IROH
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Did you know that regret could just as well put a spring in your step as cripple?
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Iroh learned this throughout his short years of marriage to his wife. An arranged one, from their very first meeting. Firelord Azulon was exacting about the lineage she brought along for the crown prince, the prince whose bending prowess should be furthered by the next generation. After all, there was a world to conquer, and they'd only just about gotten done with the first third. Were still cleaning up there, actually.
Ayana was beautiful, demure, just the right amount of capable and entirely unsuited to being a wife to a man whose first concern would always be whether his army was well enough fed, watered and trained.
In his later years, Iroh would think back on their time together and regret a great deal of things, but he would smile at the memory of their petty squabbles, the vindictive, almost hateful games of Pai Sho where they would destroy one another utterly if even one mistake was made. He would remember almost fondly how she repaid him his thoughtless slights with too-hot teas served with his most hated type of biscuit. Somehow, it never failed to incense him, as though the Weihrauch she lit burned at his goodwill to make it smell so pleasant.
He was not a patient man, then. He had not yet learnt the weight of personal loss.
The absence of his mother, who had died in childbirth for Ozai, could not hit him hard enough, since she was never one of his primary caretakers, and he'd been too young to remember her as a mother and feel any kind of loss. No, he'd been brash and impatient.
He'd been cunning, too. It made for a fine general in those times. The Earthkingdom was too vast to mobilise quickly enough against the rapid avalanche of fire the Dragon of the West would batter against their walls until they bled away to reveal…
Well, he didn't care for the terror he wrought then, either.
He was vindictive. He was the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, he was the Dragon of the West and he did not realise what utter destruction was until Ba Sing Se.
But for that, he first had to learn what devotion was.
Destruction, devotion, devastation.
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Did you know that hurt can bring joy?
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Iroh learned this from raising his son. Like his own mother, Ayana died in childbirth.
This left Iroh with a screaming bundle of red skin and blue eyes that shat and pissed itself constantly. But it was his screaming bundle that shat and pissed itself and that made it…
He cared for it. His son. Lu Ten.
He watched him grow, laugh, play, crawl, walk. And when he went to war, he would leave his son behind with a heavy heart. There was no good option concerning his son then, but he made certain that as the boy grew, so would his means of defending himself.
Lu Ten was a bending prodigy that rivalled his own.
This allowed Iroh to bring him with him, not to fight on the front lines, but to councils of war, to planning, to the far outposts that would allow Lu Ten to observe the battle from a safe distance.
They were together, they were a family of warmongers, as the royal family should be.
They played. They learned together. They would have conquered Ba Sing Se together.
The Earthking's personal guard were informed enough of who the young boy far behind enemy lines was. And when Iroh had defeated the Earthking…
They took revenge.
Simple as that.
He took revenge in turn, but it cost them victory.
It cost Iroh far more than the crown.
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Did you know that you need it all to grow?
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Iroh didn't often doubt himself. He hadn't thought that all he'd known could one day turn out to be so wrong. So utterly warped around, like passion's middle wrought to shame.
He learned this when, after watching his son die, he left behind the Dragon of the West and wandered. He left behind the army. He left behind the crown. He left behind the proud, blind man he'd been and he…
Learned that kindness, when not a courtesy, could free his spirit. He learned that there was more to commoners than he'd been led to believe. He realised that… the Fire Nation got it all horribly, disastrously wrong and he had no means to change it. Not when he'd left behind the crown. Not when Ozai sat on that throne as Azulon grew more and more weak as his madness grew proportionally.
He learned to bend once more, when he looked for the old ways, the old that had been destroyed in the craze of destruction that warranted the slaughter of an entire people. He understood what bending could be, when it wasn't a weapon.
He researched the waterbenders further, their healing powers seemed the antithesis to what he had been taught all his life. He learned of the Sunwarriors.
He was found worthy, when he knelt in awe of the last surviving dragons.
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Did you know… tea leaves should only dry out once?
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The White Lotus tile startles.
The poorly hidden amusement beneath blatant calculation makes for a sense of inevitability.
Iroh has never been able to resist temptation when it comes to his passions. He has learned caution, though, and it is with slight trepidation that he sits and joins the old, scraggly, oddly smelling man at his low table.
It is only later when he wakes in a beautiful garden within the walls of an ancient temple that he realises that suspicion does nothing if it isn't coupled with the ability to detect poison in his tea. Or, as it were, sleeping medicine.
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Did you know that fire lives only when it deems its fuel adequate?
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He realised upon his return to the Fire Nation that fire could be dead.
And so he took up the task of breathing back life into the Nation that had burned the Air Nomads from this world. He re-asserted that kindness was life and violence could even lie in the words he spoke.
He set out to nudge the council to the wrong places. The wrong cities to take first. He set out to sabotage chains of information.
He did well.
He saw kindness in his nephew and cruelty in his niece.
He saw great potential.
So did his brother.
And a desperate Fire Nation made for a cruel Ozai. The nobles had begun to grumble, after all.
And what better example to them than the scene of the untouchable crown prince humiliated for his kindness. His so-called weakness.
Iroh saw. And turned away, towards a more manageable hurt.
Or so he thought.
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Did you know… light is not enlightenment when it is the only candle in the darkness?
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Heed your own council, Iroh often reminded himself on a ship in the wastes of the ocean. But patience was something learned and forgotten and learned again. And to teach it to a child, so hurt, so traumatised, so in need of stability that he would not allow close except for in rare moments in the dark of night after night terrors woke him screaming, was a challenge.
Iroh could appreciate those. Saw them as chances when the day was bright.
Recognised them as an opportunity for introspection, for self-scrutiny, for attempting to take the right actions.
But Zuko was so caught up in his own turmoil that any attempts to teach him self-reflection and the value of knowing when to say enough fell flat.
He worked hard. At being able to commit horrendous violence. Iroh attempted to temper this by speaking of honour. Of nobility, even when he knew no human was better than another. He could only hope that Zuko would live long enough to realise this by himself.
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Did you know… fairness can leave a bitter taste on your tongue?
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