Sorry for the lack of updating, but the next few chapter will be tres fun!
Hints:
Suki/Sokka action, totally. And some more Zutara. And fighting. And Aang being Aang...teehee.
Break
Song led the two sisters straight to her own quarters, subtly defying the Emperor's wishes, if only for the moment. As soon as they entered the room, Song was moving towards her washing-bowl to give them a good scrub-down before they changed into the palace slave-clothes; she was detained, however, when Katara's dark-skinned foot slammed against the ground, almost as fierce as when Toph earthbended, and began to rant in loud, disruptive tones.
"That bastard, that liar, that - that traitor!"
Katara threw her arms around violently, and all the water in Song's washing-bowl jumped, prickled, froze, cracked; Song grabbed for the bowl instinctively, somewhat used to the girl's temper-tantrums, having grown up alongside her at Al-Abhad - only this time Katara was unaware of her own bending strength, blinded and infuriated at the firebender.
"I can't believe -" Katara fumed, but even now she dare not recognize why, exactly, she was so angry at Zuko. She dare not breathe a word of anything that had happened between them in the depths of the Library, beneath the glow of a thousand falling stars - and in fact, nothing had happened, so why did it matter? Why did she care so fiercely that he had said a tavern whore was better than her? Why did it hurt so badly to think all he had said of her in the Desert...his musings on her beauty, his respect for her...was an act? Had he played her for a fool, simply lonely in the absence of his precious, perfect Mai?
She cursed inwardly. Let him have his wretched Mai. Let them both go to hell.
"Katara, I'm sure Zuko had a reason for -"
"What reason?" Katara spun, wrathfully, on Toph. The blind girl remained annoyed, but calm, in the face of her sister's fury. "You heard him, Toph! He was acting great friends with the Emperor, wasn't he? Having great fun, punishing us for his Lordship's pleasure!"
"I did hear him, Katara," said Toph, raising her voice to overpower her sister, and stamping her foot decisively. "You're the one who wasn't. He said he married us. Did you miss that?"
"And that's good?" roared Katara, but she was losing her edge now, and there were tears in her eyes again. She knew Toph was going to break down her argument and it made her invent wild notions in her head. "Now he can do whatever the hell he wants to us! How do we know he wasn't - he wasn't planning it all, from the start -"
"You're being completely ridiculous, Katara!" screamed Toph, and several servants in one of the adjoining rooms had come to the doorway to listen in on the heated conversation. "That's not what's going on, and if you'd calm down enough you'd see that!"
"What's going on then, Toph? Why don't you tell me, since you can see it so clearly."
Toph opened her mouth to reply, but she realized the veiled insult with a sudden rush of shame, and her lips snapped shut again. As soon as the words left her mouth Katara felt regret knock her across her angry skull, and the fire died inside of her. Toph turned away without a sound, Song angrily ushering the
"Toph try to say - Zuko save, from Emperor," Song said, stopping Katara before she could begin her apology. "He say, you his wife, so Emperor not take you."
Katara was no longer as concerned with the firebender's motives. Toph's back was too her, and even now she could tell the girl was holding back tears, trying to ignore her sister's cruel reminder of her disability.
"I'm...I'm sorry, Toph. I didn't mean it." Katara tried, weakly.
"It's fine. You were angry," and though the blind girl's voice was steady, it was not convincing. Katara took a step towards her, but Toph avoided her by walking over to Song's bed and sitting down, crossing her arms protectively and keeping her blind gaze to the floor. Katara hesitated, then whirled defiantly in the other direction, crossing her arms likewise, and trying to remind herself that it was Zuko she was truly enraged with.
"It still doesn't explain why - why he said all of those things," she muttered swiftly.
"He is in pressure, Katara. He panic, maybe -"
But Song's words fell an deaf ears, and before either girl could remount an attack on the waterbender, the doorway slid open a bit, revealing the young, confused face of Teo, the camel-leader from the caravan ride.
He had survived the bandit attack and made it to Masabi, where he was serving the new wives and Emperor just as Song was. He was a stable-boy now, as his bad leg and limp had made him more a nuisance in other tasks, and the most he did now was carry water for the ostrich-horses. Yet he looked on Song with a deep recognition, the other servants gathered desperately outside the door, highly interested in the feud taking place within the room.
"Song? What's going on? There's a right crowd outside the door, here."
"Teo!" Song took the camel-driver's hands in her own, in a way that suggested some intimate thing had already passed between them. "Teo, please, find us Sahadev."
Break
Zuko looked at the wild, dreadlocked man silently, stupidly. Everything in the world suddenly muted, like he had plunged into the icy depths of the sea.
"What the hell did you just say?" he managed, and though Jeong-Jeong shot him a reproving look, the Chief didn't seem offended.
