Chapter 4: Sins of the Mother
The small ship left Fire Nation waters and turned towards the southeast, steaming towards the destination that Azula had instructed the captain to make for. The night was cool and clear, and the princess herself stood apart from the crew near the prow, staring off into the distance as though looking for something that no one else could see. She heard footsteps ringing off of the metal deck behind her, and turned slowly to face Captain Shin.
"What do you want?" she demanded.
"We are bound for Kyoshi Island as per your instructions," he said, "but you haven't told us who or what you expect to find there. I believe that we are entitled to that information."
Azula clutched the iron rail tightly. "You dare question me?" she snarled.
The captain was unperturbed, staring straight at Azula with a gaze that never wavered. "I feel obliged to remind you that while you may still technically hold the title of princess, you no longer hold any direct authority over us. Your brother instructed me to follow your directions within reason, and if I am to do that I need to know your own reasoning."
Azula scowled and considered arguing, then decided that it was pointless. Much as she hated to admit it, she needed Shin and his ship to accomplish her goal, and if she continued overlooking him he was liable to simply turn around and take her back to the Fire Nation, where her madness would surely consume her. And that remained the one fate that the proud princess would not tolerate.
"I'm looking for a friend," Azula finally said. "Ty Lee is one of the most dangerous non-benders I've ever met, and I was told that after the War ended she joined the Kyoshi Warriors. She would be very useful to have along."
Shin snorted. "Huh. Wouldn't have thought you would ever be one to come out and admit you needed help."
"I don't need help!" Azula snapped. "Ty Lee's presence would just make things easier, is all."
"Really." The captain's tone indicated he believed no such thing, but Azula couldn't muster the strength to keep arguing with him. Deep down, she didn't believe it herself. Turning away from Shin to signify that their conversation was at an end, Azula leaned over the railing again and watched the sea pass by. After several moments she realized that the captain was still there.
"The sea is beautiful, isn't it?" he asked softly. "There aren't a lot of people in the Fire Nation who could appreciate that. Even most of the Navy saw it as an enemy to be conquered. But I always thought that it was the most powerful, majestic thing I'd ever seen. It's ironic that during the war we, the children of fire, were able to conquer the other nations not because of our numbers or bending, but because we had the best ships."
"Of course we have the best ships," Azula said. "We're an island, though a big one. We needed to conquer the seas before we could even interact with the other nations, much less go to war with them. There's nothing special or ironic about it."
"Conquest and domination." Shin shook his head. "That's how it always is with your kind."
Azula looked at him. "You hate me, don't you?" she asked softly.
He shook his head. "No. I don't hate you personally- I hardly know you. I hate what you represent- a tyranny generations old, forcing the people of our nation to lay down their lives in a pointless war. We did the fighting and the dying, and it was your family and supporters who were the only ones who benefitted. That's what I hate, princess- the attitude that we're all just here for the amusement and service of a handful of arrogant dictators."
"I risked my own life to take Ba Sing Se!" Azula snarled indignantly. "I faced the Avatar himself a half-dozen times at least! Call me a ruthless, cruel beast if you want, but you can't deny that I fought for my Nation and my father."
"And that's the only reason I ever respected you more than your father, who did nothing but sit in his palace and brutalize his own son." Shin turned to walk away. "Respect is something you have to earn, princess. I may not hate you, but I have no love for you either. Part of me hopes you'll prove me wrong before all this is through, but the rest thinks it's not very likely." With that he reached the ladder leading down into the belly of the ship and descended from Azula's sight.
The princess sighed and leaned up against the metal railing. She'd never inspired love from those who served her, but she had always succeeded in inspiring respect mingled with fear. Now she wondered how much of that had been because her men knew that royalty could have them punished or killed on a whim, rather than because of her own force of personality. It wasn't a pleasant thought.
