko replied. “Which adds yet another reason to see Sozin’s war burn.”


“Did you need another?” Sokka asked with a smirk.


“Well, you can’t really have too many, can you?”


“Point.”


Down by the river, Aang and Katara were sitting on their knees in the soft sand.


“Deep breath in, deep breath out,” Aang said. “Just let your mind empty. Everything is okay. Feel the air around you. Hear the river course along. Just take a deep breath. Let the mind empty like a pitcher of water.”


Katara took a breath.


Then exhaled.


She took another breath.


Then exhaled.


Yet another breath.


Her snarl of frustration startled Aang.


“Just forget it,” Katara said, standing up and walking back toward the camp. “It’s not working, I’m not getting anything.”


“Katara,” Aang entreated.


“I said forget it!”


Zuko blinked in annoyance, but figured it was useless to try to talk to her right now.

* * *​

“A fortune teller?” Aang asked, sounding kind of excited.​

The group was gathered over Aang’s map, with Zuko’s additions added in charcoal marks.​

“Yeah,” Zuko replied. “I thought about seeing her when I was feeling desperate.”​

“Why didn’t you go see her at all?” Aang asked curiously.​

“Because I had eyes, ears and a brain,” Zuko replied, deadpan.​

“See, that’s what I’m saying,” Sokka said, animatedly gesturing toward the map. “It’s a load of platypus bear droppings. You can’t possibly predict the future.”​

“I think it sounds fun,” Katara said, looking like she was feeling better since last night. “Let’s go, get our future read and see if any of her predictions come true!”​

“Anything she gets right would just be a lucky guess,” Sokka argued. “Seriously, you can’t predict the future. That whole thing is just dumb.”​

“Well, if people than bend the elements through spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Zuko began, echoing the water tribal’s words right back at him. “Then telling the future can’t be that far fetched.”​

“Everything can be explained through rational and intelligent observation,” Sokka argued.​

“And fortune telling,” Katara snipped with a smug grin.​

“Hey, no! No!” Sokka snapped in annoyance. “All fortune telling is just a bunch of generalized predictions couched in vague suggestions and sometimes fancy pyrotechnics.”​

“Sokka, is there a reason a fortune teller makes you this upset?” Zuko asked curiously.​

“Their frauds!” Sokka snapped with a huff.​

“I heard Old Man Jarko played a prank on him and some of the other kids by pretending to be an evil spirit that would roam through the village at night,” Katara explained. “He had them going for a whole week before our dad stepped in and put a stop to it. Since then, he’s never believed a word about spirit stuff.”​

“Hey, he didn’t fool me,” Sokka denied with all the passion he could muster without screaming. “I knew it couldn’t have been an evil spirit because I kept calm and examined the facts. Everything can be explained by scientific examination. Including bending.”​

“That scientific examination points to spiritual mumbo jumbo,” Aang said with a bright, mischievous smile.​

Sokka groaned, getting right up in Aang’s face and tapping his chest with a finger. “You are not helping.”​

“Besides, if it’s all fake, then what can it hurt?” Zuko asked, shrugging. “We can all use a good laugh.”​

Sokka sighed in defeat. “Fine!”​

​

* * *​

The fortune teller was an old lady, called by the name of Aunt Wu. Uncle Iroh would’ve liked her, she was old and full of wisdom that she preferred to cloak behind a veil of mystery and mysticism. And, if he understood correctly, she had a reliable way of predicting the weather by watching the clouds.​

Zuko was the last of the group to go see her. Aang had apparently gone to eavesdrop on Katara’s meeting and came back looking smug and triumphant, but wouldn’t say why. Sokka’s reading had taken place at their first meeting, and to Zuko’s delight, she had said that Sokka was someone heading for disaster, and it would be all his fault.​

Zuko adjusted his seat in the dark room, the only light being the fire directly in the center.​

“We cast the bone into the fire and watch the cracks,” Aunt Wu explained, holding a femur. “Those will tell us how things are going to turn out.”​

“Go ahead,” Zuko said with a nod. He had no idea how that would actually work, but there were a lot of things that Zuko didn’t understand how they worked. Metallurgy, Tai Lee, the machinations of the royal court; but he didn’t need to understand them to accept that they existed.​

Aunt Wu did so. Zuko watched closely as the bone started to crack down the middle, forking to two separate paths.​

He could guess what those paths were. He sighed at the triteness of it all.​

“You have a very set and defined road ahead of you,” Aunt Wu said. “Interestingly, both paths lead to royalty and family. See the crown at the end of both of them? Combined with the tree crack.”​

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Zuko replied diplomatically.​

Aunt Wu hummed. “Well, the first path you are already on, because it’s crack starts before the other. It’s a good one, relatively straight forward. You are traveling with the Avatar, but the alternative path will open it’s doors to you soon. It is marked, if I’m reading this right, by betrayal.”​

