Story [Avatar:The Last Airbender] Sins of the Fire Nation(Zuko/Mai Oneshot Inspired by OTP Challenge #21)

Title: Sins of the Fire Nation

Author: devilinthedetails

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Genres: Romance; Drama; Angst.

Characters: Zuko; Mai; Azula; Ozai; Azulon; Ty Lee.

Summary: Zuko, Mai, and the sins of the Fire Nation and its Royal Family.

Author's Note: This piece was inspired by the OTP Challenge #21, which was to feature one or more of the seven deadly sins. Each of the seven deadly sins is explored here.

Sins of the Fire Nation

Future Pride

“I used to be so proud to be from the Fire Nation,” Zuko muttered as he curled closer to Mai late at night when all the candles had burned into blackness.

“That’s not surprising.” Mai’s answer was dry. “We were taught that our country and culture was the best in the world. Superior to everyone else. That all the other nations were inhabited by a bunch of primitives who needed our civilization and progress brought to them.”

“Now I’m not proud to be from the Fire Nation.” Zuko’s head dropped against her shoulder. “Now I’m just ashamed to be from the Fire Nation because of everything that was done during the Hundred Year War, but the leader of the Fire Nation shouldn’t be ashamed of his country, should he?”

Mai was quiet for a moment before asking, “Your uncle is from the Fire Nation, and you aren’t ashamed of him, are you?”

“No.” Zuko offered the eminently obvious reply. “Of course I’m not.”

“And Piandao.” Mai pressed her advantage following this concession. She was relentless. Never giving an inch in any discussion or battle. “He’s from the Fire Nation, and you aren’t ashamed of him either, are you?”

“No.” Zuko shook his head in frustration. “But these are individual examples of people who defied the Fire Nation. They aren’t representative of the Fire Nation as a whole.”

“The Fire Nation is made up of individuals and their choices.” Mai gave a light tug on his hair, apparently exasperated with his obtuseness. “You aren’t ashamed of me either, are you?”

“I could never be ashamed of you.” Zuko brushed his lips across her forehead. “Not after you betrayed Azula and were sent to prison for saving me. I’ll always love you with all my heart for that.”

“And you aren’t ashamed of yourself, are you?” Mai jabbed an almost accusing finger against Zuko’s chest. “Not after you teamed up with Katara to take out Azula? Not after all you’ve done to lead the Fire Nation and the world into a new era of peace and understanding?”

“No.” Zuko grinned crookedly. “I suppose I’m a little proud of myself for that. For finally finding the courage and clarity to do the right thing.”

“And you aren’t ashamed of the child we created together?” Mai grabbed Zuko’s hand and guided it down to the bulge of her pregnancy.

“Of course not.” Zuko’s grin grew into a full-fledged smile at the promise of new life and a better future swelling within his wife’s womb. “I’m so proud to be the father of your child.”

“We’re the future of the Fire Nation, Zuko.” Mai’s squeezed his fingers. “You and I, we are the leaders of the Fire Nation. We represent it more than anyone else now. In the future, our child will be the face of the Fire Nation. We have to be proud of who we are and confident of the future we can create. We can’t let people like Ozai and Azula continue to define what the Fire Nation is from their prison cells and asylums. People like that don’t represent the Fire Nation any more. People like your uncle and Piandao do. That’s what we are working to achieve. Be proud of that, and stop whining, because it is tedious to listen to your angsting.”

“Sorry to be tedious.” Zuko kissed her on the lips, loving her and the taste of her.

Maps of Greed

“Fire Nation greed rewrote the map of the world.” Zuko sat on the second-story terrace of the diplomatic house where he was staying in Yu Dao as the final treaties were signed between himself, King Kuei of the Earth Kingdom, and the city’s coalition government establishing Yu Dao as an independent state within the United Republic of Nations.

Yu Dao. The glorious First Colony of the Fire Nation. The jewel in the crown of what had once been the Fire Nation’s globe-spanning empire. An empire that was no more. A city that was still as glittering as the jade for which it was named but now was no longer Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation territory but a complete celebration of the two cultures that had intertwined in conflict and in collaboration to create it over the past fraught century.

The Jade Market in Yu Dao was without parallel anywhere in the world. The finest jade necklaces, pendants, and bracelets could be bought there from a hundred vendors competing with one another to offer the best prices and the greenest jewels. Zuko knew that. He had visited the Jade Market with Mai and purchased her a sparkling green necklace.

