Avatar- "Year One"
Title: Year One
Universe: Avatar the Last Airbender
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Zuko focus
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for the end of the series.
Word Count: 3,790
Summary: The things a young Fire Lord learns at the beginning of his reign.
Dedication: a very late holiday present for gaisce. I finally finished the series! And I tried, I really did. This is not the fic I had planned on writing you at all. It started OUT as that idea we talked about with dick-face diplomats harassing the fail!Fire Lord, but you know. Sometimes things take on a mind of their own.
A/N: Considering the fact that I watched most of the series a couple of years ago and then just finished the last 10 episodes this week, my memory is incredibly shaky on most of the details. I hope I was vague enough that my mistakes aren’t too jarring.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Words have power.
It is the first thing Zuko learns upon becoming the Fire Lord, as he is looking down at his father-at the fearsome Lord Ozai- stretched pathetically upon the floor of his small jail cell, tired and beaten. As Zuko eagerly waits for the defeated man to answer him, he allows himself to feel, for the first time in a long time, a sort of hope, a sort of power, a sort of triumph over this person who had held so much of him prisoner for so very long.
Zuko is indestructible in those moments; he knows that today is the world’s new beginning and there is nothing that can mar it, that can make it less than perfect. He wants to see his mother again.
Because today, for him, anything is possible.
Except that when Ozai finally deigns to speak, he simply says, “I don’t know,” and nothing else.
The way he says it is weak and broken, but even still, Zuko discovers then that three little words can be more painful than burning flames, more incapacitating than the blows of water and air and earth and all the elements combined.
~~~~~
In the months that follow, Zuko learns that while war is horrible, peace is difficult.
The trials that come after the end of the war have the power to destroy the simplicity of his worldview, to shatter the clean dividing lines between black and white that in the months before, had made him so determined to wage war against his own flesh and blood.
On the day he took the throne he promised the world that he would restore the honor of the Fire Nation. The other kingdoms had taken heart from those promises, had believed him because the Avatar did, because the blood of Avatars past ran through his veins.
Now, the people cry out for justice. In their letters and their petitions to him-oh Venerable Fire Lord- he learns of uncountable horrors from the very people who had survived them. He reads them all and takes them into his own heart knowing that he must reconcile what is to be done in their aftermath.
These are the people of the world’s nations, whom his own have greatly wronged. He promised them he would give them peace.
And yet the people who committed those acts-oftentimes under order-are now his people as well. They are his responsibility and they look to him for guidance, for redemption.
As Fire Lord, Zuko pores over thousands of angry, horrible letters every day and does not know what to do. This is far more difficult, he thinks, than anything he had ever done before. It had been much simpler to plot the deaths of his own sister and father than to endure this.
Letters in hand, he wonders how he is to respond.
“…happened when your Northern Raiders destroyed my village several years ago, oh honorable Fire Lord. My entire family was executed in the town square like criminals, simply for requesting extra rations to get us through the winter…”
”… I demand a response to this crime. More to the point, I demand the execution of my brother’s killer for the horrible acts he committed. My brother was only ten years old and the only family…”
“What will you do, Young King?”
“…surely you will not let this tragedy be forgotten. An entire valley, razed to the ground for refusal to comply…”
“Captain Lu is now a decorated member of your war council. To allow such a cruel man to hold such a high office in light of his transgressions against the Earth Kingdom cannot be allowed, I feel, if you are to keep your promise and restore the honor of your nation.”
“… some crimes simply cannot be forgiven.”
“…But I swear on my honor as a Fire Nation soldier that Lieutenant Tsueng was acting under orders then, as Admiral Jian explicitly told us that everyone who disobeyed curfew was to be publically executed. Surely he cannot be held accountable for complying with the direct wishes of a superior officer…”
“…the child had stolen Major Yin’s sword and posed an immediate threat to the surrounding troops when he was shot…”
“Do not abandon us in our time of need, My Liege!”
“…supplies were scarce in the forests and we knew that location would be used by Earth Kingdom troops for refueling. If we hadn’t acted, surely our men would have starved, or been annihilated by the Earth Kingdom’s more well-supplied regiments.”
“Captain Lu is a hero who risked his life to protect those of his men at all costs, under the most trying of circumstances during the war.”
“What shall be done about this, Fire Lord?”
“…in war, Lord Zuko, some things are simply inevitable.”
“How shall this be addressed, Lord Zuko?”
“Please…”
“…do something.”
Zuko sighs and puts the letters down, fighting back the urge to burn them all to cinders with a flick of his wrist. Part of him longs to return to a more simplistic state of mind, one where he could simply offer to help track down the guilty parties alongside the vengeful kin of those they’d wronged. But that road is long closed to him; he’d been a boy without a nation then, an enemy of the perpetrators. Surely now, nothing can be as simple as it had been then, when he’d given an enraged Katara the right to decide the fate of her mother’s killer.