"You seem troubled, Azula," a calm, pleasant voice said from nearby. Azula turned and saw her mother standing beside her, leaning with her elbows on the railing and looking out over the water as her daughter had done a short time ago. "Tell me what's wrong, and let me help you."
Azula snorted. "Help me? You're the problem- you're not even real, and here I am talking to you. In my experience, things like this aren't generally put under the label of 'sanity'."
Ursa looked sadly at her daughter. "Do you really believe that? Talk to me, Azula. Let me help you."
"It's getting worse," Azula said softly. "Flares of temper I can't control, these visions- I'm losing control."
"And that's what bothers you, isn't it?" Ursa asked. "You were always so proud of your control- control of yourself, control of the people around you, control of the fire. Now you're losing that control, and you can't stand it."
"That's why I'm trying to find you, you know- because I had a vision out of the fire that told me it was the only way." Azula barked a short, bitter laugh. "And that sounds crazy too, said aloud. Maybe I'm still back in that asylum after all, drooling into porridge and imagining this entire journey."
"But that's not all, is it? There's something else you're afraid of."
Azula was still for a moment, then nodded. "Just before I left the Fire Nation, I met a girl who said she was the one who killed Father, and that she was going to kill me too. I shot lightning at her, and somehow she… bent it… around herself. I'd never seen anything like it before."
"And you're afraid of that," Ursa finished, "because it's something you don't understand, and you can't fight what you don't understand."
"Yes," Azula said. "That's why I need Ty Lee- she knows how to fight bending without bending. If there's anyone who can help me stop this person, it's her."
"And you want to force her to risk her life for you before you even have a chance to ask her?" Ursa asked.
Azula snorted. "She was with me for years, Mother. I don't think she'd say no."
"Did you forget that the last time you met she attacked you to keep you from killing Mai? Maybe she's decided she doesn't want to follow you around and be your 'friend' any longer and is happy where she is? Did you ever think about what she wanted?"
"When I explain the situation to her, she'll come with me. I know it. And why should I listen to you anyway? You're not my mother- you're just a figment of my imagination."
Ursa smiled sadly. "If I only exist inside your head, then wouldn't that mean that everything I've said to you is something you actually believe, deep down?"
Azula closed her eyes tightly. "Leave me alone," she hissed.
When the princess opened her eyes again, her mother was gone.
/
The Earth Kingdom was a territory more vast than that of the other three nations combined. Ruled from the great city of Ba Sing Se, it encompassed an entire continent and dozens of cultures. During the great War, it was the only power able to face the Fire Nation on its own terms before falling to treachery from within.
Still, even in times of peace a nation so vast could never be easily governed from one location. The Earth King's seat was in Ba Sing Se and all the kingdom acknowledged him as its rightful ruler, but subject kings, Bumi of Omashu the most notable among them, held virtual autonomy within their own cities. And in the farthest reaches of the continent there were smaller fiefdoms that paid obeisance to the Earth Kingdom in name only, if at all.
In one such place- a settlement that was too small to be properly termed a city, yet far larger than any village- there rose a great shelf of rock, and atop it sat a fortress of grey stone that crumbled with age. Built by forgotten architects in a time when warlords squabbled over the land that would one day become a great nation, it had long ago fallen into ruin and been disregarded as a relic of a dark age. Several generations ago, however, the fortress had been taken over by a line of tyrants who would have hardly been out of place in the barbaric time of the fortress's construction.
The Lady Ursa, once wife of Fire Lord Ozai and mother of his two children, sat in a chamber near the top of the castle, hands crossed in her lap. The sun had just sunk below the horizon, and she knew that before long her captor would come to her. He was nothing, she had found, if not predictable.
He called himself Jian Chin, though Ursa knew it was not his birth name but an honorific he had created for himself as a means of claiming kinship with a famous conqueror who had ruled the Earth Kingdom centuries ago. Ursa knew the legend of Chin the Great as well as any, and had pointed out to the man on more than one occasion that taking the name of someone who had been defeated by the Avatar in a humiliating fashion was hardly a way to greatness, but as usual he ignored her. Her husband Ozai had been a monster, albeit an intelligent and successful one. Jian Chin was little more than a brute.
