ZW 2008 Day 4: Manipulative
The Riots of 104
Summary: Zuko would learn respect, and suffering would be his teacher. The trouble is that leading a nation often means he isn't the one suffering the most, and that's a heavy weight to bear.
The former Fire Lord was an expert strategist, in his way. He didn't quite understand that ruling by fear only works until it doesn't, but there were few things he couldn't get an army to accomplish. Zuko respects this. Perhaps a bit begrudgingly, but he respects his father's skill nonetheless. What he has more difficulty respecting is the manipulation necessary to convince people to give their lives for a purpose that's dubious at best and evil at worst. Is it possible to respect something he disagrees with? Uncle would say yes. Katara might spout off on how horrible Ozai was, but he thinks she would have agreed with Uncle at the end of the day. He'll never know for sure, but it's a nice thought.
Zuko thinks he has too many thoughts these days. He shivers as a cold wind blows through his robes and clutches at his skin, but neither his eyes nor his thoughts leave the tiny dot on the horizon.
It was a year ago, 104 ASC, he remembers. Zuko swept into the throne room and faced his standing advisors, all of whom looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"Be seated." The men sat, and the Fire Lord's flames rose before him as he lowered himself onto his throne.
"Fire Lord Zuko," one began. "The council has heard rumors that your relationship with Lady Mai has ended."
"What Councilman Risu means to say," interrupted another, "is that the Fire Nation throne must have an heir, and we are aware that you are being rather slow about it."
Councilman Risu gasped loudly (Zuko briefly entertained the idea that the two rehearsed this before the meeting) and sputtered most indignantly about Councilman Shinobi's disrespect.
"Enough." Zuko stood and let the flames flicker higher. His voice didn't boom like his father's did, and while he's never sure whether or not to be grateful for one fewer similarity, he did feel less intimidating. It bothered him, and he thought Shinobi knew it. The man obviously had some old loyalties left. Probably one of Ozai's spies (how his father thought Zuko didn't know there were spies was a puzzle Zuko never had the energy to work out). "What do you suggest?"
The council nearly tripped over itself to present a plan that had obviously been carefully plotted earlier. Shinobi vehemently opposed it, along with most of the traditionalists, so Zuko felt it was safe to consider. It frustrated him that someone leaked it and incited the torching of the Water Tribe trading district in the city, but the idea and its supporters were sound.
~8~
Dear Zuko,
How nice of you to reassure me that you want to marry me, but you don't love me. I will, but only because if I don't, my father wants me to marry some stuck-up jerk from the Northern Tribe. At least you're just a jerk.
Your friend,
Katara.
Zuko wasn't sure whether to be gratified or offended by her response, but he met her at the docks anyway. He didn't love her; not the way she deserved, he thought at the time, but he thought a well-aimed fireball at the ranks of protesters wasn't entirely out of line. Katara disagreed, but he was only defending the honor of his intended. She had her flaws (a great many, at that), but she didn't deserve the vitriol from the people.
They walked around the caldera the next day, through angry civilians throwing rotten vegetables and glowering soldiers fingering their weapons.
He leaned against the wall that night as she scrubbed the scarlet tomato-squash stains from her blue dress. "Why did you agree to marry me?"
Katara gave him an odd look. "I never turn my back on people who need me. The Fire Nation needs me, even if they don't know it yet."
Zuko deflated a bit, though he couldn't have said why. The statement sounded rehearsed, but maybe it was just Katara's mantra getting old.
The palace was attacked the night they announced their engagement, and much of the city was burned. Zuko informed the council that Katara would be returning to the South Pole until things quiet down, and he was unsurprised when Shinobi weakly encouraged the plan while nearly bouncing in his seat. A poor actor, Shinobi.
"My Lord," Risu protested. "We need this alliance. We have to show the world that the Fire Nation can accept other nations."
"We will." Zuko glared at the councilman. "As soon as things cool down."
Somehow, thanks to Shinobi's long conversation with Katara about how beneficial it would be to the Fire Nation for her to leave, Katara refused to go. "Zuko, I'm not leaving. Not when we're so close."
"People are dying, Katara. My people. The traditionalists need time."
"How much time, Zuko? How long are you going to let them win?"
They were in his office, on opposite sides of the desk, and Zuko leaned over and stared into her eyes. "As long as it takes. The Fire Nation is proud and strong; people aren't going to change because we tell them to." Katara turned on her heel and walked out, as if to say that she could be just as proud as any stuck-up Fire Nation native and she refused to give up the alliance. The Southern Water Tribe was a minor nation, if you asked for Zuko's honest opinion (not that he'd ever tell Katara that), so he wasn't sure exactly why she was being so stubborn about it. He pushed those thoughts aside for the moment and turned to the white faced servant waiting next to the door. "What do you want?!"
The slums and servant's quarters burned that night. If Zuko hadn't felt so awful that the servant at his door had lost his family in the blaze, he'd have fired the man on the spot for spreading the news that Katara would stay. He should have, but they say everything's clearer in hindsight.
