I got a lump in my throat reading this. It packs in a lot, from cruelty to gender roles to identification. It looks like Zuko was rescuing himself by rescuing the dolls, but he couldn't face the truth of his situation any more than he could face the dolls. Hence the bandages that hid their damage under the guise of healing, and hiding them away so he wouldn't have to look at them under the guise of protection. They were the physical reenactment of his shame and fear, his frustrated need to save. Only now, long after, when he's able to admit the truth of his childhood, can he take them out of hiding and see the reality of the dolls.

And now for something uncomfortable: In a continuation of my disturbing penchant for sympathizing with abusers, I surprised myself by actually feeling a flash of anger on Azula's behalf when Zuko hid away the Ursa doll. I think Azula's truth about Ursa and Zuko is that Zuko took their mom away. It's warped logic, as narcissistic logic is, but it's also the logic of the hurt and wounded because that's what narcissistic personality disorder is, a sucking vacuum at the core of being. To see this aspect of their story reenacted through the doll (though I'm pretty sure you didn't intend it that way), and to see Azula thwarted in her need to control and punish... I felt it as an injustice on her behalf, even while fully understanding and sympathizing with Zuko's need to protect the doll. Basically I hurt for them both, but maybe a little more for Azula, the implications of which sympathy discomfits me.

That's what makes this story all the better for me, that it challenges me and makes me uneasy of myself. Not bad for a "what happened to the mouse?"-type angst fest. ;) It takes a sensitive eye to turn an eye to scrap. Archeology seems to me a study of trash and ruin, the thrown away, abandoned, and forgotten. Maybe the same is true for the archeology of our personal histories.