“Why would I betray the Avatar?” Zuko asked with a frown.​

“Given how thin the crack is, I don’t think it’s likely, but the start of the break has the Family Tree,” Aunt Wu said, pointing at the crack. “So, if you do decide down that path, then it will be due to family.”​

Zuko rolled his eyes. “But both paths lead to Royalty?”​

“They do,” Aunt Wu said. “You don’t don’t sound surprised.”​

“I don’t want the crown,” Zuko replied. “I don’t want the crown. Or my family, even. Is there a way to change fate?”​

Aunt Wu hummed. “Many in my profession would insist that there is no way to change your fate. But they would be lying. Fate can be changed. But it is a difficult thing, simply because so many forces are hurrying you along this path.”​

“Like swimming against the current,” Zuko said, his frown deepening.​

“A good metaphor,” Aunt Wu replied with a nod of approval. “Young man, fate is what we make of it. It is the long term consequences of our actions and behavior over a long period of time. Right now, your actions and behavior are setting you on this path. The reason fortune telling works, to a point, is because people don’t usually change.”​

“You sure?” Zuko asked flatly.​

“Don’t sass me, young man,” Aunt Wu replied, a smirk betraying her wry amusement. “A person may grow, their old wounds may heal and they might transcend their weaknesses, but their fundamental character remains the same. They are who they are.”​

“So if someone changes, they didn’t really change,” Zuko said, reflectively staring into the fire. “They just grew.”​

“Exactly,” Aunt Wu’s smirk grew to a smile. “A cunning gardener who cares for a tree may want their tree to grow a specific way and they be able to carry out their vision; but no matter how hard he tries, he cannot ignore the roots, or how the tree has already grown.”​

“So I’m doomed,” Zuko said, glaring at the bone. “At least, that’s what the bone says.”​

“No, no, no,” Aunt Wu shook her head. “Have you not been listening? Changing fate is possible. You just need to take charge of how you grow.”​

Zuko’s glare toward the bone intensified.​

Aunt Wu hummed in thought. “What does a Gardner do with a tree with branches that are growing out of line?”​

Zuko shrugged, having not even the slightest idea.​

“They prune them,” Aunt Wu replied. “By pruning branches that have grown out of line, the tree flourishes because it is able to put its energies into the growth of the trunk.”​

“What if the trunk is the thing I don’t want to grow?” Zuko asked.​

“A crown is not a trunk,” Aunt Wu replied, waving that off without so much as a pause for consideration. “It’s only a station. A profession. Something that you may be well suited for, a place where you may spare the world a great deal of pain and devastation, but merely a station. The thing about stations is that there are always multiple candidates for the position.”​

Like Uncle Iroh, Zuko thought with a smirk. Then a thought occurred to him. “Do you know which crown we’re talking about?”​

“From the scar, I guessed,” Aunt Wu said. “But don’t worry, young man. Your secret’s safe with me.”​

Zuko just shrugged, and glowered down at the burning bone. “It’s just a scar.”​

“Indeed,” Aunt Wu agreed.​

​

* * *​

“So...Zuko?” Aang began. “Can I talk to you for a second?”​

“No, I’m not going to show you how to make sparks by snapping your fingers,” Zuko droned with a thoroughly bored look at his bald pupil.​

“No, no, no!” Aang rapidly shook his head in agitation. “That’s not what it’s about. It’s well...I don’t know. Uh...are you, I don’t know um...how do I say this?”​

Zuko placed his hands behind his back and waited.​

“Are you...do you have a girlfriend?” Aang asked.​

“Is this about your crush on Katara?” Zuko asked trying and failing to keep the smirk off of his face.​

“Not so loud!” Aang said, rapidly looking around in embarrassed fervor.​

“Okay,” Zuko replied, indulging his student by lowering his volume. “But is it?”​

The answer was strained, like it had to be forcibly wrung out of him like filth from a wet flag. “Yes.”​

Zuko hummed. “Well, no. I don’t have a girlfriend. There was a girl back in the fire nation, but I haven’t seen her in years. And I’m not looking, anyway.”​

“You’re not looking,” Aang repeated, relief washing the worry off of his face like a tsunami.​

“Yeah. Not looking,” Zuko replied. “I’m really not in a position to be dating someone and honestly, it’d just be a distraction.”​

“Whew! Okay,” Aang said with a grin. “Thanks, Zuko!”​

“Why do you ask?” Zuko asked with a crooked eyebrow.​

“Oh,” Aang froze, looking straight to the side. “No reason. I just, uh...wow, it’s getting late, isn’t it? I need to go grab some-”​

“Aang,” Zuko pressed, grabbing him by the shoulder to stop him from leaving.​

“Look, it’s no big deal,” Aang deflected, shaking Zuko off. “I was just curious because she talks about you a lot. There’s no way she really likes you or anything.”​

Zuko blinked, taken aback. “Huh. Okay then.”​

That made a strange amount of sense, but it didn’t change anything. Zuko still wasn’t interested, he had things to figure out.​