He was letting his mind wander, he thought, gazing down at the thronging streets of Yu Dao. The clothes of the citizens, as much as the mixed-green-and-red architecture of the low-rise buildings the populace inhabited, were a melding of Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation styles. Some people walked around decked from head to toe in green; others wore ensembles all in red and gold. Others, no doubt products of a marriage between one parent of Fire Nation descent and another of Earth Kingdom heritage, were clad in outfits that mingled the colors of both nations. Clothes plainly designed to pay equal tribute to both cultures.

Through the gardens, courtyards, and buildings that were no higher than two-storys, he had a clear, unimpeded view down to the beautiful, bustling harbor, where ships from every nation were docked and the promise of trade would hang fragrant and thick as salt in the air.

The green water he could glimpse behind the attractive city landscape was no doubt what had provoked this strange, reflective mood, he decided.

“Fire Nation greed conquered this land,” Zuko mused to Mai, sipping at a steaming cup of jasmine tea in a manner that surely would have made his Uncle Iroh proud if he were present. Grateful that she had given him space to formulate his thoughts without snide interruption. Appreciative that she was willing to listen to his contemplations on this bright morning with the sounds of life and commerce echoing off the walls around them and the smell of carts selling Fire Nation food, Earth Kingdom cuisine, and every imaginable fusion between them drifting up to them from the corners and alleys below. “Built this place from a backwater into a thriving city.”

“A city built on greed.” Mai fiddled with the jade necklace he had bought her. The one now draped around her neck. “No doubt that is how the Yu Dao obsession with profit was born.”

It was an aphorism and borderline cliche that the citizens of Yu Dao cared only for their bottom lines and not at all about their principles. Considering his experiences with the passionate people of Yu Dao, Zuko was no longer inclined to regard that as a fair assessment.

“Trade matters to Yu Dao. How could it not when it is a port city?” Zuko took another sip of his tea. “Yet the people of Yu Dao have their principles that they care about, not just their profits. One girl was so devoted to her principles that she was prepared to assassinate me for them.”

“A foolish, rash girl.” Mai snorted. “But sometimes foolish, rash girls can change the world when Fire Lords listen to them.”

“Attempted assassinations have been known to draw the attention of this particular Fire Lord.” Zuko laughed, thinking that he had truly come to love Yu Dao and its people even if one of its citizens had once tried to kill him in his own bedroom.

“So it isn’t only Fire Nation greed that can remake the world.” Mai provided a contradiction and conclusion to his first words of the morning. “It’s also Fire Nation generosity. The Fire Nation willingness to allow its colonies to become free states.”

Lust for Power

“Hard to believe that one man’s lust for power could change the world so completely.” Zuko felt a sickening knot tighten in his stomach as he gazed at Sozin’s portrait where it was confined in a special archive accessible only to scholars, himself, and Mai. “Could cause a genocide and a hundred year war.”

“It wasn’t just one man’s lust for power.” Mai leaned against his shoulder, her sign blowing and tickling against Zuko’s cheek. “It was many people’s lust for power. That’s why an entire country followed him to war. It was generations of lust for power. That’s why the war was waged for a hundred years.”

“Yes.” Zuko’s jaw clenched. “But Sozin started it. He is to blame for the Hundred Year War and the Air Nomad genocide.”

“Sozin may have started the war.” Mai cupped his chin, making it relax under her gentle, soothing touch. “But you finished it.”

“I didn’t.” Zuko bit his lip. “The Avatar did.”

“But you helped him,” Mai insisted.

“Only after I hunted him for three years and tried to kill him too many times for either of us to count.” Zuko gave a rueful grin.

“Better late than never.” Mai tapped his nose playfully.

“Not for the Air Nomads,” Zuko said bitterly before he could stop himself. "It's never for them because they're extinct."

A silence in which only their beating hearts could be heard followed before Mai finally found a response. “The Air Nomads will return, Zuko. Aang is seeing to that. It’ll be his greatest legacy.”

Burning Envy

“I used to feel this burning envy for Azula,” Zuko confessed to Mai as they returned from a visit to Azula that had left them both drained. “Because she was a firebending prodigy and my father’s favorite. I thought she had my father’s love. The approval and affection that seemed to elude me. But now I realize that she never really had his love. That his approval and affection could be withdrawn from her, and that could make her crack. Make her go crazy. That makes me pity her and wish I never envied her.”

