Fortunate Son
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
oh, they send you down to war.
And when you ask them,
"How much should we give?"
they only answer, "More, more, more!"
It ain't me,
it ain't me,
I ain't no fortunate son.
He'd faced them when he'd gotten off the plane in the islands, with their taunts and their nastiness. They'd laugh and reach out for the place where the napalm had slapped his face. Lucky, that's what the field medics and the doctors, later on, had said. Lucky to see, lucky to be alive, lucky that some nitwit private had just tried to make the stuff on his own, lucky that there was no white phosphorous in the mix or his face would have melted clean off. Lucky. Fortunate. He felt otherwise. He tugged at his coat collar again, feeling the cool weight of the medals hanging off of his chest. He had to be hit in the face with crude napalm to be sent home. Where was the honor in that? Not that he wasn't dying to get out of that place, no, he had been, just not like this. He paushed and touched his face again, self conciously. He knew there would be those god damned hippies waiting for him at this airport too. Waiting to hiss at him and call him baby killer, rapist of Vietnam.
He wanted so sorely to scream at them that they knew nothing of what he'd seen while he'd been there. That the ground, the trees, the people, even the children were rigged. He'd watched one his buddies be blown sky high by a rigged 105 round. Boom. Then he was being told to climb on up there and a pick the guts out of the trees. If he felt a little less inclined to feel guilty when he was staring down another gook with a gun, then so be it. If he had to deal with a comrade who'd lost his moral center, than that was all part of the price they were paying for this war. He stepped out from the plane, into the airport and to his home country.
He glanced around, his good eye flying in all directions. He was surpassed by the medic who'd been sent home from a different battalion. He snorted as the medic was pounced upon by a group of what appeared to be college students, but he soon realized it wasn't the kind of pouncing that he expected. These people were happy to see him. Called him Siaka, like the man from Sierra Leone, that colony the British journalist had been trying to tell him about. Something like that. The medic had even tried to introduce himself on the plane.
o-o-o
"Name's Siaka," he'd said, sticking out his uncalloused medic's hand.
"Sokka?" he'd said, confused.
"Si-aka," the medic had answered. "Or would you prefer my name given at birth?"
"Is it in English?" he'd retorted, suddenly feeling rather bitter towards the medic. The medic scowled. "Or do you really go by some gook name?"
The medic scowled even more. "Don't use that damn slur."
He raised his only eyebrow. "Gook."
"Have it your way...Zuko."
He'd frowned himself at that. "That's not my name."
The medic shrugged. "It is now.
And so, the medic had called him Zuko the whole plane ride home and he'd called the medic Sokka.
o-o-o
And now Sokka was trying to hold back what seemed to be an entire host of hippies. A tall man materialized at the front, his dark glasses hiding his eyes, but his smile gave the impression of being threatening. Still standing at the gate, he wonder briefly how this fellow could stand wearing his leather jacket. He snorted to himself. Very "Easy Rider" indeed, from what he remembered of the screening during R and R. The tall man started towards him, all threatening smiles and teeth, but was intercepted by a wave of gauzy blue and purple and green fabrics holding a woman in their midst.
"Jet, no," she said sternly. She turned to him. "Siaka said your name is Zuko...?"
"It's not," he answered, adjusting his grip on his suitcase, wishing he could just leave. She scrunched up her brown face, studying his carefully. Studying the damn burn, he thought as she finally looked away.
"I'm going to call you Zuko anyway. It fits."
"Just a stupid gook name," he muttered. He glanced down to see her glaring at him with indignant blue eyes. His lips quirked. Damn hippie. Might as well get what she was here for over with. She pursed her lips and composed herself.
"I understand that the trials of war must have left their mark on you, but I would ask that you please watch your tongue in the presence of a lady."
He threw his head back and laughed, "The trials of war..."
He felt her take his hand and ask, "I pity you, really, do you need a ride anywhere? I'm Katara."
o-o-o
"You eat, very good," the girl had said, holding out a tray of elaborate looking Asian food. He looked at it despondently. What he wouldn't give for a real burger and a real shake right now, served on real American soil. He also couldn't take the food in good conscience, since the order had been give to burn this little village to the ground in the morning. He looked at the girl, who smiled and nodded and held out her tray. Then he looked at his comrades, who were testing mouthfuls and then spitting them out and laughing as they did it. He popped a piece of chicken in his mouth, and though it was so hot it brought tears to his eyes, he chewed and swallowed it anyway, deciding that it did, in fact, taste good. The beef tasted even better.
"What's this called?" as he worked on his second helping of beef. The girl smiled.
"Satay, satay," she answered, bobbing her head and ignoring the stares of his stunned friends.
"It's wonderful."