For one, Zuko knows now that Captain Lu is a man with two young daughters and a burning desire to better the country, particularly with trade between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, where he had been stationed for many years. Whether or not Captain Lu torched that orphanage to the ground goes without question, but Zuko wonders if it is his two children who should ultimately pay the price for his actions in the long run, whether those dead orphans would feel avenged or not by tearing apart another family as their survivors cry out for the Captain’s death.
The other soldiers brought to his attention in the letters-more often than not-mirror the situation that Captain Lu’s does; they are good men who have been raised to believe things that are not true and asked to do things in the name of those beliefs that are unholy.
In moments of frustration, Zuko thinks that if he had his way he’d simply blame the whole thing on the half of his family that is crazy and offer to publically execute Azula and his dad for everything that had gone wrong over the past couple of generations, but part of him-the part that still dreams about seeing his mother again-knows that it isn’t the path to take, that it is a very narrow margin that differentiates him from his sister and father.
So he ends up slumping in his chair instead, sitting alone in his office, holding letters full of anger and pain and loss and not knowing the first thing to do to make them better.
~~~~~
One afternoon, Mai tells him she thinks he might be a workaholic.
“I don’t actually like what I’m doing,” he assures her, and tries not to sound like he’s whining. Fire Lords probably shouldn’t whine. He looks determined instead, while holding his proposal for a war crimes trial system that will be impartially overseen by an even mixture of Fire, Earth, and Water nation representatives. He is fairly certain that Fire Lords should be determined after all (though not in the crazy way).
His girlfriend sighs from the doorway, professionally. “You know, if Azula were Fire Lord she’d make them all deal with their own issues.”
He stares at her. “No she wouldn’t. She’d hit them all with lightning and then make the guards dispose of the bodies.”
She shrugs, but doesn’t disagree. “Maybe I’m just saying you’re being too nice.”
He looks at her questioningly, and after a minute her features soften just a little, just enough so that someone like him can tell. It’s a smile, almost, one that’s a little helpless and a little tired but ultimately understanding. “You still need to eat,” she says, stubbornly.
He winces before sheepishly motioning to the documents on the table in front of him. “Yeah, I know. I just…”
She rolls her eyes and heads towards the door. “We’ll just have dinner in here. It’ll be like a picnic on the rug instead. Grass has always been too…grassy anyway. At least this way you can’t stand me up again.”
He smiles at her and for a moment, forgets about the wax seal in his hands, the maps on his table, the deadlines in his future. “That sounds nice,” he says, and means it.
She closes the door behind her, and once she’s gone, he carefully begins pulling her throwing knives out of the wall behind him, one by one.
That day he learns that maybe he is too nice, and even that comes at a price.
~~~~~
Six months into his first year as Fire Lord, as he is seeing off an airship of accused Fire Nation soldiers to where they will be tried on Kiyoshi Island, a little boy runs up to him and kicks him in the shin.
His personal guard reacts, prepared to strike the child dead for deigning to harm him.
Zuko orders them still with a wave of his hand, while the boy sobs and punches him and screams at the top of his lungs at Zuko’s stomach.
“Why are you taking my father away?!” the boy demands, lip quivering, eyes steely.
As it is, Zuko is the one to look away first. “He might come back,” he says to the boy, the same words he tells himself every night when he thinks of his own mother.
The boy swipes at his tears hopelessly. “He might not.”
In the distance, the airship disappears over the mountains, and the little boy keeps wiping away tears that don’t stop falling.
Zuko realizes that he can’t please everyone, no matter how hard he tries.
~~~~~
Zuko receives a letter from Aang one day, the Avatar’s handwriting obvious amidst the fistfuls of official ones that come to Zuko’s desk daily. Determined to display some discipline, the young Fire Lord purposefully sets it aside for the better part of the day so that he can work. But after he reads the casualty list in a report about a recent riot between Fire Nation nationals who reside in Ba Sing Se and the city’s natives, he forces himself to take a break.
When he opens the seal on the letter he automatically feels the muscles in his back relax for the first time in a long time. He reads about Aang’s adventures in Omashu (many of which involve a city-wide game of earth tag with Bumi) and an epic gum-necessitated haircut for Appa. Ty Lee still has a thing for Sokka (which disturbs him and annoys Suki), and yesterday Momo accidentally ate a shiny marble, which everyone hopes will pass. The Earth King’s bear was distraught over the loss of his favorite marble.
Midway through the missive, Zuko-with some surprise- realizes he does remember what his own laughter sounds like.
He wonders if it is too bad that there is no one else around to hear it.
