Colony talks
To get to the meeting about the colonies, Aang and Sokka had to walk through a crowd of screaming girls. The famous Avatar didn't do more than smile and wave, but that was enough encouragement for one of the girls to faint, and another to yell a marriage proposal. When the fans' hands started getting grabby, Aang had to bend a wind around himself and Sokka that was just strong enough to discourage the girls from getting too close.
The council that had been convened to discuss the future of the colonies included Zuko and his party, King Keui and his advisors, King Bumi's daughter Bishi, who spoke for Omashu, and Toph's great uncle Guizu, serving as head of the Beifong family and representative of the province of Gaoling. The gathering was dominated by Earth Kingdom voices.
Zuko began the meeting with a kind of status report on the current state of the colonies. "The men my father and grandfather put in charge of the colonies are no longer serving. I have appointed new colonial governors, and their orders are to administer the colonies fairly, treating Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation citizens equally. They are also to prepare a report making recommendations concerning a transition plan."
"But fair according to whom? To the Fire Nation?" Asked one of the Earth Kingdom advisors, Fuchou, who quickly established himself as the voice of what radicals in Ba Sing Se and Yu Dao were calling the Harmony Restoration Movement.
"I trust the men I chose. They have an understanding of the history. I've charged them with being sensitive, and they have advisors from Earth Kingdom to help them see all perspectives." Zuko responded mildly. "But I understand if you don't trust them. What would make you feel more comfortable about their being in charge, at least in this interim?"
Fuchou was unable to come up with a suggestion short of a demand the Fire Nation governors leave immediately, which would leave the cities with no government at all, only a power vacuum for warlords, criminal organizations, or charlatans to fill in. No one wanted that.
The Earth King's legal counsel suggested an appeals court as a compromise. "Earth Kingdom citizens who feel a Fire Nation governor has mistreated them, could appeal the decision to a set of judges appointed by this very body."
Zuko thought the idea was pointless, but went along with it for the sake of playing nice. A temporary appeals court seemed like an easy concession for him to make, one that might win him some goodwill for later.
One member of Zuko's team was a woman named Yugo from a Fire Nation family who had grown up in the colonies. She had worked in the administration of a colonial governor who had originally been appointed by Azulon, but when Zuko took the throne, Yugo had eagerly left her position for a new one in his cabinet because she believed in the new Fire Lord's plans and values. Truthfully, she had confided to the young leader, she had been uncomfortable with a lot of the things she'd been asked to do while working in the colonial government and was excited for a chance to make amends.
Tasked with presenting the council with some examples of colonial culture, Yugo showed the group some pottery that had been fired in new kilns that had been developed recently by firebenders working closely with earthbending potters. The resulting dishes could withstand the heat of an oven without cracking, and cooled quickly enough not to burn a baker's hand. There were also sculptures of incredibly intricate and elaborate metalwork; the process for creating it had been developed in Yu Dao. Next, Yugo described the new theater productions that combined Fire Nation masked opera with Earth Kingdom folk music, and used both firebending and earthbending to provide special effects. When lunchtime came, she served the group a meal of the unique colonial fusion cuisine: traditional moo-pork from the Western provinces, with spicy sauces from the volcanic islands of Zuko's kingdom.
Sokka ate eagerly; he'd acquired a taste for hot foods while traveling in the Fire Nation before the comet. Aang enjoyed it as well, though he stuck to the rice and vegetable dishes. But Earth Kingdom advisors spit out the food, saying it was too spicy, and guzzling water. They asked for the moo-pork without the sauce. Zuko also overheard them making fun of the theater masks and metal sculptures.
When they reconvened after lunch, King Keui gave the floor to Fuchou.
"Harmony requires four separate nations. Therefore, all intermixing between Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation people should end immediately." He began, before his proposal degenerated into talk of banning 'miscegenation' and organizing cities to allow people to live among "their own kind." But it was when he started talking about forcing mass emigration, evicting all people with roots in the Fire Nation from their homes in the colonies, that others started to question his plan.
"But how would we decide which of the Fire Nation citizens will return?" Asked Guizo.
