Ozai's Vengeance

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Chapter 11

Summary: Twelve years after the final battle, Zuko summons Katara to heal the victims of an epidemic sweeping the Fire Nation.

Disclaimer: ATLA is the property of Nickelodeon and VIACOM. No profit is made by this story.

Notes: Hey, you lurkers, I want to hear from you! I know you have this story on Favorites and Alerts, but I don't know any of you. And to all my reviewers -- you guys make all this hard work worthwhile. It's so great to hear from all of you. You guys make my day! Thank you!

≅

Kurzu's scalp had an interesting smell. It was clean, but different from any other smell Zuko knew. Azula used to smell this way. She was a baby too, once. He settled Kurzu between his legs for the hundredth time and picked up a piece of bread. Methodically, he tore it into little pieces. Kurzu reached for the bread with tiny, fat fingers and Zuko handed him some.

"I suppose the tainted water killed all the turtleducks in Tetsushi," Zuko said. He tossed crumbs of bread into the water. Kurzu mimicked him. His bread went only a foot or so. The turtleducks emerged from their reeds and paddled over to the edge of the pond. They dunked their sleek heads in search of pulpy crumbs. Kurzu lunged for them, but Zuko held him fast. "No," he said in his most quelling voice. "Be nice."

The child strained and started to fuss. Zuko kept a firm grip on him. Kurzu started to cry and Zuko stood, hoisting the child over one shoulder. "If you won't be nice, I won't bring you out here again," he said. The child buried his head in Zuko's neck and Zuko felt tears smearing across his skin.

"He's tired," Iroh said behind him. "He needs a nap."

Zuko turned. His uncle's brow had beaded with sweat. The old man had obviously hurried here. "He's not the only one."

Iroh sighed. He found the nearest flat stone and lowered himself into it. "Sit."

Zuko resumed his position beside the pond. He stood Kurzu in his arms and let the child lean back and forth, this way and that. It reminded Zuko of Water Tribe ships, the way a mast could list one way or the other depending on waves and winds.

"Tell me you won't go through with this," Iroh said. "Tell me you're not that foolish."

Zuko looked at Kurzu. Currently, the child tracked the progress of toucan-puffs through the sky. His left hand pointed up at the V they made against the clouds. "Tom-Tom challenged me, Uncle."

"And you have absolutely no reason to respond. You're the Fire Lord, not a pipsqueak boy with a score to settle. Your concerns are larger than what a child thinks of you!"

"Tom-Tom's concerns are this country's concerns. I can't ignore them."

"And fighting a child is the best way to acknowledge them? Have you even thought this through? Do you know what this looks like?"

Zuko turned so that his uncle would see the full expanse of his scar. "I know what it looks like."

"Then why? Answer me that, nephew. Why?"

Kurzu fell backward a little and Zuko reached to catch him. "Because this isn't about schools or taxes or the orphanage," he said. "It's about Mai."

Iroh swore and growled at the sky. "I should have taken the throne in your place." He pointed at Zuko with a shaking finger. "Mai died years ago. She-"

"She died saving me."

"Better her than you!"

"Be quiet!"

"I will not! Azula attacked you and Mai did exactly what I would have done in her place: she got in the way. She did that because she loved you! Do you honestly think she would have wanted this for you? Her lover and her brother preparing for an Agni Kai that neither can win?"

"I can win," Zuko said. "I will win."

Silence. Iroh hung his head. In a ragged voice he asked: "Do you know who you sound like?"

The hairs on Zuko's neck prickled. He lifted Kurzu in his arms until the child's squirming body obscured the sun. "I won't hurt him, Uncle. I can win without hurting him." And if I do, Katara will be there.

"Because Katara will be there to heal him."

Zuko winced. He let Kurzu slide through his hands and caught him just before his toes hit the grass. Kurzu laughed. "No. He's a child. He didn't have you as a teacher. He never fought the Avatar or Azula or Katara." Zuko lifted the child again, let him slide, caught him. Kurzu giggled. "He'll tire himself out before I've even lifted a finger."

"This is not what I instructed you for! Years of training wasted on a man who bullies children…" Iroh leaned forward. "Zuko, I did everything I could to avoid this, to set you on a different path from the one your father-"

"My father is dust and ashes," Zuko said. "The Avatar scattered them himself."

"Your father is laughing at you, because you have proved yourself his loyal son," Iroh said. Zuko ignored the little shiver that went down his spine. Iroh rose to his feet. "Nephew, please reconsider. You are under no obligation to accept this challenge. There is extremely little precedent for Fire Lords engaging in Agni Kai with men outside their family or their cabinet."

