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Hello everyone! Here is my latest Zukaang AU: tea spirit!Zuko. It is angstier and darker than my usual writing, though admittedly, some parts of Avatar Zuko were very dark indeed. Please note that one half of the main pairing is dead in the fic's present timeline. Whether or not things will stay that way remains to be seen. But this is not the kind of romance where death does them part: there will be a happy ending, against all odds. If you want more warnings / information on the premise before reading, scroll to the very end before reading.
If you've read Avatar Zuko, you'll know that I enjoy including many references to Chinese history, language, and culture in my writing. This fic won't be as intense a dive into Chinese culture, but I'll include some notes here and there. I'm using in-text footnotes (the AO3 version has clickable linked footnotes which is nice but sadly FFN is not so advanced). See the end of the chapter for the footnotes.
I tried to give some context to the names of places/OCs that I've made up, but if you see a name in the text that isn't explained, I probably recycled it from a drama I watched, and it's not intended to be significant. Not everyone gets to have a name and life laden with meaningful purpose, after all.
Bzzz, bzzz.
Kirin startles awake as an unruly gadfly zips around his head (1). Grumpy at his nap's disruption, he reaches for his handy jug of rice wine, but his fingers brush empty air.
Ugh, that's right. It's been years, but sometimes he still forgets. He takes a mighty stretch, squinting against the late morning sun, and uncaps his waterskin for a drink instead.
Gone are the days when he could spend all day at the city gates with a jug of Du Kang's finest to keep him company (2). Sadly, the Fire Lord has done his research and concluded that pound for pound, wheat fills bellies more satisfactorily than rice, freeing up tonnage for more heavy artillery on his battleships. Over the past decade, every rice field in the jurisdiction of Zuodu and throughout the country has been converted to acres of golden grain (3). Many other crops have been abandoned for wheat as well, never mind the fact that it's less suited for growing this close to the equator.
Farmers make an honest living growing grain for the war, and the army buys it for a price they deem fair. In reality, it's barely a living wage, worse in the years when the locusts are bad. But does the Fire Lord care? No, he only cares about supplying his military, feeding his interminable war with the grain and the steel and the lives of his nation's sons.
Kirin is past the point of caring too. Right now, he only cares about the lamentable lack of alcohol. "To think that I've lived to see the day when rice and rice wine weren't a constant of life," he bellyaches to himself, peering beyond the walls inconsolably. "I'll never see anything more improbable."
The universe's die have more in store for him, it seems. As he gazes past the scant refreshment stands and sundry vendors that set up shop outside the city gates, he notices a figure in the distance. Dressed in nondescript grey and leaning heavily on a staff, his stooped posture is at odds with his youthful, unlined face. He doesn't seem to carry any goods for sale, nor any traveling supplies at all. He does sport a black bandanna wrapped around his head and unusually long sleeves that hide his hands entirely.
Hm. Not a farmer from a neighboring town, nor anyone with the court or the army. Kirin puzzles it over. The shop tenders pause and watch as the man walks between them, too befuddled to call out to the weary traveler and advertise refreshment as they normally would to visitors.
"Name and business?" Kirin asks when the man finally draws within hailing distance.
"Yes, I… I recently lost my home—I'm looking for a place to stay in the city." The man's voice is soft and unsure, hesitating over his syllables. "My name is Aang."
"That's an unusual name," Kirin remarks but immediately feels bad. You don't get to turn your nose up at what your parents gave you, and this man has probably experienced his unfair share of schoolyard bullying.
The man doesn't take offense. "I'm not from around here," he admits.
I couldn't have guessed! Aloud and less sarcastically, Kirin advises, "I suppose you'd better register at the Zuodu city marshal's office." There's something about the man's haunted grey eyes that forestalls him from further ribbing. Just let him get on with his day, no matter how strange he seems. "Xiao Lai!"
One of the boys hawking wares and gawking openly for the past few minutes hurries over. "Xiao Lai, show this man to the marshal, why don't you? It's not as if anyone has coin to buy your useless waist tassels and trinkets."