“So, uh...see you!” Aang said, jumping away.​

Zuko blinked, staring at him as he jumped from rooftop to rooftop like a flying lemur.​

​

* * *​

When it came to an erupting Volcano, Zuko was surprisingly disappointed. Not in the Volcano, watching it spew fire and molten death into the sky was the greatest thing that he had ever seen, but rather in himself; he had been completely unable to do anything.​

There was a common misconception, Zuko had found, that fire benders could bend lava. He didn’t know if that was actually true, but what he did know was that he couldn’t do it. So the best he could do was watch his three friends turn away the very destruction that had claimed the life of Aang’s predecessor so long ago.​

He could not assist the town’s earth benders as they dug a trench to redirect the lava currents. By the time he had found out about the disaster, Aang and Katara had formulated a plan to use the clouds to fool Aunt Wu.​

Zuko couldn’t assist the Earth Benders as they dug a trench around the town. He couldn’t bend the lava away. They didn’t even have enough shovels for him.​

Not for the first time, Zuko felt like an extra. A parasite.​

Like he didn’t belong.​

Even with his bending back, Avatar Aang wasn’t ready for instruction. Katara’s infatuation, if it actually existed or if Aang was merely imagining it, was causing a division in the group. Though, frankly, Aang was only hyper focused on her because she was a very pretty girl who would regularly talk to him.​

Zuko wasn’t entirely sure that a tribal girl whose main worries were taking care of her village would do well permanently adopting the nomadic lifestyle of the Avatar. She might’ve, but he doubted it.​

“Zuko, what are you thinking about?” Katara asked.​

He had been sitting in the little lobby outside of all their rooms, and Katara had sat down beside him. Sokka had his door open, sketching on a piece of paper as a way to pass the time until Katara went to bed; very sly of him, Zuko noted. Aang had hid behind a corner in the shadows in a surprisingly well executed maneuver. In front of him was a small candle, which he had been planning to use for meditation, but that had gotten away from him.​

Zuko looked straight ahead. “I don’t want to talk about it.”​

“You can trust me,” Katara said with a small smile.​

He very nearly snapped at her for ignoring what he said. But that would be bad. How to handle this diplomatically? “Katara. I appreciate that you want to help. Thank you. But I...do not want help. If I want help, I’ll tell you, alright?”​

Katara frowned like he had just hurt her feelings. “Are you sure? I can tell you’re upset about something.”​

“You’re right, I am,” Zuko said with a nod. “And if I need help handling it, I’ll ask for it. But until then, I want to handle it myself.”​

Katara sighed in disappointment. “Alright, fine I guess. I’ll go to bed.”​

She stood up and walked off toward her room, muttering to herself. “Boys.”​

Zuko looked down and started focusing on the candle wick.​

With a breath, it grew brighter and taller.​

With a breath, the room was plunged into darkness.​

* * *​

Author’s Note: So, I demonitized. I want to take the time to thank everyone who ever supported me in writing, it means the world to me. But...I fell below the bar, and didn’t deserve the support. Here, let me post what I did in my post that explained why I did so.​

Before I go into why, I want to thank everyone for their support. Don. Darkama. Chris, Melodychii, Niluka Satharasinghe, Sackthananban Kounlavong, Tlavoc, Zeroharm, Megrisvernin, Miu, Chris, Raven Uzushi, A Person, Nex19, Paloswag, Cole Deucalion, Jacob A Bridgewater, ladiciusevol, Steelcondor, Anonymous, Perseus Red, Trashmage, Ryan, Axodique, Vladtheinhaler, PostLifeSyndrome, Juane Pendragon and Samuel Reed as well as the Super Patrons Melden V, Anders Kronquist, Ray Tony Song, Volkogluk, Aaron Bjornson, iolande, Martin Auguado, Julio, Hackerham, Tim Collins-Squire, Maben00, Ventari, PbookR, ChristobalAlvarez, Apperatus, EPiCJB19, Seeking Raven, Handwran, Russel Beatrous and Richard Whereat. Thank you all so much for your continued support, it helped me out a lot. Words cannot describe my gratitude toward you and my love to you.

The reason it’s gone is because, well, I’ve fallen below the bar. My writing schedule has fallen to pieces. I haven’t updated weekly in months and I felt like I was letting everyone down. To say nothing about how I never wanted to make money off of my Fanfiction in the first place. I firmly believe that trying to profit off of my fanfiction did more damage to my writing than I will ever be able to quantify. I will never make this mistake again. If I want to monetize, it will be original fiction and I will do it by designing and selling shirts or something. That way the people who love the fic will be getting more than just a spot in the credits and I won’t feel like I’m begging anymore.​

Anyway, I hope this chapter was entertaining. It’s a difficult time in the world right now and it was a terrible time to take a break...but I had too. Thanks all for your support.​

Until the next time!​

~Fulcon​