"I'm well aware of the precedent, Uncle."

Iroh sighed heavily. "Where you are going, I cannot help you."

"I know."

≅

Zuko spent the rest of the day quietly. He dismissed his secretaries to larger projects -- he had put off pressuring the Earth Kingdom to buy more Fire Nation-manufactured farm equipment, but the time for that was over now that Toph Bei Fong had taken up residence in his home for an extended period -- and wandered the palace instead. He took Kurzu with him after both men had an impromptu nap. The child liked being carried and was much lighter on Zuko's shoulders than either Toph or Azula had ever been. Zuko gave him the grand tour and let him crawl on antique furniture in the library while he brushed up on Agni Kai etiquette. He brought him to the kitchen and Kurzu ate the pieces of dumpling that Zuko tore open for him. He sensed the eyes of his staff on him, wary and bewildered, surprised at this man who accepted challenges from a long-dead lover's brother and carried a fussy refugee child like a talisman. Zuko brought Kurzu to the palace vault and the child's eyes danced as he generated lightning from his fingers and shot it down the dragon's gaping mouth, triggering the switch behind the intricate golden door so that it swung open with a mighty creak. Zuko recalled a time when he had watched Ozai do this very thing. It must have been at least twenty-five years ago. Until this moment, he had never remembered it.

They stood with the child in a room full of moldering wealth: jade urns, useless jeweled swords, bolts of rotting silks, hardened incense and statuettes of Fire Lords whose names Zuko had forgotten in childhood. The best prizes he had already given to his friends after the final battle: for Sokka a suit of ancient ceremonial armor and accompanying weapons, for Aang the collected works of Avatar Roku in Roku's own hand, for Toph the priceless Earth Kingdom lands long-ago taken from the Bei Fongs in the first Fire Nation surge almost a century ago, for Katara two circlets, one an amethyst the size of a gold piece and the other a golden crescent on a chain of rubies that -- legend had it -- had belonged to the first Painted Lady. He wondered if she had sold either to buy necessaries for the orphanage. He wondered how far his money had gotten them.

"That's my mother's wedding dress," Zuko said to Kurzu. He held the child up high to see the cloth-of-gold on the dressmaker's dummy. The dummy still wore a headdress ringed in tiny rubies. "She must have glowed that day."

He hoisted the child on one arm and crossed to his mother's mostly-empty jewelry-cabinet. It stood beside the wedding dress and featured ornate carvings of a dragon and phoenix. Fumbling with a key he'd retrieved from his room, Zuko opened the cabinet and found the secret drawer beneath the jade eggs lying on silk -- in his youth he'd never guessed what they were for, but he had a better idea now -- and he withdrew the scrolls marked with his mother's insignia: a bear's claw-print. Shrugging, he fit her signet ring on his right hand.

"Mission accomplished," he said. Kurzu reached in vain for the last remaining bauble in his mother's cabinet: a pear-shaped sky opal on a triple-strand of pearls. "Don't even think about it," Zuko said, batting the child's hand away with the scrolls and locking the cabinet.

≅

"Where have you two been? I've been worried sick! Did Kurzu even get his nap? Did you give him his lunch?"

"The vault, I'm sorry, yes, and yes," Zuko said. He set the child on the floor and watched him crawl eagerly to a pile of papers and begin re-arranging them. He suppressed the urge to pull him away. He focused on Katara instead. "What are you doing in my room?"

"I was looking for you! You can't just walk off with a baby and disappear like that!"

"It's my house. I can do what I want."

"Oh, of course. How silly of me not to have remembered! This is Zuko's house. Nothing anyone else wants matters!"

It spoke to the surprisingly relaxing day he'd had -- Kurzu fussed, but accused him of nothing -- that Zuko maintained composure. He arched his good eyebrow and said: "You know I'm perfectly capable of giving you the things you want." He directed his gaze to the bed for emphasis and watched her ears go pink.

"That's not what I meant and you know it, Zuko."

"Then I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific. For instance, I'm about to request some komodo chicken. Would you like some, or do you intend on eating with the moral majority in the dining hall?"

"You're fighting a child!"

"I'll take that as a no."

"You're breaking your uncle's heart all over again. How can you do this?"

Zuko turned away and pulled a silk rope connected to a bell in the kitchen. Without facing her, he said: "I used to be good at this, you know."

Katara sniffed. "What? At scaring everyone?"

