A/N: The Following is rated G; for Grief.
It takes place, chronologically, somewhere during the series finale S3E18-21 "Sozin's Comet."
Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter 20: The Battle of Rising Mist and Stone
Spring, Year 13 in the reign of Fire-Lord Ozai
The fog rose from the river before them, and fell over the land like a heavy blanket, covering everything in a thick muffled silence.
"The stillness before battle is unbearable. Such a quiet dread," Chief Arnook said, coming up beside Zuko on the rise overlooking what was soon to be a field of battle. "Yet again we must stand and wait. Wait for the Fire-Nation. Wait for the end."
"…Well, that's pretty fatalistic," Katara said after a moment. She leaned forward and fixed the Crane with a somewhat beady look from Zuko's other side. "Do you say that before every battle?"
"…I wouldn't expect a woman to understand-"
"Doji Barahime," Zuko interjected, his eye still on the field in front of him, trying its very best to not roll in its socket. "That quotation, unless I am very much mistaken, was written by one of your tribe's greatest poets… and a woman. Surely someone able to so accurately describe the tension before battle is worthy of our respect."
Arnook snorted in mild disdain, then walked away to check on his troops, many of whom were engaged in raising the thick mist that was still billowing out of the river.
"Ash. He is such an icehole," Katara said quietly.
"Katara," Zuko sighed, finally giving in to his desire to roll his eye at the two of them, "I would appreciate it if you would stop antagonizing him. You managing to convince his 'retainers' to take part today was already pushing him a bit far."
Katara smiled in remembered triumph as she looked down at the dozen or so blue-clad waterbenders summoning mist out of the river Kyokai.
"You can't possibly think he'll leave? After everything?"
"I think that after you called him out last week, in front of the whole war-council I might add, he's going to start looking for an excuse to do so." Zuko shook his head. "He does not like me, Katara."
"To be fair, you could try to be a bit more likeable. Barking orders works some of the time, but other times…"
"I'm not Aang," Zuko said grimly. "I can't just say a thing and expect people to believe in me. People don't like me."
"First of all, that's not even remotely true. When you speak, people really listen, even if they don't like what you have to say. Secondly… well… I like you."
"And you, hearth of my heart, are very odd."
"You're so sweet," Katara said, now rolling her eyes as she shook her head in mild exasperation. "You and Sokka really need to stop comparing notes. The bothof you sound like ancient Gramp-Gramps."
"And I promise, if he ever calls Suki his 'snuggle-bunny,' I will," Zuko said, his lone eye still sweeping the rapidly assembling forces below them.
They both stood there for a long quiet moment, enjoying each other's company, as well as the last calm moments they would have before the battle began and the ringing tension in the morning air imploded into the crash and roar of pitched violence.
"…how did you know where that quote was from?" Katara asked after a moment.
"I do read you know," Zuko said with a snort. "At least, I used to. Back when I had anything that even vaguely resembled free time. Poetry can be rather evocative in some of our otherwise dry military texts. Lady Barahime was actually best known for her commentaries on the other nations and dojo, from back in the old days, when we were only trying to kill each other some of the time. Uncle had me read one of her books when I was studying water-style."
"Oh? What did she say about the Fire-Nation?"
"Mostly rather rude things, she was generally considered to be rather tactless, if truthful. As I recall, she said that the Lion dojo was 'hard-working, staid, and honorable.'"
"Well… that doesn't sound too bad."
"She went on to say that she had a polarbear-dog with the same qualities."
"Ouch."
"Indeed. Teenage Zuko was less than impressed."
The conversation halted for a moment as, with a ground-shaking thump, the earthbending contingent below them erected several long barriers on the future line of battle, and then began to bend the small breaches that Zuko had asked for.
"…What do you think about polarbear-dogs?" Katara asked, breaking the silence again.
"I think I have been rather effusive in my praise for the Utaku battle-maidens. Perhaps too much so," Zuko said with a wry shake of his head. "Lady Utaku keeps mentioning that, should you and I ever part ways, she has a wide assortment of granddaughters…"
"Uh-huh. Not what I meant though. I just meant the animals themselves."
"They are, as Lady Barahime said, hard-working, staid, and honorable."
"So… you like them?" Katara said, now glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
"…Why?" Zuko asked, an alarm gong suddenly ringing in his head.
"What about… puppies?"
"…No."
"No, you don't like puppies, or…"
"No, as in we are in the middle of a war, and I already have one giant slobbery creature to feed and care for." Zuko jerked his head towards Appa who was still waiting patiently about twenty paces behind them. "And he seems like the jealous type," Zuko continued.
"Well, I didn't mean now. I meant… after."
"…After?" Zuko asked, his lone eyebrow rising in surprise.
"After," Katara said with a nod.
There was another long pause. Katara remained ostensibly focused on the soldiers below, spearmen beginning to take up positions and earthbenders still working to modify the barricades they had previously erected. Zuko on the other hand turned and looked at her, mildly aghast.
"…Now?" he said in a muted growl. "You want to talk about… 'after' now?"
"No," Katara said, still blatantly focused on the future battlefield despite the small flush that was rapidly appearing at her cheeks. "It just something to think about."
Zuko sighed with a heavy exhale, turned back to the battlefield, and slowly re-shelved all of his previously thought-out conversational strategies regarding moving beyond being "just a boyfriend." Hakoda had begun to make pointed, albeit subtle, comments in war meetings about propriety and mutual respect for customs, despite the fact that Zuko had assured him, repeatedly, of his intentions towards his daughter.
The daughter that, in spite of her own customs, spent every night in Zuko's tent.
But he had promised to move at whatever speed Katara wanted, and so he shifted gears and instead began to imagine a litter of enormous four-legged creatures rampaging through the halls of the palace at Otosan Uchi; peeing on rugs older than his swords…
Absolutely not.
…chewing on the tapestries in the Royal Gallery…
Well… they can have father's… and Sozin's. I'll give them that.
…chasing terrified members of the Daijo-Kan around the ornamental gardens…
Hmmm.
"…It's not a terrible idea," Zuko muttered, mostly to himself.
"There's the signal," Katara said pointing down the hill. "You'd better get going."
"Indeed," Zuko said with a grunt, shrugging his shoulders back and snapping his thoughts away from the mental image of former Minister of War Quin, fleeing in terror from a pack of baby war-dogs. "Be safe," he said, raising Katara's gauntleted hand to his lips, delivering his now customary pre-battle kiss before stalking down the hill towards the mixed force of samurai. Katara turned the opposite direction and clambered up on to Appa along with the rest of her cargo, quickly taking off with a snap of the reigns.