"Just send them all back! They had no right to come in the first place!" Fuchou threw up his hands in frustration.
"But where would they all go?" Aang asked, dumbfounded.
"Back where they came from, of course!"
"There are thousands of them!" Zuko objected, his voice rising. "The Fire Nation couldn't absorb a sudden influx of that many people. There's not enough jobs or housing, there would be mass homelessness, food shortages-a refugee crisis!"
"Just like the one your country's army has been causing all over the Earth Kingdom for decades! Fuchou shot back. "Unnumerable refugees pouring into this very city-"
"Exactly." The Fire Lord snapped. "I've tried to learn from the past and avoid repeating it. You want a repeat of the hundred years war, just with our countries' roles reversed."
"Hold on, everybody." Aang held up his hands. "It's at moments like this that I remember my training with the monks-I'd like to lead you all in a breathing exercise."
"Seriously?" Zuko muttered.
"Seriously." The airbender caught his friend's eye. "Breathe with me, everybody." There was quiet as the young Avatar directed the attention of the group to their diaphragms. "Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale." When he could see that their respiration had slowed, and most of their eyes were closed, he murmured koans from the Air Temple. "Breathe in anger. Breathe out calm. Breath in confusion. Breathe out serenity. Breathe in discord. Breathe out peace." After he had stopped directing their breathing, the leaders still stayed quiet for several moments.
King Keui was the first to break the silence. "Maybe we don't have to send them all back to the Fire Nation, Fuchou. And certainly not immediately. That is a bit extreme." His advisors started grumbling among themselves.
Soothed and centered by the short meditation, Zuko was able to recognize the statement from the other monarch as a step toward a middle ground, and wanted to encourage it with reciprocation. "I'd welcome back any Fire Nation citizens now living in the colonies who want to return to their homeland." He told the group. "I'd even help them start a new life. I'm already working on creating a formal program offering incentives—housing, jobs, loans—to colonists who come back. But I don't have the resources to give every single Fire Nation citizen in the colonies the support they'd need to successfully reintegrate into their country of origin. And I've received so many letters from my people who live in the colonies saying they don't want to leave. They have family and businesses; they've lived there for decades or generations. They're begging me to protect them, and I want to do it, but I admit that their presence on that land began with such an injustice. I'm torn."
The Fire Lord's admission appeased all but the most extreme of the Earth Kingdom delegation, and the meeting adjourned for the day with most participants feeling hopeful, but pensive.
Zuko invited Aang and Sokka to join him at his uncle's tea shop following the colony meetings. It was a nice way to unwind from the stressful discussions in the peaceful atmosphere Iroh had created for his patrons. They ended up making it a habit.
After they settled into a quiet table in the corner, Sokka elbowed Aang. "Hey, next time things get heated, how about instead of doing a guided meditation, you just-glow it up. Like, you don't have to start throwing shit around, just get your eyes to turn all white and talk in that big scary 'voice of 1000 avatars' and tell everybody to calm the hell down."
"So I should terrify people into agreeing to keep the peace?" Aang asked incredulously.
Sokka just crossed his arms, convinced of his own genius. "You can't tell me it wouldn't work."
"Yeah, I'm not sure that's a good idea either. You're um, kind of scary when you're like that." Zuko shifted uncomfortably, remembering the sublime dread he'd felt watching an incandescent child rising above the freezing waters of the far south.
"That's the point!" Sokka replied.
"I really don't want to have to go into the Avatar state every time things start going wrong….." Aang fretted.
"I think we're already kind of intimidating to King Keui sometimes, without even bringing Avatar powers into it. He's a near-sighted non-bender who's spent his whole life in the library, facing three teenagers he knows could each kick his butt singlehandedly." Zuko cut his eyes at Sokka, who seemed to appreciate being included in their imposing trio. "Well, as long as that bear doesn't get involved."
"Ah, Bosco is gentler than a croco-kitten." Sokka waved it away. "Have you seen his manicured claws? He can't even eat any food that hasn't been cut up for him ahead of time."
"Bosco is certainly a lot less threatening than some of those Earth Kingdom advisors." Zuko rolled his eyes.