"At being nice," he said. "There was a time… You weren't there, but there was a time when I could be the person others wanted me to be. I could smile and laugh and make tea and host sunset dinners. I used to be really good at all that."

"But you're good at those things now, Zuko. You're still good at… You can still make people feel…" He heard her struggle for the words. "Don't you think you're already…?"

"No," he said. "Back then it was only pretend. Like playing house. I tried to be Lee and I tried to be Azula's brother and it ate me alive both times." He twisted the rope around one finger. "The only thing I know how to be is…this." He turned and looked for Kurzu. The child had crawled toward the washroom and now stared up at the pneumatic pipes, mystified. Zuko stepped over the bed and picked Kurzu up. "No playing in there, you'll hurt yourself."

He looked up to see Katara staring, arms crossed, a single tear rolling down her face. She quickly blinked and wiped it away. "You two look like you're getting along."

"We're both a little slow."

She rolled red-rimmed eyes. "Oh, shut up. Neither of you is slow. You're just…" She sighed. "You're just Fire Nation."

"Ah. That explains it." He lifted one leg and rested it on a chair, balancing Kurzu on his knee. He held the child's hands in a mockery of salute. "Say it, Kurzu: My life I give to my country. With my hands I fight for Fire Lord Zuko and our forefathers-"

"Stop," Katara said, and grabbed Kurzu away. "Oh, he's getting heavy…" She bent and set the child down. She leaned against one post of the bed. "Why are you doing this, Zuko?"

"I happen to like komodo chicken."

"The Agni Kai, Zuko. Why are you doing it?"

Zuko kicked off his slippers and climbed onto the bed. He lay back with his hands folded behind his head. "We used to think about adopting Tom-Tom. Did you know that? It was the only part I liked about that time. We used to joke that even two degenerates like us would be better for him than the inept clods that spawned him."

Katara looked at the floor. "By 'we' you mean you and Mai, right?"

He nodded. His throat hurt, suddenly. "We had it all planned out. Azula wanted me on the throne. I didn't want children. Mai hated them. Of course, if we had… If we had made a mistake, miscounted the days, it wouldn't have mattered, I would have done the right thing…"

"You didn't want your own heir?"

"I believe you're familiar with my bloodline." He shrugged. "It doesn't matter, now. Azula killed her." He turned to Katara. "She did it right in front of me. Like you with Aang. You just turn around, and they're gone. Azula made her glow from the inside. Like Aang, in the caves."

Katara sighed and sat down. She picked up Kurzu and cuddled him. "I was so ready to use the water from the oasis on you that day."

"I know. But that doesn't matter now, either. What's done is done." He turned on his side.

A tentative knock sounded on the door. He felt Katara leave the bed to answer it. "We'd like two komodo chicken dinners and some congee, please. And plenty of General Iroh's rosehip tea."

"Yes, my Lady." The door closed.

Her weight settled on the bed again. "Looks like you're stuck with me until dinner."

He squeezed his eyes shut and forced the words out: "That doesn't change anything, though, does it?"

She drew a long, audible breath. "What's done is done."

He nodded. A moment later he felt Kurzu's small hands on his shoulders and he pulled the child over the hill his body made. The child sat on his chubby knees and leaned over Zuko, making a game of crawling back and forth. "Why are you here?" he asked finally.

"Because you need a friend."

"We've never been friends."

"Then maybe we should start." She shifted. "Is what Tom-Tom said true?"

Zuko dug his head into the pillow. "Not entirely. I have some money. Most of it is in my mother's property. She left it to me exclusively. The land wasn't part of her dowry. It came to her when her parents died."

"What kind of property is it?"

"A farm," Zuko said. "It costs more to maintain than it's ever earned. If I sold it to the Bei Fongs or another company, they would turn a better profit. The land is good and I've had several offers."

"But you don't want to sell."

"No. I don't. But I will if I have to."

Katara sighed. "Zuko… You don't have to. The orphanage will always find another way of making money. We're doing fine, really. I don't want you to give up your mother's legacy just to take care of us."

He turned, lifted Kurzu, and set him on the floor. He pointed at Katara's necklace. "If selling that necklace meant buying food for those children, you would do it."

"Of course I would." She touched the stone. She looked away from him. "I have a responsibility to them. I have to give them the kind of life that Aang wanted for them. Aang always had the strength to sacrifice the things he wanted for the good of others. So even if it hurt, even if I really, really didn't want to give something up…" Katara's eyes found his. They held each other's gazes. His hand almost reached for hers, but he held back. She cleared her throat. "I would still have to," she finished.

