Glory
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The plot is the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
---------------------------
We were the Róng Yào, which means "glory," and that is what we sought.
We were not evil men and women, though our detractors have often characterized us as such. We took no steps that had not been taken before--except perhaps the killing of the children. The killing of the children, I will agree, was wrong. Especially given what it touched off.
But we had our reasons even for that. Even for that crime, we had a justification: Children grow up. Children grow up and can remember what we did. Children grow up and can remember what we did and want to seek revenge. Children grow up and can remember what we did and want to seek revenge and learn to think for themselves--and not what we wish and teach them to think.
And so we killed the children. We ripped them from this world in front of their mother's eyes, and cut her down in front of them. It was kinder than to let them live, after what they'd seen.
We were the Róng Yào, which means "glory," and that is what we sought.
---------------------------
We began innocently enough, when Zuko, called Peacemaker, pulled us prematurely out of Sozin's War. We called it premature for a variety of reasons--we hadn't taken it through to its logical conclusion. There were vast economic consequences--it takes time to reconfigure a wartime economy for peacetime.
Not everyone felt this way. My parents didn't. They were relieved. My sister had gone to the front two years before, when she came of age. We didn't hear anything for six months. Then we heard she'd been killed. Zuko Peacemaker ended the war before I came of age, and my parents were relieved, relieved that they didn't have to watch their younger child die.
I don't really blame them. I understand that. I disagree with it, but I understand.
Then there were others, who agreed with us, with the Róng Yào, but couldn't agree with how far we were willing to go. However much they disagreed with Zuko Peacemaker and his politics and policies, they were unwilling to take those final steps. They were unable to resort to violence within the homeland to get what they wanted.
Then, I thought they were cowards and fools.
Now...
---------------------------
We were not the first coup in our nation. We weren't even the bloodiest. Most coups that preceded us, however, were quiet, internal affairs--a Crown Prince or Princess got tired of waiting, and took matters into his or her own hands. We were the second in officially recorded history that came from outside, and was successful.
The first, of course, was the overthrow of Zuko Peacemaker's father, Firelord Ozai.
We were the elite among the Róng Yào, we who entered the palace that night. We were the best killers, the best fighters, the most devoted to our Glorious Cause.
Our instructions were simple: Take out the Peacemaker and his family, and anyone who got in our way.
The less said about the slaughter that ensued, the better. I only rarely talk about my role in it, save for one moment, near the end.
I was the one who killed him. I killed Zuko Peacemaker.
---------------------------
We'd attacked the palace some eternal hours before, and it was nearing midnight. I don't remember what my specific target was--if I'd even had one--but I remember killing four men that night. That's something important to remember--I only killed four men.
I came to the hallway that led to his study, and it was littered with bodies. Three of them wore the uniforms of palace guards--they'd died defending their lord. Commendable.
The rest...the rest were my brothers- and sisters-in-arms, wearing Róng Yào insignias.
I tripped and stumbled over the bodies, seeking the broken door at the end of the hallway. There were more bodies blocking it. Slightly sickened, I pushed them aside. If he is still alive...
He was.
Somehow, he'd managed to hold off the assault by barricading himself in his study. He'd been injured, of course--one man against an army, he had to have been. He was slumped against the wall on the other side of the room, right hand still clinging desperately to one half of the pair of swords he so favored. His left hand, along with the bulk of the arm it belonged to, was also holding its sword, halfway across the room. He'd somehow found a moment to tie his belt around the stump, tight, so he didn't bleed to death.
His eyes flicked in my direction, and he kicked a weak blast of flame in my direction. It missed, and instead caught the body of one of my fellows, acrid scent of burning flesh and hair filling the room.
Cautiously, I continued my approach. Even downed, the man was still hellishly dangerous.
"Why?" he choked out, still staring at me.
"Because we are the Róng Yào," I replied, the only answer we had time for.
He seemed to accept this. "My wife?"
"I don't know."
"My children?"
"I don't know."
His eyes glinted, barely-suppressed rage. "Did you kill my children?"
"I don't know."
He sagged back again. I knew we probably had, but he would be dead soon anyway. There was no need...
"I'll make it quick," I promised him, quietly, slipping a little on the blood on the floor as I approached him. He watched me. I knelt down next to him, and put my knife at his throat.
The instant I pressed inwards and drew, he breathed fire, consuming my right shoulder. I screamed.
I don't know which killed him--my knife, or that last, futile, defiant breath.
Before you condemn me for killing a great man--and, yes, I know he was a great man. No one knows that better than me. I have seen greatness, I have looked into its eyes and slit its throat, and it was still far greater than I could ever dream of becoming.
So before you condemn me for what I did, recall that I only killed four men that night. His casualty count was easily ten times that much.
We were the Róng Yào, which means "glory," and that is what we sought.
---------------------------
I wasn't conscious of what followed the next few days, but I'm sure you know the stories.
The Avatar arrived the next morning--too late to save his friend. But he got the bodies out of the palace--Peacemaker, his wife, his son, his daughters. He navigated that labyrinth of corpses to retrieve the ones that mattered to him.
We, the Róng Yào, placed our own heir on the throne--the Lady Minami, Peacemaker's uncle's wife's niece-by-blood. She had been Princess Azula's lover, and, as such, was used to being controlled.
Three days later, there was a counter-coup, courtesy of the Zhōng Chéng loyalists. Minami was assassinated, and the streets of the capital once again ran red with blood.
From there, it was strike and counter-strike, coup d'etat after coup de grace after coup d'etat. Within five years, no one was in control, save the armies--no longer Róng Yào and Zhōng Chéng, but Láng and Mǎ. Peacemaker's dream was but a bittersweet memory, and some of us who had been Róng Yào began to doubt our original goals.
I wasn't one of them. We had done what needed to be done. I bore no regrets.
But it was seventy years before the violence ended, with the Láng taking control, and our nation had been decimated. The Seven High Houses were extinct. There was no one to take the throne, so we were ruled by what had once been a rebel army.
And I bore no regrets. I would have fought in that army, if I had retained any mobility in my right arm.
But I had looked in the eyes of greatness, and I had cut it down. And I was still less than he was.
---------------------------
There's a story--I don't know whether or not it's true--that is told sometimes, about Zuko Peacemaker. It is said that, two or three years into his reign--after he had learned to play the game, but before his children were born--a courtier, or a foreign diplomat--different versions disagree--asked him, half-joking, if he regretted his role in his father's death. He laughed a little, thought a moment, then left the questioner with this cryptic answer: "It was the right thing to do, but I was wrong to do it."
I never really understood that. If something was right, it was right regardless of who did it. If something was wrong, it was wrong. It was just that simple.
But a few days ago, my granddaughter came to me. She had heard, somewhere, that I had been the coup de grace on that night, and she was a war child, same as I.
"Do you regret killing him, Grandfather?" she asked me.
I laughed a little, thought a moment, and gave this answer: "It was the right thing to do, and I was wrong to do it."
We were the Róng Yào, which means "glory," and that is what we sought.