"Sometimes it's like they're encouraging King Keui to prove he's a big brave man to make up for years of letting the Dai Li run his kingdom for him." Sokka replied cynically. "They seem a lot more concerned with furthering their own careers than with doing what's right for the people of those cities."
"Or else they're just acting radical as a negotiation tactic," Aang speculated, somewhat more charitably. "Like haggling for a price at the market. Both the buyer and seller start the bargaining process with a number really far from what they expect will be the final price, knowing they'll both have to compromise to make a sale."
"I hope that's all it is. My biggest concern is protecting the fire nationals in the colonies as much as I can." Zuko told them. "I don't want to leave them defenseless or subject to unfair rule by the distant Earth King. The more we talk, the clearer it becomes that Keui and his advisors don't understand the colonies or their people, and they just see regaining control as a way to gain political points and make themselves look great. They don't understand or respect the blended culture that's arisen there."
"You think you understand it better?" Sokka asked skeptically.
"No, but I know that I need to learn more about it, and I'm willing to do that work. I don't see that same willingness from them." Zuko replied.
"All right, then. I mean, you do have a point. All I hear from those guys is 'throw out the ashmakers.' " Sokka made air quotes around the slur, but Zuko still raised his eyebrows at him. "Sorry. It's kind of xenophobic. Like over and above the….troubling history, they just want pure Earth culture and don't want anybody who's different from them to be around."
Aang shook his head solemnly. "That narrow-mindedness is toxic, and I can't support it. But I do sympathize with the lingering pain from the original colonization."
"We all do." Zuko assured him. "But it was over a century ago. The people who committed and suffered from those crimes are long dead."
"That doesn't mean it just goes away," Aang murmured. "And it also doesn't mean everyone needs to go back to wherever their ancestors came from. I just hope the whole council will agree in the end, no one should have to leave their home unless they want to."
"I think the three of us agree on that," Sokka said. Zuko verified with a nod. "But getting that whole crew to accede to a simple, humane goal like that is going to be a lot more difficult than it should be."
"But it's like Guru Pathik said, separation is an illusion." Aang argued, "I don't understand why it's so hard to get people to accept the idea that we don't need to be kept apart by national boundaries. That there is no zero sum competition between nations and peoples. Instead of fighting each other over some piece of land, we can live together with people who are different from us, and learn from each other, and all become more whole in the process."
"That's….pretty idealistic. But if anyone can get that bunch to go along with it, it's you." Zuko raised his cup of tea to the airbender.
The following day, Zuko came to the meeting prepared with a stack of the letters he'd received from colonists. Most simply told the story of their lives in the colonies, the families and businesses they'd created. Many of them had formed strong relationships with people from the Earth Kingdom and used their combined talents and cultures to create something new and vibrant. With such heartwarming evidence of the unique strengths of the communities and their people, it was hard to argue that the colonies should be completely dismantled. The Fire Nation citizens who had settled there had clearly contributed something vital to the life of these cities.
The day after that, the Earth Kingdom delegation copied his move. In addition to current letters from residents of the colonies, they also brought in historical accounts of the original colonization, the battles the Fire Nation had won when it originally took control, and the atrocities that had been committed against the original inhabitants of the land.
After a weekend's rest, both sides arrived at the negotiation table with additional documentation they intended to use as rhetorical weapons. For a while it seemed like the talks were going to descend into a contest of intensifying accusations of past and future atrocities. They spent almost an hour negotiating who would get to talk first, and how long, until Aang interrupted with a threat to make them all go out into the courtyard and do yoga with him.
To prevent that, Sokka broke in and named the elephant mandrill in the room. As a neutral party, the Water Tribe representative was able to state the obvious: both countries wanted ownership of the land and its resources. "Look, this is a waste of time. You're all just parading these documents in front of us as if a pile of paper is going to convince either Zuko or King Keui to just give up his claim on a few of the most prosperous cities in the world. What we have to decide here is who owns this land. What relationship do these cities and their people have to the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. If your letters and testimonies are really going to help us answer those questions, then, please. Proceed." He leaned back in his chair as the others seated around the table fell into a confused, discouraged silence.
