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Jiaying had been teaching in the most prominent Fire Nation schools for over thirty years, tutoring numerous children of high-ranking nobles and diplomats, shaping them into honorable and intellectual young men and women. She considered herself a gifted educator, and she felt truly blessed that she loved what she did with all her heart. She was honored when General Iroh came to her and requested her presence on an extended expedition so that his nephew, the crown Prince of the Fire Nation, would have the finest personal education possible on his journey.
What a wonderful opportunity, she thought, to play such an intimate role in helping someone from the royal family.
She spent the first couple weeks aboard the Wani planning lessons for the boy, knowing he wouldn’t quite be ready yet to hop right in. She’d caught glimpses of him from time to time, face bandaged heavily and expression full of fear. If the rumors she heard were true, he would need some time to heal, and not just physically.
In her time as a teacher, she had certainly come across a number of traumatized children. Noble families weren’t necessarily known for their warm parenting styles. They would send children off to school, and Jiaying would see the way they dutifully avoided eye contact, the way they flinched if she dropped a book, the way their hands trembled ever so slightly when they received feedback on their work. It hurt her heart immensely, so over the years she developed a soft voice and a gentle touch that helped sooth some of the wounds that cruel families left behind.
She channeled all of her practiced tenderness for the first day of lessons with the young prince. He appeared in the doorway to their classroom—hardly more than an emptied out storage closet with a couple desks—escorted by his uncle, who nodded politely at Jiaying before heading out. The boy was tiny, and with the bandages finally removed from his face she could see the full extent of his father’s cruelty. Smiling, she invited him in with the silent promise to treat him with a kindness she imagined he hadn’t ever received before.
After one week of lessons, she genuinely considered retirement as the next step in her life. Jiaying had never, in all of her thirty years of teaching, met a student as terrible as Prince Zuko.
The child was a menace. She loved teaching, and it was very difficult for her to think such a thing about someone as young as thirteen, but Jiaying was growing to hate her daily duties as the prince’s personal tutor.
He was late every single day, if he even bothered showing up at all. Half the time, she was forced to wander around the ship until she could track him down, at which point he never even offered an excuse for his absence. He merely looked at her, rolled his eyes, and followed her back to the classroom with a huff.
In class, he seemed insistent on ensuring every one of her efforts were thwarted immediately. She tried to quiz him so she could gauge where he was academically, and he either gave half-hearted and mostly incorrect responses or refused to answer outright. She tried to assess his writing skills, setting a piece of parchment and an inkwell on his desk, and he spilled the ink onto the paper, watching it drip to the floor without an ounce of remorse on his face. She drew up a beautiful poster to teach him about a math concept, and he actually turned his chair around to face the other way.
Whenever she gave him homework, she was always met the next day with something new. One sheet of paper covered in scribbles, one hastily torn into several pieces, and even, once, a pile of ash he simply dumped onto her desk.
It didn’t matter how kindly she treated him, how patient she was with his antics, and how gently she spoke: Jiaying could not get through to Prince Zuko.
She persisted in her efforts, but as the weeks progressed there seemed to be no change in the boy’s defiant behavior. She often expressed her confusion and frustration with his uncle, but General Iroh would simply look at her with a sad expression and say, “I assure you, the day I discover how to tame my nephew, you will be the first to know.”
While on their way to stop in a port on the edge of the Earth Kingdom, Jiaying noticed Prince Zuko was acting differently. He was twitchy and inattentive, but instead of being an act of insubordination, it appeared to be genuine distraction. They got about a third of the way through the lesson—honestly an improvement from the last few days—and Jiaying decided to quit while she was ahead.
“Do you have any plans once we dock?” she asked offhand. She stacked together some papers on her desk, almost missing the way Prince Zuko’s head snapped towards her. She looked at him just in time to see his eyes light up.
“Uncle said there’s a theater in this district,” he started, drumming his fingers on his desk. “I’ve never heard of them, but I hope they’re decent. Anything has to be better than the Ember Island Players.” His face turned sour at that. “My family used to go see them perform all the time, but they butchered Love Amongst the Dragons every year. I guess they probably don’t have Love Amongst the Dragons outside the Fire Nation, though.”
Jiaying wasn’t a big fan of theater, thinking perhaps she had seen a grand total of two plays in her lifetime. But this was the most she had ever heard Prince Zuko speak in her classroom, and she wasn’t eager for it to stop. As casually as she could, she asked about the play.
In an instant, the boy leaned in and excitedly explained the entire plot from memory.
Jiaying half-listened, schooling her expression to be gently encouraging and interested. But inside, she was forming a plan. She dismissed him for the day, and jotted down the title of the play before she could forget it.