To say that the four months since the battle just outside Ba Sing Se, the "Battle of Dust and Snow" as the scribes were now calling it, had been turbulent would be something of an understatement. While the loyalist Fire-Nation legions stationed on the continent had not been fast enough to intercept Zuko's eastern passage, they certainly had been fast enough to take up good defensible positions in anticipation of his inevitable return, digging in and fortifying themselves at good strategic chokepoints and overlooks with standard Fire-Nation efficiency.
However, much to Zuko's normal mix of relief and annoyance when fighting his countrymen, they simply took those positions… and then waited. Waited for Zuko to come to them, surrendering both their agency and their strategic momentum to their smaller, but far quicker, adversary.
The series of very timely modifications Zuko had made to their lone airship (which no longer went anywhere near any battle group that had any chance of damaging it) had allowed Zuko to increase the Legion's maneuverability and, for brief tactical bursts, to almost double their overall marching speed.
This speed allowed Zuko to absolutely savage his inert and almost listless opponents by sweeping around, through, and, on one notable occasion, under them.
Despite this fact, and the string of victories it facilitated, at no point whatsoever had any of the loyalist generals shown any inclination towards simply combining their forces in such a way as to make victory a certainty, or even simply attempting to work together. They should have simply tried to swamp him with the sheer force of numbers. Zuko had been prepared for that, one of the reasons he had even made the modifications to the airship to begin with, and he had spent the first few battles on the figurative edge of his seat, prepared to engage in a rapid tactical withdrawal at the sudden appearance of overwhelming force.
But it never happened, much to Zuko's continued chagrin and irritation.
He still wasn't entirely certain whether his opponents had been motivated by arrogance, idiocy, or sheer honor-born bloodymindedness, but given the continued strategic incompetence Zuko encountered day after day he had gradually become comfortable (albeit vastly irritated) with engaging any force that was less than twice his size with the expectation of emerging with total victory.
They had fought eight major battles since that dusty initial ambush in the winter of the previous year, and more than three-dozen skirmishes of greater and lesser degree, and every single one of them was a victory to one degree or another. It was a measure of just how much fighting they had done that, even with their increased speed, it had taken them an extra month to make it here, one of the last Earth-Kingdom provinces, still east of the Colonies.
Mai's spies had begun writing of nervous muttered conversations in the upper echelons of power, and of staff officers tearing their hair out at the seeming invincibility of the "Legion of the White Lion."
Zuko had immediately declared the contents of the war-council meeting where Mai had dropped that particular appellation classified. To the very highest degree.
Not that that had stopped the name from spreading.
Or had stopped the Duke from following Zuko around the camp the next week with a battle standard featuring a black and white depiction of the lion that was the Akodo family mon.
Sokka thought it was hilarious. He found it significantly less so after Koshaku tried to follow Zuko into battle with it and Katara found out.
She had taken a great, somewhat vindictive, pleasure in making Sokka carry the banner himself for the rest of the battle, which Zuko, very quietly, had thought was hilarious.
But it had not all been impressive victories and embarrassing names (that had, despite his best efforts, spread through the entire legion like wildfire.)
Aang's absence was easy enough to explain, his location was, very plausibly, a highly guarded "secret." The Avatar was easily accepted as the key to everything, and nobody who heard the phrase "highly guarded secret" would immediately assume that that also meant "we have no idea."
It had been four months and they still had had no word. Katara alternated between rage and half-panicked worry depending on the day, and who it was that mentioned Aang's name.
Bumi's death, on the other hand, had been very problematic.
Earth-Kingdom samurai, the more traditionally minded ones that had not been drawn by Toph's rapidly growing fame, were noticeably skeptical about following the general that had brought down the walls of their formerly impenetrable capital city. This skepticism might have been overcome by the presence of one of the great Earth-Lords in Zuko's war council but, given Bumi's absence, recruitment had dried up almost entirely. While the Crane healers did an admirable job, they could not fix everything, and casualties were eventually going to become a problem.
Which was why Zuko was now here, striding down a hillside towards a foggy riverbank, the shadow of Shiro Toritaka looming above it in the middle distance, and several hundred miles away from their original route.
The battle line in front of him, assembled on the western side of the river Kyokai, was a rapidly assembling mix of spearmen, archers and earthbending samurai in the black and white armor of Zuko's legion, those last indistinguishable from their firebending compatriots but for the green wakizashi at their sides. Toph's troops, native earthers, and formerly "lost" colonials alike, looked, worked, and, most importantly, fought like Fire-Nationers.
Zuko grinned at the sight, reasonably certain that Sozin's ashes were spinning in the family grave.
It had been an unexpected blessing when Lord Toritaka's missive had arrived at Zuko's camp a few weeks ago via an extremely bedraggled messenger. The letter had contained a surprisingly cordial greeting and expressed Lord Toritaka's passing interest in the idea of cooperation against their mutual enemies. It had also, in somewhat typical earther fashion, lamented that he might be a bit slow in coming to terms with Zuko, owing to the fact that… he was currently trapped in his fortress, being besieged.
Only a Crab would write it so offhandedly.
So, after some brief deliberation with the assembled war-council, Zuko had veered the army north, away from the Hebi river and towards Shiro Toritaka. It was deemed a practical as well as symbolic maneuver, showing that not only could Zuko be counted on to defend the interests of foreign elements which only might join his cause, but that he was willing to do so while fighting his own countrymen.
So, now all he really had to do was to pry the famous Bayushi Takeda's hands off the castle.
General Takeda was the younger brother of Lord Bayushi, and was renowned in both the Fire-Nation and the Earth-Kingdom for his skill as a general and his outstandingly well-trained cavalry force. As one of the very few members of the Scorpion dojo to be admitted to the staff of the War College, he was an advocate of meeting strength with strength, crushing the strongest points of an enemy first to demoralize the rest. His heavily armored rhino-lizards were trained to go right through earthbent bulwarks and, where they could not, the lighter, faster, ostrich-horse companies, equipped with iron-shod talons, were trained to simply go over them. Takeda's entire force was designed, trained, equipped, and prepared to face defensively-minded earthbenders in battle. The tactical culmination of over a hundred years of fighting in the Earth-Kingdom.
Zuko was hoping he could make that work for him in this instance.
"Are we ready, Colonel!" Zuko shouted, more for show than any real answer. He knew what the answer ought to be.
"Fuck yeah we are!" Toph shouted back, slamming one gauntleted fist into the other and grinning an intensely malevolent grin.
She had been practicing that grin, Zuko had been helping.
"You're sure about this?" she asked more quietly after the surrounding soldiers had cheered and returned their focus to the east. "I can't believe Katara was ok with…"
"As sure as I ever am about anything," Zuko muttered back.
"If these barriers don't hold…"
"If your soldiers don't hold, you mean? Somehow, I think we both know your answer to that question.
The two of them stopped and Zuko gazed out at the field around them, the flat muddy ground and the river ahead shrouded in fog and visible through the gaps between the perforated earthen barriers.