When he takes out a sheet of parchment to write his reply, he begins by reminding Aang to practice his fire bending.
“The next time I see you, there will be a test.”
~~~~~
He doesn’t visit her because he particularly wants to, but because he thinks their mother would want him to. The fact that Mai asks how she’s doing sometimes also pushes him forward, even though making the trek down to Azula’s cell and listening to her haunted, hopeless laughter echo through the lonely walls really gives him the creeps.
“You’re getting fat, Zuzu,” she coos at him this time, examining the shackles around her wrists like they are the finest of the Fire Nation’s royal jewels. “I can see it rolling off of you, all white and soft and weak. It disgusts me.”
“How are you doing, Azula?” he asks, and feels his heart clench with something like pity when he sees her. He knows she doesn’t deserve it, but she’s still his little sister.
She just sneers at him, eyes unfocused through the cracks of dirty hair hanging limply in her face, breath smoking just a little bit, with the ghost of a power she once had full command of. “Come closer and see for yourself.”
He doesn’t. “Are you comfortable?” he asks instead. “I know it can get cold down here sometimes. I can have them bring you more blankets.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” she hisses. “I am the Fire Lord. I can have you executed with a snap of my fingers, you sniveling loser. You’re just lucky I have so many better things to do.”
She goes back to dreamily examining her shackles.
He never knows what to say to her in those moments, so sometimes he doesn’t say anything at all. He sits down across from her and listens instead, wondering how people with the exact same blood running through their veins came out so completely different in the end.
He brings her some extra blankets the following evening and marvels at how he ever feared someone so incredibly fragile.
In those moments in the dungeon, he learns more about her than he ever did while they were growing up.
~~~~~
On the rare occasions that he visits his father, neither of them has anything to say at all.
He realizes that in itself speaks volumes.
~~~~~
When Mai’s parents are formally presented to him at a party following her father’s release from an Omashu prison, Zuko wonders if any Fire Lords before him had ever-in their entire reigns-felt like running and hiding under the royal bed until everything has blown over.
According to his uncle, many probably have, it’s just never been recorded in any history books.
Zuko finds that comforting to know.
~~~~~
The knock on his door in early summer isn’t a knock so much as the door being shoved open. And then crushed a little.
“I thought I said no interru…” Zuko starts, doing his best stern Fire Lord face only to falter halfway through when he realizes that it means absolutely nothing to the object of his objections.
A familiar countenance grins back at him from the half-bent doorway. “Fancy digs, Lord Flamey Pants.”
Toph strolls in, whistling as she takes in each piece of ornate furniture and fragrant wood her senses reveal to her inside the room. “Kind of rank in here though, you bathed recently?”
He’d spent the last two days holed up in here, drafting, actually.
“Pardon, my lord,” Zuko’s elderly aide, Chu Wi, mumbles from the doorway, before he is forced aside to make way for a second visitor. “The diplomats from the Water and Earth kingdoms have arrived. They insisted upon seeing you immediately.”
Zuko tries to keep the goofy look off his face. “I see.”
“So this is where the Honorable Lord Z spends his time, huh?” his second guest declares, loudly. “I don’t know, it doesn’t fit my image of the feared Fire Lord. Too many potted plants, maybe. Toph?”
“Definitely too Fancy Pants for Zuko,” the small earth bender agrees, before plopping down in the chair across from Zuko’s desk and picking at her toes. “Is he sitting there with a stupid look on his face?”
Zuko hastily closes his mouth. “No.”
Sokka grins. “Yes.” He perches on the edge of Zuko’s desk. “So, what does it take to get a decent order of dumplings around here?”
“Hospitality!” Toph agrees, throwing her tiny arms up over her head. “I’m starving.”
Zuko sighs and rings the small silver bell on his desk, wherein Chu Wi pokes his head through the doorway again, however reluctantly. “My lord?”
“Lunch, please,” Zuko says. “Thank you.”
“Of course, my lord.” Chu Wi bows solemnly and exits the room again.
“Nothing with the head still on this time, Chewy!” Sokka adds, as the door closes behind the sour-faced old man. Then the duo smiles broadly at the weary Fire Lord.
Zuko is resolved not to smile back; they really need to learn how to not make a scene wherever they go. Chu Wi already doesn’t approve of a lot of the way Zuko runs things as is. “You guys are here a week early. The summit isn’t until Monday.”
Sokka shrugs noncommittally. “Well, you know, rebuilding is going so smoothly in my neck of the woods I thought it’d be nice to take a little vacation, see some of the sights in the Fire Nation now that they aren’t trying to kill me…”
“Bozo forgot Suki’s birthday,” Toph clarifies, neatly.
Zuko winces sympathetically.
“I did not forget! I was only making her think that way,” Sokka insists. “That way the present I got her will be an even bigger surprise. It’s a strategy.”