"I said, I am honored to meet you at last, Crown Prince, heir of Agni, and that I am Chief Hakoda."
"Hakoda?" Zuko said the name distantly, shaking his head, feeling like he had strayed into someone else's dream. "...Katara..."
He saw her eyes before him, endlessly blue and serene, like the gaze of some lost angel. Deep blue, twisted with rage and pain, and the violent ache in his chest.
"She is my daughter," Hakoda allowed, looking strangely at the firebender. "You know her?"
"No - well, yes, but no, you're -" and then the strength of fire in his veins bloomed to life, and he mounted his attack. "But you're supposed to be dead. You were killed, by -"
"By the General who stands beside you, yes," there was a breaking earnest in the Chief's voice, his emotion raw and real and worn on his sleeve, unlike the iron frame of Jeong-Jeong. "I see my daughter has told you of me. Is she well? Is she safe?"
"She is...safe," Zuko hesitated, remembering the cold, hurt fury in her eyes as she passed him. "I'm sorry. I think I'll need an explanation, Chief."
"I am alive, and that is all the explanation you need for now," said the Chief, swiftly and more confidently. He gestured to the General and Jeong-Jeong took Zuko firmly by the arm, drawing him unwillingly to the other side of the room, beside the seated Hakoda. A table was standing behind him, just as old and worn as the chair in which the Chief sat, but covered with a thousand different things: papers and maps, in languages and characters Zuko had never seen before; strange instruments for charting and sailing and navigating, along with more than one empty rum-bottle and a half-eaten bowl of cabbage soup. Whatever state the Chief lived in back home in the Aurora Tribes, the state in which he lived now was less comfortable than many a slave. His mattress in the corner, which Zuko could see by the light of the small window, was rotted through and browning, and the whole apartment was thick with the stench of fish, sweat and mud. The sound of the crowded slums roared up through the window and disrupted their talk more than ocne, during the course of the afternoon; Hakoda's only other clothes were hanging out of the window, drying beneath the red sun.
Myobu rose from beside Hakoda and seemed, for a moment, to come to Zuko's aid; but just as the firebender met the spirit-Fox's eyes, he slunk over to the corner, curled into a comfortable little ball, and went directly to sleep.
"Is the Emperor trying to secure my daughter?" Hakoda's question was directed more towards Jeong-Jeong than Zuko.
"At this moment the Emperor is under the assumption that she is married to Zuko," said the General swiftly, and for some reason his eyes were fixed suspiciously and unpleasantly, on the firebender. Zuko found out why a moment later.
"Good. You will keep up this pretense - but you will not lay so much as a hand upon my daughter, heir of Agni," said Hakoda fiercely, and for the first time there was power and threat in his voice, enough to send a chill down Zuko's spine. The light in Hakoda's eye suggested that, though he had possessed no contact with his daughter for most of her life, he still knew his fatherly duty.
Zuko nodded, compliantly, remembering how Sokka and Jeong-Jeong and Katara had spoken of this man; they had all done so with unlimited reverence and respect, but Zuko was finding it hard to regard this man as such. His state of being was so ragged and dirty and ill-kept that he looked more the part of a drunk beggar than a great warlord, but beyond this he was wondering how the Chief spoke to him so personally, as though somewhere they had met before.
"Do you know me?" he asked, before sitting slowly in the decrepit chair across from the Chief. Jeong-Jeong did not sit (there were no other chairs anyway, but the General still would have stood bodyguard) but placed himself beside Hakoda, arms crossed and savage eyes on Zuko, who remembered crushingly how easily this man had snapped his arm.
"You are the heir of Agni," said Hakoda slowly, shifting a few papers on his desk absentmindedly. "You are here to unite Acchai."
"Excuse me?"
"It is not something I expect you to accept right now," said Hakoda, and Zuko saw that he was bundling up most of the papers into a thick stack, directly before the firebender's eyes. "But there are certain things you must know. You are descended from a long line of royalty, Zuko - a line that has been sought, for a long time, by the Chiefs of the Aurora Tribes, and Generals of Acchai, like Jeong-Jeong."
"What the fu -"
Jeong-Jeong's hand slapped Zuko in the back of his head so hard that Zuko saw stars, and had half a mind to whirl and send a flaming fist into the General's face. The iron, emotionless tone of the General, however, kept him seated.
"Wait until the Chief is finished," he snarled. Hakoda looked worriedly at the General, and then turned back to Zuko.
"Forgive the General," he said lowly, but respectfully. "He is a complicated man. When he first learned of you as the heir of Agni, he knew he could not betray the hope in your arrival to anyone - you, or the Avatar. He had to treat you the same as any other man."