Then Zuko blinked as an errant thought suddenly burst in his brain.
"Have you gotten taller?" he asked, turning to examine the still tiny, but possibly less tiny, earthbender, trying to decide if she was now approaching his shoulder thanks to the illusion of size that good armor gave, or through natural growth.
Toph snorted. "I swear, you must save all your gravel-chewing powers of observation for fighting, don't you?"
"So… that's a yes?"
"That's a 'you're dumb and your fucking sister dresses you funny.' Did you really think I was gonna-" she cut off abruptly, her head snapping to the right and her toes wiggling in the dirt of the field.
"They are coming," Zuko said, only half a question as his eye began sweeping the fog again.
"Yep," Toph said simply and then turned away pitching her voice into a shout. "ALL RIGHT, ICEHOLES! YOU KNOW THE DRILL! You fuck this up and I am personally going to shove each of your heads UP your respective-"
"Never thought somebody so tiny would be so good at shouting at people," Matsu Haki said with a chuckle, appearing at Zuko's left as Toph strode away.
"She has grown recently," Zuko said with a nod of approval. "Or so she tells me."
"Yeah. Starting to fill out that uniform a bit," Haki said with another chortle.
Zuko turned slowly and glared up at the taller man with a malevolence that Toph was only beginning to capture.
"Right. Sorry, sir," Haki said, drawing himself up to an even greater position of attention. "What position are we taking, sir?"
"I will be in the center, Colonel. You should-"
"Probably stay with you, sir? Good idea," Haki interjected.
"Are you under the impression that I require a nanny, Colonel," Zuko snapped as he began to move to the center of the formation.
"No, sir," Haki said following closely in his wake.
"… are you afraid of me, Colonel?" Zuko asked, a slight growl in his voice as he wove through almost completely assembled spear companies.
"Yes, sir. Very much, sir," Haki said flatly, his pace not faltering in the slightest.
"… and you are aware that Shosuro Mai is my subordinate?"
"Yes, sir."
"Not the other way around?"
"Very aware, sir."
"So when I say that we need to spread our firebending assets out around the field…"
"I understand you completely, sir," Haki said, nodding in an attempt at sagacity as they both reached Zuko's appointed place near the center of the formation.
"… and yet, you are still here," Zuko said, his normal scowl deepening.
"Well, sir…" Haki made a great show of looking around for a moment, "…this seems as good a spot as any."
This is why he waited until now to show up. Or more likely why Mai told him to wait until it was too late.
"Fine," Zuko snarled, the rage he kept locked up in the pits of his stomach beginning to seep out into his voice as the first ranks of enemy slowly emerged from the fog, "just stay out of my way."
Rhino-lizards were naturally enormous creatures, and Takeda's were some of the largest of the lot. They were bred for strength, and sheer bulk, and the dim light of the Sun shining through the overcast sky did not glint off the ironclad horns of the beasts so much as simply illuminate them, a great grey wall of iron and muscle appearing out of the fog. Row upon row of heavy cavalry, advancing at a deceptively sedate pace, materialized out of the dense mist, filing across the bridge that Zuko could no longer see and spanning almost the length of Zuko's barricaded line of battle. Further ranks of ostrich-horse companies appeared in patches behind them, flitting in and out of the fog, the battle-standards of their riders hanging limp in the moisture of the air.
See the barricades, Takeda. Treat us like earthers. Make the assumption…
Just at the edge of hearing Zuko could hear shouted commands, incomprehensible at this distance, drumbeats and shouts relaying orders up and down the line…
We're a bunch of earthbenders here. Come get us!
And then, almost as though Zuko had sent the order himself, the rhino-lizards started forward, their enormous bulk slowly accelerating into a terrifying crash of sound and shuddering ground.
Stones began to fly forward from the earthbending contingent, a few striking the enemy but most falling far short, reinforcing the illusion that Zuko had created.
There would be no fire… not yet.
Wait… Closer…
The key to zanshin, to good tactics, was patience. Iroh had made that lesson clear, and now Zuko waited until the sound of charging cavalry grew into a thunderous cacophony and the enemy crossed the invisible line he had drawn in his head.
Then, he began to move.
There were not many things Zuko hated.
Rage was one thing. There were many things that deserved his anger, but hate, he had discovered, was another thing entirely.
It was cold. Icy. Quiet almost. Singular in its purpose and unique in its intensity.
And so the kata Zuko began did not look anything like what the rest of his family would have done.
Azula had made it look graceful, a gathering of power that would inexorably burn its way through any and all that opposed her. A statement of pride and power.
Iroh had made it look formulaic, like it was simply an onerous chore that, for its own sake, had to be accomplished. A man gathering refuse from a field so that it could be used productively.
Ozai had made it look easy, like hate was always right there at his fingertips, a breath away from manifesting and ripping its target apart.
Like he hated everything.
Zuko made it look the same way he felt when he had finally managed it.
Wild. Feral. The savage dance of one in the throes of murder or being murdered. Like a madman, cursing the sky and expecting the Kami themselves to fall over dead.
Like a stupid boy who, even after everything, just wanted his father to be proud of him.
And he hated that.
Hated it so much.
Which was why, after years of futility, he had finally gotten it to work.
You have…
He would never have dared try this when he had known there was still a demon in him. Still a malevolent force latched on to his soul that could and, he was sure, would have pounced in this moment.
…redeemed yourself…
The tension of split chi roiled through Zuko, making his skin tingle, and his beard feel like it was standing on end.
…my son.
Ozai had called Zuko his son. He hadn't done that in years and the small inkling of pleasure that Zuko still felt in the remembrance of that moment made him so, so, sick to his stomach.
He HATED it.
And it made him release every ounce of control, every barrier swamped, every objection dismissed, and his rage fermented in his stomach, transmuting fire to ice.
Fuck you, dad.
And so… there was…
CRACK-A-
Lightning.
The scream that Zuko let out was not the roar of thunder, not the cry of battle, not a snarl of anger.
Lightning.
It was a terrible ripping thing that hurt his throat and sounded more like a cry of pain.
Lightning.
In the moment, he was never sure which was the louder; his voice, the echoes of his father's, or the scream of the lightning itself as its unbelievable power roared through his nerves and out of his fingertips.
Lightning.
-BOOOM!
The lightning burst from Zuko's fingers, two outstretched, and arced and forked like manifest terror through the gap in the barricades directly in front of him. It slammed into one of the wedges of iron-shod rhino-lizards, leaping from beast to soldier to beast like a thing both alive and hungry.
Like Lightning.
"Here I am," Zuko snarled through heaving breaths, "come and get me."
He meant it for General Takeda almost as much as he meant it for his father, and as half a company of badly singed rhino-lizard cavalry fell over in either death or incapacitation every archer and firebender in Zuko's legion let loose a volley.