Toph smirks. “To get kicked in the teeth? Because congrats, it totally worked.”
Zuko clears his throat. “So you’re pulling strings to hide out under the Fire Lord’s protection?”
Sokka grins. “And because I want to see my favorite grumpy-faced sourpuss!”
Zuko’s eyebrow twitches. “I can have a messenger hawk to Suki in five hours…”
“My best friend in the world,” Sokka corrects, solemnly.
“What about you?” Zuko asks Toph, relaxing a little bit in his chair for the first time in over forty-eight hours.
“You still owe me a magical field trip,” she tells him, bluntly. “Pay up.”
Zuko blinks. “Uuuhm…”
Her smile broadens. “Don’t worry, Flamey Pants, I’ve already got all the particulars worked out!” She pulls a rolled up parchment from her pocket and slams it down on his desk, on top of all his other ones. “The Annual Fire Bending Tournament of Death!” she crows, fists pumping skyward in the sort of raptures only big sweaty men duking it out in a flaming pit of death for ultimate honor can induce.
“The Annual Fire Bending Tournament of Death,” Zuko echoes, though with decidedly less enthusiasm.
“Exactly! All you need to do is pull some Fire Lord strings to get us tickets! I’ll consider us even after that, on account of this obviously changing my life. I hear last year, some guy lost his arm!”
“Wow,” Zuko manages, awkwardly.
“Damn skippy!” she replies, standing on her chair. Then, “You can get tickets, right?”
Zuko can, he just isn’t sure he has the time. He motions helplessly to his paperwork. “Yeah, but…”
Toph crosses her arms.”Magical life changing field trip,” she says, pointedly.
Zuko swallows. “Right.”
When Chu Wi returns with their lunch a few moments later, Zuko asks him to please procure tickets to the event. “Box seats.”
Toph is walking on air for the rest of the day after that, and the following afternoon, as Zuko watches some guy in a spandex suit who calls himself The Hotness trade blows with a masked-marauder named The Grand Torcherer while Toph is shouting at the top of her lungs for blood in the seat beside his, he finds himself-oddly enough-remembering what it’s like to be a teenager again.
Personally, his money is on the Hotness.
~~~~~
The first anniversary of his ascent to the throne also signifies the first year of peace.
The council of elders votes to have a parade through the city with Zuko at its apex. A feast is scheduled for afterward, with a special presentation by the Ember Island Players (Zuko can only roll his eyes when he hears) and a tribute to the Avatar.
They want him to prepare a speech, one as stirring as his inaugural one, one that will give hope to a nation still in transition, rebuilding after a war, and trying to regain the trust of its fellow countries. “Show them your strength,” his advisors say, “show them that the Fire Lord is strong and that through these times, he-and indeed his people-will somehow endure. You are the symbol of our new nation, Lord Zuko.”
He says he will.
He struggles horribly with the words for many nights and days after that, unable to find a place to start. It lasts up until the moment the foreign dignitaries begin to arrive for the celebration, up until the moment Aang and Katara walk into his house bearing a small satchel that has come with them all the way from a famous tea house in Ba Sing Se as a special delivery just for him.
“My most harmonious blend,” the attached note reads, in familiar script that is very, very dear, “for a most momentous occasion. ”
“We both helped test it out!” Aang announces around a broad smile, as he hands it to Zuko.
It is in that moment that inspiration hits; Zuko hastily, if sheepishly, excuses himself from the room before bolting back into his study and locking the door behind him.
“Was it something I said?” Aang asks Katara, clearly puzzled.
She laughs and squeezes his shoulder. “I’m sure the Fire Lord is very busy,” she says simply, and suggests that they go and unpack in preparation for the parade.
In the meantime, Zuko writes the opening to a speech that he hopes will inspire a nation in turmoil, as well as show how that nation has changed.
“The Fire Nation is strong,” he writes, “not because of our armies or our weapons or even our warrior spirits. I know that we are truly strong because of our neighbors, because of our families, because of our friends and loved-ones. Even if the road ahead is one full of struggle, the knowledge that we are not alone no matter how dark the past or how frightening the present will drive us forward to a better tomorrow. All we have to do is learn to trust in one another, beyond the boundaries of nationality and history. Only our friendships can save us, brought by our own willingness to reflect upon our actions and our determination to change ourselves for the better. We are not alone. We have never been alone.”
The satchel of tea sits peacefully at his desk as he scribbles away, and sometime later, when he is finished with his address, he leans back and picks it up again, bringing it to his nose and taking in the scents of harmony and celebration.
More than anyone, Fire Lord Zuko has learned that no one in this world ever did anything worthwhile alone.
END
Edits?
