I Love How Iroh Is 100% Able To Admit He Has Made Mistakes In His Life, But He Has Yet To Acknowledge

I love how Iroh is 100% able to admit he has made mistakes in his life, but he has yet to acknowledge the greatest one:

At the end of a 100 YEAR WAR, he decided to leave the MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD in the hands of a TRAUMATIZED 16 YEAR OLD, and then move like 100,000 miles away.

#its because no one wants him until they realize how much he’s worth, but I didn’t want to make myself cry so I said it this way

Zuko is like that suitcase in the airport bagging area that goes unclaimed for like 12 years and then when they finally decide to get rid of it they realize it’s full of gold bars.

*on the Day of Black Sun*

Ozai: Why wait? You have your swords and I’m defenseless. You could just kill me now.

Zuko:…

Zuko: Shit, you right.

Ozai: WAIT NO

The amount of sheer joy Iroh must have felt when Izumi was born

Exhausted

Hakoda knows that Sokka is exhausted. 

They all were, all the time, his son even saying that tired was now apart of his personality. 

“That’s me,” he would joke, “the meat, sarcasm and perpetually tired guy.” 

Hakoda was tired, too. The war had been over for a few years now, and the Northern and Southern Water Tribes were working on rebuilding their relations as well as their cities. Hakoda, Bato and Sokka were the only ones as representatives for their small tribe of only 40, while the Northern had thousands, and had sent over 50 representatives.

They had decided to convene in Omashu, where King Bumi had been gracious enough to let them host, after the Northern Water Tribe realized that traveling from pole to pole was not an easy feat for the southerners (them, too, but they would never admit that). 

Getting a chance to speak was difficult, the formal language used was difficult, getting the representatives to understand just how different their tribes were was difficult, even finding a seat had been difficult. 

The door to the apartment they were staying in opened abruptly and then slammed a moment later, and Hakoda’s heart started to race. Sokka was home, and that meant that he…had to tell Sokka. Hakoda took a deep breath as his son entered the room. 

“S-“

“Not now,” Sokka practically growled, and if he had been a fire bender, he certainly would have let out a huff of fire, “I’m really not in the mood for anything right now. I’m hungry, exhausted and this place is horrible. The people here are all jerks.” 

“Sokka, I think you should—“

“Why do they care that we’re using one of the fifteen conference rooms? Bumi said it was fine!”

“Sokka, you should—“

“They weren’t even politicians! They were damn delivery drivers!” Sokka pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“should—“

“Dad, I literally just said I didn’t want to talk!”

“read—“

“Ugh!” Sokka threw his hands in the air, frustration pouring out of him. “Goodnight, dad. Don’t wake me in the morning, unless something catastrophic happens. Actually, scratch that, even if the world ends, don’t wake me up. La knows it would be an improvement.” 

The door slammed, and Hakoda stood. He couldn’t remember how long he stood, how long he stared at the door, before the reality of the situation hit him all at once. 

He covered his mouth with his left palm, an attempt to keep from sobbing, silent tears beginning to slide down his face, hands shaking, the crinkling parchment of the Fire Nation missive heavy in his hand. 

To whomever it may concern: 

Fire Lord Zuko, First of his Name, Protector of the Dragon Throne, and Master of Dragon Fire, has been assassinated by poisoned arrow on the date of the 17th, Late Sun. Lord Zuko was struck in the left shoulder by a lone arrow while presenting a speech to the Council of Education, and died a few hours later from his wounds, as the weapon was laced with belladonna. 

He leaves behind a grieving mother, sister, uncle, and nation. 

No successor has been named as of yet, however Prince Iroh is currently acting as reagent. 

Princess Azula is no longer in line for the Dragon Throne. 

Funeral rites were preformed shortly after death, and the body cremated, as it tradition. Only the Fire Lord’s mother, step father, half sister and Fire Sages had been present, as Prince Iroh was in Ba Sing Se at the time of Fire Lord Zuko’s death. 

May his flame burn bright forever. 

Councilmen of the Court of Flames 

Bones

Skeletons of war aren’t in the closet, they hide in plain sight. 

The first sign of war is on display in each one of the air temples: actual skeletons of a people who were killed amidst kindness, left hollow by the passing of a century.

The Fire Lord who helped end the war will return to one of these temples, years after the war has been won. He will go alone, and he will scour the Southern Air Temple for weeks. 

When he returns, he will gift the Avatar with the record of his birth, found in a library turned to dust, dirt, unburnt. 

The Avatar will cry, and feel more connected to his new family and his old than he ever has before, but the Fire Lord knows the Air Nomads will never come back. 

The second sign of war is the soldiers through the Earth Kingdom, disciplined and barbaric alike. 

The same Fire Lord will remember a young boy with his brother stolen for the front lines, who turned on him when he knew who he (his family, his legacy) really was. He will remember a girl’s kindness, repaid in rapacity. He will remember all the the charred earth he had seen, and a boy who died beneath a lake. 

The villages will be rebuilt, the soldiers brought home, and a baby ostrich horse will find a new home. A Fire Nation village, nestled in an Earth Kingdom forest, will be instructed to leave the intricate hideouts in the trees where they are. 

The Fire Lord won’t stay in these towns long enough to hear them say thank you, feeling he would break if he ever heard such a lie as gratefulness to him.  

Third, the destruction of the Southern water benders, an entire bending discipline now resting on the shoulders of a single water bender, made terrified by the prospect of unyielding control under the light of a full moon. 

He will release the prisoner who had taught her to blood bend into the water bender’s custody, and lets her decide what she sees fit (she looks into her eyes, blue bearing into gray, and demand imprisonment for eternity, both in body and in spirit).The young Fire Lord will see the relief and gratitude in her eyes, and ignore the loud protests of his advisors, who wanted the woman executed. But looking at Katara, he feels as though the Fire Nation should get no say in the matter. 

And the fourth is the Fire Lord himself, broken by a lineage of war and deceit, and even though he tries, even though he is reassured he has done more than what anyone expected of him, gone above and beyond, he will never be able to shake the feeling of guilt for a heritage he did not choose. 

He hides this skeleton in the closet, and smiles for the other nations, for his friends, but he feels it in his bones and in his soul. Every night he takes out the skeleton he made of these bones and dances with it, in the form of pacing, shaking, the thought of rest ever so a foreign concept. The night he arrives at the Southern Water Tribe (for the second time) greeted by Sokka with an embrace (he remembers tossing him to the side before), he will lay awake and clench his jaw, trying so hard not to think about Katara, the last water bender in the south pole. He will help rebuild the villages and towns and pay reparations to the Earth Kingdom, doubting his choice only in the case of Yu Dao, and even years later, is scared to think he actually made the wrong choice. He will help the Avatar rebuild the ties to the spirit world, replanting trees into a lush forest, a statue watching them gratefully in the distance. He will grip his hands, plaster a smile on his face, when Aang’s voice hitches when he talks about the air benders, and waits until he is alone at night to sob. 

The Fire Lord is haunted by ghosts and bones alike, the balance within him forever off kilter. So the Fire Lord carves every lost water bender, every Earth Kingdom family ripped apart, and every air nomad corpse into his own bones, a promise to always be redeeming, a darkness he takes with him to the grave.