The Ethic of Reciprocity
(Apologies for inserting Jewish ethics onto an Asian character/ world, this would not leave my brain. As the descendant of genocide survivors, this part of Aang’s arc has always resonated with me. He gets a lot of hate for not killing Ozai ( he is 12????? Did you really want to see a child murdering someone on nickelodeon when you were 6? What), but I always applauded his refusal to truly finalize the Air Nomad genocide by giving up their views, as their sole survivor. They have just as much right to the world as the rest of the nations, and Aang did exactly the right thing to restore balance, which is his JOB as the Avatar. Balance means air, too.)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419808
He’s the last of his people. Why don’t the others understand that?
(He knows why. He’s always been too understanding. He refuses to view that as a flaw.)
He smiles a lot. He doesn’t always feel like smiling. He sometimes feels like destroying something in a tornado.
( He smiles because it helps him to know he always had the freedom to. Its not a given. He wonders how often Zuko or Toph smiled in their childhoods. He knows Katara and Sokka did, because they were not always at war the same ways Zuko and Toph were. He wishes he knew Suki better.)
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Aang. The Avatar?
It’s not about not being able to kill, or being afraid, or a coward, or too immature ( Taking a life is maturity?). He shouldn’t have to sacrifice one more thing of his people in the name of necessity. He will not shed his people as if they are a childish fixation to be outgrown.
He’s the last. He must stand for them. For himself.
No one else will. He thinks maybe they’ve forgotten how.
And being for myself, what am 'I' The Avatar. Aang?
Katara understands some. She does not laugh at him, at least. They’ve always been able to see each other’s side even when disagreeing. They are like the clouds- mixing two separate entities to form something new and always been and organic, natural. She wonders how much the world will strip from him before there is nothing left, and why it insists on doing so. She cannot fathom how much strength it takes for him to smile every day. Is in awe of it. He was her first friend. She wonders if he knows that.
Sokka understands some. Less. He is a pragmatist who has been raised in war, but he has a gentleness of spirit that shines through always. He pushes it away- it can haunt him later if it will end it now. He is smart, but he is fifteen. He is game for any genuine answer to the problem, he just doesn’t see another one. He is glad when one presents itself. He was his first friend. He wonders if he knows that.
(He does. He’s honored.)
Suki is a warrior with too much Kyoshi in her to understand his view, but enough diplomat to respect it. Why is she a warrior diplomat at fifteen? Why is he the only one of them with a childhood? She is glad that he was not forced to do more then he was willing to do. She wants him to be a child, because it is that quality which drew them all to him- his childish lightness of spirit, his happiness at the simple acts of friendship and love. He was different from Kyoshi, possessing a lightness she had never felt but wanted desperately. She learns it is the lightness of a world at peace, later.
Toph….. will bury it under sarcasm, but she can read his emotions. In some ways she knows him better then all of them. She hurts for him in equal measure to the amount she yells at him. That’s a lot. It frustrates her, sometimes, that she can read them all so well, because she is forced to sympathize with their anguish while exasperated with it. She isn’t really annoyed at him. She wishes she was, because she thinks she’s supposed to be. She can’t really ever truly be angry at him, her first friend. She wants him to do what he has to. He does.
Zuko is his mirror in many ways. He is also his opposite in many ways. They complement each other in different ways then him and Katara. Its no less crucial, just different. He was the first person aside from uncle to ever make an overture of friendship. Perhaps it struck him differently because it was an outsider who by all rights should despise him, the descendant of the man who murdered his people, and not a long-suffering family member. Even though he was never long suffering. It takes him time to see things clearly. He is glad he was not forced to murder his father, because once he sees clearly he would not have been able to withstand that. It moves him, that a child can see so much more clearly then he can. He sees him smile, laugh, overflowing love in all forms, and cries from how much he wishes he had seen the light earlier. He was the first to truly forgive him, too. Completely and without trial. He was his first friend he ever chose for himself.
It’s a common theme.
If not now, when? He does what he has to, but he does not give up himself. It was the right thing to do.( It was the only way to end it with peace).
He can be both the Avatar and Aang, Air Nomad and Judge and Jury. He can smile. He is a product of his people, and of his friends. He is the old and the new combined. He is Balance.
(He gives people hope.)