Author's Note: So that last chapter might have made a good ending for this fic, but I've got more planned. Consider this chapter the beginning of Part Two.
Chapter 18: The Royal Trophy Room
Aang and Katara flew with their friends from Ember Island to the palace the day after their date. They had fewer than 24 hours before they would be taking off for the South Pole, so they were surprised the Fire Lord had time to do more with them than eat dinner. But Zuko had requested that Aang, Katara, and Sokka meet him in the hall of tapestries as soon as they arrived. He had come from an important state meeting and was wearing one of his big formal robes with the intimidating, pointy shoulders. "I wanted to show you something." he said mysteriously.
He led them down decorated hallways until they came to a tall set of double doors. He paused and looked at each of them before opening the doors for them and letting them in first.
The room was big enough to fit two or three sky bison comfortably. The walls were lined with paintings, pottery, musical instruments, tapestries, furs, weapons, armor, and contraptions they could not immediately identify. In the center of the room was a jumble of display cases and large items that could not be mounted on walls.
"Whoa," Sokka marveled, taking in the giant room and its abundance of awesome stuff.
"Zuko, what are all of these things?" Katara asked, wondering at the sheer volume of wealth and beauty contained in a single room.
"These are all of the treasures the Fire Nation stole from other countries during the wars of the past hundred years."
"Why are you showing us this?" Righteous anger simmered under the young Avatar's voice.
Katara took Aang's hand to help him center himself, then directed herself to the young Fire Lord. "What's your plan for these things, Zuko?"
"I want to give it all back." The young Fire Lord replied. Katara felt Aang's tension lessen, but not quite disappear. "I was planning to make it part of the reparations tour. But, as you can tell, it's going to be quite a job. First I need to bring some scholars in here to figure out what this stuff is, and where it's from. My people aren't known for being great record keepers. A lot of it needs to be restored or repaired by experts. And this is just the trophy room, where the most spectacular artifacts ended up, the things that somebody thought looked especially exotic or impressive. There are two more warehouses full of boxed up art, and lots of books and scrolls. Some of those pieces probably have more cultural significance than the ones in here."
"It looks like you've already packed up some of it." Katara pointed to a few crates in a corner.
Zuko snickered. "That's the stuff Azula brought home from the palace at Ba Sing Se. She never bothered to unpack it. I'm sending it back with the ambassador next week. That's going to be the easiest part of this project. Maybe it will win me some points with the Earth King. Anyway, I brought you three here because I wanted to see if you could find something that belongs to your people, to bring it back to them, or just to keep. You probably don't have room or time to take all of it, but I wanted to give you the chance to take a few things back where they should be."
They looked through the glass cases, the hangings, paintings, pottery. Sokka ran around touching every single thing, trying on hats and armor. Aang found lots of Air Nomad artifacts he could identify.
"They're all yours, as far as I'm concerned." Zuko assured him.
"Of course they are." Aang snapped, exasperated. "Zuko, what is this about? Making you feel less guilty? Clearing out your storage room? Just giving presents to your friends? What are you thinking?"
The young ruler's face fell and he almost looked hurt for a second, but he swallowed that feeling and answered thoughtfully. "I want it to be about justice. Yes, it does ease my guilt a little, but the point is to give you a choice, to let you decide what to do with the things that rightfully belong to you, when the choice was taken away from your people before. Was it a bad idea?"
Aang sighed. "It wasn't a bad idea, but it's going to take a lot of sensitivity to do this right. Each one of these pieces has a history that you obviously have no clue about. You're going to need all the help you can get from those scholars. Honestly, it's not easy for me to see these things here like this, out of their proper context, all jumbled together." Aang admitted, pointing at an elaborately molded bronze item. "This is not a goblet, it's a bell. It's something sacred the monks used in rituals, but here it's displayed upside down, right next to a jeweled chamber pot from the Earth Kingdom."
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," Zuko looked mortified. He picked up the bell to turn it rightside up, but then realized he didn't want to put it down again next to the chamber pot. So he picked that up too, and looked around for a different place for it, settling on the Ba Sing Se crates. Then he rubbed the shelf with his sleeve and put the bell back where it had been, but correctly, looking sideways at Aang for approval, and wiping the hand that had touched the chamber pot on his robes.
"It's ok, Zuko. I know you're trying. Your ancestors really put us all in a mess, didn't they." He turned to the Air Nomad artifacts. "These things belong in the Air Temples, but those are empty right now. If we moved them, they could be damaged by weather or animals. Or stolen again."