Ursa had come to his domain many years ago, banished from the Fire Nation by her husband after she had killed his father, Fire Lord Azulon, even though murdering the old man had been Ozai's idea in the first place. Ozai had attempted to wrest the throne from his brother Iroh on account of the death of the older prince's son, Lu Ten, and Azulon had, in a rage, commanded that Ozai kill his own son as punishment. Ursa had been horrified, but all Ozai saw was an opportunity. And so in one fell swoop he conceived of a plan that would rid him of his father, brother, and wife in a single night.
Fleeing from her homeland, Ursa had passed through the Earth Kingdom, looking for a village where she could live in anonymity, and yet be close enough to news that she could watch over her family from afar. Unfortunately she had encountered during her journeys a gang of thugs who recognized her as Fire Nation nobility. They waited until nightfall and then seized her, carrying her away to their master, Jian Chin.
The warlord had long dreamed of rising up at the head of an army and laying the four nations low before him, but had never found the courage to actually attempt such a thing. Still, he surrounded himself with trappings that emphasized power and glory, as if hoping that somehow it would reflect upon himself. Jian Chin was pleased when his men brought Ursa to him, feeling that if he claimed the hand of the Fire Lord's exiled wife for himself it would greatly increase his standing and power. Ursa refused him- she no longer wished to be a tool for evil men.
Jian Chin was furious. He imprisoned her in a tower atop his palace and refused to let her leave, though he was still convinced he could make her love him, given time. The only thing that kept him from forcing her to marry him was his own ego- he felt a need for her to come to him of her own will, and couldn't imagine that any woman could deny him for long. Ursa, at last count, had been denying him for close to seven years now, but still the warlord persisted in his nightly visits. At first she had feared Jian Chin- now she merely found him pitiful.
As if on cue Ursa heard the keys rattling in the lock on her door. After a moment it swung open and the warlord himself entered, looking for all the world like some mad hybrid of platypus-bear and peacock. Jian Chin was a huge man, his hair and beard thick and black, his body possessed of an earthbender's hard muscles. A gaudy golden crown balanced on his head (it had clearly been intended for a man or woman with a much smaller head) and his green robes were festooned with medals and decorations.
"Why do you persist in this, Jian Chin?" Ursa asked wearily. "You must have realized long ago that I will never love you. Release me, I beg of you- my imprisonment does not serve either of us."
Jian Chin removed his crown and knelt. "My Lady," he said in his rough voice, "you know that I can offer you glory beyond your imagining. One day soon my warriors and I shall ride forth from this place and sweep towards Ba Sing Se, and then the Earth Kingdom shall be mine. I offer you the chance for glory by my side. Why do you deny it?"
"Because it is false," Ursa said. "You will never leave this place. For years I have heard you speak of how you will conquer the Earth Kingdom, but you have never made even the slightest attempt to prepare for it. And even if you were crowned Earth King tonight I would not marry you. I had my fill of glory in the Fire Nation, and I am weary of the ambitions of evil me."
Jian Chin scowled. "So be it," he said. He motioned for his guards and they entered the room, bearing trays of food and cups of hot tea. "For you, My Lady," the warlord said, "in the hopes that you might see the light. Farewell, for now. We will speak again tomorrow." Jian Chin turned and stalked from the room, his guards trailing behind him.
When they were gone, Ursa made no move to touch the food. Speaking with Jian Chin always robbed her of her appetite, and the meal would still be there later. True it would be cold, but while Ursa wasn't a particularly talented firebender, she was skilled enough to heat a cup of tea.