The first of many.
The charge of the rhino-lizards, already impeded by the soggy ground near the riverbank, slowed even further as wave after wave of synchronized fireblasts and arrows hammered into them. Despite that, or perhaps in spite of it, they still hit the stone barricades with another enormous crash.
…and found them far more stable than they should have been.
Earthbenders could make their element incredibly strong and stable, almost impenetrable with enough skill, Toph had explained to him. But, in doing so, they could not attack with it. They, and it, had to remain still and stable. The art of earthbending, much like the tactics Zuko had learned, was at its core the art of learning when to move and when to wait.
So the earthbenders held fast, held the stone barricades steady in the face of the furiously lowing rhino-lizard horde, while firebenders launched volley after volley of fire through the holes in those barricades that had been bent for this exact purpose.
Teamwork is the key to any successful operation.
And so fire burned as stone waited, and the rhino-lizard charge was brought to a complete halt and savaged by precise volleys of firebending. Seeking either to escape the onslaught, or to simply extract some measure of revenge on their enemies, the heavy cavalry naturally began to gravitate away from the unyielding stone and towards the gaps in between those stone barricades.
Gaps that were entirely packed with heavily armored yari-spearmen, set, waiting, and infinitely more dangerous than simple stone.
Cries of frustration slowly gave way to cries of dismay as cavalrymen were dismounted and mounts slain by spear and fire and arrow as volley after volley slammed into them. Brief flashes of fire marked the presence of enemy firebenders among the enemy, but while they could easily slap away the small blasts of fire from their nominal countrymen, they could not simply slap away the leafhead arrow or the foot of steel that was a yari-blade.
Zuko, after he had recovered his root and his breath in the wake of the lightning, had joined in the volley fire alongside Haki. While the lightning was effective, it, as was the nature of all uncontrolled, wild, fire, was indiscriminate in its affections and not suited for use where the enemy had already made contact with his own forces. Not only that, but it, like the firewall Ganko, was far too draining, both physically and emotionally, for Zuko to perform repeatedly. It had already served its intended purpose, drawing the enemy's focus to the center of the formation.
So Zuko, alongside Haki, settled into a rhythm of percussive fireblasts with the rest of his men until a new discordant sound flooded across the battlefield. Seemingly as one, the ostrich-horse companies, which had remained floating in and out of the fog at the riverside leapt forward with a far greater acceleration than their lizard compatriots. They flowed away from the river like water from a smashed pitcher, the war-cries of their riders harmonizing with their mounts' infuriated sounding squawking.
Good choice, Zuko thought as his normal, mildly-terrifying, battle-grin crept on to his mangled face.
He had anticipated this phase of the battle, but had assumed that General Takeda would try to withdraw his heavy troops using the lighter ones as a screen to prevent pursuit. Sending all of his forces at once was a rash, if understandable, gambit, but it was also one that played into Zuko's strategy quite well.
At least it would, but only if all the disparate moving pieces of his war-machine could get into their positions quickly enough.
After a brief mental count, assuring himself that Takeda had completely committed all of his ostrich-horse companies to the charge, Zuko stopped firing and, with a leap and a shout, launched a sky-burst of fire into the air, hoping against hope that the fog he had ordered conjured along the riverside did not prevent the Utaku, hidden in the forest on the other side of the river, from seeing or hearing it.
He knew that Katara at least, who he could see faintly circling the battlefield at a great height, would see it, but if she delivered her payload, two-dozen parachute-laden Kyoshi Warriors, too quickly, they most assuredly would be swamped by superior numbers.
Given the necessities of a siege, Zuko knew that General Takeda would be forced to divide his forces. He would need to attack and disperse Zuko's relieving force, while at the same time leaving adequate forces at the gate of Shiro Toritaka to ensure that the garrison did not escape or, even worse, attack them in the flank.
Given that his sightlines had been revealed to be blocked by the "sudden" heavy fog over the river he would also need to leave a series of messengers across the bridge to ensure continued communication between the divided elements of his army.
Messengers that would be dispatched by the Kyoshi warriors at approximately the same time that the Utaku Battle-Maidens slammed into the detachment on the east side of the river.
Thus, hopefully, Takeda would be taken completely by surprise when the Unicorn forces came pouring over the bridge he had thought secure, hitting him right in the hindquarters and trapping him, as the earthers liked to say, between a rock and a hard place.
Well, not completely trapped, Zuko thought to himself as he resumed blasting fire with the rest of the legion. He had deliberately ordered the barricades angled slightly, allowing a natural escape route for his enemy to the north. It was one of his uncle's favored strategies that, on the surface at least, seemed overly merciful but actually served a rather pragmatic strategic purpose.
If you gave an enemy nowhere to run, they would have no choice but to fight to the death, and like a cornered animal, there was no enemy more dangerous than one that felt it had nothing left to lose.
Everything seemed to be going to plan however, even as the ostrich-horses hit the battle-line with a thud and a squawk and began trying to scale the stone barricades, Zuko's confidence remained high.
At least it did until he saw Toph in his field of vision, launching herself through the air, away from the strong right flank and towards the north side of the battlefield.
Where, to Zuko's shock, he could now see another red-clad force rapidly advancing on their position.
His feet turned almost immediately to follow her, even as his brain froze in shock for a few moments, its wheels spinning pointlessly for a few moments before snapping back into gear.
I KNOW I counted eight companies of ostrich-horse, he thought angrily. That's exactly how many they HAD! Who in the Sun's holy name is THIS? Takeda doesn't have any allies north of here! It's all wildlands and people who hate him!
That's how many companies Mai's reports SAID they had, he thought, countering himself as he continued to move. If I knew that someone was coming for me, I very likely would have hidden a company or three out in the wildlands, out of sight of an enemy that I KNOW has flying capabilities.
…Clever. Zuko's savage grin reappeared as he charged north to catch up with Toph. Now let's see if you can out-clever the Blind Bandit.
Toph, obviously having sensed the new enemy first, reached the left flank of the army a fair amount of time before anyone else. Zuko, with Haki still in tow, trailed in her wake, and the detached cavalry company that Zuko had placed in the rear of the formation for emergency relief had begun to move in that direction as well. Spearmen that had been fighting the trailing edge of the rhino-lizard charge began to wheel and set their spears at a new angle as Toph cratered into the landscape.
But, for the moment, Toph stood alone. A still small girl in black and white armor, alone, as a further three companies of ostrich-horse came flying out of the north, bearing down on her.
It reminded Zuko of nothing so much as the time she had faced down the entire cast of Earth Rumble VI, her posture confident and unafraid as she reached out and grabbed the land itself with a wrenching grasping motion.