Universe: Avatar the Last Airbender
Theme/Topic: N/A
Rating: PG
Character/Pairing/s: Zuko focus
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for the end of the series.
Word Count: 3,790
Summary: The things a young Fire Lord learns at the beginning of his reign.
Dedication: a very late holiday present for gaisce. I finally finished the series! And I tried, I really did. This is not the fic I had planned on writing you at all. It started OUT as that idea we talked about with dick-face diplomats harassing the fail!Fire Lord, but you know. Sometimes things take on a mind of their own.
A/N: Considering the fact that I watched most of the series a couple of years ago and then just finished the last 10 episodes this week, my memory is incredibly shaky on most of the details. I hope I was vague enough that my mistakes aren’t too jarring.
Disclaimer: No harm or infringement intended.
Words have power.
It is the first thing Zuko learns upon becoming the Fire Lord, as he is looking down at his father-at the fearsome Lord Ozai- stretched pathetically upon the floor of his small jail cell, tired and beaten. As Zuko eagerly waits for the defeated man to answer him, he allows himself to feel, for the first time in a long time, a sort of hope, a sort of power, a sort of triumph over this person who had held so much of him prisoner for so very long.
Zuko is indestructible in those moments; he knows that today is the world’s new beginning and there is nothing that can mar it, that can make it less than perfect. He wants to see his mother again.
Because today, for him, anything is possible.
Except that when Ozai finally deigns to speak, he simply says, “I don’t know,” and nothing else.
The way he says it is weak and broken, but even still, Zuko discovers then that three little words can be more painful than burning flames, more incapacitating than the blows of water and air and earth and all the elements combined.
~~~~~
In the months that follow, Zuko learns that while war is horrible, peace is difficult.
The trials that come after the end of the war have the power to destroy the simplicity of his worldview, to shatter the clean dividing lines between black and white that in the months before, had made him so determined to wage war against his own flesh and blood.
On the day he took the throne he promised the world that he would restore the honor of the Fire Nation. The other kingdoms had taken heart from those promises, had believed him because the Avatar did, because the blood of Avatars past ran through his veins.
Now, the people cry out for justice. In their letters and their petitions to him-oh Venerable Fire Lord- he learns of uncountable horrors from the very people who had survived them. He reads them all and takes them into his own heart knowing that he must reconcile what is to be done in their aftermath.
These are the people of the world’s nations, whom his own have greatly wronged. He promised them he would give them peace.
And yet the people who committed those acts-oftentimes under order-are now his people as well. They are his responsibility and they look to him for guidance, for redemption.
As Fire Lord, Zuko pores over thousands of angry, horrible letters every day and does not know what to do. This is far more difficult, he thinks, than anything he had ever done before. It had been much simpler to plot the deaths of his own sister and father than to endure this.
Letters in hand, he wonders how he is to respond.
“…happened when your Northern Raiders destroyed my village several years ago, oh honorable Fire Lord. My entire family was executed in the town square like criminals, simply for requesting extra rations to get us through the winter…”
”… I demand a response to this crime. More to the point, I demand the execution of my brother’s killer for the horrible acts he committed. My brother was only ten years old and the only family…”
“What will you do, Young King?”
“…surely you will not let this tragedy be forgotten. An entire valley, razed to the ground for refusal to comply…”
“Captain Lu is now a decorated member of your war council. To allow such a cruel man to hold such a high office in light of his transgressions against the Earth Kingdom cannot be allowed, I feel, if you are to keep your promise and restore the honor of your nation.”
“… some crimes simply cannot be forgiven.”
“…But I swear on my honor as a Fire Nation soldier that Lieutenant Tsueng was acting under orders then, as Admiral Jian explicitly told us that everyone who disobeyed curfew was to be publically executed. Surely he cannot be held accountable for complying with the direct wishes of a superior officer…”
“…the child had stolen Major Yin’s sword and posed an immediate threat to the surrounding troops when he was shot…”
“Do not abandon us in our time of need, My Liege!”
“…supplies were scarce in the forests and we knew that location would be used by Earth Kingdom troops for refueling. If we hadn’t acted, surely our men would have starved, or been annihilated by the Earth Kingdom’s more well-supplied regiments.”
“Captain Lu is a hero who risked his life to protect those of his men at all costs, under the most trying of circumstances during the war.”
“What shall be done about this, Fire Lord?”
“…in war, Lord Zuko, some things are simply inevitable.”
“How shall this be addressed, Lord Zuko?”
“Please…”
“…do something.”
Zuko sighs and puts the letters down, fighting back the urge to burn them all to cinders with a flick of his wrist. Part of him longs to return to a more simplistic state of mind, one where he could simply offer to help track down the guilty parties alongside the vengeful kin of those they’d wronged. But that road is long closed to him; he’d been a boy without a nation then, an enemy of the perpetrators. Surely now, nothing can be as simple as it had been then, when he’d given an enraged Katara the right to decide the fate of her mother’s killer.