Aang looks confused as Xiao Lai ushers him away—what kind of a backwaters place does he hail from, that he doesn't even know the regulations for transferring residences? Kirin goes back to the business of morosely considering why the rice wine is gone (4).
"Where's the Avatar when you need him?" he asks of his waterskin. "I'll bet he could turn water into wine."
Gao Sheng's morning had been going swimmingly well—no crimes in town for the past week, looking at a promotion soon—when some idiot out of time had stumbled in. The man doesn't know of the census established by the Fire Lord several years ago mandating all citizens to register with their local town authorities. He doesn't seem to have heard of the requirement for travel papers, much less have them; gives vague answers about his origins ("far north of here"), and doesn't know the date, to boot.
"I don't know if you're trying to be funny, but it's the twentieth year of Ozai's reign, not the sixteenth year of Azulon." He crumples up the incorrectly dated paper, and his deputy hands the man a new form.
"Ah, my apologies. My mind was wandering elsewhere." He excuses himself bashfully. "Well, if that's all…?"
Gao Sheng fumes internally but manages to control his bureaucratic irritation. "Mister, if you have no intended place of residence nor relations in this town to vouch for you, then I hardly fathom the purpose of your registration at all. Where do you plan to go?"
The man clearly hasn't thought about this—tsk, youth these days, just floating about like vagabonds, expecting the sky to house them and the earth to feed them.
"Don't know that there's any housing available in town long-term." Odd, the man hasn't even explained what happened to his original hometown and family. There hasn't been much local bandit activity lately.
"There's always the house by the abandoned tea plantation," his deputy suggests.
"Nonsense! Who'd want to live in that rundown place?
"Actually, that sounds quite fine," Aang interjects quietly. "If you'd just point me in the right direction, I'd be much obliged."
Well, if that's what it takes to dispatch him…
"Bye-bye Mistress Onji!" "Goodbye!" "See you tomorrow!" "I won't forget my homework this time!
The schoolyard rings with the joyous voices of children liberated from their studies to go play for the rest of the afternoon. Onji watches them leave before packing up her books and papers and preparing to head home. She hopes her father hasn't tried to get a head start on making dinner. Ever since her mother passed, his mind has been ailing, and it's less than advisable to leave him alone with the hearth fire.
She stops abruptly outside the schoolhouse doors at the sight of a man standing there alone. "Er… are you a parent?" That's the only reason she can think of for someone to be waiting at the school. He's certainly not there for her.
"No, actually, I'm more of a prospective student." He clutches a staff in his hands nervously, unsure of himself. "I'm from the colonies, you see, and I'm afraid my schoolteachers were a bit lax in their history lessons. Having arrived now in my homeland—," he seems to bite this out between gritted teeth, "I just thought I'd… try to apply myself diligently."
She's not sure what to make of this. The man, who's about her age, is strangely sweet in his affect, a tightly wrapped bandana starting to come loose at the base of his neck as he fidgets with the knot, glancing at the ground and back at her in rapid succession.
"Well, the school typically enrolls students through age thirteen; after that, children help their families out with business and such," she explains. "It would be most irregular to have an adult learner. Unless you were looking for individual tutelage?"
"Oh, no, I'm new in Zuodu," he clarifies with haste, stumbling over the name. "I've no family or business, or any means of compensation just yet."
"Not necessary at all." She waves this off, thinking she may have an inkling as to where to steer this conversation. "I'd be happy to just have a chat with you, maybe tomorrow after school?" She does need to check on her father still.
"Alright," he says, with some trepidation.
"Great, I'll see you tomorrow…"
"Aang," he supplies.
"Aang. I'm Onji."
On the way home, she ponders this development. It could be premature of her, but her father's debilitated condition hasn't done wonders for their family's savings, and she's got her two younger brothers to think of. If she were marrying any respectable man in this town, he'd be lucky to get a handful of silver for her dowry. But Aang… well, beggars can't be choosers. A girl has to do what a girl must.
He trudges wearily under the empty twilit sky, leaving the city of Zuodu and its anemic amber lights behind. Everything looks grey and dull through a filter of exhaustion, and all Aang wants to do is lie down and sleep.