When the ship docked later that week, she headed into the closest town to find a bookstore. Prince Zuko had been right, though, and it took her visiting three separate stores before she found anyone who had even heard of Love Amongst the Dragons. The third store didn’t have a copy of the script, but the owner gave her the address for a larger store that might.
She found the fourth store a couple towns over and eagerly asked the clerk at the front desk if they had it. A thick, dusty manuscript was handed over, and Jiaying thought it might be the most precious book she had ever held. She purchased it, along with another play by the same author, and another one she found about dragons.
When she brought the books back to the Wani, she felt very certain this would be a new chapter in her time with Prince Zuko.
She wasn’t necessarily wrong, but it didn’t quite go as she originally planned.
Prince Zuko was as thrilled as she had ever seen him express when she produced the copy of Love Amongst the Dragons at their next lesson. He took the book and marveled at the cover, tracing a finger over the golden spine of the dragon.
“We can read through it together,” Jiaying explained, pulling up a chair to sit beside him.
“I want to read for the Dark Water Spirit,” he replied quickly. She had expected him to want to be the Dragon Emperor, but the fact that he was willingly participating at all in her lesson was enough for Jiaying to quickly accept it.
She took the book and opened to one of the scenes near the beginning. She had leafed through it the night before and picked a few scenes she thought seemed appropriate but challenging for a boy his age.
“Alright,” she started. “Act two, scene three.” She cleared her throat and artificially deepened her voice to read for the Dragon Emperor, which seemed to amuse the boy beside her. He watched her face as she read, staring with apt attention. When it was his turn, she nodded towards the page and pointed to his line, the beginning of a long monologue.
“Um…” Prince Zuko looked at the book and was quiet for a long time. Then, finally, he took a deep breath and started reading.
Or, rather, tried to read.
Jiaying was immediately taken aback at how poorly the prince was reading. His tone was flat, and he continuously paused and stuttered, squinting at the page and leaning in closer. He kept reaching out with a finger to point at the words before quickly pulling his hands back to his lap. He pronounced words incorrectly, left words out, and even made up a few at times. At one point, he read the same line twice and didn’t even seem to notice.
He finished the monologue after what felt like a long time, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. Nervously, he looked at Jiaying. When he saw her staring at him, his cheeks turned pink and he looked away, his fists clenching in his lap. He was embarrassed.
Sensing he was about two seconds away from going back to his old antics—and fearing he might just tear the whole book in two—Jiaying leaned in and started reading her next line in the same silly voice as if nothing was amiss.
It seemed to sooth the boy a bit, as he turned his attention back to the book. His posture still revealed his anxiety, though, so Jiaying kept her expression positive and nodded in encouragement as he stumbled over his lines. He only seemed to get worse as the scene continued, and more than once Jiaying had to guide him back to the correct line. He started squirming in his seat, clearly growing frustrated.
When they reached the end of the page, Jiaying brought her hand up to turn it. Prince Zuko reacted as if he had been struck, flinching away from her so hard he nearly fell out of his chair. She looked at him in surprise, and he looked back at her with mortification when he realized what he had done.
So. That was the kind of tutor the Fire Lord hired to teach his own son.
Prince Zuko stood quickly from his seat and said something about being too tired to continue before hurrying from the room. Jiaying was left alone, fingers still gingerly holding the page.
She went back to her room after that, clutching her copy of Love Amongst the Dragons tightly to her chest and replaying the lesson in her mind. She’d certainly had students before who read like him, fumbling over words and struggling to keep their place.
She would have ordinarily assumed that a family as privileged as the Fire Lord’s would simply hire specialists, psychologists and educators who knew exactly what kind of help the young prince needed.
She thought back again to all the rumors she had heard about the type of man Fire Lord Ozai was. The image of Prince Zuko flinching away violently from her hand played over and over.
Jiaying sat at her desk in her quarters, lighting a candle and pulling out a stack of parchment. She opened the book to the scene she and the prince had read that day, figuring the familiarity of the words would help. She copied the words down, paying special attention to her penmanship. She wrote with large, bold strokes, leaving plenty of room between words and sentences. She varied the weight of her strokes and even wrote each line in a different color ink. She used every trick she could think of, and by the end she felt confident that it would work.
The next morning, Jiaying sat in the classroom and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Prince Zuko did not show up. With a sigh, she began her search around the ship, peering into rooms and asking crewmembers if they had seen the prince. Finally, she found him sitting on the floor of a room, all by himself, clearly pretending he couldn’t see her in the doorway.
“Prince Zuko,” she greeted, getting nothing in return. “We can start today’s lesson now. We’re reading more of Love Amongst—”
“No.”
