CR Chart
the last voyages.
Iroh is probably the one person who’s had the most influence on Zuko’s life. Ever since Iroh’s son Lu Ten was killed during his siege on Ba Sing Se, he’s considered Zuko to be his son, and Zuko considers him to be more of a father to him than Ozai ever was. The two have stuck together through almost everything, and Iroh was the main force guiding Zuko towards his own redemption. Zuko puts a lot of faith in his uncle’s words, and often turns towards his example to try and work through difficult situations. Iroh is also the first one Zuko jumps to defend when someone speaks badly of the Fire Nation or his family, because while he’s redeemed himself too, he still has a lot of issues over what he’s done in the name of the Fire Nation and isn’t trying to tell people to forgive him for what he’s done, while Iroh - especially since the death of his son - has always been a good man.
On the Barge, Zuko’s usually torn between wanting to ask his uncle for advice about everything, and wanting to prove he can do all of this himself. Hopefully he’ll strike a good balance sooner rather than later.
IROH
The inmate. Vanessa is like a horrifying combination of Jet, Azula and Zuko himself, and she’s a source of a lot of angst and frustration for him. Even though he went through his own redemption already, and he can clearly identify with Vanessa in that sense, and understands where she’s coming from, he really has no idea what he’s doing, and it frustrates him that there’s basically zero trust between the two of them. He knows what it’s like to not be trusted, but back home, he was able to prove to Aang and the others relatively quickly that he was on their side, while Vanessa still sees him as the enemy.
Still, he’d like to think he can help her, and after outing her as Hope to the rest of the Barge, he arranged for the Admiral to give her some of her abilities back, and got her less lethal copies of her usual daggers in exchange for Narvin’s knives. This has sort of smoothed over the anger over Hope for now, but Zuko’s pretty sure if she’s been scheming with Narvin, it means she’s been scheming with other people, and he’s pretty much preparing himself for a long, drawn out, extremely frustrating road to redemption, paved with misunderstandings and potential poisoning attempts.
VANESSA VANCLEEF
Wanda is actually pretty cool, and Zuko’s barely even sure why she’s an inmate. She’s clearly a good person, but implied it had something to do with her father, his methods, and ideology, something Zuko can relate to only too well. She’s told him some details of her life back home and knows that he’s a Firebender, and considering they’ve both got issues with sort of crazy parents, it’s potentially very likely that they’ll talk about that in the future.
They’ve helped each other out during floods and various other Barge events, and Wanda also works in the kitchens with Iroh. While Zuko’s not exactly great at the whole being a normal teenager who has friends thing or anything like that, even now, he does consider her to be one.
WANDA MAXIMOFF
Chromie looks small and innocent, but she is secretly a dragon. Seriously. This was revealed during their field trip to Jurassic Park, where her inmate was stupid enough to kidnap a T-Rex egg and was subsequently attacked by the mother, and Chromie and Zuko had to intervene to stop him from getting eaten. Zuko was, at first, pretty freaked out, but considering she usually seems like a nice, normal person, it actually won her some points in the long run. Zuko likes her, and considering she’s from Vanessa’s world, he’ll probably turn to her for some information at some point, because it’s pretty different from the world he’s familiar with.
CHROMIE
Spike is kind of an asshole, but in a way that Zuko can get along with him and sort of enjoy talking to him. He was one of the wardens who wasn’t opposed to killing Sveta, but also wasn’t taking huge steps to make sure it happened, so Zuko and him are more or less kind of on the same page. He’s also given him a little bit of info into what the standard non Avatar world is like, which has been helpful for getting used to the Barge.
SPIKE
Tim’s a good guy, and Zuko likes him pretty okay. He admires that he was willing to go to the bat for an inmate who wasn’t his own, when Bourne was more or less abusing David, and apparently he’s sort of chummy with Iroh, which is usually a good sign in favor of someone being a good person.
TIM DRAKE
Olive told Zuko she’s seen him on TV. This was. Weird. Especially considering Zuko had no idea what a television was before coming to the Barge. She’s also very typical teenage girl, which is something he’s got basically zero experience with, considering most of his friends/acquaintances aren’t normal teenagers, but… she seems okay. She’s apparently super interested in Firebending and hasn’t pushed him on issues he doesn’t want to talk about, so either she doesn’t know his whole history or is polite enough not to ask, which is more than fine by him.
OLIVE PENDERGHAST
Narvin is an idiot who armed Vanessa with intent for her to go kill Sveta, and is apparently too cowardly to actually face the consequences of his actions, telling Zuko not to tell Vanessa he found out about the knives from him, but rather from the Admiral. This totally did not sit well with Zuko at all when he found out, and he, frankly, thinks very little of Narvin because of it. If he wanted to kill Sveta, he should have done it himself, not armed someone else and encouraged their behavior, especially when the other person’s an inmate who is supposed to be here for redemption, not for wardens to aid and abet their schemes.
Apparently Vanessa reminds him from someone he knew back home, but Zuko still doesn’t really get why that would make his behavior excusable at all. Narvin’s setting up the other wardens for failure in the eyes of his inmate, and Zuko’s told him that if he hears about anything else like this happening, he’ll go to the other wardens and reveal what the Time Lord’s been up to.
NARVIN
Kay was the first one to let Zuko know something was up with Vanessa and Narvin, and Zuko later checked in with him when Narvin told him what had happened.
Kay’s apparently planning on marrying the guy. Zuko’s… not totally sure what to think of being given this apparently sensitive information, but he won’t tell anyone.