The earth shuddered like a sheet being shaken out in preparation for being folded, or the prey of a wolf-bat being shaken to death in its jaws, and the large riding birds jumped into the air with the force of it, a number of them losing their balance and disappearing in a burst of red under the metal-tipped talons of the ones behind them.
But not anywhere near all of them, and the rest thundered onwards, samurai in red, with the four diamonds of Takeda's personal guard emblazoned on the chests, screaming high-pitched battle-cries that blended seamlessly with their mounts'.
"Ramp!" Zuko roared as he made it through the now settling spear formation, and Toph obliged him with a shout, bending an earthen ramp behind herself, allowing Zuko to charge up it, leap over her head and, with a shout of his own, send a wave of thunder into the charging cavalry, blunting their charge just enough for him to grab the suddenly squawking earthbender and sprint, bursts of fire from his feet propelling him, back to the now set line of spears.
This, while effective in keeping Toph from being run over by several hundred tons of ostrich-horse, proved to be a tactical blunder on Zuko's part, something he only realized as he finished pulling the now violently cursing girl to the rear of the formation.
The last thing that he should have done was draw the focus of battle here, to what was now the weakest point of his line of battle.
He had already purposely given his position away at the beginning with the lightning, to draw attention to the center of the formation, where he wanted it.
But there was also only one person who was known to be able to bend thunder.
And that one person was him. The same person that, if killed, would likely spell the end of the Sengoku, the destruction of the Earth-Continent…
…And immeasurable honor for the one who took his head.
Fortunately, it was a gradual thing. The Takeda line of battle shifted slowly, cavalry forces that had been pressing into the packed masses of Zuko spears drifting northward towards the now highly attractive weakened flank. Earthbenders there, that had previously only had to focus on maintaining the barricades, were gradually forced to divert their attention to their immediate survival.
The protective earth barricades began to crumble under the still present iron-shod horns of the rhino-lizards.
The fighting grew more and more pitched on the flank as ostrich-horses slammed into the yari-spearwall again and again, gouts of fire and stone and blood fountaining all around. Rhino-lizards began to trickle past the crumbling barricades in ones and twos, and wreaked havoc on the spear formation until Toph and Zuko threw themselves bodily at them, practically heavy cavalry themselves, as they burned, smashed, cut, and buried the enormous beasts and their riders.
Yet, even they were forced to give ground, step by blood and mud-soaked step.
It might have all ended there.
If the thudding crash of howling polarbear-dog colliding with squawking bird and lowing lizard hadn't sounded to their right.
Just in time.
The tide of battle shifted again, still towards the north and the left flank of the battle line, but now towards the path of retreat Zuko had left them, gradually becoming a full rout.
And that might have been the end of it, but the cheers of victory, the most honest sounds of life Zuko knew, were suddenly silenced as the entirety of the legion froze in abject surprise.
It seemed to be that almost the entirety of the river Kyokai was now airborne, drifting through the sky behind Appa and the single figure standing upright, bending it aloft.
What is the ash is she do-
Even Zuko's mind froze as the floating river suddenly shattered into spears of ice, the volleys of several daikyu companies worth, and fell like monsoon rain on the retreating cavalry forces, impacts and screams audible even at a distance, slamming into them like the edicts of an angry Kami.
"Begging your pardon, sir," Haki said, still working to catch his breath. "But, why didn't we start with that?"
"Because that is a hundred lives she won't be able to save tonight," Zuko answered quietly, giving voice to his confusion.
Eye locked on Appa, who was descending in his direction, Zuko strode out of the formation and into the intervening space, walking around corpses without even looking.
Appa was not even down a heartbeat before Katara, eyes red with tears, was on the ground and sobbing awkwardly into Zuko's armored chest.
Utterly bewildered, Zuko wrapped his arms around her as best he could, making their armor squeak slightly as he did so, and for a long moment there was only that sound and her muted crying. Then Toph exhaled in a low hiss, as though all of the wind had been knocked out of her. Zuko, his arms still around his sobbing girlfriend, looked over his shoulder and saw that Toph had gone as pale as wax and was now rocking her head back and forth in a manner that suggested that she was looking for something with her earthbending senses.
With a sickening lurch, Zuko's fatigued brain latched on to an unfortunately probable explanation.
"Sokka…" he began, unable to continue, unsure if he would be able to finish without breaking away from her and beginning to mindlessly chase after the still retreating Takeda forces himself.
"Sokka's…" Katara started, still weeping, "Sokka's… b-back at the bridge. With… with…" she cut off breaking down into fresh wracking sobs.
"Suki," Zuko said quietly, his shoulders slumping as Katara confirmed his new guess by nodding into his chest. He turned his head to give new orders, just in time to see Toph launch herself into the air, away from him, and towards the bridge, now barely visible in the sinking mist.
"Colonel Matsu," Zuko said, "prepare the troops to receive the healers. We will be making camp here."
"Yes, sir," Haki said quietly, a truly solemn look on his face as he saluted.
-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-
She looked strangely peaceful there, lying in the mud, just east of the river Kyokai.
The fan of blood from the spear wound under her sternum blended into the dark-green of her Kyoshi uniform far too easily.
Zuko, in that quiet solemn place where grief existed for him, supposed that that was on purpose. A visibly wounded soldier was a detriment to morale after all.
And it was easier to remain stoic and standing upright when he thought of Suki, bright-eyed, skilled, smart and accomplished warrior that she had been, as simply another casualty.
Instead of the friend she had become.
Sokka was the one who looked like a corpse, far paler than anyone as dark-complected as he was had any right to look. He had collapsed onto his knees at Suki's side, tears silently running down a face that had already exhausted every bit of anguish. The two of them were surrounded by a ring of living Kyoshi warriors who looked as somber as one could with as much face paint as they wore. Somehow desperately formal-looking, despite the fact that all of them were nearly coated in blood and mud of differing proportions.
Katara stood at Zuko's side, one arm around him for support, looking as drained as she might have had she already spent a day and a night both bending and weeping. Hakoda stood off to Zuko's left, a small gash at his temple still trickling blood into the creases of his face, as he stared at his son in a combination of misery and remembrance.
A man watching his younger self about to make the same mistakes.
In the middle distance, looming out of the still fading mist like silent mountains, stood a small contingent of earth samurai clad in the deep green-blue of the Crab.
There was no sound in the misty morning air save the somewhat ragged breathing of many still in tears.
The first sound to truly break the stillness was the creak of armor as Lord Toritaka, arms still at his sides, bowed deeply in Suki's direction and, followed by his retainers, held that pose for a long moment.
"I would be honored to conduct the right myself," Toritaka said, his voice low, formal, and just as deep and basso as one would expect from a person who was seven feet tall.
One of the Kyoshi warriors, Suki's second Zuko believed, nodded in acquiescence, and as though it had been planned the circle of face-painted warriors broke apart, backing away from Sokka and the body as one.
