Well, I'm so above you
And its plain to see.
-"Lonely Boy", The Black Keys
He's playing pai sho with Mai, although he's not really paying attention. There's too much on his mind.
There's a soft exhale. "I win. Again."
Zuko looks up to see Mai watching him.
"Why are we even bothering to play? You've let me win the past three games." There's no accusation in her amber eyes, just observation. It's times like these that Zuko is thankful for Mai's normal apathy.
With elegant fingers she begins to set up the board for a new game, barely acknowledging Zuko's one shouldered shrug.
"Did you hear?" she says softly, gaze still on the board. "They found Admiral Zhao's body this morning. Someone ripped him open and then dumped him in the sewers."
Zuko has heard, actually. It is all he is able to think about.
"Interesting," Mai continues, "that Admiral Zhao would show up dead right after he has a public disagreement with your father."
"Fascinating," Zuko agrees.
Mai looks up at him, gaze sharp. "Azula is livid."
Zuko almost smirks, but catches himself. "She should be."
Mai's eyes narrow a fraction, but she doesn't say anything more on the subject. She moves a tile instead.
Mai is extremely pretty; Zuko would have to be blind not to notice it. She and his sister's other friend, Ty Lee, were practically raised to be Fire Lady's. He was simply supposed to pick which one he liked more.
In the end he had picked neither. Besides, Mai and Ty Lee had always been more interested in each other than they ever had with him.
He looks back up. She's watching him again. "Your turn."
To Zuko, the royal dining hall has always seemed much too large, considering the size of his family. He supposes that a hundred or so years ago the royal family was much bigger, and that at one time this hall might have been full of people.
Zuko briefly wonders what that might have been like before forcing himself to go back to his meal.
There are only three of them in this hall, now. Him, his sister, and his father.
The kitchen servants lining the walls, holding various dishes, don't really count.
There's a clearing of a throat, and both Zuko and Ozai look up to see Azula watching her father with a professional expression. She hasn't spared a glance for Zuko throughout the entire meal. Once again Zuko has to repress the urge to smirk.
"Father, we have another earthbender. Her parents sent her in this morning."
Ozai dabs at the corner of his mouth with a napkin and nods slowly. "Speaking of, Azula, there is something I wish to speak with you and your brother about concerning Project Kongzhi."
Azula goes deathly pale and her hand fists into the table cloth.
"From now on your brother will have full control over Project Kongzhi. You must find something else to do with your time."
She stiffens, eyes narrowing into slits. "Father," she says, voice sickly sweet, "are you absolutely sure that—"
"Do not question my decisions, Azula." Then Ozai returns to his meal.
Truthfully speaking Zuko has no desire to run Project Kongzhi, but that didn't really matter.
Azula turns and glares at him. It's the first time she's acknowledged him all evening. His sister might be a master firebender, but the look she sends him is cold, freezing fury.
Zuko smiles back at her.
For the very first time since they were children, for the very first time ever, really, Zuko has come head to head with his sister and he has won.
He hopes she's starting to see him as the threat that he is becoming.
He wakes up twice that night in order to vomit.
As he's being sick he remembers something his Uncle Iroh told him before he disappeared: "You are not like them, Prince Zuko. You might say the things that they say, you might do the things that they do, and you might walk where they walk, but you will never truly be who they are."
Zuko groans and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He squeezes his eyes shut, banishes the images swarming in his head.
Then he stands up straight and sucks in a deep breath.
The horror, the guilt, the disgust, he takes those feelings and tucks them away somewhere in the back of his mind. He decides to dwell on them no more.
Two days later he walks into a meeting room with a horrendous hangover. He had decided to belatedly celebrate his new position with his father the night before. It had been fun…at the time.
Now he's paying the price.
He sees the waterbender lounging against a chair next to a shabby looking girl who looked about fifteen. The earthbender, he guesses.
He resists the urge to groan.
"Tea please," he mumbles to a servant before pulling out his chair at the head of the small table and sitting down.