Meeting with Jian Chin always put her in mind of her husband, and the night when she had been forced to flee the Fire Nation. She did not regret killing Azulon- his had not been the first life she'd taken, and he deserved it more than most. The old Fire Lord had been a cruel tyrant, though not to the extent of his son- but at the same time guilt filled her soul. For by killing Azulon, Ursa had ensured that the cruel Ozai would take command of the most powerful military in the world, rather than his wiser brother. As a result, all of the blood that her husband had shed during his tyrannical reign could be laid at her feet as well. Yet how could she not have acted? How could any mother have refused the course of action that would save her son? It had been an unwinnable choice that Ozai had laid before her.
And guilt still gnawed at her, for that deed and others she had committed before. Given time and luck, Ursa knew that she could devise a plan to escape her captor's clutches, and yet she could never bring herself to begin making the attempt. Some part of her believed that her plight was just, the proper response to the horrors she had helped set in motion, and the rest of her could not easily cast it aside.
Sighing, Ursa picked up her teacup and walked to her window, drinking slowly as she watched the last light of day fade from the sky.
/
Well, there's a lot going on in this chapter. Captain Shin's little rant to Azula is something he'd probably been keeping buried for years – an essentially decent man stuck trying to rise in a system controlled by an evil monarch and corrupt officers, he'd certainly built up a fair bit of resentment for the people running his nation and the general situation they'd steered it into. That said, his line about not hating Azula personally is genuine – he's heard both good and bad things about her, and is willing to wait and reserve judgment until he actually sees her in action.
The Ursa hallucination returns, fittingly for a chapter that also introduces the actual Ursa. I determined that the Ursa and Ozai hallucinations would never appear together, as I wanted to avoid the cliché "good angel, bad angel" setup; rather, Azula will typically get a hallucination opposite to whatever she's feeling or thinking at the time. In other words, if she's feeling particularly repentant or merciful, she'll likely get Ozai chewing her out for being week; be arrogant and ruthless (like here, where she's arguing with Shin and planning to drag Ty Lee along whether she wants to come or not), and she'll get Ursa trying to talk her into being a better person.
We also see the real Ursa for the first time in this chapter. My Ursa is rather substantially different from the version presented in the Search* (though the original version of the Trilogy predated The Search by almost four years), and we get our first taste of that here. First off, she's actually noble-born (still thinking of herself as "Lady" Ursa – this made sense to me considering she's descended from Roku, who though he lived simply later in life was clearly high-born enough to hang around with the crown prince when they were both kids), and she's a firebender, though not nearly as impressive as the rest of the family, rather than a non-bender. She's also got some real darkness in her past, though we're just getting the tip of it here, just like every other Fire Nation royal. Part of my inspiration for characterizing Ursa came from the idea that Zuko and Azula were both mixes of their parents' traits – Zuko got his father's pride and temper and his mother's conscience, and Azula got her father's arrogance and ambition, but what from her mother? That question is something we've just barely started exploring here.
Jian Chin is the second of this fic's three main villains (I intended his name to mean "Child of Chin" and later learned it could also be read as "Sword of Chin"; either way works). He's meant to be kind of pathetic, with ego and ambition far outstripping his actual competence, but the potential to be a very dangerous man is still in him, waiting for the right circumstances to bring it out – if nothing else, he's a ferociously powerful (though not terribly skilled) earthbender. His stubborn insistence on wooing Ursa is something that I think characterizes him as a reflection of the darker side of earth as an element – earthbending requires you to be patient and stubborn, but Jian Chin here has dug his feet in and refuses to budge or change tactics even as it becomes painfully obvious things aren't working out for him. His territory, by the way, is meant to be located on the peninsula the world map shows on the eastern Earth Kingdom coast, somewhere that was never really explored in the show.
-MasterGhandalf
*A google search for "The Two Ursas" will turn up a bit of meta that I didn't write, but which showcases some of the issues I have with The Search's Ursa and how she differs from what was indicated about her history, social class, and relationship with Ozai in the show.