Already? An insidious voice taunts him. You just woke up from a decades-long nap, and look where things are now.
He doesn't have to live in the abandoned old house five miles out of town. Rui Jing, the keeper of the stables, had offered a room in exchange for hire as a stable hand, but Aang feels odd about staying in such a place. It's as if the city walls are a trap closing in around him, stifling and suffocating. No, he'd rather roam free under the open air.
The house is nestled at the bottom of a modest hill, its shallow slopes covered in tangled vegetation. The marshal mentioned that whoever lived here previously had been quite the tea enthusiast. Aang stands for a moment before the darkened house, studying the untamed rows of tea bushes running wild, bare branches and curled leaves cracking from lack of care. A mirror of the world today, and of himself, he muses.
The door creaks open at a push, a few bamboo splinters falling out of the disused hinges. He enters, fanning away the dusty miasma that greets him. One wall has all but collapsed, and cobwebs span the corners with abandon. A couple raised steps lead into a second room in slightly better repair. The whole house boasts a few articles of furniture, all thoroughly coated in dust.
Going through some drawers yields spark rocks and candles, so at least he can better see his surroundings. A quick tour of the pantry turns up a couple bags of flour already chewed through by rats; nothing edible, unsurprisingly. Everything seems largely undisturbed by humans, though Aang keeps getting an eerie sense that he's not alone. He surveys the shadows, peers out the windows—nothing. It's just his nerves.
A sudden wind rustles the thatched roof, and he jumps as something rattles to the ground, fallen from the table.
That's odd. It's a bamboo scroll, thick and heavy; he doesn't think he would have failed to notice it on his initial scan of the premises. He unravels it slowly, wooden slats clacking as he goes. The Classic of Tea, it's titled (5). It seems to be a treatise, written in a steady, neat hand, that deals with all manner of tea planting, harvesting, processing, and preparation. He sets it down at length, characters blurring together as his eyes water from renewed fatigue. Best to sleep it off and start fresh in the morning.
He lies down on the fortunately intact sleep pallet and falls asleep within minutes, forgetting to douse the candle. Thus, he misses how deliberately the wind blows it out, without ruffling anything else or disturbing his repose at all.
Sleep well.
The Southern Air Temple is not the one he remembers from his childhood. Much of the central structure is missing, the bare mountainside gaping open to the clouds. It's much more tiring scaling its heights on foot than it is by sky bison, but Appa is as absent as the rest of his comrades. The plants are untended, some wilting and leafless, stark branches like skeletons against the sky.
He remembers the last battle, smoke congesting the air so they could not breathe, no matter how they tried to bend it away. The comet paints the sky vermilion and smoky at midday. It would be beautiful under other circumstances; here, though, it sounds their death knell.
They cannot prevail. The fire is hot enough to melt flesh from bones, but the heat does not torment Aang so much as the sound: the roaring rush of fire blasts, compressed air rattling his eardrums, knocking him to the ground. He rises time and time again, and each time is like a century of warfare in the making. He gets up without tire, but more remain unmoving, the air sapped of sound, the blasts temporarily ruining his hearing. An unexpected moment of silence for the dead, then another, and another, multiplied without end until they stretch into eternity.
Any hope of escape is dashed. Sozin has been preparing for this for a long time, it seems. He has harnessed the dragons, and between their serpentine cunning and his war machines, Aang realizes how dire their chances of escaping unscathed truly are. Figures fall from the sky unmanned, a gruesome meteor shower, without forecast. Aang prays that they're already gone, that they won't feel the devastating impact of sea level ten thousand feet below.
Pray? Is that all you can do? He thinks to himself scornfully. You're the Avatar.
And? A voice not his own interjects, smooth and unharried, so foreign to the apocalypse reigning outside his mind.
And nothing. He falls, falls asleep, falls to his death, falls short of his people's needs and expectations of the Avatar. Silence reigns amid the calamity, and he falls, and falls, and falls.
There's nothing for him here.
He wakes from dizzying dreams, mild light from the spring dawn bathing his face.
Wait, I'm outside. I don't remember going to sleep outside.