Sokka blinked, seeming lost for a moment as he glanced around himself. He finally hauled himself to his feet with a strange look of befuddlement on his face, the look of a man on the brink of solving a riddle that had been in his mind all day.
He looked down at the corpse of his lover, then up to the sky for a moment.
"Never again," he said with a nod, so quietly that had the field not been utterly still Zuko might not have heard it. Then he strode away from the body, taking a position next to his father who still watched him with the look of a man watching a boat-collision; horrified, but unable to do anything but watch.
Lord Toritaka stepped forward, took a stance, and with surprisingly few kata he sank Suki's still peaceful looking body into the ground. In its place, in the same deep brown of the riverbank, emerged a wide stone plinth with the curving roof of a pagoda.
With a single final thrusting gesture the image of the fans of Kyoshi appeared, recessed into the stone.
"May she defend the land, even in death," Mitsu said, ending the right.
-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-
"You need to go talk to him," Katara said quietly, her grey-blue eyes enormous as they seemed to swallow him, capturing him, and refusing to be ignored.
"I… I do not know what I could possibly say to him, Katara. I am not… You are the one who is good at-"
"I'm his sister. He won't… hear anything I say right now. The last time… with Yue… All he really needed was time… but-"
"Then we should give him time. Trying to force recovery… Ash, you are the one who said that-"
"I know what I said!" Katara snapped. "But I don't think that's going to cut it this time. He's… just… I don't know. I… I'm just…"
"Worried about him. I am too. But I doubt that I have the words to make him-"
"Sir?" Zuko cut off as Uesugi Rin poked his head into the tent that Zuko and Katara had been sharing since Ba Sing Se. Zuko bit off the angry reprimand that had been halfway out of his mouth, the man knew him better than almost anyone else, and he would never have interrupted without legitimate cause. Katara, who also knew Rin to be of sound judgement gave Zuko a nod, releasing him to deal with whatever latest disaster it was that had Rin looking perceptibly worried.
It's never just ONE thing at a time, is it? Zuko thought to himself as the two of them, with a quickened pace, moved through the camp.
As they walked in silence, Zuko again noted how remarkably unaffected the camp seemed to be. Certainly, he had lost someone important to him, someone who was not just a name on a roster, but one who was actually a friend.
But to the rest of the legion she was simply another casualty. One they all may have known of but, still, just another casualty added to the continually growing funeral pyre.
Zuko thought on that, on the relative value of a single life, as Rin led him onwards, toward the gradually increasing volume of powerful earthbending.
Towards a visibly irate Toph, surrounded by several platoon's worth of intermittently injured soldiers.
"Come on you hog-chicken-shits!" she roared, rocking back and forth slightly. "Yooou've gotta be tougher than that if you want to- to- survive."
Oh, ash.
"Ma'am?" Uesugi Ren said, caution thick in his voice, "maybe we ought to… take another break? Get the healers for-"
"You lot think you're worth fucking healing?!" Toph snapped, her head swiveling back and forth oddly. "You shit-stains aren't worth the fucking mud in this puddle! You- you- you can't even beat a fucking teenager! I've seen better earthbending from fucking badger-fucking-frogs!"
"Ma'am," Ren tried again, glancing at his brother and Zuko in something akin to panic, "you're a bit… uh…"
"You're not tough enough!" Toph continued, ignoring the former earth-rumbler in favor of continuing to shout. "I've been to- to- to- soft on you. Well that'ss about to fucking change! I'm going to start breaking bones until you lily-livered fucks figure out-"
"Colonel. Beifong!" Zuko barked, drawing all eyes to him and away from Toph.
Toph started, her odd swaying cutting off as she jolted in surprise.
"I require a word, Colonel," Zuko continued, now projecting complete unconcern.
"Not right now, Sparking," Toph said, shaking her head as though shaking off an irritating bug. "I've got tooooo many asses to kick."
Zuko nodded sagely, as though considering the seeming importance of those words.
"You are all released for the night," Zuko said, making eye contact with as many of the soldiers as he could. "Curfew has been suspended. Those of you who require it will report to the healing tents. NOW."
He finished the statement with a bark, and almost instantly, in the near-magical manner of armies everywhere, the rank and file soldiers disappeared out of view almost before Toph had a chance to squawk a protest.
"Now, there is only one ass," Zuko said to the almost empty training ring. He walked into the muddy ring himself, sniffing at the air and almost immediately confirming his initial suspicion.
"You are drunk," Zuko said, managing to squelch the impulse to immediately interrogate Toph as to who exactly had given her alcohol and which of their body parts they would mind missing the least.
"Nooooo I'm not," Toph crooned, her previous anger seemingly evaporated.
"No?" Zuko asked flatly. In a blur he kicked out, sweeping Toph's legs out from under her. She landed flat on her back in the mud with another squawk and a squelch.
"Ow!"
"You are drunk," Zuko repeated, resting on his haunches at her side.
"Ok… maybe a little bit," Toph said seeming amused.
"I… understand what you are feeling. But at no point should you be taking it out on your soldiers. They are your responsibility and you-"
"You don't know ANYTHING about what I'm feeling, you baby-burning fuckwit!" Toph snarled, drunken rage returning in a flash.
Zuko paused for a moment, letting the insult slide off of him before speaking again.
"I loved Suki too. I had assumed that she would be my sister one day. There is no shame in this grief."
"FUCK you, AND the high-ostrich-horse you rode in on! If I needed this fucking touchy-feely shit, I'd- I'd-"
"Be lying in the mud, so drunk that you are barely able to sense where I am?" Zuko said, a hint of a snarl creeping into his voice. "You listen to me, Beifong Toph. We both know that I, that neither of us, are any good at this whaleshit. If you do not want to share, that is acceptable, but if you allow this to influence your ability to command then I will relieve you."
"Fuck. You."
"I will have no choice."
"FUCK you."
"I will find you a desk job, and some adjutants to help you with your paperwork."
"FUCK YOU!"
Zuko remained entirely impassive as Toph screamed, and waited until she had regained her breath before continuing.
"Sokka needs us to be strong," he said quietly.
And then, to Zuko's great shock, Toph's face broke down into a silent sobbing contortion of anguish.
Oh… ash. Why do I even try to be good? I'm really really bad at it!
"This is- is- all my fault," Toph croaked, curling up in the mud, choking the quiet words out between hiccups.
"… That is ridiculous," Zuko said after a moment. "The enemy killed Suki. You were busy saving all our lives."
"I should have- have- told her. But I didn't. I didn't and now…"
"…Told her what?"
"Told her that she was- was- going to get herself killed if she kept taking so many risks."