Zuko wanted to open his mouth to say something harsh and rash to the General and the Chief, but the collected hostility in Jeong-Jeong's eyes, coupled against the pleading look in Hakoda's, was too bewildering and infuriating to act upon. He slumped into the chair uncomfortably, just wishing to get back to Katara, so that he could explain all to her.
"What do you to say, then?" he said, when Hakoda did not continue right away. The Chief, however, had greater knowledge for the firebender than Zuko ever could have imagined, grown in the streets of Balda Haram, and thrust into the wilds of Acchai and the Empire.
"Sokka must have told you some of this, but I will start as easily as I can. A little over five hundred years ago, the first Emperor of Masabi - Long Feng he was called, just as his great ancestor - had newly conquered the Fire Nation, and most of the world was under his command. But there were Rebels who fought him, followers of your ancestor, and other friends of the Avatar. Their hope, in those days, was to find the reincarnated Avatar within my people, the Water Tribes, and raise him to defeat the Emperor. But more than fifteen years passed, and no Avatar was ever found. The Rebels disintegrated, either losing faith in the Avatar or falling to the Emperor's sword."
Zuko thought suddenly of Aang, the innocent, huge-hearted kid, the despairing words he had uttered in the Desert.
All I wan'ed was ta' be normal, normal as I could be, y'know? Everythin' was fine! Everythin' was damn fine! I didn' know a no Avatar, I didn' care! I didn't wan' it! They put it on me, but I nev'r wan'ed it!
"It was in the last days of the Rebels that Long Feng, in both greed and wisdom, realized he could not control all the expanse of the world on his own. Had he tried to do so, a rebellion would have inevitably formed. So in strange stroke of brilliance, he formed the Union.
This distracted Zuko from his thoughts on Aang, and Hakoda, brushing dirt off his coat irritably, continued without missing a beat.
"He left it under the command of a dim-witted man who constantly reported to him, of course; but the people believed this was an act of grace on his part, giving them their own government and land. Swiftly, Long Feng erased the people's memory of the Avatar,of the four Nations, of even the war itself; histories were re-written, lies told in schools. Only the territory you now know as Acchai withstood both the Emperor and the Union, but Acchai is a land rent with war, and Long Feng never considered it much of a threat..."
"How can that possibly be true?" Zuko almost interrupted, but luckily the Chief had trailed off. The firebender was staring Hakoda straight in the eyes, fearlessly. "Such a thing as war...it would be impossible to erase men's memory of it, no matter what the government did. It has only been five hundred years!"
"Men easily forget what does not stare them in the face every day," said Hakoda sourly. "But you are right, it would have been very difficult. And that is why Long Feng took these precautions: he made earth kingdom citizens the elite, already loyal to him, which made all others blasphemers and mixed bloods. Airbenders especially were hated, for their connection with the last Avatar. Then he instated the Academies."
All his days in Academy classrooms came rushing back to Zuko in one sweeping wave: The Chosen King had always been; before the instatement of the Union the world was overrun with barbarians and thieves; the Union was the only source of wisdom and justice in the world. Hail to the Chosen King, who led the first citizens from their dark ignorance, and into the light of truth.
Zuko felt his stomach churn as he thought of the King's pledge. From ignorance to truth. The depth of the lie scorched him to the soul.
"To tell a history made of lies," Zuko remembered the crazed, but honest look in Jet's eyes as he kept the tiger-hook sword at his chest. The truth about Acchai, about everything. "So...so why do you come forth now?"
"The Union is on the brink of civil war," Hakoda stated, and at his words Zuko went cold with sweat. "In a few days, though no one is yet aware, it will erupt. Many Advisors, as well as the Dai Li and earthbending agents, have been led to mutiny against the Chosen King. The leader of the rebellion is still unknown - but our allies of the Crescent Isle have joined them, despite my warnings. They will attack swiftly and without mercy, and the Union will be thrown into chaos."
"Chikusho..." Zuko said the curse very quietly, not knowing if Jeong-Jeong would smack him in the back of the head again.
"It gets worse , Agni," and there was an ill-amused smile on the Chief's lips. "The Emperor has helped see to this war. He has agents in the Union, a network not unlike my own. He is collecting all of his forces to mount an attack when the Union - divided, and warring - is at its weakest. By the end of the summer - three months, is when Jeong-Jeong has estimated - he will be ready to completely overcome the Union. All the world will once again be enslaved to the terror of Long Feng, and this is time it may be irreversible."
"And why are you telling me this?" Zuko asked, wildly. "Why not your son? Why not the Prince?"
Hakoda opened his mouth, but stopped short. A sad, distant look came into his eyes and he swallowed hard. Myobu stirred in his spot in the corner, opened on eye to look at the Chief, but did not rise or move otherwise.