His sleepwalking self seems to have laid him down on a marginally softer and greener patch of earth than the surrounding area, which Aang appreciates. He stretches and yawns, then shudders through some vigorous stomach rumbles. That decides the order of business today.
The tea plantation covers about half this side of the hill, beyond which stretch vaster mountains and a thick forest. A few paces off the beaten path, he finds a small pond, where he refreshes himself and tries to apply his long-neglected skills of identifying edible flora. Some mushrooms look like they might fit the bill, but he'll have to check with the locals.
It's a sleepy day in town, early spring drenching the town in pollen and slumber. Rui Jing lets him work for his grub today, slouching on a bale of hay and whittling a smoking pipe as Aang feeds the animals and shovels manure.
"How're you liking Zuodu so far, young man?" he drawls pleasantly, whittling away and spraying splinters of wood everywhere. Aang makes a note to sweep those up later. He's nothing if not thorough. "I always say to the marshal, I say, 'We should go and fix up that house by the tea field, it's an eyesore.' But he says to me, 'Then just don't be going up there where you've got no business, and your delicate little eyes won't be sore.'"
"Uh huh." Aang ties the top of the feed bag securely so that the animals won't get at it. "Do you know anything about the person who used to live there? I haven't been able to find out much."
Instantly, Rui Jing looks more guarded, sitting up straighter and focusing on his woodwork, as if this will distract Aang. "Hm… well," he hems and haws, "he was an honest young man. Came from a good family on the main island, but it sounds like he did something to offend someone." At Aang's confused look, he helpfully jabs a finger at the ceiling. "Someone high up," he whispers conspiratorially.
Still not quite clear on how this is relevant, Aang nods nonetheless, hoping for more details.
"He seemed quite repentant, the poor boy. Used to work in a tea shop, and kept up a good field of tea crops even after most plantations were commandeered by the state for other purposes. Kept to himself, and who could blame him, shipped off to the middle-of-nowhere when he was born into so much more. But then…"
Here, Rui Jing pauses, the lull in his spiel rife with hidden meaning.
"And then?" Aang prompts him, but he shakes his head.
"No, I'd best not say too much about what happened."
Now Aang's really curious. What circumstances surrounding this man's death were so taboo that Rui Jing won't even speak of them?
"You'd have to ask Kirin—can't guarantee he'll say much either. Normally I'd advise you to loosen his tongue with some liquor, but ah, old Kirin. Liver like pickled cabbages! Only the best rice wine will make him talk, and there's none to be found in the whole country nowadays."
Interesting. Aang resolves to ask the gatekeeper more later.
"Are you listening, Aang?"
He glances back at her, eyes widening in alarm as he tries to make amends for his lack of attention. "Sorry, you were saying?"
"You could use a lesson from some of my students; their concentration skills far outstrip your own," she admonishes mildly, but she's smiling, leaning towards him across the table, her plate of spiced deep-fried radish cake quite forgotten.
…he hadn't realized he'd agreed to an early dinner date with Onji under the pretext of learning Fire Nation history. Well, at least he gets a free meal. "I was distracted by a lush green beauty," he lies, hoping to save face with her and avoid cutting his history lesson short.
"Oh, you rascal." Aang would say they haven't known each other long enough for her to say this so fondly. He doesn't remember the girls at the Eastern Air Temple being so easy to charm.
His heart plummets when it hits him again, as it has multiple times during this conversation, necessitating Onji's repeated interjections to draw him out of aggrieved reverie. There are no more nuns at the Eastern Air Temple to dazzle with his air scooter, nor brothers at his home in the Southern Air Temple, nor any Air Nomads at all in this wide, cheerless earth. If Onji is to be believed, the Water Tribes and many coastal towns of the Earth Kingdom have succumbed too. All because Aang couldn't hold fast in the Fire Nation's attack and instead spent seventy years comatose on the sea floor, unable to do anything in the Avatar state.