"Toph," Zuko said with a shake of his head, "that is purely ridiculous. You cannot hold yourself responsible for-"
"But I didn't," Toph continued over top of him, "I didn't because I… I…" she paused for a moment gathering herself and fighting to bring her breathing back under control. "I wanted her gone," she finished quietly, misery now etched into every line on her sixteen-year-old face.
Zuko, utterly stunned, rocked back on his heels, and sat down in the mud.
"I wanted her gone… so I didn't say anything," Toph continued, her voice now calm and flat with resignation. "But now she is and he's… he's broken. His heart is broken and… I heard it. Heard it break. All because I…" she trailed away again, now seeming calmer, a prisoner headed to the gallows, resigned to their fate.
"… Do you know how I figured out the lightning kata?" Zuko asked after a long moment.
"I know I don't like the way you sound when you do it," Toph said quietly.
"Good," Zuko said with a nod, "because it is hate. Firebending is about life, emotion, and lightning… is hate. REAL hate. You have to be… really focused to truly hate something. It is a lot harder than you'd think. There's no room for doubt, concern, or anything like that."
Toph's sightless eyes peered up at the darkening sky in confusion, but she remained silent, still listening.
"I thought that, when I figured that out, that it was my father. That I could hate him and that that was what had finally made it work. If there was one person in the world who really deserved to be hated like that, it was him. But it wasn't. It wasn't my father at all."
Zuko took a deep breath and exhaled gathering himself.
"When I went home, after I betrayed Katara, my father told me that I had… redeemed myself. He said that he was proud of me, he called me his son. And it felt… good. Really good. It was good that I was finally… valued." Zuko reached down and took Toph's unresisting hand in his own. "It still feels good," he said quietly, and Toph's head snapped to the side in her version of a stare.
"And I hate that," Zuko continued, even now fighting against that fury that could, even now, so easily slip its bonds. "I hate that, after everything that bastard has done, to me, to my sister, my uncle, my country… that after all of that I could still, somewhere in here-" he tapped his chest "-want his approval. "I hate that."
He paused a moment, burying the searing fury back into the pits of his heart.
"I think the point I'm trying to make here is that… everyone has something about themselves that they don't like. Terrible little dark impulses that are completely opposite to how we think of ourselves. That is… normal, I think, and not entirely within our control." He gave Toph's hand another squeeze. "But you, Beifong Toph, if you wanted Suki gone, really wanted her gone, you would have taken her outside of camp and buried her. She was a brilliant warrior, but there was no way she could have stopped you. You are feeling guilt that she's gone? That you didn't save her? Well so are we all. I made the plan that she volunteered for. Katara is the one who took her to the place that would be her grave. Sokka invented the parachute that she rode to the ground." Zuko shook his head. "So, I think, the fact that you are in love with Sokka, and would rather that he was with you instead of with somebody else, is a bit of a leap in terms of personal responsibility."
"But… I didn't-"
"Tell her something that she already knew? She was not an idiot, Toph. She knew that this, all of this, is a deadly business. That any battle could be her last. She was… an honorable warrior. She knew."
Toph's face bent into a contemplative one, still heavily tinged with sorrow.
"How do you deal with it?" she asked. "Deal with hating yourself, even a little bit?"
"By using it. The hate lets me know that, that part of me, the part that thinks those awful things, it is not the real me. That it's just the darker places in my soul… casting shadows on my heart."
"…That sounds like fucking poetry," Toph said with a small huff, heaving herself into a sitting position. "Better write that one down, you could be famous one day."
"Doubtful," Zuko said. And then with a grunt he hauled himself, and Toph, back to their feet.
-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-
Under any normal circumstance, Zuko was fond of the sound of a sharpening stone on steel.
It was a calming, ringing, sound that had always symbolized dedication and preparedness, two things that he had always been taught to value.
But in the current circumstance… when Sokka was its source, running a sharpening stone down the length of his jian-sword, his face lit by flickering firelight and still spattered with the mud and blood of the battlefield…
That sound was the hiss of a serpent, sibilant and full of venom.
A serpent that did not stop its song when Zuko sat down next to Sokka on the log he was using for a bench.
The silence between the two men hung heavy, underlain and made more terrible by that hissing song, and neither acknowledging the other's presence for several long moments.
"…There is a term, in the oldest language of the Fire-Nation," Zuko said eventually, his quiet rasping voice at odds with the hiss of stone on steel. "Shi nozomu mono. It means, roughly, 'those who seek death.'" His eye left the fire in front of them both and flicked to Sokka. "Their own death." There was another long pause as Zuko, his eye back on the campfire, gathered himself for this conversation. "In times of conflict, it often was, and is, still considered better for those who have dishonored themselves to spend their lives in battle, rather than simply to fall on their swords. In many battles, throughout history, even a single company of Deathseekers was enough to turn the entire tide of battle, so fierce were they in their desire to cleanse themselves of their dishonor… and their lives."
The hiss of stone on steel trailed away slowly, although Sokka's eyes remained looking straight ahead, unfocused on the middle distance.
"Do you believe you have lost your honor, Shinjo Sokka?" Zuko asked quietly.
Sokka slowly turned his head, his face still horribly expressionless, to actually look at Zuko.
"One of the things I have learned in recent years is that honor is internal," Zuko continued, still looking into the fire. "Only you can be the judge of your own honor. So I will not attempt to tell you where your honor truly lies." He exhaled in a sigh. "But I do know grief. I do know something of that dark silence that currently resides in your mind. And I know how easily grief can make us… do things we might not otherwise… make us blame ourselves for things that are not our fault." Zuko turned his head and affixed his single yellow eye on Sokka's blue pair. "If you ask it of me, Shinjo Sokka, I will help you seek your death."
There was another long silence as the two samurai looked at each other, both as still as statues.
"However," Zuko said breaking the stillness, his voice slightly louder than before, "I do not think you have lost your honor. I do not think that anyone but the enemy is best served by your death, and I do not think that Suki…" Zuko trailed away with a growl as Sokka turned away to look back at the campfire. "Ash. I am not good at this sort of thing," he continued. "We both know that. But… your sister is worried for you, and I…" Zuko shook his head again and, with a grunt of irritation, rose to his feet to stalk away, certain that he'd botched the whole thing.
"Do you think I'm cursed?" Sokka asked quietly, making Zuko draw up short.
"Cursed?" Zuko said with a blink of confusion as he looked back down at the still seated man in mud-stained purple.
"Cursed," Sokka said simply now looking down at the jian-sword and sharpening stone still in his hands.
"How… what makes you think that…"
"It's just… this is twice now. Two times that I've been in love with a woman and… twice that I've asked her to marry me."
Oh… ash and bone.
"And then, within the month… dead," Sokka said with a sort of quiet finality.
