Disclaimer: Still don't own Avatar. That's Nickelodeon and its creators Bryan Konietzco and Michael Di Martino. Still not making any money on it. See above for who's doing that. On with the story…
His business was war.
Some men live off the land, others live by their hands. He lived by those same men dying. It was a family business, passed on from father to son like his premature grey hair or the strange back pain he'd get whenever he was on his feet too long. Even his slender fingers were a gift from his dad.
Fingers meant to craft the murder of thousands, his father might say. His father had a way of being profound like that.
That was something he had not inherited – an overzealous moral philosophy. And so he didn't spend sleepless nights haunted by the weapons he created during the day. After all, war is a business. In order for someone to profit, someone has to lose. It was how the world worked, again as his father would say. And you could either live with it or die by it.
Those had been the rules of business for as long as he remembered. Yet when his assistant entered the development area, carrying that crumpled scroll to his cluttered work bench, he didn't anticipate how the game had changed. With almost absent-minded interest, he looked up from the blue-prints and took the message.
The assistant's face said far more than the scroll ever could.
He had to admit, he was awed by the Avatar's power – his single-handed ability to destroy a century of technology and warcraft with only some nice footwork and a lemur. But he was not in the business to admire his competitor; in fact, he was not in business at all, any more.
Without job or home, he saw now what he'd never seen before; the moral compass his father never gave him somehow surfaced. And that night, as he ushered his family, hidden by Earth Kingdom clothes, into their private carriage, his thoughts turned to the hundreds of thousands of people he surely killed. To the fact that even if Fire Nation soldiers were given pardons, he never would be.
Life, just like war and business, is an all-or-nothing game. One lives by a gamble that this venture will pan out – that by investing everything you have, you will eventually strike big. And perhaps, if he was lucky, somewhere along the way would be another prospect – another future that required slender fingers and the ability to ignore ramifications.
But tonight, he cradled his daughter in his lap and looked out the window at the fading compound, its smoke-stacks now empty. The war was over, and with it the only life he'd ever had.
As his father would have said, in life – just like in business – there are consequences. Equal and opposite reactions. The goal is always to be on top when it eventually bottoms out. Now he realized there was no top. Life – just like war or business – is a game that everyone loses by playing too long or too poorly. And everyone inevitably does.
So when the fight is lost, when your work is finished, when there is nothing you have left but your thoughts and your honor, then the only thing that matters anymore is how you conducted yourself on the field.
What matters is how you played the game.
Author's Note: Wow. You are all friggin awesome. I had no idea I'd have such an outpouring of encouragement/support. As I've told several of you wonderful, wonderful reviewers, I didn't think this fic would ever have any reviews. So please let it be known I'm in love with you all.
On another note, I'm afraid all the chapters are pretty dark. I really am trying to think of a happy one to break up the monotony of angst, but sadly, the one-shot above was my happy one. I'll give it another go next week. Also, I'm assuming that the Mechanist is not the only one building weapons. Because that would not be utilizing full Fire Nation capability. Also, this takes place after the War has ended, but I'm leaving how it ended pretty vague. After all, none of these people live in the Fire Nation Capital, so all they know are rumors and fifth-hand news.