It must be true; he intuited as much when he awoke and returned to the Southern Air Temple only to find it barren, the structures blasted to pieces, the bones of his people scattered and sullied by ash and frost. A mausoleum, frozen in time, and he could not find it in himself to stay. He knew time must have passed, but he hadn't known exactly how much until the marshal corrected his paltry attempt at guessing the date yesterday.
"Anyways, the rest is as you know it, I'm sure," Onji continues. "Azulon passed suddenly from ill health twenty years ago, and his younger son Ozai became Fire Lord. He's got two children, but a few years ago, I heard that the crown prince committed some grave offense. He was stripped of his title and banished to gods know where, so I guess he's out of the picture." She shrugs, unfazed by the sorry state of the nation's politics.
As expected, Kirin was no help in clarifying the story of the house's previous tenant. All he would say was that the man's name was Lee, and he was banished for defamation and libel against a prominent public figure back in the capital. He'd refused to speak when Aang asked how he died, and instead shut the gate in his face, closing the city for the night. Another dead end.
"I mean, what's the harm in telling me?" he grouses, sweeping the floor with a makeshift broom constructed out of twigs. He might as well fix things up around the house if he's to stay here. "It won't change the past, nor the future, most likely."
He brushes away the cobwebs on the ceiling, sending apologies to the spiders who have now been displaced. What he wouldn't give for some living creature to accompany him here, to save him from his own darkening thoughts. Sometimes, he wonders if everything he's experienced since waking up alone in the sea was a dream. If everything from before that was a dream, and he'll wake up safe and happy in the Southern Air Temple tomorrow.
He keeps talking out loud to make the silence less oppressive, pondering the mystery all the while. "I get the feeling that this guy, Lee, died unjustly. Everyone's so tightlipped about how he died, as if they think someone's listening in to make sure they don't say the wrong thing. And if he were the town pariah, they wouldn't have hesitated to retake this land after he died.
"Technically, as the Avatar, it's my job to arbitrate unjust punishments and settle them in favor of the wronged party," he considers. "But no one even knows I'm alive."
Sometimes even I question my existence. The fire in the hearth glows a little brighter as to verify that yes, you're here, you're alive.
(but to what end?)
He opens the door and guides his sweepings outside with the broom, pushing the debris towards the field and out of the way. It's dark enough that he doesn't notice an unevenness in the ground, and he trips, reflexes catching him lightly in a flutter of airbending before he hits the ground. Thank goodness no one's around to see that.
Blindly, he feels out the contour of something buried in the ground and hazards a guess at the edge of a jar lid. It's easy enough to liberate with a spot of earthbending—might as well break out all the forbidden arts while there's no one to see him. He unties the twine securing a piece of cloth over the lid and pops it open.
It turns out to be a jug of rice wine, nicely aged, buried here long ago but never consumed. Must've been before the transition away from rice crops, he reflects, recalling some of Onji's extended didactics this afternoon. Well, this is unexpectedly helpful.
He dreams of the battle again, of his solitary awakening, of his lonesome punishment, forced to walk alone, accompanied only by the forgotten dead amid a decaying temple. That cloying grief fills his heart, his stomach, his soul and body and mind, and the dream seems to last forever, until suddenly he looks up, no longer in his destroyed home. The stone under his hands is not the smooth, unlined grain of the temple's construction, but rather cold marble raked with gridlines spanning several paces. He is indoors in an unfamiliar place, but the feeling of unbridled terror in his chest is the same, and so is the massive spout of flame delivered from a damning hand. He hears his voice escape his throat as the flame sears his face, agony incarnate, but something's not right. The timbre of that pained cry is familiar, but it is not his own.
He has no time to illuminate these circumstances as the jolt of emotion and pain sits him bolt upright in bed, in the present but no less bleak and forsaken moment.
Whose voice was that? Why was I in their body? He wonders without answers at this whole dratted mess. He spends the rest of the night staring morosely at the ceiling, childishly peeved that he cannot even find peace in sleep.
The next day, he bends some water into a frozen ice blade and chops a morning's worth of firewood, handily constructing a little sledge of bamboo stalks lashed together to haul it into town. A pretense at an honest occupation will deter any questions directed at him out of animosity, and Aang needs to avoid all the questions he can. It's fortunate that he lives far from town, away from prying eyes that might witness him bending the elements.
