Fanfic / there is a fire in me

there is a fire in me is a Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic, written by suzukiblu on Archive of Our Own. It's completed at 25 chapters.

When Katara heals Jet's memory, he doesn't merely remember Lake Laogai but also something he very much tried to erase from himself.

Then he's fighting for his life, and accidentally firebends when Long Feng tried to crush him under a rock.

It has consequences.

Contains the following tropes

• Abandoned War Child: Longshot muses it's impossible to not know someone with a drop of Fire blood after a century of war, and Iroh alludes to "war brides". The Earth Kingdom doesn't like very much the mixed-blood offspring and it's hinted the Fire Nation are looking down on them for their tainted blood.
• Adult Adoptee: By bending Jet's fire, Zuko claimed responsability over the other teen and as such has to acknowledge him as part of his clan. Toph wonders if it means Zuko is now a dad to the slightly older Jet, but Zuko clarifies it's more like another sibling or cousin.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: What the Freedom Fighters think of firebending, meaning Jet is tainted by association. Aang himself is distressed by the idea and insists people are bad because they have a rotten personality, not because of their element.
• Black-and-White Morality: Katara and the Freedom Fighters stubbornly associate the Fire Nation with evil — to Katara, learning of Jet's firebending comes as some relief because it validates his bad nature, and the Freedom Fighters decided Jet needs to die very soon or he's going to grow into a pyromaniac murderer.
• Character Development:
  • Of course, the story's main focus is on Jet coming to terms with his Fire ancestry and the fact his racism might be excessive — Longshot and Smellerbee follow a parallel road to him as they struggle to accept Jet as a firebender instead of killing him.
  • Zuko insists to watch over the volatile and self-loathing Jet, keeping him in close quarters with Team Avatar and making him re-evaluate his opinions about the war and what the world actually needs. It culminates in him rejecting Azula when she offers him to join her party, as he feels Jet and the other teens need him.
  • Katara has an internal monologue about how leaving the Southern Pole helped her to learn the world is not black and white — sometimes, the enemy isn't wearing red, and someone you hate really needs help because they're in horrendous pain.
• Child by Rape: Iroh and Team Avatar assume Jet is one because this tends to be how mixed-blood children are conceived, but it's subverted with the prequel revealing it was a consensual affair between his parents.
• Child Prodigy: Jet at seven years old was good enough at Firebending to master training targeting twelve-years-old and his father wanted to enlist him in a military academy to nurture his potential. Iroh outright compares Jet to Azula and muses the teen's power likely helped him to survive in spite of his stubborn refusal to bend his element.
• Color-Coded Characters: The author took Jet's canon tendences for donning red clothes and turned it in a subtle reveal of his bending potential and ancestry.
• Conflicting Loyalty: As usual with Zuko, the Fire Prince is torn between fulfilling his mission and coming back home with the Avatar, or helping someone who's much more vulnerable and obviously needs help. When Azula offers him to help her to conquer Ba Sing Se, he ultimately picks Team Avatar.
• Crippling Overspecialization: It's quite rare for a firebender to learn to wield weapons, to the point that people are surprised by Jet being a gifted swordsman.
• Culture Clash:
  • Nonbender Sokka is alright with Jet receiving instruction enough to stop sparking and prevent accidental fires but not using his gift beyond that. Katara, Aang, Toph and Zuko are flat-out horror-struck at the prospect of a bender rejecting his own gift, even if Jet is a firebender.
  • Bato explains to Zuko that Sokka isn't a Prince, he's merely the Southern Water Tribe Chief's son. Zuko obviously struggles with the concept, musing the Fire Nation would label Sokka as such.
• Death Seeker: After learning he's a firebender, Jet isn't too bothered by the prospect of losing his life. He grows out of it in the last chapter, because his mother wanted for him to live.
• Entertainingly Wrong:
  • When Zuko gets to see how familiar Team Avatar is with Jet, he assumes they recruited the teen as Aang's firebending teacher — causing him to accidentally out Jet's abilities to them.
  • Iroh considers the possibility of Jet being some kind of spy for Azula when he doesn't even know the Fire Nation has a princess.
  • Jet believing Iroh is Zuko's dad is pretty justified because he's not aware of the fine details regarding the Fire Nation royal family and is currently a mite busy having a breakdown to pay attention.
