Story [Avatar: The Last Airbender] Worth Fighting For (Oneshot for Disney Songs Mini-Game Challenge)

Title: Worth Fighting For

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Genre: Drama; Family; Friendship; Romance.

Characters: Azulon; Sozin; Ilah; OC's.

Summary: At war, Azulon finds a girl worth fighting for.

Notes: Written for the marvelous @Kit' s Disney Songs Challenge in the Mini-Games thread. My assigned song was "A Girl Worth Fighting For" from one of my all-time favorite Disney animated movies, Mulan. Thanks to @Kit' for the inspiration!

Readers are warned that Sozin in particular is an emotionally, verbally, and psychologically abusive character who says some vulgar and downright reprehensible things. The Fire Nation rhetoric and culture is also filled with all the violent nationalism and militarism that defines this era in their history so please be prepared for that if you choose to continue with this fic.

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Worth Fighting For

Azulon is in the middle of his six weeks leave from the war in the Earth Kingdom. He doesn’t enjoy his mandatory leaves. Being under his father’s searing scrutiny. Subject to the Fire Lord’s soft, scathing comments that can cut like the lacerating blow of a bamboo rod on bare flesh. Like a steel sword through silk.

He prefers being in the field. In the thick of the gory action. Amidst the clamor and clangor of battle where glory can be won. Commanding his father’s armies. Achieving victory and honor. Away from the petty politics of the palace.

He is not in the field right now. Sits instead at his father’s right hand in a crimson-cushioned chair in their private balcony at the Royal Caldera City theater. His mother on his other side. Servants kneeling to offer luxuriant refreshments on lacquered trays. Drapes scarlet as blood behind them.

A gilded gold railing before them over which they can see the slender, delicate frame of Fire Nation celebrity Yuna Ume singing with enough volume to rattle the rafters the lyrics of her latest hit “A Girl Worth Fighting For.”

The song has swept like a blaze–like a wildfire raging out of control in a dry forest—through the Fire Nation, Azulon knows. Has heard it sung by many entertainers who perform in the mess halls where Fire Nation soldiers rest and feed themselves between battles. Such shows intended to boost the morale of the troops but also burnishing the reputations of the singers who took such tours.

None of the entertainers he has heard have sung it quite like Yuna is now, Azulon thinks. She is singing it in a sultry tone. As if proclaiming herself as the titular Girl with Fighting For. Endlessly desirable. Elusive yet somehow attainable to all.

As if Azulon’s mind is an open scroll to be perused at whim and leisure, Father leans closer to Azulon. Asks in an undertone, “What do you think of ‘A Girl Worth Fighting For,’ son?”

The question is a trap, Azulon can sense it. Questions from Father are always traps waiting to spring on the clumsy and the unwary.

Azulon is uncertain what might trigger this one. Hazards, “Surely, the Fire Nation, her eternal honor and glory, is the only girl worth fighting for in the heart of any faithful Fire Nation soldier?”

For a second, a blink of an eye, Azulon allows himself to believe that he has answered well.

Then he notices with a clenching mailed fist squeezing about his stomach, Father’s lip curling in contempt. “Oh, Azulon. You’re so simple-minded it would be diverting if you weren’t my heir. The one meant to rule the Fire Nation–to ensure its continued supremacy–when my body is ash.”

“Simple-minded?” Azulon hears himself repeat his father’s condemnatory phrase. A hollow echo. Empty-headed.

Father doesn’t dignify this with a reply. Instead dips his finger into a porcelain bowl filled with exotic fruit from the fertile, ever-growing Earth Kingdom colonies. Colonies that are so much more productive now that they are under the efficient governance of the Fire Nation than they ever were as provinces of the fractious Earth Kingdom with its weak emperors and competing kings.

Father withdraws a lychee. Bites into it as Azulon flounders. As the song below them comes to an end. A void of silence instantly filled by thunderous applause from the admiring audience. Applause that swiftly dies again when Yuna takes up the thread of another song. Her voice weaving a tapestry through the theater.

“How am I simple-minded, Father?” Azulon’s cheeks burn ember-bright. Surely something only a simpleton would say. Yet he has to know. To learn. To one day be cunning as a fire-bellied serpent. Shrewd as his father.

“First.” Father finishes his lychee. Reaches for another. Lychee are his favorite fruit. It is sometimes quipped by daring, witty courtiers (though never in the Fire Lord’s hearing, which is ever fading in radius as his ears begin to fail him in his advanced age) that he started his invasion of the Earth Kingdom before Azulon’s birth to ensure an inexhaustible supply of them. “The Fire Nation is masculine. Strong and powerful. Not feminine. Unlike the feeble Water Tribes and the destroyed Air Nomads.”

Father pauses. Chewing lychee as Azulon absorbs his words. Then continues, “Second, the Fire Nation is something of an abstraction to many soldiers. Not as breathing and real as a beautiful girl who makes their hearts quicken with desire. A girl who could be theirs if they only have the courage, the manhood, to fight for her.”

“I see.” Azulon has never been struck by such desire. Wonders if he is perhaps immune to it. Too heartless to have such an arrow pierce it. He has, however, seen his friends from the Royal Fire Academy for Boys who now serve alongside and under him in the army smote by such yearnings. Has seen how all-consuming such longings can be for a young man. A soldier. Anyone.