“I used to envy her too,” Mai admitted. “Because she was a firebender, and I wasn’t. Her fire used to burn so brightly, Zuko. She had charisma, not just cruelty and cleverness. That’s why she was my friend. Much more than just someone I hated and envied. Now she’s burned herself into oblivion, and it hurts to see. I didn’t think it would--not after everything she did to me, how much she manipulated me--but it did.”

“That’s because you have a heart.” Zuko wrapped an arm around her waist, drawing her toward him.

“I tried to hide it, but I do.” Mai eased into his embrace. “Do you think Azula does?”

“I used to think not.” Zuko hesitated and then went on, “But now I do. Now I think that’s why she snapped. Why she went insane. Because she had a heart that she ignored until it broke her. That’s why I visit her sometimes.”

“That’s why I join you.” Mai leaned against him, and his skin drank in the warmth of her body as if soaking in sun rays.

Pregnant Gluttony

“I’m such a glutton.” Mai dipped a slice of satisfyingly sweet pineapple into a spicy ginger sauce as she and Zuko lay beneath a cabana on a black sand Ember Island beach. It was a slice from her fourth pineapple that day. Today she was craving pineapples with ginger sauce. Tomorrow, no doubt, her craving would be even stranger. “I’m losing all balance and proportion. Ever since I was a child, my mother warned me that would happen if I ate too much.”

There was a reason beyond workouts and trainings that she had always been thin. Her mother had hammered into her head that eating too much would make her fat and ugly. Repulsive to look upon.

“You’re not a glutton.” Zuko cradled her against his chest. “You’re only eating for two.”

The baby that so often kicked sharply inside her was making her ravenous. Hungry enough to eat a komodo rhino. Perhaps komodo rhino would even be her craving tomorrow…

“What you’re really saying is it’s your fault I’m a glutton now.” Mai waggled a slice of pineapple at him before devouring it in one bite. “Oh, well, since I end up throwing up half of what I eat, I suppose it doesn’t even matter that I’m a glutton.”

Repeated Wrath

“You’re thinking of your father,” Mai commented when she came across Zuko stroking at his scar as he always did when he remembered his father. “How he burned and exiled you.”

“He said it was to teach me respect.” Zuko’s gaze was distant and haunted as if he were watching himself get scarred again during that fateful agni kai.

“That was a lie.” Mai shook her head, tears stinging her own eyes. “He never cared about teaching you anything. He never cared about you at all. That’s what made him such a terrible father to you.”

“I used to believe it was a lie.” Zuko’s fingers continued to trace the jagged outline of his burn. “Now I think it was a sort of twisted truth. A repeated wrath that echoed through the generations of our family, scarring everyone it touched.”

“Oh?” Mai arched an eyebrow. Unsure of what else to say because she didn’t understand him even if she wanted to.

“I was there in the throne room, concealed behind curtains Azula had dragged me behind so we could eavesdrop, when Azulon ordered my father to kill me.” Zuko’s fingers finally stilled, ceasing to sketch his scar. “Well, I fled before he said that because I was scared of the flames raging around him, but I heard him tell my father that Iroh had suffered enough--my father had asked him to betray Iroh and name him heir instead, you see--but my father’s punishment had scarcely begun.”

“He was a cantankerous old man.” Mai’s lips pinched. “And your father was a snake as always.”

“Yes.” Zuko still looked disturbed, telling her that her words hadn’t been as much of a balm as she’d intended. “But I’ve been thinking about how much Azulon’s words echoed what my father said before he burned and banished me. How much was repeated. How much focus on suffering there was as a teacher. As if pain was the only way people could learn.”

“Don’t torture yourself thinking about such things.” Mai pressed a kiss into Zuko’s furrowed temple. “You’ve suffered enough, and you’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

Sloth Sickness

“Did you know Azula felt sick to her stomach the first time your father inspected the school and she was expected to be part of a display of its students’ fighting prowess?” Mai asked Zuko as they settled themselves on a stone bench in one of the many courtyards of the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.

They were attending their first joint inspection of the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, which had obviously stirred memories of her own schooldays with Azula and Ty Lee in Mai’s mind. It was expected that the Fire Lord and his wife would preside over such affairs. They were the school’s benefactors, after all.

“No.” Zuko shook his head. “Azula would never have told me such a story of her embarrassment.”