• Everyone Has Standards: Team Avatar doesn't like Jet very much, with Aang bluntly calling him a bad person, but they nonetheless are unsettled by his sheer self-loathing and fraying sanity and try to encourage him to gain control over his bending.
• A Father to His Men: Why would Zuko insist to help Jet with his bending and mental issues? Jet is a firebender, and Zuko is the Fire Prince so he will take care of his people. Of course, Zuko considering Jet as his people is an unpopular move for Team Avatar and the Freedom Fighters.
• Foreign Queasine: Zuko and Jet's opinion of Water Tribe cooking.
• Freak Out: Jet's reaction after regaining his childhood memories and firebending is less than positive.
• Freudian Excuse: Jet's father was a mercenary who wanted for his son to join a military academy and become yet another soldier to die for Sozin's war. When the boy's mother disagreed and ran away with Jet, the man tracked her down to kill her in front of their child.
  • It's strongly implied that a bender not using their element will grow mentally unstable, and Jet utterly repressed his inner fire as he led the Freedom Fighters.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Everything related to the Fire Nation is evil, hence Jet having Fire blood is evil and dirty and needs for someone to kill him. At least, this is what the Freedom Fighters believe — and yes, it includes Jet himself.
• Internalized Categorism: Jet spent over a decade hating the Fire Nation, so when he learns he's a firebender, he immediately loathes himself and grows suicidal and self-destructive.
• Mama Bear: When she learned her lover wanted for her seven-year-old son to become yet another indoctrinated soldier to sacrifice in the war, Hotaru pulled a runner with Jet and taught him how to survive on his own until her lover found and killed her.
• Momma's Boy: Contrasting his sheer hatred towards his mercenary father, Jet has nothing but fond memories of the mother he lost, taking after her in his looks and affinity for swords, and ultimately regaining the will to live because she sacrificed herself to save her son and he won't waste that.
• Mundane Utility: Bato asking Zuko and Jet to help him with smoking the fish.
• Pass Fail: Jet takes a lot after his half-Earth mother, so nobody suspected him from being a firebender because his skin was on the darker side. After reawakening his abilities, however, Katara comments on his body temperature being hotter than usual, and Smellerbee remembers he never got cold or burned.
• Power Incontinence: Jet won't stop throwing sparks because his breath control is shot to hell and his sanity is too frayed for him to focus on fixing that.
• Race Lift: Jet in the story is three-quarters Fire, with his maternal grandmother being a "war bride" from the Earth Kingdom.
• Suicide by Cop: Jet is ready to let Smellerbee slit his throat because he cannot bear the idea of living as a firebender. Toph strongly objects.
• Suspect Is Hatless: Long Feng tells Azula that an "angry boy wielding matched swords" has been brainwashed by the Dai Li, leading her to use a trigger password on Zuko only for it to fail.
• Training the Gift of Magic: Jet is terrified by his own bending and rejects any possibility of training, but he needs to be taught control in order to put a stop at his Power Incontinence and it's also hinted it might help his mental health, as benders around him insist bending is something you have to do, not something you choose to do.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: As Katara wonders how Jet could forget he was a firebending, the older boy admits he didn't want to remember his father had burned his mother alive when she refused for their son to be indoctrinated as a child soldier.
• Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Jet was already pretty unsettled by the reemergence of his childhood memories, but he completely lost it when he accidentally firebended solid rock and was forced to confront the reality that he was the very enemy he wanted to eradicate.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Jet's recollections of his early childhood deeply upset him because he genuinely was a happy, energetic tyke with loving parents and a gift for firebending. Then his father murdered his mother, and Jet's mind utterly broke.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Aang congratulates Zuko and Sokka on becoming friends when he sees them bickering after coming back from Chameleon Bay, to the older boys' utter disgust.
• We Used to Be Friends: Longshot and Smellerbee are horror-struck by Jet's firebending, outright attempting to kill him, and even after he regains the will to live, Jet is aware their bond has been irremediably damaged.
• You Are What You Hate: Jet the virulently opponent to the Fire Nation is a firebender. It causes him a Freak Out of epic proportions, and the whole story is him struggling to come to terms with his ancestry.