He directed his gaze at the black silk canopy. "Then you understand why I have to do this."

"No, I don't! I'm not one of your responsibilities, and neither is the orphanage! The others don't-"

"The others don't have the means with which to care for you," he said, still staring at the canopy. "Your brother and his wife have their own children. Your brother and Teo's inventions consistently make money, but they have yet to move to large-scale manufacturing because neither of them have the capital necessary, and your brother refuses to take a loan from either me or the Bei Fongs. And speaking of the Bei Fongs: Earth Kingdom law requires a woman to have borne children in order to inherit property. I doubt that will happen any time soon, so Toph has to remain frugal. I, on the other hand, am the Fire Lord. And so help me if I have to serve tea in Ba Sing Se to feed and clothe the children whose parents my father's armies killed, I will do it."

Katara drew her knees to her chest and hugged them. "You and your stupid honor," she murmured.

"You said it yourself: the Fire Nation took your mother away from you. They did the same to your father. You're an orphan, too. That means you're my responsibility."

"Don't I get a say in this?"

"You get to choose what to do with the money."

He heard her draw breath to speak, but in that moment their meal arrived. Katara busied herself answering the door, and Zuko hid in the washroom cleaning his hands and face. He stared in the mirror and, not for the first time, wondered if he'd kept the scar just to avoid looking Ozai in the face each morning.

They sat quietly through dinner. They spoke to the child and not each other: "Did you like seeing the vault?" "Did you like the dumplings I gave you?" "Here, try a radish, good boy." They pushed the teacups out of the way of Kurzu's grabby little hands and rescued egg custards from his reach. Finally, Zuko said it was time for his meditation.

"I thought you meditated in the morning."

"I do. But tomorrow I will have very little time."

Her head tilted. "Promise me you won't hurt Tom-Tom."

"I won't."

"Promise me you won't hurt yourself."

He leaned over to the child in Katara's arms and kissed his scalp. "Take him to bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

≅

Dawn came and Zuko was there to greet it. He stood in the weak blue light of earliest morning, the tiles of the arena cool under his bare toes. He kept his breath of fire constantly cycling so that his skin would remain warm. He did the boring stretches that his trainers advised. Sunrise exposed the people he'd seen only as distant shadows: his uncle's shape and Katara's and Toph and Ling's. Katara held the child. Zuko saw Yun-Zi file in slowly. With him came the servants who had time to spare, and what few outsiders had the courage to request a seat at the arena. Zuko had not closed the proceedings -- if he was to meet a citizen in Agni Kai, it was only right that other citizens should have the chance to observe. The crowd thickened as the sun crept over the arena. Zuko bounced on his toes and rolled his neck first one way, then the other. It gave a satisfying crunch when he turned his head just sharply enough.

Finally Tom-Tom arrived. The boy looked even scrawnier than Mai had been in her youth. Surely I had more muscle at his age. Surely I didn't look this pathetic when I entered the arena. Zuko gave Tom-Tom one moment to take the arena in. The boy searched the stands, found Yun-Zi and Iroh, and smiled. The boy turned to face Zuko. His smile vanished. A moment passed before, as one, they turned away from one another and knelt.

The gong left a shimmer of sound trembling in the air.

Zuko stood and faced Tom-Tom. The boy stood in a defensive posture. Sighing, Zuko assumed the same. He waited. Nothing happened. Across the arena, Tom-Tom shouted: "Aren't you going to attack?"

"You challenged me. It's your move."

Tom-Tom frowned. He looked from side to side. Zuko kept his eyes on him. Apparently making up his mind, Tom-Tom started his long run in Zuko's direction. From the boy's hands came two poorly-formed fire-dao. Zuko allowed him to come close. He counted down in his mind: almost, almost, almost…there. He dodged to one side and blasted fire hot enough to send the boy flying head over heels. Tom-Tom crashed to the tiles. He rolled away like a bundle of loose twigs. Scrabbling up, he stared at Zuko and reproduced the twin blades.

"You know, I used to favor the twin blades myself," Zuko said. He wove from side to side as the boy lunged. He let the boy push him back slowly. "Have you ever thought about twin hooks?"

"Fight me!" Tom-Tom shouted.

"Give me a good fight first."

Tom-Tom growled and sent a ball of fire straight for Zuko's chest. Zuko's hands split the flames and streamed them away like water. More jets of flame followed. Zuko stepped away as he blocked them with his hands. He resisted a yawn. This is worse than fighting Zhao. Tom-Tom moved clumsily. Worse yet, his attacks were unoriginal. The boy seemed wary of coming too close, so he persisted in shooting ineffectual blasts in Zuko's direction. Finally, Zuko gloved his hands in fire. Spinning his wrists above his head, he quickly formed two whips of flame and let them lick Tom-Tom's feet.