"If you want, I'll keep it all safe for you here until you come back from your trip, and then you can decide what to do with it."
"That's fine. Just—don't make it about you. The reparations tour, the repatriation of these art pieces, whatever happens with the colonies. Start by listening."
"That's good advice. Thanks." Zuko paused, and gestured to Sokka and Katara, who were in another part of the room, looking through the piles of sparkling trinkets. "What about those two? If I offer them some of this stuff, does that mean I'm playing the magnanimous ruler, trying to buy their continued friendship with my country's ill-gotten plunder?"
"I don't think they'll take anything unless you offer it, even though it's more theirs than yours." Aang paused. "And you know you don't have to give us anything. We'd be your friends if you were as poor as we are."
Against the wall, between a stuffed platypus bear and a large marble figure of some old Earth Kingdom queen, they found an imposing life-size statue of a polar bear dog.
"Wow, I've never seen one of these in real life!" Sokka exclaimed. "It's carved from the bones of a giant whale walrus. That's kind of a lost art from the south."
"Well, it clearly doesn't belong here." Zuko responded. "What do you think of taking it home with you and putting it in the middle of your village square?" He looked to Aang for approval and got a nod. "I was told that some of the most beautiful art of the Water Tribes were ice sculptures. Of course, those wouldn't have survived transportation, so the Fire Nation soldiers simply broke them, to our enduring shame. Those masterpieces can't be replaced, but this noble creature can be taken back to its home." Sokka and Katara tried to thank him, but he wouldn't let them. They continued walking around the room, musing at the strange assortment of art and oddities.
"Look at this beadwork!" Katara exclaimed, picking up a belt with blue, purple, and white patterns. "This is the best example of Southern bead embroidery I've ever seen. I think the designs have to do with water bending, but some of them I don't know."
"Would you like to keep it?" Zuko offered.
"I don't know, is that right? The Fire Nation didn't take it from me." She answered uncomfortably.
"There's no way to find out who it really belonged to. You have as much claim to it as anyone from your Tribe. Certainly more than I have."
"It would look lovely on you." Aang encouraged. She smiled at the two boys and rolled it up.
"This broadsword looks like a Water Tribe weapon." Aang pointed to a shining silver blade with blue trim on the handle.
"Yeah, it does. What do you think, Katara? Southern or Northern?"
"Southern," she answered thoughtfully. "These symbols here. And the shade of blue."
"Do you want it, Sokka?" Zuko asked. The other boy had heard their talk from across the room and joined them.
"I do need a new sword," Sokka rubbed his chin, considering. "But this is too pretty to really use in battle. It's so ancient."
"Don't you see all the knicks and scratches on it?" Zuko pointed out. "It was not purely a ceremonial piece. But if you wanted it to be, it could be. For all those public appearances you're going to be making. Hopefully we're all done fighting battles."
Sokka picked up the blade and its decorated scabbard. They had seen almost everything in the large chamber by now.
"Look at this platter!" Katara exclaimed, upon finding the piece in the one section of the room they hadn't explored yet. "It's from Naujaat. That's the village my grandfather's mother was from. That design wasn't used anywhere else." She paused and spoke more quietly. "It's not there anymore. There was a raid years ago. There weren't enough survivors to keep the village going, so they dispersed."
"I'm sorry." Zuko said softly. "May I send it to your grandmother?"
"Yes, I think it would mean a lot to her." She smiled at Zuko and squeezed his arm. He called servants to pack up the platter and the statue and have them taken to Hakoda's ships on the docks.
"Is it dinnertime yet?" Sokka asked. "Did your royal chef make more of those moo-sow steaks? Or the fried dumplings?"
"Both, I believe," Zuko grinned, leading them to the door.
"And after dinner, a little flight around the city?" Aang whispered to Katara. She blushed and took his hand.
Author's Note: This is a kind of sensitive and political chapter, touching on the meaning of reparations and how to do them right. I hope I've approached the topic in the right way, and I'm totally open to criticism if I've made any missteps here. I'm definitely working on my education about issues of race and colonialism, and certainly don't know everything. I'd love to hear from any readers, especially BIPOC, about my approach to this topic, especially if I got it all wrong. Obviously the world of Avatar is not immediately analogous to our real world, but our stories can help us explore complicated ideas. That was my intention, anyway.
I'm going to try to post weekly from now on. Look for new chapters on Fridays or Saturdays. Click follow to get updates.
As always, thanks for reading!
Next chapter: The Avatar Victory Tour begins!