That afternoon, in the Jasmine Dragon, Sokka nudged Zuko. "Have you ever noticed how there are always a bunch of middle-aged ladies hanging around here and flirting with your uncle?"
They watched as Iroh brought a kettle of tea to a pair of women with gray streaks in their hair. His eyes twinkled at them as he poured, and his hands lightly touched both of their shoulders when he moved away. The women giggled like schoolgirls as soon as his back was turned.
"I think Iroh has his own fangirls." Aang chuckled. "He liberated the city, after all."
"He's just friendly." Zuko gruffly dismissed their insinuations.
"How would Mai feel if you pulled a shift here and were just as friendly to all the female customers?" Sokka asked knowingly.
Zuko blanched, and changed the subject. "I thought we were here to talk about the colonies."
"We just spent several hours talking about the colonies with a bunch of old guys, and now we come here to rehash everything they said." Sokka grumbled.
"It just helps me to debrief." Zuko explained himself apologetically. "To make sure I'm not misunderstanding or misjudging the Earth Kingdom representatives, if I hear that you two are coming to the same conclusions I am. And if I'm wrong, I'd rather hear it from you than make a fool of myself in there. I'm still kind of new to being a good guy, and my sense of right and wrong might not be fully calibrated yet, especially with an issue this complex. I trust you guys to tell me if I'm off base without creating a diplomatic crisis."
Aang jumped in. "We're happy to do that for you, Zuko."
"I mean, you're right that it's complicated," Sokka allowed. "I keep wondering, if some other country took over my village, what I would want to happen a hundred years after that, when the war is finally over?"
"Do we have to even refer to the original, pre-colonization state of the territories?" Zuko wondered. "What matters is how things are now, and what's right to do now, not how things got this way. I'm afraid that if we try to right historical wrongs, all that we end up doing is encouraging revenge."
"You're right that the question is what to do going forward, but we can't answer that without a full understanding of what happened in the past." Aang corrected him. "But I will say, for the sake of helping you fine-tune your conscience, I do recognize prejudice, and an impulse toward vengeance in some of the more extreme things Keui's advisors have been saying."
"Thanks. It's nice to know my instincts aren't that far out of line. I guess I'm just having trouble understanding what delving into the history could accomplish, besides driving the Earth Kingdom to seek revenge on my people." Zuko shrugged, at a loss.
"Hopefully it could accomplish lasting peace. There is no peace without justice, and justice demands that we acknowledge what happened, no matter how long ago it was." Aang explained serenely.
"See, this is exactly why I'm so glad you're part of this." Zuko gestured emphatically. "You have a perspective that I feel these talks desperately need. Not only are you neutral, you're committed to nonviolence, and you've suffered far worse than even the Earth Kingdom under colonization. If you say justice does not require sparking a new refugee crisis, everybody kind of has to listen to you. You have this moral authority that goes beyond being the Avatar."
Aang looked down into his tea sheepishly.
"No pressure," Sokka joked, grabbing the airbender's shoulder and shaking it playfully. "It's not like it's your job to fix every mistake of the last hundred years all by yourself."
"No, it's mine." Zuko replied, his mouth a thin, grim line.
"That's not what I meant," Sokka objected.
"My great-grandfather started this mess—"
"Exactly!" Aang interjected. "I—Roku allowed—"
"I was talking about Sozin." Zuko corrected him. "Failure to prevent a crime doesn't confer the same guilt as actually committing it. Obviously. And besides, you might be all powerful, but I actually have more authority in this situation than you do."
"But that still doesn't mean you have to do it alone." Sokka reminded him.
Zuko shot his friend a half-grin. "I appreciate that. Because this is not going to be easy." He took a deep breath and told them his decision. "I want to give up my country's claim on the colonies. I've become convinced it's the right thing to do. But I want to do it in the right moment, in the right way. In fact, I'm afraid to do it at all unless King Keui does the same."
Sokka shot a glance at Aang. "That's…..going to be a challenge."