For one, Zuko knows now that Captain Lu is a man with two young daughters and a burning desire to better the country, particularly with trade between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, where he had been stationed for many years. Whether or not Captain Lu torched that orphanage to the ground goes without question, but Zuko wonders if it is his two children who should ultimately pay the price for his actions in the long run, whether those dead orphans would feel avenged or not by tearing apart another family as their survivors cry out for the Captain’s death.
The other soldiers brought to his attention in the letters-more often than not-mirror the situation that Captain Lu’s does; they are good men who have been raised to believe things that are not true and asked to do things in the name of those beliefs that are unholy.
In moments of frustration, Zuko thinks that if he had his way he’d simply blame the whole thing on the half of his family that is crazy and offer to publically execute Azula and his dad for everything that had gone wrong over the past couple of generations, but part of him-the part that still dreams about seeing his mother again-knows that it isn’t the path to take, that it is a very narrow margin that differentiates him from his sister and father.
So he ends up slumping in his chair instead, sitting alone in his office, holding letters full of anger and pain and loss and not knowing the first thing to do to make them better.
~~~~~
One afternoon, Mai tells him she thinks he might be a workaholic.
“I don’t actually like what I’m doing,” he assures her, and tries not to sound like he’s whining. Fire Lords probably shouldn’t whine. He looks determined instead, while holding his proposal for a war crimes trial system that will be impartially overseen by an even mixture of Fire, Earth, and Water nation representatives. He is fairly certain that Fire Lords should be determined after all (though not in the crazy way).
His girlfriend sighs from the doorway, professionally. “You know, if Azula were Fire Lord she’d make them all deal with their own issues.”
He stares at her. “No she wouldn’t. She’d hit them all with lightning and then make the guards dispose of the bodies.”
She shrugs, but doesn’t disagree. “Maybe I’m just saying you’re being too nice.”
He looks at her questioningly, and after a minute her features soften just a little, just enough so that someone like him can tell. It’s a smile, almost, one that’s a little helpless and a little tired but ultimately understanding. “You still need to eat,” she says, stubbornly.
He winces before sheepishly motioning to the documents on the table in front of him. “Yeah, I know. I just…”
She rolls her eyes and heads towards the door. “We’ll just have dinner in here. It’ll be like a picnic on the rug instead. Grass has always been too…grassy anyway. At least this way you can’t stand me up again.”
He smiles at her and for a moment, forgets about the wax seal in his hands, the maps on his table, the deadlines in his future. “That sounds nice,” he says, and means it.
She closes the door behind her, and once she’s gone, he carefully begins pulling her throwing knives out of the wall behind him, one by one.
That day he learns that maybe he is too nice, and even that comes at a price.
~~~~~
Six months into his first year as Fire Lord, as he is seeing off an airship of accused Fire Nation soldiers to where they will be tried on Kiyoshi Island, a little boy runs up to him and kicks him in the shin.
His personal guard reacts, prepared to strike the child dead for deigning to harm him.
Zuko orders them still with a wave of his hand, while the boy sobs and punches him and screams at the top of his lungs at Zuko’s stomach.
“Why are you taking my father away?!” the boy demands, lip quivering, eyes steely.
As it is, Zuko is the one to look away first. “He might come back,” he says to the boy, the same words he tells himself every night when he thinks of his own mother.
The boy swipes at his tears hopelessly. “He might not.”
In the distance, the airship disappears over the mountains, and the little boy keeps wiping away tears that don’t stop falling.
Zuko realizes that he can’t please everyone, no matter how hard he tries.
~~~~~
Zuko receives a letter from Aang one day, the Avatar’s handwriting obvious amidst the fistfuls of official ones that come to Zuko’s desk daily. Determined to display some discipline, the young Fire Lord purposefully sets it aside for the better part of the day so that he can work. But after he reads the casualty list in a report about a recent riot between Fire Nation nationals who reside in Ba Sing Se and the city’s natives, he forces himself to take a break.
When he opens the seal on the letter he automatically feels the muscles in his back relax for the first time in a long time. He reads about Aang’s adventures in Omashu (many of which involve a city-wide game of earth tag with Bumi) and an epic gum-necessitated haircut for Appa. Ty Lee still has a thing for Sokka (which disturbs him and annoys Suki), and yesterday Momo accidentally ate a shiny marble, which everyone hopes will pass. The Earth King’s bear was distraught over the loss of his favorite marble.
Midway through the missive, Zuko-with some surprise- realizes he does remember what his own laughter sounds like.
He wonders if it is too bad that there is no one else around to hear it.
