nd here is the final painting for my Avatar: The Last Airbender series! Avatar Aang himself, master of the Four Elements and savior of the world.
The cartoon was significant for me when I was growing up. Now that the live action is releasing tommorow, after 20 years since the original I felt that its the time to create my tribute.
This was the first one of the three (Katara, Sokka) that I made, and the piece I spent the least amount of time on. I also had plans for more characters but time constraints wont allow me to work on them just yet! Perhaps in the future.
I hope you like it!
All the best,
JCH
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scaled salvage: there are some... innocent misunderstandings between the earth kingdom and the southern water tribes about what an "information gathering" session with the prince entails - kutsaa is left to patch up the aftermath with a disturbingly calm zuko, bc if he interacts with a single earth kingdom representative he'll cause a diplomatic incident.
zuko isn't sure why everyone is so surpised or upset.
hakoda is quietly filing away the notion that zuko thought they *knew* what the earth kingdom was going to do and didn't try to fight back or refuse, to deal with at a later date.
“But…” the prince started. Again.
Hakoda stared him down, until he shut his mouth. “Just answer their questions, the same way you answered mine. Listen to them, behave for two hours, then you can come back to our ship.”
The prince didn’t agree, per se. But he let himself be marched across the gangplank, which was agreement enough.
“He’s convinced you’re going to break his hands,” Hakoda said, to Fong’s representative. A joke that was a warning.
“He’s your prisoner, not ours,” the man said. “We can respect that.”
Hakoda nodded, once. “Try to get something out of him that we can use as proof of life. I’m pretty sure my crew could forge a more personal letter than the ones he’s been writing.”
“Of course,” Fong’s representative said, with a smile.
* * *
The prince was returned before dinner. He walked stiffly back aboard, and took up position behind Hakoda, like he wasn’t sure he was dismissed.
“Your proof of life,” Fong’s representative said, handing Hakoda a strip of something black. “Thank you again. That tip about his hands came in very useful.”
It took until a long moment of staring to recognize the strip for what it was: dragon hide. He’d… never touched it fresh.
* * *
The kid didn’t say anything as Hakoda led him down to Healer Kustaa’s.
He needed leading.
“Out,” Kustaa said, and closed the door.
* * *
There was the barest hint of a burn on Prince Zuko’s hand. The flame they’d used, to make him shift. The threat behind it, if he refused.
The skin had been sliced neatly from between his shoulder blades. It was… not a disabling wound, for a human.
Kustaa rigged up a kind of wrap, to keep the prince’s wings immobilized. And mandated that he spend at least half the day as a dragon, to aid with healing across both forms.
“Will it heal?” Hakoda asked.
“The scales on his face didn’t,” Kustaa said.
The black dragon spent a lot of time stretched out, unmoving, on a yard of the mainmast. The easiest he could climb to. Hakoda did not climb after him.
* * *
“You knew they’d do this,” Hakoda said.
“You told them to.”
He hadn’t known what he was asking for.
“Why would you let them?” Hakoda knew it wasn’t the right thing to say, that it wasn’t the prince’s fault that he’d been skinned, but he also knew that nothing on the Earth Kingdom ship had been lit on fire in the process and he couldn’t understand how those facts fit.
“You said I had to listen to them,” Zuko said, “before I could come back.”
The prince had wanted to come back, even thinking that Hakoda had—
Of course he had. It was better than being sold to the Earth Kingdom. This ship was… it was safe, for him. The safest option he had right now.
Being sent off to be deliberately hurt, then coming back to where they only hurt him accidentally: that was the prince’s idea of safety.
…Hakoda hadn’t known what he was asking for. But he had a child aboard now, and it was time he figured out what that meant.
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