Prompt #67: "World", Maps Have No Horizon
Title: Maps Have No Horizon
Author: Anon616
Rating: Gen
Words: 500
Genre: AU. Set before Become The Master, but you don't have to read that.
Characters: Zuko and Azula
Summary: Azula, ethics and mapreading.
When she was young, Azula’s world was the palace grounds and a pond full of turtleducks she’d throw bread at. Then her Uncle the Firelord took out his collection of maps and used them to teach his lessons.
-
“Zuko!” Azula brandishes the mask. “You stole.”
“I had to.” He explains. “They were starving.”
-
Though Azula privately thinks of Iroh as a quitter he is no coward or fool, so when he brings out the Water Tribe maps or the Earth Kingdom maps or the Air Nomad maps she listens because this is the Dragon of the West speaking now, not the idiot jester. She sits, trying to decode the symbols for water currents and air flows and land ownership and everything else beside.
But there’s not one map for each nation, but several. There’s Fire Nation Navy maps, Fire Nation Army maps, fishing maps, mercantile maps, civilian maps, historical maps, revisionist maps and Azula struggles to remember them all and thinks back to the days when all she needed was the map that hung on the wall in her father’s quarters.
-
“Are you only objecting because I took from our nation?”
Azula frowns. Isn’t the answer obvious? “…Yes?” she asks.
Her brother sighs.
-
Zuko translates between her and the maps and since that is apparently useful Azula tolerates him and teaches him a few things in trade. It only becomes worse when she realizes that her brother’s skills are not extraordinary and only considered merely very good by other people. The Firelord is understanding, curse him, but it is only with great effort that she can make the lines and drawings become anything but lines and drawings.
-
Zuko starts the chain of logic. “People dying needlessly is bad, right? So we don’t want people to stave.”
Azula nods.
“And a small bad action can be excused if it’s also a larger, good action?”
She nods again. They’ve been over this already. “So saving their lives excuses the stealing?”
He nods, and Azula stops him speaking. She wants to make the rest of the connections herself.
“So…” she says, “What you’re saying is that saving an Earth life is worth discomforting even a Fire life?”
He smiles. “That’s it.”
She commits that to memory, frowning. “This morality stuff is difficult, Zuzu.”
“It’s tricky even for us, Azula.”
-
By ‘us’ he means the mapreaders. Her father never required her to understand other people’s maps, and she misses him like she misses the palace grounds and turtleduck pond, but one of the things he taught her was practicality and for these people mapreading is apparently an important skill, so she tries her best to learn it.
Zuko’s always been there to help her read the maps.
-
At night, still thinking on the question, she turns and speaks.
“Would it have been a better or worse action, morally, if the Bei Fongs had always been poor?”
There’s a rustle from the other bed. “Go to sleep, ‘Zula.”
Author: Anon616
Rating: Gen
Words: 500
Genre: AU. Set before Become The Master, but you don't have to read that.
Characters: Zuko and Azula
Summary: Azula, ethics and mapreading.
When she was young, Azula’s world was the palace grounds and a pond full of turtleducks she’d throw bread at. Then her Uncle the Firelord took out his collection of maps and used them to teach his lessons.
-
“Zuko!” Azula brandishes the mask. “You stole.”
“I had to.” He explains. “They were starving.”
-
Though Azula privately thinks of Iroh as a quitter he is no coward or fool, so when he brings out the Water Tribe maps or the Earth Kingdom maps or the Air Nomad maps she listens because this is the Dragon of the West speaking now, not the idiot jester. She sits, trying to decode the symbols for water currents and air flows and land ownership and everything else beside.
But there’s not one map for each nation, but several. There’s Fire Nation Navy maps, Fire Nation Army maps, fishing maps, mercantile maps, civilian maps, historical maps, revisionist maps and Azula struggles to remember them all and thinks back to the days when all she needed was the map that hung on the wall in her father’s quarters.
-
“Are you only objecting because I took from our nation?”
Azula frowns. Isn’t the answer obvious? “…Yes?” she asks.
Her brother sighs.
-
Zuko translates between her and the maps and since that is apparently useful Azula tolerates him and teaches him a few things in trade. It only becomes worse when she realizes that her brother’s skills are not extraordinary and only considered merely very good by other people. The Firelord is understanding, curse him, but it is only with great effort that she can make the lines and drawings become anything but lines and drawings.
-
Zuko starts the chain of logic. “People dying needlessly is bad, right? So we don’t want people to stave.”
Azula nods.
“And a small bad action can be excused if it’s also a larger, good action?”
She nods again. They’ve been over this already. “So saving their lives excuses the stealing?”
He nods, and Azula stops him speaking. She wants to make the rest of the connections herself.
“So…” she says, “What you’re saying is that saving an Earth life is worth discomforting even a Fire life?”
He smiles. “That’s it.”
She commits that to memory, frowning. “This morality stuff is difficult, Zuzu.”
“It’s tricky even for us, Azula.”
-
By ‘us’ he means the mapreaders. Her father never required her to understand other people’s maps, and she misses him like she misses the palace grounds and turtleduck pond, but one of the things he taught her was practicality and for these people mapreading is apparently an important skill, so she tries her best to learn it.
Zuko’s always been there to help her read the maps.
-
At night, still thinking on the question, she turns and speaks.
“Would it have been a better or worse action, morally, if the Bei Fongs had always been poor?”
There’s a rustle from the other bed. “Go to sleep, ‘Zula.”