He gets right down to business and pulls out their paperwork. Clearing his throat, he prepares himself to speak—
"Where's your sister?" the waterbender, no Katara, asks, eyeing him with a displeased expression.
"I've replaced her," Zuko grumbles. This irritating waterbender was probably going to ask him questions throughout this entire session. "I run Project Kongzhi now."
She blinks a blue eye at him. "I've yet to discover what that is."
The earthbender scoffs. "How do you not know? You volunteered for it."
Katara turns her head sharply, hair swinging, and glowers at the earthbender. "I was trying to help someone," she snaps. The earthbender's mouth turns into a snarl and the two girls glare at each other.
Zuko does not have the time nor the patience to put up with a cat fight.
The earthbender continues before he can cut in. "Well, get ready to be married off to some random dude and have bending babies, sweetheart."
Katara goes deathly pale. "I—what?" She looks back and forth between the earthbender and Zuko, awaiting confirmation.
Zuko says nothing. Zuko is still waiting for his tea.
There's silence for a long moment. Then the earthbender takes it upon herself to explain.
"Remember when Fire Lord Ozai burned down the Earth Kingdom three years ago with Sozin's Comet? I'm guessing the Fire Nation thought that that would solve their problems, demolishing what was left of the free world. It didn't. There have been riots everywhere, rebellions, little amateur armies raiding Fire Nation infantries, causing all sorts of trouble." The earthbender's eyes glaze over with a faraway look and Zuko realizes that for the first time that she is blind. Interesting.
"We all know that the Fire Nation can't have trouble," the girl continues, voice low. "But they've opted for a different tactic. Instead of destroying an entire race of people, they've—"
"Stop talking," Zuko says sharply. His tea is finally being set in front of him.
"What we're doing," he starts softly, "is allowing earth and, by extension, waterbenders to volunteer for our program. We find someone for them, a firebender—"
At the look in Katara's eye he frowns. "It's an extensive process. We won't just stick you with anyone."
Her panicked expression doesn't change.
"When the earth or waterbender and their matched firebender reproduce, if that child is an earth or waterbender then they will be put in a special training program—to hone their ability and to train them to be the best bender they can be."
The waterbender looks sick. "But, why would you—"
"Isn't it obvious?" the earthbender interrupts. "Theoretically speaking, in twenty, thirty, a hundred years from now the Fire Nation will have earth and waterbenders at its disposal. We're talking earth and waterbenders who have been raised since birth to think like a firebender, to think like a member of the Fire Nation. They will be a member of the Fire Nation, and they'll be fighting against all the rebellions, riots, and free thinkers until they're eventually crushed once and for all. Then the Fire Nation will essentially control the entire world. Just like they've always wanted," she finishes darkly.
"The Northern Water Tribe," Katara points out, and Zuko catches a note of desperation in her voice.
The earthbender answers that too. "Not too much of a threat if they eventually have to fight Fire Nation waterbenders."
"How many other waterbenders are there in this…thing? Besides me." Katara is staring at Zuko now, and he wishes beyond anything that he was back in his bed.
"That information I cannot disclose."
The waterbender frowns.
"You're probably the only one."
Zuko's hand clenches around his tea cup. This fifteen year old is grinding on his last nerve. "Thank you, earthbender. You can stop talking. Now."
"Fuck you," the girl snaps. "And why didn't you order tea for the rest of us? We're thirsty too, you know."
Katara winces and Zuko's left hand curls into the wood of the table, singeing it. "If you do not shut up, earthbender, then I will burn off your ears. Then you'll be blind and deaf."
The girl rolls her eyes. "I'm terrified."
There's a snap and a sharp cry of pain. A new welt now exists on the earthbender's neck, right under her right ear. She goes white as a sheet, but finally she's quiet.
Oddly, enough, Katara doesn't react at all.
"If you'll excuse me." Zuko stands up and is out of the room in seconds.
He'd taken dinner in his room that night and was busy writing a letter when a knock at his door interrupts him.
He's half tempted to send whoever it is away, but a second knock quickly comes and its more urgent then the first one.
Grumbling under his breath he gets up and answers the door.