Rui Jing frowns when Aang explains that he's not coming to work for him anymore. "Ah, you volatile young people," he despairs dramatically, affecting a wounded swoon from atop his bale of hay. "What do I need to do to keep you?"
Aang grins in spite of this teasing—it's all in good sport. This place isn't so awful. "Sadly, I need to move on. Some firewood to remember me by?"
He acquiesces. "Alright. A very transient keepsake, to be sure." Rui Jing inspects his purchase critically. "These are cut phenomenally smooth; mind telling me where you get your blades sharpened?"
"Eh…" Monkey feathers, maybe I should invest in a sufficiently dull hatchet after this.
"Ohhh," Rui Jing utters in understanding. "A tradesman never reveals his secrets. Fair enough."
… crisis averted. After that, Aang makes his debut on a populous street corner stacked with small eateries and watches his pile of firewood dwindle. Word gets around about the perfectly stackable, smooth cords of firewood sold by the mysterious young man in a black bandanna. He eagerly awaits more sales unlike any self-respecting Air Nomad, not primarily because of the payout, but because then he'll be free to go and get some answers for himself.
Finally, it's done! He eats dinner without tasting his food and quickly finds his way to the gatehouse before dark.
"Kirin!"
"Not you again," the man grumbles. "I told you, I don't have any information for you. No one does."
Aang uncovers last night's fortuitous discovery, the jug of wine, hidden under a cloth on his wooden sledge. "Maybe this will help jog your memory?"
Kirin gives him a long, searching look, and finally capitulates. "What do you want to know?"
"He called himself Lee," Kirin begins, swirling the wine around in a shallow bowl, still trying to give the impression of a lofty connoisseur and not something baser. "Came into town just under a decade ago. Couldn't have been much older than my son is now, and he came of age last year. Had a huge, fresh burn wound over the left side of his face. Pretty sure he couldn't see nor hear from that side, but you'd never guess it."
Aang looks at his own bowl, hardly touched. He'll have to maintain a clear head to make sense of Kirin's increasing inebriation.
"He came with armed escorts from the capital city patrol, so everyone knew he must've offended someone high up. We were a bit leery at first, but he seemed nice enough. The guards left after a month when it was clear that he wasn't going to try and make a break for it. The marshal was entrusted with keeping an eye on him, but there wasn't anything to do.
"Before he arrived, we used to have pretty frequent bandit attacks in the rural areas northeast of here. They're technically under the town's jurisdiction, but the marshal was stretched thin enough trying to keep crime down within the walls themselves. After Lee came along, there was talk of a masked figure fighting off attackers in those areas. They called him the Blue Spirit: he'd appear out of nowhere with his swords, dispatch all those no-gooders, and vanish without a trace."
"Why would he hide his face if he was doing good?" Aang asks, puzzled.
Kirin shrugs, tossing back his bowl and pouring a third. "People are wary: they'll misread good for bad and unknown for worse."
Aang drinks too, unable to counter that with any sort of dignified response. What a world they've come to, if even good deeds can no longer be taken at face value.
"Lee lived in that house for almost three years. He planted those tea bushes and for several seasons, he harvested them and made quite a bounty. Last I heard, he was writing a book and deciding on a fancy name for his special line of tea leaves… I never tried them myself, but I'm told the flavor was quite transcendental. Said his uncle was a tea enthusiast before he passed, wanted to uphold his legacy, poor kid."
… why do I feel like there's about to be an abrupt plot twist for the worse? Aang thinks pessimistically. He refills Kirin's bowl and polishes off his own. The gate is long since closed, though Kirin promises that he can let himself out once they're finished.
"But one day, five years ago, an official and some soldiers from the capital came with a decree. Said someone had accused Lee of harboring Air Nomad fugitives in his house."
The oiled paper of the gatehouse windows is patchy and peeling, and the wind squeezes through to ruffle the flames in the hearth fire. The dancing flames cast shadows over Kirin's salt-and-pepper hair, and for a moment, he looks almost grotesque, like a fearsome masked figure sent to deliver punishment.