Father ignores Azulon. Goes on as if in love with the sound of his own voice, the rhapsodizing of his own reasoning, “Third, the song is propaganda. Meant to stir up the hot blood of our troops. To motivate them in battle. And if it flatters our Fire Nation girls, inspires them to spread their legs for our soldiers before they march off to battle, that is all the more useful. A population boom would give us more soldiers with which to conquer the Earth Kingdom and the world in the future. In the Earth Kingdom, they reproduce like rabbits in the spring. Having more Fire Nation children to grow up and one day subdue them is all to the good. You understand?”

“Yes, Father.” Azulon nods. Glances, out of the corner of his eye, at his proper, poised mother. To see if she is offended by his father’s crassness.

Her spine is spear-straight. Face blank as the smooth surface of a tranquil garden pond beneath her porcelain-white facepaint. Serene gaze fixed on Yuma as the singer performs, holding the rapt audience in the palm of her perfect hand. It is impossible as ever to know what his mother thinks. Feels.

She might hate Azulon’s father. The Fire Lord, decades older than her, whom she was betrothed to marry because she was young, nobly born, and beautiful as a flowering orchid. Might be able to give birth to an heir when the Fire Lord’s first two brides had failed. Died in fever and blood on silken bedsheets. Straining to deliver only miscarriages and stillbirths.

She had managed to give birth to that heir. Azulon. Could take pride and pleasure in that. Did seem to take more pride and pleasure in Azulon than Father ever had. At least Azulon can tell himself on sleepless nights that he is not a disappointment, a dismal failure, to both his parents.

When Azulon returns to the front, his leave lasting too long as it always does, he finds that variations on the theme of “A Girl Worth Fighting For” becomes the refrain of his friends. Alterations on the lyrics a mirror to reflect their own wistful daydreams and yearnings. Their way of escaping the strictly regulated tedium of a military camp.

As their chopsticks poke unenthusiastically at overcooked noodles, limp vegetables, and stingy meat, Hideki remarks, “When I marry, I want a girl who can cook like a goddess. A full menu and feast of delicious dishes. Red chili beef. Five spice pork buns. Roasted komodo chicken. Now she would be a girl worth fighting for. The girl of my dreams.”

Azulon’s mouth waters at the description of these beloved Fire Nation foods, but he cannot resist teasing with a smirk, “You don’t need a wife to cook that for you. You need a trained chef.”

As they stand sentry duty at night on an Earth Kingdom field that was once green and is now charred ground, Masao murmurs, staring up at the blanched moon and stars, “When I am next on leave, I want to meet a girl with a face pale as the moon’s and eyes inky black as the night. Eyes that shine like stars in romantic candlelight. Such a girl would be one worth fighting for.”

“If her face is pale as the moon,” Azulon scoffs, echoing many of his father’s sentiments without realizing he was doing so, “then she must be sickly. Frail. Not strong. Not able to give you powerful children. Not worth fighting for at all.”

“You don’t understand, Azulon.” Masao smiles. Claps him on the armored shoulder. “But you will when you find your own girl worth fighting for.”

“I won’t.” Azulon snorts. Shakes his head like an irascible, bucking komodo rhino refusing to accept a rider’s saddle. “Because there is nothing to understand. You’ve rocks for brains.”

“Better rocks for brains.” Masao shrugs. Unruffled by Azulon’s derision. “Than stones for a heart.”

Azulon’s stone heart melts like magma when he first glimpses Ilah’s determined face as she practices her firebending at dawn. Radiant with dappled pearls of sweat in the pastel pink-and-purple glow of sunrise. Her hair, black as a raven’s wing, tied into a sharp up-do. A sight he will remember for a lifetime. Even when Ilah is long dead, and his own bones are paper-weak.

Watching her, breath caught in his throat, he can see that she is a firebending prodigy like him. An artist at work. Sizzling flame her element. A genius inventing her own forms and techniques.

Her firebending seems to have been self-taught. Learned by painful experience and dangerous experimentation. By scorching trial and errors.

Hasn’t been tutored, as his had, by the ruthless, precise education of the best instructors in the Fire Nation. First at the palace and then at the Royal Fire Academy for Boys.

He finds the bravery to approach her. To practice his own firebending alongside her. Hoping to impress her with his strength. His power. How he can make the world burn around her.

Every dawn, they practice their firebending together. Each dusk they clash in a friendly but fierce duel. Fireballs bursting and blazing between them.

They talk after they practice and after they duel. She learns he is the prince of the Fire Nation and yet she never bows before him. Is too proud and confident for that.

He learns she is common born. Has climbed through the army ranks with astonishing speed due to her prodigious talent and intense ambition.

He is all the more in awe of her when he discovers that. She becomes his girl worth fighting for because she is as strong and fierce as him. Because she is never afraid to argue with him. Never flinches from challenging him.

He defies his father, who would have arranged his marriage to a noble girl, to be with Ilah. Weds her even though she is common born because, as he shouts at his father, she is the only firebender in the world who can match his power. His genius.

His father doesn’t agree with Azulon, but must cave to Azulon’s will in this. Must recognize that the army by now answers more to Azulon than to his father. That Azulon could overthrow him if provoked too far because Azulon’s sun is rising while his father’s is setting.

Azulon is triumphant. He has won his girl worth fighting for. Is certain he will have her forever. Doesn’t know, because he can’t see the future written in the shapes of clouds or the patterns on cracked bones as the Earth Kingdom peasants believe, that he will lose her too soon.

That she will die giving birth to their second son. That he will loathe that son–named Ozai because it was her last wish–with all the fire and fury inside him. That his grief will turn to hatred and rage because that is how he fights for what he has lost forever. What he can never regain no matter how hot he burns. No matter how much of the world he reduces to cinder and smoke.