It figured, he thought, that it had given him food poisoning.
o-o-o
"Excuse me, what?" he asked as he realized he was being led towards a large van in the airport parking lot.
"I asked," repeated the all too patient Katara girl who was the sister of the all too irate medic Siaka Sokka, "is anyone meeting you?"
He shrugged. "No."
"Do you have anywhere to go?"
"No."
"Are you hungry?"
"Yes" tumbled out his mouth before he really thought about the question. She glanced up at him expectantly. "I need a burger," he said, "and a chocolate milkshake and satay."
He wound up sitting next to Siaka Sokka the whole way. He stared off into space, not listening to the radio, but the thrum of the engine as the clutch shifted and the whine of the fan belt. He was aware the Siaka Sokka was trying to say something about treating burns in Nam and that perhaps he could do something about the severity of the scare, but, then again, you're not exactly open to new things, are you Zuko?
Yes, he thought, I'll be Zuko for a while. I'll be Zuko for the rest of the war.
o-o-o
He'd been drafted when he was nineteen, in 1968. The made the war real, when he was sent off to it. He'd been Terrence then, and now Terrence sounded so plain and boring and unexotic next to Zuko. Terrence had played baseball and gotten good grades and went to church every Sunday with his sister and father. Terrence had taken May to the senior prom in his father's Galaxie convertible and, instead of losing his virginity in it, May's high heeled shoe had punched right through the top when they swapped positions making out. Terrence had gotten accepted to the University of Massachusetts. Terrence was going to be a lawyer. 'Cept, somewhere along the line, Terrence got drafted and Terrence became Zuko, who threw smoke grenades and sat in foxholes, his M-16 poised.
Zuko knew how to do things like shoot to kill and burn entire villages to the ground, even after they fed him and it gave him food poisoning. He never did find out what happened to her. She'd ran past him in the mayhem screaming "No VC, no VC!" and then she was gone. Probably got hit with the right kind of napalm, unlike lucky him. Zuko knew what it was like to see his good buddy be thrown up into a tree by a landmine and Zuko knew what it was like to try to scale the very same tree, now slimy with gore, to try to get some of the bigger chunks down. Zuko knew quite a lot about death, he thought. He thought about the news that he would be going home. Home in time for the holidays, a soldier next to him with a missing arm had intoned sarcastically. Lucky you.
There was that word again. "Lucky". He didn't feel so very lucky to be home for the holidays since he was sure his father wouldn't be happen to see his prize son roughed up from something as basic as war and he was sure that he woudldn't want to try to explain some of the things that had happened over there.
o-o-o
The first night he was coerced by Katara to stay with her ragtag troupe, he awoke screaming. He rolled off his futon and sat up, shaking.
"It's ok," he heard Sokka say. He turned and looked at the medic, who was wide awake, huddled on the corner of his mattress. "Really gets you, doesn't it? The death knell. The silence."
Zuko stared at the medic, who stared off into the darkness with a sort of endless sorrow in his blue eyes. "The dead silence."
o-o-o
Zuko was reintroduced to safe grass the next day. He scrunched it between his toes and relished the fact that he wouldn't be blown up into the trees. He sighed and slipped his hands into the pockets of Sokka's jeans, twisting his fingers into the worn fabric. He knew Katara was watching him, Jet too, but he was sure Jet did it more to spite him than anything else. He got the impression that Jet may have dodged the draft. But he couldn't very well be certain. Sokka had appeared with a harsh looking Japanese woman, who was currently speaking to him, handing out orders.
He really couldn't be bothered to remember her name. He sat down and thought about the burger joint across the street. He could smell it. He wanted one. With a nice cold beer to go with it. He'd have to go home in order to get money, but home was currently across the country. His thoughts grew hazy on the topic of home as he grinned slightly at the California sun beating down on his head. He drifted out of conciousness.
The errant hand on his face brought him back, his reflexes kicking in, he leapt to his feet, pushing his attacked down, reaching for a knife that wasn't there anymore. He tried again for the gun. Nothing. Zuko looked down and looked at the girl with the hamburger and the spilled beer and Katara just looked back at him. He felt a guilty twinge in his stomach, remembering the satay and he knelt to pick the food up.
"Thanks," he muttered around a full mouth. She sat next to him and took a sip of what was left of the beer.
"No problem."
o-o-o
Zuko remembered being tired that night and he also remembered thinking that Mitchell had gone off the deep end a bit too far that day. And then he remembered a explosion from the general area of Mitchell's tent and then his face was on fire. He clutched at it as he became aware of what looked suspciously like a leg rocked back and forth near him. He screamed, he writhed and he could hear her voice.
No VC.