When he takes out a sheet of parchment to write his reply, he begins by reminding Aang to practice his fire bending.
“The next time I see you, there will be a test.”
~~~~~
He doesn’t visit her because he particularly wants to, but because he thinks their mother would want him to. The fact that Mai asks how she’s doing sometimes also pushes him forward, even though making the trek down to Azula’s cell and listening to her haunted, hopeless laughter echo through the lonely walls really gives him the creeps.
“You’re getting fat, Zuzu,” she coos at him this time, examining the shackles around her wrists like they are the finest of the Fire Nation’s royal jewels. “I can see it rolling off of you, all white and soft and weak. It disgusts me.”
“How are you doing, Azula?” he asks, and feels his heart clench with something like pity when he sees her. He knows she doesn’t deserve it, but she’s still his little sister.
She just sneers at him, eyes unfocused through the cracks of dirty hair hanging limply in her face, breath smoking just a little bit, with the ghost of a power she once had full command of. “Come closer and see for yourself.”
He doesn’t. “Are you comfortable?” he asks instead. “I know it can get cold down here sometimes. I can have them bring you more blankets.”
“Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” she hisses. “I am the Fire Lord. I can have you executed with a snap of my fingers, you sniveling loser. You’re just lucky I have so many better things to do.”
She goes back to dreamily examining her shackles.
He never knows what to say to her in those moments, so sometimes he doesn’t say anything at all. He sits down across from her and listens instead, wondering how people with the exact same blood running through their veins came out so completely different in the end.
He brings her some extra blankets the following evening and marvels at how he ever feared someone so incredibly fragile.
In those moments in the dungeon, he learns more about her than he ever did while they were growing up.
~~~~~
On the rare occasions that he visits his father, neither of them has anything to say at all.
He realizes that in itself speaks volumes.
~~~~~
When Mai’s parents are formally presented to him at a party following her father’s release from an Omashu prison, Zuko wonders if any Fire Lords before him had ever-in their entire reigns-felt like running and hiding under the royal bed until everything has blown over.
According to his uncle, many probably have, it’s just never been recorded in any history books.
Zuko finds that comforting to know.
~~~~~
The knock on his door in early summer isn’t a knock so much as the door being shoved open. And then crushed a little.
“I thought I said no interru…” Zuko starts, doing his best stern Fire Lord face only to falter halfway through when he realizes that it means absolutely nothing to the object of his objections.
A familiar countenance grins back at him from the half-bent doorway. “Fancy digs, Lord Flamey Pants.”
Toph strolls in, whistling as she takes in each piece of ornate furniture and fragrant wood her senses reveal to her inside the room. “Kind of rank in here though, you bathed recently?”
He’d spent the last two days holed up in here, drafting, actually.
“Pardon, my lord,” Zuko’s elderly aide, Chu Wi, mumbles from the doorway, before he is forced aside to make way for a second visitor. “The diplomats from the Water and Earth kingdoms have arrived. They insisted upon seeing you immediately.”
Zuko tries to keep the goofy look off his face. “I see.”
“So this is where the Honorable Lord Z spends his time, huh?” his second guest declares, loudly. “I don’t know, it doesn’t fit my image of the feared Fire Lord. Too many potted plants, maybe. Toph?”
“Definitely too Fancy Pants for Zuko,” the small earth bender agrees, before plopping down in the chair across from Zuko’s desk and picking at her toes. “Is he sitting there with a stupid look on his face?”
Zuko hastily closes his mouth. “No.”
Sokka grins. “Yes.” He perches on the edge of Zuko’s desk. “So, what does it take to get a decent order of dumplings around here?”
“Hospitality!” Toph agrees, throwing her tiny arms up over her head. “I’m starving.”
Zuko sighs and rings the small silver bell on his desk, wherein Chu Wi pokes his head through the doorway again, however reluctantly. “My lord?”
“Lunch, please,” Zuko says. “Thank you.”
“Of course, my lord.” Chu Wi bows solemnly and exits the room again.
“Nothing with the head still on this time, Chewy!” Sokka adds, as the door closes behind the sour-faced old man. Then the duo smiles broadly at the weary Fire Lord.
Zuko is resolved not to smile back; they really need to learn how to not make a scene wherever they go. Chu Wi already doesn’t approve of a lot of the way Zuko runs things as is. “You guys are here a week early. The summit isn’t until Monday.”
Sokka shrugs noncommittally. “Well, you know, rebuilding is going so smoothly in my neck of the woods I thought it’d be nice to take a little vacation, see some of the sights in the Fire Nation now that they aren’t trying to kill me…”
“Bozo forgot Suki’s birthday,” Toph clarifies, neatly.
Zuko winces sympathetically.