"I...I cannot, yet," he said, returning to his stack of papers, drawing a cord from his pocket to tie them with. Bewildered and overwhelmed, Zuko rose, but was cut off when Hakoda said: "It is not important. You are the only one who can unite the war-lands. Acchai can look to you."
"Why me?" Zuko spat, and found himself dangerously aware of how terrifying the idea sounded. "Why do you - why do you keep saying I must unite Acchai?"
"It is in your blood, just as it is in the Avatar's blood to bring peace. if you want to aid him, you must unite Acchai. It will be the only way to combat the forces of the Emperor, especially if the Union falls, or refuses support to us."
"And what if I refuse to do as you say?" Zuko snarled abruptly. Hakoda glared at him for a long time, ragged from somewhat lost in the dim light of the room. Someone in the alleyway screeched, cursed after a thief who had stolen something from market.
Preparations for a world war. Time running out. The familiar, repetitive irony of Father Time.
"Iroh said you were defiant," Hakoda mused, finally tying up the bundle of papers, oblivious to the sudden look of shock and disbelief on Zuko's face.
"You...you know my Uncle?"
"This is the last time Jeong-Jeong will be able to come to me, so you must deliver this knowledge to my son," Hakoda ignored him, pointedly. "In two days, once the wedding feast of the Emperor has ended, you, my son, my daughters, and the General, will meet me on the Eastern Edge of Masabi, near the Docks. Will we part ways there in three directions: my children and the Avatar will take a boat to the Northern Tribe, and you will decide whether or not to take up your task, and be the first man to ever bring the war-lands under one banner."
He shoved the scrolls into Zuko's hands, bowing briefly to the heir of Agni, though Zuko looked at him like at any moment he'd whip out a bundle of water-squirting flowers and say "just kidding!". He was not allowed, however, another word of protest or question; Jeong-Jeong had taken his arm again and dragged him out the door, fierce and exact in his orders and his deliverance of them, eyes unreadable, motives unclear.
Neither Hakoda, Jeong-Jeong, nor Zuko had noticed, all the while, the woman in the blood-red cape leaning precariously out of the window above his, dark shadowed hair hanging down across her ghostly pale face.
As Jeong-Jeong stormed through the fish-seller's and swept out the door before him, Zuko couldn't help but mutter, the scrolls and maps and papers bundled to his chest:
"This is fucking insane."
Life often is. It is usually you humans who make it that way, however.
"...Smartass."
Zuko couldn't tell in the faded light, but he thought he saw the Fox's lips curl up into a fanged smile.
Break
Zuko did not go straight to Sokka. In his wild, infatuated mind, he had more urgent things to attend to.
He found Song while wandering around the dining hall, hungry but unable to eat until he'd sought out the offended waterbender. She directed him to the kitchens, where Katara was making sweet-soup for the Emperor's tables, until she was sent to scrub floors with an equally disgruntled Toph.
He saw her before she saw him. A stray light from her pot of soup was shining across her features, illuminating her from the other servants bustling and working around her. Even wearing the ragged maid's clothes, she seemed soft and delicate and gorgeous in the light. He noticed, suddenly, that she was wearing a carven blue gemstone at her throat. It looked perfect around the soft, dark-skinned color of her neck.
But she saw him like a bull seeing red. The fury entered her eyes before Zuko could blink.
"Katara - "
"Get out!" she cut him off, her voice high and piercing and wild, the fury of a woman scorned.
"Wait, please -"
He was cut off, again, by a plate flying headlong at his head. He dodged it, barely, and it shattered against the wall, showering him in tiny white shards. Katara had already grabbed for another pot, but decided instead to bend a great amount of the sweet soup to her hands, as if to scald him with his dinner.
"Let me explain!" Zuko shouted, and servants peered in from the doorways as Katara kept the soup close to her hands.
"I know - I know why you did it - to save us," snapped Katara, unwillingly, refusing to release the feminine hurt. "But - but that doesn't excuse what you said about me. About - about my sister and I, I mean - and it doesn't mean you can punish us! So just - just get out!"
"But I never wanted -"
"Get out!"
The scalding soup cracked suddenly into what would have been a delicious icicle, and then embedded itself into the doorway beside Zuko's head. Zuko ducked, cast one desperate, defeated, enraged look at the waterbender, and then stormed furiously out of the kitchens.
Katara shook as he left, ignoring the stares and whispers of all the other servants, never daring to look from the door. She remained this way for awhile, as though in some strange, wrathful, hopeful way, she still wanted him to return and explain.
But Zuko had tramped off, mistreated, to find her brother, unaware of her desire.
When she finally returned to the soup, her eyes were full of tears.