He stumbled blindly around, hands trying to wipe away the burning napalm from his eye, screaming for help and wishing that he would just die already. Then he woke up at a field hospital with a man with one arm as a bunkmate who laughed and said he'd be sent home in time for the holidays. And Zuko had just felt sick when he caught sight of his face.
o-o-o
He wasn't aware of when he became fully acclimated with the idea of living from day to day with people he barely knew, but he was aware when the woman with the blue eyes and the brown face touched his arm to guide him and brought him dinner when he was too absorbed in thought to do it himself. He was aware when she found something for him to wear and tried with all her might to coax him back to life. Him. A complete stranger.
Perhaps she did it because her brother would not let her do it to him. That's what the Japanese woman was for, Suki, who ordered Sokka's life and persuaded him to bed when he needed it and let him be when he needed it. Sokka seemed to come back, it seemed, but there were still the nights when the two of them sat in the living room of the house they somehow managed to rent listening for an enemy that wasn't there. Ready for the sharp rush of battle and closeness to life and love that came along with it. But the first night he sat alone after screaming was when she stumbled in, hair askew.
She crawled onto his futon and curled her feet underneath her, leaning against his shoulder and he could feel her trying. Willing him to get better. For her. For her brother. To prove it could be done. He wrapped his arm around her and tried to make her feel the pains and horrors and the experience. The love and life and loss and beauty and the hideous scenes. He felt her pull in closer as he did, and he realized he was the one pulling her in, hoping that her will was enough.
She sushed him and nudged until they lay back together and fell asleep. He woke up in the morning with her sour breath in his face, but he couldn't help but feel satisfied. Better. He stretched and she woke as well, groggy and unwilling. She ordered him still and pillowed her head again on his shoulder.
o-o-o
They sat still, looking out on the bay. She'd taken his hand and they sat like that. Holding hands, looking out over the water, though it pained his bad eye to look so long on the sharp brightness of the water.
"I'm sorry I'm trying to fix you," she said suddenly. "I realize I shouldn't."
He snorted. "Who said that, your brother?"
"Yes."
"Oh." He focused back on the water. "How's he doing?"
"He's been acting...strange."
Zuko considered this. "He's seen a lot of things, you know."
She sighed. "He told me about the things the soldiers do." She paused. "It's terrible."
"It's orders," he said stiffly, tightening his hand around hers. "It's better than being killed."
She squeezed his hand back. "I know. It's just that perhaps I shouldn't try to fix what I don't understand."
He smiled, his eyes squininting against the sunlight glancing off the water. "Then it would be awfully lonely at night."
o-o-o
So far as he'd known, rough and tumble hippie girls didn't say "I love you" or take pity on soldiers, but she did and he had to admit that he'd come to love her too and her overbearing drive to heal him. He even had to admit he looked more like one of them than a solier with his shaggy hair and secondhand clothes. He even held down a job now, working at a mechanic's garage patching up exhaust systems and brakes. He stowed his money and he made a plan, but turned out she'd made her own plans too.
She said that "I love you" before he could say "I need to go home", but he got in there soon afterwards and she just looked at him blankly.
"I'm coming with you," she said, matter of fact, and he nearly had to jump up to keep her from packing bag right then and there.
"Your brother -- "
"Can shove it."
"Your job -- "
"I'll quit."
"You're -- "
"I'll get a haircut," she said, standing there looking hopeless and sad. He paused, his hand falling back to his side. He took a breath and thought about the date. Well, he didn't know the date, but he did know that it was March and that it was 1970 and that this young woman, who'd named herself Katara, who waited tables to the pay the rent and who sang Beach Boys songs to him when he couldn't sleep had just said she loved him. His mind hurtled back to the jungle, crashing through the foliage and getting sucked down in the paddies. Here was the part of fighting the always got to him, the closness of it all, every emotion that a person could possibly feel focused into those few moments when the danger was highest. He even found time to notice that she didn't seem too offended that he hadn't even said anything in repsonse to her.
"You're coming," he said, finding the words, pulling back from the jungle and back into the present tense. "I -- "
"Sh," she said, "you don't have to say it -- "
"Well -- "
"No -- "
"Please? I think I owe you."
She smiled, a hand rumpling her hair. "Well, it sounds so cheesy once you say it, I mean..."
He chuckled low and deep, pulling her in, feeling oddly satisfied. "I love ya babe," he growled playfully, all at the same time wondering where the hell this was all coming from, and she tilted up onto her toes and kissed him. He woke up the next morning with her hand wrapped around the napalm scar. And he thought, warily, that if it hadn't been for some nitwit private...if not for the war...but then he decided that he'd rather go back to sleep and let Sokka walk in on them. That's something, he grinned to himself, that Zuko would do.
Note: This was originally posted to the katarazuko community on LJ and was so well reviewed there that I figured it was good enough to merit a posting to my fan fiction pen name. Anything further pertaining to this AU will probably be found there. Enjoy.