Jiaying paused. Prince Zuko had never outright refused to go with her. He huffed and rolled his eyes and made a stink about it, but he always followed her dutifully back to the classroom.
“Please come with me, Prince Zuko,” she tried, putting on a friendly smile.
“Why?” he spat. “So I can show you how stupid I am again?” He slammed a fist against the wall behind him and tucked his legs in close to bury his face in his knees.
“Prince Zuko,” she admonished, stepping into the room and crouching beside him. “I believe a positive and calm environment is the only way for students to learn, and I will not have you spouting lies about my favorite pupil.”
The boy lifted his head to scowl at her. “I’m your only pupil.”
“At the moment, yes,” she admitted with a shrug. He sighed, but didn’t hide his face again, which she considered progress. She sat next to him and leaned back against the wall. “You’re not stupid, Prince Zuko.”
He just stared intently at his knees, picking at a stray thread on his pants.
“Please,” she said gently, “come to class.”
After a long bout of silence, he gave another heavy sigh and stood, hurrying out the door before Jiaying even had a chance to stand too. She followed him out and was partly surprised to see that he actually was heading for the classroom. They entered and sat down again beside each other at a desk.
Instead of handing him the book, Jiaying pulled out her handwritten copy of the scene from the script and laid it in front of him. He didn’t outwardly react, but she could see his eyes darting quickly around the page, taking it all in.
“Shall we start?” Jiaying offered. When he gave a meek nod, she leaned in and read her line, watching as Prince Zuko kept his eyes on the page the entire time.
She didn’t even have to prompt him when it was his turn. Prince Zuko started reading his part, his voice still slow and monotone. He still stuttered and had to pause at certain points, but Jiaying noticed already that he wasn’t rereading lines or missing too many words this time. At one point, he lifted a hand up to point to a word, then seemed to think better of it and snatched the hand away.
“You can use your finger to guide you,” Jiaying said softly. Prince Zuko looked at her curiously, like he wasn’t sure if she was serious. After a moment, he turned back to the page and hesitantly brought up a finger. It seemed to help him, and it also helped Jiaying recognize where he was having the most trouble. He would pause, finger tracing over the symbols before trying them out.
They finished about half of the scene before time was up on their lesson for the day. As homework, she lent him the second half of the handwritten script and instructed him to read it with his uncle. He looked uncertain, but took the papers and left without complaint.
Part of her was hopeful, but another part was kind of expecting the prince to show up the next day with the script crumpled up into paper wads.
When the next day came, Jiaying sat uncertainly at her desk. She shuffled the papers of another handwritten scene to pass the time as the minutes ticked on by, waiting for the boy to show up. The scheduled time for their lesson to start came and passed, and as another ten minutes went by she felt her shoulders slump.
Right as Jiaying stood from her desk, preparing to go on another hunt for the boy, Prince Zuko appeared in the doorway. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, seemingly nervous, with his hands hidden behind his back.
“Good morning, Prince Zuko,” Jiaying said cheerily, simply glad he had even shown up. The way he was holding his hands behind his back, clearly hiding something, had her sighing inwardly. She figured she was right in assuming he had destroyed the script like he had with all his other homework.
Prince Zuko slowly walked into the room, stopping in front of her desk. One arm came out from behind his back, and he set the script in front of her, the papers in pristine condition. She just barely held back a look of surprise.
“Did you read the rest with your uncle?” she asked. He nodded, and she glanced briefly at his other hand, still hidden behind his back.
“I, um…” He looked self-conscious, his eyes darting everywhere in the room but at her. “I thought it might be nice to bring this in. Maybe you would think it was interesting. I don’t know.” His voice was hasty and quiet, and it was so endearing Jiaying wanted to reach over and pinch his cheeks. Instead, she waited for him to pull out his other hand and produce an object.
It was a wooden mask, painted blue and white with two ribbons cascading down from the sides. She took it from him to get a closer look, and recognized the garish smile as the same one on the cover of Love Amongst the Dragons.
“The Dark Water Spirit,” she breathed, grinning brightly. Prince Zuko perked up at her interest, nodding enthusiastically.
“My mother bought it for me when I was little,” he explained. She smiled, tracing the white outline of the eyes and taking in the craftsmanship. It was certainly well made if it had lasted this long.
“This is very neat, Prince Zuko,” she said, handing the mask back to him. “Thank you for bringing this in.”
She pulled out the next scene she had written up, and they took their places at his desk to read. He started this time, reading like he had previously. He stammered throughout, faltering whenever he would lose his place. Wordlessly, he lifted a finger to help him along.
Beside him, Jiaying felt her heart swell and held back a smile as she watched him read, the blue mask clutched tightly to his chest.