"This is what the marshal told me, because I was serving as the warden back when Lee was imprisoned. The officials said that Lee was actually the crown prince of the Fire Nation, who had been banished to this lonely town in the first place for defying his father in a war council. No one else knew.
"He was sentenced to death without a trial, and in any case, we never knew who snitched to the authorities. He didn't have any enemies in town. 'm sure Rui Jing told you plenty about him too. He was nice enough; seemed very like you, in fact. Uncertain origins, hard worker, lonely lifestyle…"
Grim candlelight dapples Kirin's lined face as he leans closer to peer at Aang. "You sure you yourself don't have something to hide?"
The man's deep enough in his … fourth? Sixth? Who knows—to not remember most of this when he wakes. Aang brushes it off with a nervous laugh. "What was his name?"
Tonight, he stops at the entry to the house but doesn't go in. The fields call to him, and he looks out over them as the one who lived here once must have done also.
"They killed you," he says numbly. "Your own father—the Fire Lord—handed down the decree. You weren't even permitted a headstone to mark your grave."
He half expects the barren fields to open up and show him the remains of the innocent dead. But this isn't a fairy tale. The wind rises around him, rustling the dry leaves into a sorrowful whisper. He can picture it now, his dreams merging with reality to form memories not his own.
A calm spring day: a good day to die, or at least to be buried. Winter's dry, hard ground makes for unconscionably shallow graves. Who knows how long he'll stay buried, with unscrupulous wildlife looking for a meal?
No one witnesses his end except one official, wearing the square hat of the Department of Justice, and three soldiers who cast die to determine whose lot it is to wield the blade today. The marshal had ruled that none of the townspeople should be present, concerned about a riot. The general populace hasn't been told of his true identity, as far as he knows. It's too much of a disgrace to the royal family; better that the Fire Lord's subjects think that the former crown prince died of mundane causes in exile, unworthy of mention.
He kneels amiably, the guards too timid to use force with a royal prince despite his now humble circumstances. There is no one to make any fanfare for, so he savors the sunshine on his eyelids, the warm earth underneath, the unknowable bite of the blade as it severs head and body. The raw anguish and queasiness of a less-seasoned soldier, emptying his breakfast onto the ground. Squarehat lifts his shoes delicately as a gush of blood rushes past like a gully irrigating the parched tea plants. It's blood, but water all the same, and they drink gratefully.
Aang blinks, and the world totters and spins around him. He knows he shouldn't have matched Kirin drink for drink after the man divulged the grisly story to him. His feet guide him into the midst of the crops. It is impossible to know if he is standing on unhallowed ground.
"I'm sorry," he says, the words woefully inadequate. "Kirin said that no one in town ever even saw any Air Nomads. That it might have been a false charge by your father to do away with you permanently."
How could any father do that to his child? Aang thinks of Gyatso, the only father he'd ever known; of the temple that housed him and the monks who raised him. All dust now, all ashes, just like the bones that lie underfoot, uncherished, unmourned.
It's too much, he thinks. All the grief and pain he's felt since waking in an empty ocean, since fleeing the ghost town of the Southern Air Temple, knowing all his people to be dead… everything coalesces here and now in a damning passion, and he sinks to his knees in the dirt, then curls onto his side, borne down by an insufferable weight. The weight of thousands of souls, gone the instant the comet passed, and now this. His tears mix into the soil, salt and iron, sorrow and fear combining in the fertile ground.
He doesn't make the conscious decision to pass out there under the cold night. It's just easier not to move. He nestles into the divot his body forms against the earth, trying to get comfortable. If only this wind would stop wailing. It's giving him a chill.
Go to sleep.
"I am," he crossly tells the voice in the wind. "Look, I'm lying down and everything."
This does nothing to deter the persistent gusts of wind, seemingly targeted at his sleeping spot. It rages and rags at his clothes, growing still harsher.
Go to sleep.
"Ugh, fine," he grumbles. He gets up and stumbles back to the house, half-awake, and catches himself on the doorframe. "I'll go to sleep, in bed, all nice and proper. Happy, Zuko?"