"I know." The young Fire Lord sighed. "But if I just hand over lands that generations of my country's soldiers died to take and hold, to a monarch almost half of my people still see as the enemy, one we had defeated, at least until I ascended the throne and gave our victory away-well, It would create a huge backlash for me at home, to say the least."
"I think King Keui might be facing the same issue." Aang pointed out. "Those lands are on his continent. They were part of the Earth Kingdom forever, until Sozin."
"If you and Keui both give up your claim on the colonies, what happens? Who's in charge?" Sokka wondered.
"I guess that's one of the things we'll have to figure out." Aang answered. "We probably won't get to that question in this round. Tomorrow is the last meeting."
"Maybe it would be better to make a big announcement like that on your home turf?" Sokka suggested to Zuko.
For the final meeting in the Earth Kingdom, Aang had asked to address the group with a closing statement.
"When I was a kid, and in Roku's time, the nations didn't mix the way they do now. They pretty much kept to themselves, except for diplomatic meetings like this. The few people who did make lasting friendships across national boundaries were either Avatar's companions or outlaws. But things are different now, and I don't think those kinds of friendships should be discouraged. They've certainly brought a lot of joy into my life. In places like Yu Dao and Cranefish Town, benders and nonbenders of different national origins are forming business partnerships and families. Obviously we can't break up families. That's ridiculous. I don't think anyone here would advocate for that. The issue is just a matter of how to make sure that the more powerful nation isn't taking advantage of the less powerful, that the groups of people are interacting on an equal playing field, and it's hard to ensure that when this all began with colonization."
Fuchou replied testily, "It's hard to ensure that when the structures and institutions of colonization are still intact, like the colonial governors."
"That's true." Aang conceded. "It's also true that not a single person from the colonies is here in this room. Why are we making decisions to govern their lives when they don't have a say in it?"
"Including them is common sense to you and me," Sokka replied. "The Air Nomads were democratic, and in the south, my people elect our leaders. But the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation are monarchies, and you're all used to ruling from on high, without asking citizens to weigh in on policy."
"Fair point, Sokka." Zuko jumped in before the Earth Kingdom people could express offense. "That's why I'd like to invite some representatives from the colonies to the next round of discussions, in the Fire Nation. They certainly should have some input on these decisions."
When the final meeting ended, the group still hadn't agreed on much beyond interim steps. Zuko's limited resettlement program and the appeals court were just about the only concrete outcomes. They would meet again in the Fire Nation in a few weeks.
Disclaimer: The issues of colonization presented in ATLA and LOK have some parallels in our world, but they are not exactly analogous. This chapter is not meant to convey support for any particular policy regarding peoples and places that were colonized in real life. I am constrained in my writing here with being faithful to LOK canon. Is the solution presented by the ATLA comics and LOK the best one for former colonies in real life? I don't know! In fact, I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that colonizers should get to stay just because they've been in a place for a while. That's partly why I wrote it so that those in the Earth Kingdom who want to simply retake the colonies and reabsorb them into their country are at least partly motivated by racism, xenophobia, and a kind of 'anti-immigrant' sentiment. So there is some 'wrong' on both sides in the story in a way that is not as true in any real life situation that is at all similar. I just hope I've been at least somewhat sensitive in this presentation. And this fic will explore these issues further; this is not the final resolution. Later chapters will hopefully add more nuance.
In this AU, I've changed events from the graphic novel canon (especially The Promise) so that Aang doesn't need a battle and a heartfelt plea from Katara to remember that separation is an illusion. In the comics the "Harmony Restoration Movement" was presented much more positively than I present it here. Also, since Zuko isn't visiting his dad and getting evil little whispers in his ear, and is instead having nice teatime chats with Aang and Sokka, he isn't anywhere near declaring war over the colonies. Bonus: Mai doesn't dump him either! Because really, instead of asking his pacifist friend to kill him, Zuko just needs to keep Aang and the Gaang close so he can continue to learn from them, and then he'll never turn into his father.
This is some sensitive stuff, and I really hope I haven't offended anyone or made any big missteps or mistakes here. I apologize deeply if my ignorance has been hurtful in any way.
Let me know what you think!
