A/N: HIIII! Remember me? I existed here until like February...and now I've come back. Hello, Avatar Fandom!
Anyway, I just randomly wrote this one day. Don't know where it came from. It's a vignette-sort-of-thing centered around the Earth King. I did have to do a little research for this one, just some wikipedia surfing, nothing big (just to be sure to check my facts). So, yeah. This is set a few hours after the very end of 2x20, when they're still flying on Appa. Hope you like it.
Disclaimer: Avatar is not mine. Ever. If it was, season 3 would've started showing in JANUARY of THIS YEAR like they SAID IT WOULD.
Of Misconceptions and Misnomers
"The Earth Kingdom…has fallen."
Ominous words as ever—and true as any words spoken before. But at the hands of three, merely three, usurpers and the loyalty-confused Dai Li—what sort of overthrow was that? What kind of foolish image had the Earth Kingdom maintained all these years? That the Earth Kingdom was strong and resolute, that it would never fall?
It was all a lie.
The Earth King is ashamed. He is King of nothing now, really. Come to think of it, he never was King. He merely was—he was a pawn, a puppet, a tool.
He bows his head, now indifferent to the rough wind rippling his royal clothing and headpiece, not comforted by the soft snores of the young teenagers (they'd fallen asleep long ago), worried for but not entirely consumed by the fate of the half-dazed, half-dead Avatar, wondering why and how and thinking I'm so foolish. He is like a child! He is ashamed. He wishes that he would become more alert, more perceptive; he wishes to shed his now nonexistent title. He doesn't want to be King anymore.
King is such a mindless term, hardly applicable to aforementioned one in power. Kings are not the almighty in power struggles. Rather, it is the advisors who hold all power.
He is tired of being "Your Majesty" and "Your Kingliness." He hates being nameless—for, he has no name. He had a name, once, but he had to give it up and assume the name that countless ancestors have possessed—the Earth King.
King. King, King, King. Kingliness is not for me, he thinks. I am just a person. I'm just a child, really, in this world—and these youths that surround me, they are far older than they appear. The Avatar and his companions are, strangely, the wisest, most learned people he's ever met, and he has met and spoken with many, many scholars and scientists. Something about the small posse seems so—otherworldly, so supernatural—so godlike—no, not that, more like all knowing.
He wants to learn. He is a child, uneducated in the ways of the world, and he wants to learn. And he wants to learn from wizened elders. He wants to grow up, become a person. He wants, for once, to have a name.
"I am," he says out loud to no one and to everyone. "My name is Kuei; I am. For once, my name is Kuei—and, for once, I am."
He smiles to himself, content, staring off into the dark night stars. He shouts it, again, in defiance of his label that imprisoned him in a jail disguised as a palace.
"My name is Kuei, and I am free!"
--
Elsewhere, the people of Ba Sing Se felt no change, no disturbance; it was the same as always. They were still segregated and separated and oppressed, still poor and rich, still heedless of war (if they found out about the war, they didn't particularly care) and the change of dictators was no change at all.