The wind dies down at last. After he falls asleep, a gentle murmur, quiet but amused, resounds through the house. I'm never happy.
1) Kirin: the Japanese equivalent of Chinese qilin (麒麟), a mythical creature often mistranslated as unicorn or giraffe. It is said to have a single horn on its head, hooves, and scales, though many variations exist of what it's supposed to look like. It is a benevolent creature that appears when a righteous sovereign rules the land, or when an evil tyrant is about to be ousted. I really only used Kirin instead of Qilin here because people panic when 'q' is not followed by a 'u'
2) Du Kang: 杜康，semi-legendary historical figure commonly known as the god of Wine.
3) Zuodu: 左都，not a real place, as far as I know. I made this up based on the idea that the town Aang arrived in once served as an eastern capital of the Fire Nation, but the capital moved west to the caldera once Sozin took over, just as the capital of China has moved countless times over the dynasties. The name Zuodu means 'left capital', which sounds odd until you consider that ancient Chinese compasses pointed south (not sure why). Therefore, from the perspective of someone facing south, the east was the left and the west was the right. Thus, zuo was used to refer to the east.
4) From Pirates of the Caribbean, courtesy of Captain Jack "why-is-the-rum-gone?" Sparrow.
5) The Classic of Tea: 茶經，a treatise written by Tang dynasty scholar Lu Yu (733-804), commonly known as the Tea Sage for his reverence for and methodical attention towards preparing and appreciating tea.
Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this first bit. I don't have anything definite planned beyond chapter two, but I have a pretty good track record with finishing my works, considering that I completed a nearly-500k series in 4 years. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, I can be reached on Tumblr the-cloud-whisperer.
Below are spoilers and warnings for this chapter, if you are reading the end notes before reading the chapter.
SPOILERS BELOW, BE WARNED.
Warnings: discussion of genocide; alcohol use; discussion of past character death; mildly graphic depiction of violence, blood, gore
Background information
In this universe, the Air Nomad genocide happens when Aang is 24. Sozin did a better job of keeping his world domination ambitions on the down low, so Aang isn't told he's the Avatar until he's 16. He still becomes an airbending master at 12, and he takes 8 years to master waterbending and earthbending. When he finishes earthbending, he takes a break and visits the Southern Air Temple, but just then, Sozin attacks the temples. The Air Nomads fight back, but the Fire armies (with the help of the comet) defeat them. On the verge of death, Aang triggers the Avatar state, which wipes out everyone within a one-mile radius of him and cocoons him into some kind of supernatural whirlpool at the bottom of the ocean, like the iceberg in canon. He and Appa are separated, and he stays in his Avatar state coma for 70 years.
Sozin dies 10 years later, and Azulon carries on his legacy, wiping out the Water Tribes and kidnapping waterbenders to make sure they don't have the Avatar either. In 50 AG, Azulon dies the same way in canon (Lu Ten dies; Ozai kills his father to get the throne), and Ozai continues the war in the Earth Kingdom. In this universe, Iroh wasted away from grief after Lu Ten's death, and Ozai sends Zuko and Azula to war from an early age. They are each skilled in different ways and advance to commanders in their own right in their early 20s. However, Zuko becomes disillusioned with the war and sympathizes with the Earth Kingdom civilians, and one day back home in a war council, he speaks out against his father.
Zuko is burned in Agni Kai and exiled to a distant town. Circa 65 AG, Ozai receives word that Zuko was apprehended for harboring some fugitive airbenders who had survived the genocide. He orders Zuko's execution by beheading for treason and burial in an unmarked grave in his place of exile. He dies at age 25.
A few years later, Aang wakes and rises from the sea floor alone. He finds the world greatly changed, and full of despair, he wanders to a lonely town in the Fire Nation.
Timeline
10 AG: Sozin dies; Azulon takes the throne.
15 AG: Ozai is born.
40 AG: Zuko and Azula are born.
50 AG: Ozai seizes the throne.
62 AG: Zuko Agni Kai and exile.
65 AG: Zuko executed for treason.
70 AG: Aang awakens.