“She vomited into those bushes.” Mai pointed at a tangle of shrubbery in the courtyard’s corner. “As she threw up, she shouted hysterically about how her stomach was hurting her and she just wanted to go home. To lay in her bed. Our instructor was furious when he found her like that. Said her stomach ache was just laziness. Sloth. And that she’d have to push through it and put on her best performance or she’d regret it.”

“She didn’t go home, did she?” Zuko gazed across the courtyard at the bunch of bushes into which his little sister had been sick so many years ago. He could picture her hunched over and shouting hysterically. Crying out in her anger and pain, and having that anger and pain misinterpreted as sloth to be chastised.

“Of course not.” Mai’s lips twisted. “She took deep breaths, drank some water, and put on a firebending show that had the whole courtyard applauding her. At the time, I thought it was a quick stomach bug or something funny she’d eaten at lunch that had been upchucked from her system, but now I don’t think so. Now I think her veneer was starting to crack even then. Now I think it wouldn’t have been so bad if she was sent home to lay in her bed even if it was sloth.”

“Everyone was so hard on children in the Fire Nation then.” Zuko watched as classes of uniformed girls began to file into the courtyard in perfect, orderly lines, radiating discipline and poise. “Do you think we are still too hard on our children in the Fire Nation?”

“I don’t know.” Mai was looking at the girls now too. Perhaps seeing her past self reflected in them along with Azula and Ty Lee. “I hope we aren’t. I’m sorry if we are.”

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting on my work!Lately, I've been really fascinated with the question of how Zuko and Mai redefine the Fire Nation and its values (and maybe rediscover some of the "softer" values the Fire Nation lost during the Hundred Year War) after Ozai is defeated and Zuko becomes Fire Lord instead. They really have an opportunity to reshape the Fire Nation that is really interesting to me, and, of course, have the chance to show that great virtue of compassion even for enemies that I think was such a wonderfully touching theme in the TV series. So this story was an immensely satisfying and cathartic one for me to write, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it!

 

@amidalachick As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting!I really loved the Deadly Sins prompts that we received for this OTP Challenge (so much so that I ended up writing two stories this time...) so it is awesome to hear that you felt I did an excellent job with these prompts. The discussions between Zuko and Mai were a delight for me to write throughout this story (I just love the relationship between those two) and their affection for each other warmed my heart.

In my head canon, I imagine Yu Dao as a beautiful, glittering jewel of a city so I wanted so much to do justice to that mental image I have. It means a ton that you found the descriptions in that section so beautiful since that was exactly what I was hoping to convey!

I definitely agree that sometimes in some of life's darkest and most painful moments, it can feel like having a heart and caring can be a big liability that only brings sorrow and pain, but truthfully, caring about others is a huge part of what makes life worth living and is very instinctual and natural to us. And makes life very fulfilling and meaningful even if occasionally painful. So to cut oneself off from compassion, from feeling, and one's own heart in the end is worse than any heartbreak and can certainly cause insanity like Azula's in my opinion. To deny one's heart and one's compassion is a path to darkness, loneliness, and insanity in the long run, I think.

I really enjoyed writing the glimpse of Mai dipping her pineapple in spicy ginger sauce while under a cabana with Zuko. It just felt very tropical and like a scene of ultimate beach bliss for this couple so I'm so glad that you loved that detail and found it delicious.

Thank you again for reading and for the kind words! I always appreciate them so much

@pronker Thank you so much for reading and commenting!Since this was for an OTP challenge, I did want to include some exposition that would hopefully help those not familiar with the Avatar canon follow and understand the story to a degree, so I'm so happy you appreciated that decision.

Red and gold is one of my favorite color combos too. So I do have a soft spot for Fire Nation fashion.

I do like to think that it took generosity on the part of both the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation to agree to let Yu Dao (and other former Fire Nation colonies) become free states since the people in those states ended up not really identifying as Fire Nation or Earth Kingdom citizens but as something else and new entirely (a sort of fusion with their own unique identity).

And, yes, I think sloth can often be the least troubling of the Deadly Sins, and certainly necessary in moderation because too much stress and overwork can definitely be damaging to one's health and psyche as we see with the sad story of Azula who shattered from too much pressure being placed on her at a young age.

I'm so glad that you felt I really showed how Zuko and Mai found an equilibrium of respect and support since I hoped to really showcase that in this fic, and since I wanted this fic to celebrate their characters, I'm so happy that you thought I did a nice job with their characterization!