“I did not forget! I was only making her think that way,” Sokka insists. “That way the present I got her will be an even bigger surprise. It’s a strategy.”
Toph smirks. “To get kicked in the teeth? Because congrats, it totally worked.”
Zuko clears his throat. “So you’re pulling strings to hide out under the Fire Lord’s protection?”
Sokka grins. “And because I want to see my favorite grumpy-faced sourpuss!”
Zuko’s eyebrow twitches. “I can have a messenger hawk to Suki in five hours…”
“My best friend in the world,” Sokka corrects, solemnly.
“What about you?” Zuko asks Toph, relaxing a little bit in his chair for the first time in over forty-eight hours.
“You still owe me a magical field trip,” she tells him, bluntly. “Pay up.”
Zuko blinks. “Uuuhm…”
Her smile broadens. “Don’t worry, Flamey Pants, I’ve already got all the particulars worked out!” She pulls a rolled up parchment from her pocket and slams it down on his desk, on top of all his other ones. “The Annual Fire Bending Tournament of Death!” she crows, fists pumping skyward in the sort of raptures only big sweaty men duking it out in a flaming pit of death for ultimate honor can induce.
“The Annual Fire Bending Tournament of Death,” Zuko echoes, though with decidedly less enthusiasm.
“Exactly! All you need to do is pull some Fire Lord strings to get us tickets! I’ll consider us even after that, on account of this obviously changing my life. I hear last year, some guy lost his arm!”
“Wow,” Zuko manages, awkwardly.
“Damn skippy!” she replies, standing on her chair. Then, “You can get tickets, right?”
Zuko can, he just isn’t sure he has the time. He motions helplessly to his paperwork. “Yeah, but…”
Toph crosses her arms.”Magical life changing field trip,” she says, pointedly.
Zuko swallows. “Right.”
When Chu Wi returns with their lunch a few moments later, Zuko asks him to please procure tickets to the event. “Box seats.”
Toph is walking on air for the rest of the day after that, and the following afternoon, as Zuko watches some guy in a spandex suit who calls himself The Hotness trade blows with a masked-marauder named The Grand Torcherer while Toph is shouting at the top of her lungs for blood in the seat beside his, he finds himself-oddly enough-remembering what it’s like to be a teenager again.
Personally, his money is on the Hotness.
~~~~~
The first anniversary of his ascent to the throne also signifies the first year of peace.
The council of elders votes to have a parade through the city with Zuko at its apex. A feast is scheduled for afterward, with a special presentation by the Ember Island Players (Zuko can only roll his eyes when he hears) and a tribute to the Avatar.
They want him to prepare a speech, one as stirring as his inaugural one, one that will give hope to a nation still in transition, rebuilding after a war, and trying to regain the trust of its fellow countries. “Show them your strength,” his advisors say, “show them that the Fire Lord is strong and that through these times, he-and indeed his people-will somehow endure. You are the symbol of our new nation, Lord Zuko.”
He says he will.
He struggles horribly with the words for many nights and days after that, unable to find a place to start. It lasts up until the moment the foreign dignitaries begin to arrive for the celebration, up until the moment Aang and Katara walk into his house bearing a small satchel that has come with them all the way from a famous tea house in Ba Sing Se as a special delivery just for him.
“My most harmonious blend,” the attached note reads, in familiar script that is very, very dear, “for a most momentous occasion. ”
“We both helped test it out!” Aang announces around a broad smile, as he hands it to Zuko.
It is in that moment that inspiration hits; Zuko hastily, if sheepishly, excuses himself from the room before bolting back into his study and locking the door behind him.
“Was it something I said?” Aang asks Katara, clearly puzzled.
She laughs and squeezes his shoulder. “I’m sure the Fire Lord is very busy,” she says simply, and suggests that they go and unpack in preparation for the parade.
In the meantime, Zuko writes the opening to a speech that he hopes will inspire a nation in turmoil, as well as show how that nation has changed.
“The Fire Nation is strong,” he writes, “not because of our armies or our weapons or even our warrior spirits. I know that we are truly strong because of our neighbors, because of our families, because of our friends and loved-ones. Even if the road ahead is one full of struggle, the knowledge that we are not alone no matter how dark the past or how frightening the present will drive us forward to a better tomorrow. All we have to do is learn to trust in one another, beyond the boundaries of nationality and history. Only our friendships can save us, brought by our own willingness to reflect upon our actions and our determination to change ourselves for the better. We are not alone. We have never been alone.”
The satchel of tea sits peacefully at his desk as he scribbles away, and sometime later, when he is finished with his address, he leans back and picks it up again, bringing it to his nose and taking in the scents of harmony and celebration.
More than anyone, Fire Lord Zuko has learned that no one in this world ever did anything worthwhile alone.
END
Edits?