~8~
The longer Katara stayed, the worse things got. Zuko's nation was crumbling from the inside out as citizens created the civil war Zuko had avoided for four years. Brothers killed brothers, neighbors pillaged and looted, and Zuko found himself feeling more like a figurehead than a Fire Lord. Aang came and went, arguing and pleading for the Fire Nation to govern itself as a member of the Four Nations, but the people refused. Fire Nation flags flew on every home, the Avatar and his waterbending master were burned in effigy, and the Fire Lord was ignored. It was in these moments that Zuko was most tempted to seek the advice of his father, and it was in one of these moments when he realized Katara couldn't stay. Fire Lord Zuko had to be the leader of the Fire Nation first, and a leader of the global community second.
His speech to that effect was greeted with confused applause. Shinobi and Risu were beside themselves trying to pick up the pieces of what they thought they knew about Fire Lord Zuko, and somehow neither of them was particularly pleased with what they put together (which Zuko was curious about, given how happy they seemed to be during all of the rioting).
They were in his office again. Katara's things were packed on the ship, and she was dressed in the Water Tribe clothes she'd given up wearing months before. "Why did you agree to marry me?"
Her answer was what he expected, even if he might have secretly hoped for something else. "I thought you needed me." She looked at him in that strange way she had, and reached for his hand where it rested on the desk. "I thought the Fire Nation needed me too. But they don't, and they knew it before I did."
"I'll, um, miss you," he offered.
Katara smiled. "You're such a dork, Zuko."
He wasn't sure whether to be offended by the words or gratified by the smile, but he walked her to the docks anyway. At some point, it registered that his servant, the one he usually had by his office door to go for tea and ink, had left the room some time during the conversation, but he didn't think nearly enough of it until soldiers caught up to them.
"Fire Lord Zuko, the prisons are burning."
"My father?"
The soldiers visibly cringed, and Zuko braced himself. "Unaccounted for, sir."
Something moved and the soldiers moved and there were muffled shouts and screams but the only thing Zuko remembers now is the red spreading over blue, like an army conquering a foreign land. He put his hand around the dagger and pressed against the wound and looked into two shimmering blue eyes. "Katara! Katara!"
"Zuko, get me water." Her voice was weaker than he remembered it, but he wasn't really sure if it was her voice or his hearing that had a problem. He shouted something and it only took a few seconds for a soldier to bring water that Katara couldn't bend. She struggled to breathe as the red grew larger, and he thought he heard his name but he couldn't really be sure and her eyes weren't sparkling like they were supposed to and where was the healer? Hadn't he sent for one? He couldn't remember.
He felt her hand squeeze his. He didn't know how she'd found it, what with him holding her wound and giving her water and waving at swarms of people to get back, but she found it and looked at him, almost through him. "I'm sorry." Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and Zuko would have given anything in that moment to hear her screaming at him.
"Don't be sorry, Katara. It's not your fault. Katara?"
She wasn't listening.
~8~
He was guarding her body and scribbling messages to people he couldn't name when he heard the boom. His father's voice echoed over the scorched earth like a cannon, and Zuko knew it was lost.
"People of the Fire Nation."
And then there was nothing Zuko could do but watch as his father, defeated, former Fire Lord Ozai, stood high above the fray, calling the people to him. Risu and Shinobi bowed to him, as did the servant whose name Zuko knew he should have remembered. They stood at his side as Ozai ascended the steps to the palace, and they accepted their praise for infiltrating the government of the weak Prince. Zuko watched with detached horror as Risu and Shinobi bowed to each other, acknowledging the other's part, as if it were all a construct, as if Zuko was some puppet they'd manipulated for their own purpose. Zuko knew he had lost. He boarded Katara's ship, now her funeral barge, and slipped into the night.
And that, he remembers, is how he came to be standing on the frozen edge of the ocean in the Southern Water Tribe, shivering as he waits for the canoe on the horizon to disappear. Her father and her brother stand on either side of him, and he thinks he'd give just about anything for them to scream at him. Anything but the deafening silence. It's not his fault, they said, but their eyes tell a different story, a story of wounded men looking for an enemy to condemn or fight or anything but a friend who did his best.
Their voices forgive him and their silence damns him.
He'd like to blame his father, Ozai's skill, Ozai's manipulation, Ozai's evil, but he can't because he allowed it, ignored it, disrespected it. He trusted, tolerated, looked the other way, and it cost him. The woman he could have loved is dead. Innocent people are dead.
And the Fire Nation burns.
AN: Whew. This one was a trip. I went in thinking I'd write some funny little thing about Ozai accidentally playing matchmaker (should I make another attempt at that?), but obviously it worked out quite the opposite. It also took forever and a day to write because I kept trying to binge watch Scooby Doo on Netflix instead of doing something more productive (way to go, Eva), but hopefully the next bit will be along sooner than this one was. As always, feedback is welcome (I'm especially interested to know if I'm keeping the voices in character, because sometimes I have trouble with that). Thanks for reading! Y'all are awesome.