"I used this technique while fighting Lady Katara during the war," he said. "I can't remember which of us invented it first."

He spun and flicked the whips. Tom-Tom fell backward and scuttled across the tiles hands-first. Lazily, Zuko let the whips make broad sweeps that narrowly missed Tom-Tom each time. "It's good for when you don't want to hurt someone."

The boy pointed his feet in the air and flipped over. Knees bent in a crouch, he said: "Stop playing with me! I challenged you to a duel, not a game of Hide and Explode!"

Zuko cast his whips so that they just kissed Tom-Tom's toes. The boy kept hopping up and down to avoid them. Zuko changed his technique and summoned circles of fire that rolled up from the floor. He aimed them for a point directly behind Tom-Tom. They narrowed on the boy before crashing harmlessly against one another. "She made that one up, too."

The boy summoned his blades and made a direct line for Zuko. Zuko made a wave of fire and pushed it at the boy. The boy ducked and continued running. Zuko smiled. He waited until Tom-Tom was at arm's length, and pivoted. He jutted his elbow into the boy's solar plexus. Funny how the old tricks still work. Tom-Tom gasped, gagged, and crumpled to the ground. Zuko straightened and waited.

The boy choked and coughed. He dragged himself to his feet. "All you care about is a war you stopped fighting when I was just a baby. You're just as selfish as my parents said you were."

"Well, it's nice to see they haven't stifled you the way they did your sister."

"What do you care?" Tom-Tom looked briefly at the seats where Iroh and the others sat. "You've got your family of heroes now. You don't need anybody else."

And with that the boy slashed and there was a fire blade in his hand and Zuko had to lean backward just to avoid it. He landed on his back. The boy advanced on him. Zuko smirked. "I need loyal subjects." He scissored his legs at Tom-Tom's ankles and the boy fell. Zuko popped back up and stood over him.

"I fought Ozai in this arena," he said. "I have fought my sister and the Avatar and admirals from this nation's navy. I have commanded men who bent fire thin as wire and explosive as a comet. I-"

"Who cares?" Tom-Tom rolled backward and stood up. The swords blazed in his hands. "All you ever talk about is how much this country has to change. Did you ever stop to think that it might have been great in the first place?"

The Fire Nation? Great? The invader, the murderer of an entire people, great? "What new breed of foolishness is this, Tom-Tom?"

The boy sent a steady stream of fire his way. Quickly, Zuko summoned a penta-pus of fire; he let its legs bat the boy's flames away. "We don't need anyone else! We don't need to give up everything that makes us Fire Nation just to apologize for a war we didn't even start!"

To Zuko's surprise, some in the arena cheered. He frowned and tried to place them. Tom-Tom took advantage of his distraction and sent bolts of fire Zuko's way. Zuko responded by clothing himself in fire. He drew up a wave as though he were straightening a sheet on a futon. He brought it down; the fire snapped in his hands. The blast of heat sent Tom-Tom skidding across the tile. Zuko brushed the fire away with his hands. "I'd give you a lesson on international policy, but if your brain works like your firebending it would be a waste."

"Maybe if you stopped paying off that Water Tribe-"

Zuko moved without thinking. He drew a deep breath and focused. He drew the target in his mind and assumed a Yu Yan posture. Only at the last second did he aim the blast safely up and to the left, where Tom-Tom would merely have to duck to avoid the tail-wind of the mighty arrow of fire he was shooting. The air before him shimmered and his face went hot. He saw the familiar circle of fire and felt the tension rippling down one arm. He let the tension build and build until he had to let it go. The fire coursed away from him like a dragon suddenly let free. Tom-Tom watched in horror as the arrow spiraled toward him -- he dropped flat on the floor. The fire roared upward and dissipated into the early morning sky. Zuko watched it go before mastering his breath.

He stepped closer to Tom-Tom. "I'm not paying anyone off," he said, loud enough for the sound to carry across the arena. "Our traditions are what make this nation great. Looking after a friend's widow -- looking after family -- is one of them. And so is doing right by the children of those we have wronged." He sighed and looked at Tom-Tom. "Your lessons begin tomorrow," he said in a voice only the boy could hear. "Be ready before breakfast."

He turned back to his people. "This duel is over!"

And he left, to the sound of polite applause.