"Sokka…" Zuko began, his mind now whirling along new paths that he could not have even considered without this information. "Suki and… Yue's deaths were great tragedies… but I do not think that that means-"
"Your future is full of struggle and anguish. Most of it, self-inflicted," Sokka said, a calm but musing look back on his face again. "A fortuneteller told me that once. I just brushed it off, because… well, I don't really believe in that sort of thing. I prefer rational explanations. But…" he paused, lifting the point of his sword out of the dirt to examine the edge of the dark-grey metal in the firelight. "But when the evidence suggests something…"
Zuko, who, like most of his people, did have something of a superstitious streak, sat back down next to Sokka to contemplate the matter.
"Normally," he began, "I would say that a pattern is not truly established until a third instance, but-"
"Same. But I'm not willing to test that theory."
"Indeed," Zuko said with a nod. "How do you suppose it might have happened?"
Sokka simply shrugged still examining his sword, turning it back and forth in the firelight.
"Perhaps the shugenja could be consulted? There must be some sort of purification ritual that might-"
"Nah. I really don't believe in that either," Sokka said. "I'd rather just deal with it myself." He nodded approvingly to his sword and to himself. "I'll just swear to never fall in love again."
Zuko mused over this for a long moment.
"I am not certain that is something you can swear to," he said aloud. "I can say that, from my own experience, love is not something you have complete control over. It comes, sudden and mysterious, and at very inconvenient times."
"…True enough," Sokka said after a moment. "How about if I just swear to never ask another girl to marry me?"
"That… well, that might work," Zuko said with a nod. "Your sister will be furious of course. But-"
"Not if you don't tell her she won't be."
"Again, I do not know if I can promise that. She can be… persistent," Zuko said with an apologetic grimace. "But… I think she will be alright if I can assure her that you are not… not seeking to harm yourself."
"No, don't worry about that," Sokka said with a grin that was far less mirthful and far more vengeful than it had been only a day ago. "I intend to see this through to the end." He glanced up at the sky where the moon now shown through the clouds, a few days past full, and his smile lost a touch of its ferocity. "Besides, if I tried that, then the both of them would be pissed. Not even my spirit would survive that."
With that Sokka quickly slid the palm of his left hand down the edge of his sword and offered his bloodied hand to Zuko.
Zuko, with a single fluid motion, drew his wakizashi from its scabbard and across his own left palm and grasped Sokka's outstretched hand.
"Never again," Sokka said quietly, his eyes locked on Zuko's.
"So witnessed," Zuko said with a nod, "so bound."
A/N:
Well, well, well, what have we here? Another chapter? Amazing! And one that ended up being MUCH longer than I had originally thought.
.
It is funny to me that this bad boy, about 10k words, is now the "normal" in my brain for chapter length, when the entire first fic in this monstrosity was only 4 times that.
.
But, I hope that I am a better writer now than I was then, and looking back on this chapter I don't know what, if anything I would have cut.
.
So, hopefully you are all not to mad at me for murdering a character and tormenting a few others. I won't say it HAD to happen, but in war there will be loss. I'll discuss it in depth later, in the entirely supplementary….
.
MURDER-BITS (sorry I couldn't resist)
.
Time Jump: So, I hope I made it clear but there is a bit of a time jump here. Just pointing that out so that, when I do it again, next chapter, nobody is totally caught off guard. I put those damned timestamps in there for a REASON!
.
Nagashino: The battle presented here is inspired greatly by the battle of Nagashino, in which Takeda Katsuyori fought against the Oda Nobunaga (of much fame) and Tokugawa Ieyasu (the future Shogun.) I have replaced the firearms with firebending, and changed some of the details, but if you are a history person, I highly recommend giving the battle a quick wiki dive. One of those HUGELY important battles that led to the formation of the Tokugawa shogunate and, if you like the total war video game series, a whole lot of fun.
.
I admit I may be weird in my enjoyment of that sort of thing, but (/shrug)
.
Lightning: So I toyed with giving Zuko lightning for a long time. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep it out of his hands as a sort of contrast between himself and his sister. What really sold me on it (other than the fact that it made for some interesting writing) was the fact that Iroh could do it. It's very much, I think, a sign of maturity for Zuko, and for anyone, to be able to find something dark, or bad, about themselves, acknowledge it, and try to use it for good.
.
As usual, I hope it worked. And as usual, I regret nothing.
.
The Death of Suzuki Suki: Ok, maybe a little regret. I love Suki, I think you guys might have gathered that from my version of the boiling rock. Yes, this is awful. Yes I feel a smidge guilty for doing this to Sokka, again. But, it needed doing.
.
War. Has. A. Cost.
.
People die. People you would rather have not had die. Sometimes they die in utterly pointless and ignoble ways, off-camera. Even the greatest of fighters, which Suki assuredly was, will go down if they get a bad break. This is one of the tactical weakness to the paratroop, they can't land in a defensive formation, and so the likelihood of a single soldier getting themselves into a situation they can't get out of increases dramatically. The whole point of Suki being the first to die was not because she was a non-bender, or a girl, or anything like that. In fact, the fact that she WAS a badass makes this particular lesson more poignant.
.
War does not care who you are. War takes from you indiscriminately.
.
I will miss Suki.
.
Survivor's Guilt: A lot of this chapter evolved out of this concept. A person of significance in our lives dies; how do we deal with it? We blame ourselves needlessly, we worry about personal responsibilities, we make somewhat irrational choices and decision. Toph and Sokka have a lot in common here in this chapter. Toph tries to keep up a good stoic façade but eventually breaks down in the fact of alcohol and older-brother/father-figure Zuko. Sokka is beginning to wonder whether Aunt Wu (the fortuneteller he quotes) was actually on to something. It makes him doubt his normal pragmatic rationality.
.
But all of that is put into contrast for Zuko our protagonist (and YOU faithful reader) by the seeming ambivalence of the rest of the camp.
.
People die. The world moves on.
.
It's not that they wouldn't care if they knew, but they don't.
.
And so the world moves on.
.
FFN ONLY NOTE: Yes it's true this note is ONLY for you, my loyal fanfic dot net folks!
.
Unfortunately it is bad news.
.
FFN it seems does not support the strikethrough command (this would appear as a single line that passes through the middle of a word or words.) And so, my latest published fic "The Trials and Tribulations of Shinjo Katara" will not be appearing here as I make great and serious use of the aforementioned strikethrough command. It IS available on AO3 (same username) if you wish to have a gander at the EXACT same story, but told from Katara's perspective.
.
If anyone knows some method that allows me to use strikethrough here please send me a PM and make me a happy author.
.
Otherwise I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience.
.
Anyway, thanks again for reading, and for suffering through a too long author's note.
.
Have a good one!
.
.
NEXT TIME on a very special "Avatar: The Last Dragon"...
War continues to be Hell.
TUNE IN. New Zuko time, Same Zuko channel!
Original post date: 23 May 2020