It's the waterbender, ropes tied around her wrists and with three guards standing behind her.
Zuko sighs. "Did she try to escape again?"
The guard on the far right shakes his head. "No, sir. She wanted to speak with you."
"She wanted to speak with me," Zuko repeats in annoyance. They were disturbing him at this hour for this?
All of the guards look embarrassed. "She was…persistent," the one on the far right admits. Zuko notices that the guard's pants are soaked.
Katara is staring at Zuko's knees, but there's a self-satisfied half smile on her face.
Zuko leans against his door frame and waves the guards away. "Wait at the end of the hall. She and I will speak here."
When the guards are out of ear shot Zuko frowns at the waterbender. "What do you want?"
The girl's bottom lip is trembling, but her voice is steady. "I'm asking you to let me go."
He almost laughs. "No."
She nods as if she had been expecting that answer. "Then let the earthbender go. Keeping her here to do that…that disgusting 'project' is wrong. She's too young, she's—"
"Okay. You can both go."
Her head jerks up in surprise, but then her eye narrows. "What's the catch?"
"I decimate the Southern Water Tribe, as it serves no purpose for the Fire Nation and hasn't for decades. It's just a small group of women and children, no one will miss them. And besides, there are no more benders. Of course, there were rumors of a last waterbender who escaped but—"
Her visible eye fills with tears. "You know I'm from the Southern Water Tribe," she states, voice inexplicably sad and regretful.
He shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly. "Actually I didn't. But the truth is written all over your face."
She spits on him.
He doesn't strike her, though he'd like to. Instead he sweeps a foot under her right ankle and trips her. She falls backward onto the floor, landing hard on her tailbone.
"You know," he says casually, relaxing back into the doorframe, "I can't comprehend why you're making such a fuss. When you volunteered for your friend you signed a contract that stated everything that you would need to know. Did you not read it?"
The girl on the floor turns a bright, humiliated red. "I signed it."
"So you just flat out didn't read it?"
She turns even redder.
His eyebrows furrow in confusion before he sighs in understanding. "You can't read."
She ducks her head so that he cannot see her face.
In Zuko's mind he knows that he should feel sorry for her. He knows he should. But he just doesn't.
"That is…unfortunate, waterbender. However, here in the Fire Nation we keep to our word. When we say we're going to do something, we do it, even if the circumstances are not playing out in our favor." He appraises her. She hasn't bothered standing up yet. "Do you have honor, Katara?"
Her head jerks up, and by the expression on her face she's clearly taken aback by his question. For a moment he spies her scars; they peak at him through strands of her hair. Then she's rearranging her locks and once again they are hidden from his view.
"More honor then you'll ever have," she whispers fiercely.
He ignores the jab and watches her as she gets to her feet. Without another word she turns and walks to the end of the corridor where her guards are waiting for her. Zuko stares after her briefly before stepping back into his bedroom.
Zuko writes letters to his Uncle Iroh. He thinks that maybe one day he'll have the courage to send them. Maybe. Well, probably not.
In tonight's letter he tells Iroh about his father's "breeding program" that he's taken over, how his sister hates him but what else is new, how father might actually approve of him, and about the water girl with the sad blue eye.
Uncle is perhaps the only person on this earth who Zuko thinks could understand his own thoughts. He could probably understand them better than Zuko himself.
As he scrolls the necessary characters across the parchment he freezes. As the ink dries he thinks about how the waterbender can't read or write. All she can do is sign her name. Illiteracy isn't uncommon, but Project Kongzhi requires its participants to be as competent as possible.
He lets the ink brush fall out of his hand, smearing ink onto his unfinished letter.
He's going to have to teach that irritating waterbender how to read.
A/N:
Short chapters like this and the last one shouldn't be too common. The chapters should grow longer as the story progresses. Or, at least, they should. *glares at story outline*
*links fingers and laughs maniacally* Lots of mysterious stuff going on. And you won't find out everything for a little while. *laughs again*
Thank you everyone for all of the feedback from last chapter! I love hearing what you all have to say! Please make sure to drop a review and let me know what you think! :D