AGENT K
Luke kind of came off as a moron the first time he and Zuko spoke, basically telling him stuff Zuko already knew about Vanessa because one, he’s talked to her before and two, he has her file now, and considering Zuko’s an impatient person, this wasn’t exactly the best way to go about talking with him.
LUKE CAGE
Wanda’s Warden. Zuko and Tony have only talked once, during a flood where both were cute, fluffy animals, and Tony gave Zuko a little bit of info on the world he comes from, which, like most of the other residents of the Barge’s homeworlds, is pretty different from Zuko’s.
TONY FOSTER
Marco knew of Azula when she was on the Barge briefly a few months ago, and was one of the first people to give him some information about her time on the Barge. He didn’t exactly have a ton of information, but that was enough to get him wondering what else people knew about her while she was here.
MARCO CAMPBELL
Arthas is a troll who thinks bending looks kind of like dancing.
Also Vanessa hates him.
ARTHAS
Nygma offered Zuko information about his sister’s time on the Barge the first time they spoke, and later told Vanessa Zuko had outed her as Hope to the other wardens. He’s also apparently trying to convince her to make potions for him.
If Zuko ever finds out about this, he’ll be pretty much leading the lynch mob against Nygma, because seriously, encouraging Vanessa to make potions =/= a good warden.
EDWARD NYGMA
Another person from Vanessa’s world, Zuko doesn’t know Tirion well, but apparently, he accompanied her into port before Zuko’s arrival on the Barge. He’s pretty sure this means Vanessa used her Hope persona to con him into letting her smuggle some stuff back, although what that is, he’s not sure yet.
TIRION FORDRING
Iroh’s inmate. Zuko doesn’t know Valmont particularly well at all, although he finds his predicament to be both interesting and kind of horrifying.
And while Iroh’s certainly more than capable of taking care of himself, Zuko’s still going to keep an ear out for anything that could mean an issue between his uncle and the man he’s helping towards redemption.
VALMONT/SHENDU
Leezar is Chromie’s idiot inmate, who tried to steal a T-Rex egg in port and almost got eaten by its mother, until some timely Firebending and Chromie’s subsequent transformation into her true form - a huge bronze dragon - scared it off.
LEEZAR
David is an asshole, who apparently spied on his sister. He seems to think this is something Zuko would either be really interested in or really angry about, but really, Zuko just thinks David’s lucky Azula never caught him.
He also has it in his head that the Fire Nation’s some backwards, third world country, and doesn’t seem to get that just because a world lacks some of the technology his does, doesn’t make it some horrible place to live. Zuko’s not proud of what his nation’s done, but he’s still got some national pride, and David’s apparent eagerness to try working with flamethrowers didn’t exactly endear him to the other teenager either.
Basically, David’s someone to keep an eye on.
DAVID
Within the first couple days of Zuko’s time on the Barge, Sveta let her powers slip and curse the whole Barge, apparently almost sending it down and really just causing a fair amount of trauma and damage for everyone on board. She claimed it was punishment for what they’d done to her, and Zuko confronted her about it, saying she was hurting people who had done nothing to her and didn’t deserve to die just because she was upset, and she had the ability to stop it, she just needed to do it instead of whining about how hard it was.
Apparently she’s worked out whatever issues she had - at least, to the public eye, Zuko’s got some personal doubts - he’s still not really her biggest fan, in that people who are willing to give up and throw in the towel at signs of adversity aren’t exactly people he likes associating himself with. He certainly has sympathy, but considering all the shit that’s been thrown at him, it’s hard for him to really sympathize with ragequits.
SVETLANA NAZAROVA
the departed.
Somehow, even though she’s not on the Barge, Azula’s still managing to ruin Zuko’s life. She was here briefly, and made enough of an impression on people to be labeled as "crazy pyro princess from some place called the Fire Nation", and while that in and of itself isn’t inaccurate or necessarily a bad thing, people have seemed confused about what the Fire Nation is actually like, and what Zuko’s like because of it.
This is especially an issue with Vanessa, as she has a number of issues with royalty and authority figures, and Azula (and Ozai and a lot of Fire Nation history) represents pretty much exactly what she hates. She’s having a hard time accepting that Zuko isn’t like that, and he’s really not sure what he’s supposed to do other than wait it out and hope she comes around.
There’s also the issue that Azula was here apparently from before the end of the war, and last time Zuko checked, she didn’t die several weeks ago back home. This… actually kind of bothers him, because while she’s insane and has tried to kill him on more than one occasion, he still doesn’t want her dead.
AZULA
Howie was an idealist. Zuko used to think people like him were idiots for not understanding what had to be done in the name of protecting innocent people or ending a conflict, but Aang showing mercy to Ozai - removing his bending, but not killing him - opened his eyes to the fact that maybe, sometimes, violence isn’t the only solution to resolve huge, violent conflicts. While he encouraged Howie to think about what would happen if he couldn’t stop Sveta by talking to her, he encouraged the rest of the Barge to give Howie a shot at fixing the problem himself before any further action was taken.
He graduated his inmate and left the Barge, and Zuko kind of can’t help but wonder if anyone else is going to have the courage to stand up the way he did the next time the Barge is calling for someone’s blood.
NEIL HOWIE
Steph was… sort of weird. While she was certainly friendly to him, in their first conversation, she seemed to want to encourage him to stay on the Barge for forever, something he’s not willing to consider as he has duties at home that he needs to go back to at some point. She also publically posted herself changing into some weird suit during the Sveta crisis, which was all kinds of embarrassing for everyone involved, and generally, Zuko didn’t exactly know what to make of her.
She vanished without explanation or warning, so he never really got to figure out if this was just girls being weird, or what she was actually like.
STEPHANIE BROWN