Fanfiction: Ashes, Ashes (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

[nebroadwe]

Title: Ashes, Ashes: A Sequence
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Character(s): Ozai, with cameos from Zuko and others
Pairing(s): None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 700
Warnings: Set post-series; contains spoilers for the finale.
A/N: I've been writing villains at length for the first time lately and it's almost too much fun. Crossposted from nebroadwe to avatar_fans and avatarfic.
Dedication: For everyone on my f-list who refused to adopt a plotbunny. It's all your fault, you know.

---

      It's a game they play, the deposed king and his faithless successor. Zuko demands to know where his mother is, and Ozai answers him with silence or taunts him with cryptic reminiscences. Her absence is all that binds them now, a chain as delicate as spider-silk and as unyielding as star-steel. When chance allows, Ozai twists it ruthlessly, desiring to see that high-crowned head humbled, those stubborn knees brought low.

      You are so like her, he murmurs, and when the boy stretches his neck to hear more, a hawk straining after poisoned meat, he whispers, She was a traitor, too.

≈≈≈≈≈
      His captors are not cruel: twice daily he is fed, and twice escorted into the yard to exercise, after which he returns to find his chamberpot emptied and his linens aired or changed. By his son's order he is served in silence, so that his ambiguous status (what style befits an uncrowned Fire Lord?) need not become an occasion of lèse-majesté.

      These courtesies Ozai scorns as cowardice, the hypocrisy of one who pardons what he dares not damn. Without the Avatar to prop you up, you would fall, he accuses Zuko, and accepts the boy's mute headshake as proof.

≈≈≈≈≈
      He takes the air reluctantly, uneasy now beneath the sun. At dawn the whole valley blushes like a maiden at her lover's fond approach, but that heady passion no longer animates him. The noonday heat on his skin is merely warmth, not power; the darkening sky, an empty invitation to rest. The Avatar has cast his spirit into perpetual eclipse: Ozai wonders whether this is how a corpse feels, shrouded for the pyre, and whether the only ardor he will know henceforth is that final burning.

      He learns to prefer the cold stone walls of his cell, which excuse all.

≈≈≈≈≈
      His son stands ghostlike on the threshold, robed in white. "Azula is dead," he says.

      Ozai attends with interest to the tale: she hanged herself in her chamber, by a rope of scraps torn from the seams of her garments and braided secretly in the empty watches of the night, while her attendants slept. A tragic end, and not implausible -- and all bodies look the same, once they are ash. The Phoenix King eyes his heir with the first, faint stirrings of respect. He had not thought the boy so politic.

      "Well done," he says. "You are learning, at last."

≈≈≈≈≈
      At first Ozai believes he has miscounted the days between his son's visits, but the time comes when there can be no mistake: the usurper has fled the field, leaving the true Fire Lord in possession. He stands in the center of his cell, eyes closed, arms spread wide in benediction, as if all the pride of his kingship has been restored. For Zuko has failed: now he must live and die in the shadow of his father's victory.

      Ozai laughs until the walls ring with the echoes, his exultation as loud as a flourish of drums, and as hollow.

≈≈≈≈≈
      In his dreams he knows the truth: that no man can take away another's bending, not even the Avatar. He will rise from the ashes of his own defeat to purify the world as he has been purified. Loss is an illusion, like separation, like death. He burns the Earth Kingdom from shore to shore, and new forests spring up from the seeds of the old. He melts the polar ice, and lion-turtles swim in the rising seas. He cradles his daughter's body in his arms, and at his touch her tormented eyes open.

      Father, she says. Let me go.

≈≈≈≈≈
      Ozai looks up from his dinner to see his son, all unexpected, usher a cloaked figure into the cell. The turtle-duck soup sours in his belly: Am I a spectacle now? He turns away, watching sidelong as this new visitor lifts chapped hands to push back the cloak's deep hood.

      She is thinner than he remembers, less elegant, her fair skin freckled and her hair coarse. But she kneels to face him with the same grace, the proud lines of her face (even marred by pity) still queenly, still lovely.

      He weeps to see her and know himself truly powerless.

---

[Acknowledgments: Avatar: The Last Airbender was created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko; copyright for this property is held by Viacom International, Inc.]

Comments

[orchid-falls.livejournal.com]

I have to say that whilst I find Ozai an interesting character, he isn't one that I'm ever drawn to read about - yet I loved this. You managed to portray the crazy guy perfectly and I think you got his thoughts and manic wondering down pat. I love your choice of words in descriptions, the first paragraph being my favourite, I think. An enjoyable read and I'm glad I chose to click on the link.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clicking! I'm pleased I managed to put Ozai across well enough to hold your interest. Fortunately, Ozai's brand of crazy is one I find easy to conceptualize -- if you accept his skewed premises, most of his conclusions follow logically from them, so his actions can seem at once surprising (because his premises are so far off normal that his conclusions are in the Twilight Zone) and inevitable. Drabble #3 is all about that; so is #7 -- they were the first ones I composed. Then there's his relationship with Zuko; I just couldn't see him revealing where Ursa had gone while he could hold that fact just out of reach of the son he despises. Especially when he had nothing else left: not his rank, nor his bending, nor his freedom. (I think he probably dies not long after the end of this story ...)

I love your choice of words in descriptions, the first paragraph being my favourite, I think.

Oog. I must have rewritten the last sentence of that paragraph at least sixteen times. The subject's still got a grammatically unclear antecedent, but I can't think how to resolve the problem right now. Maybe it'll come to me in the middle of the night. :-)

[dharmavati.livejournal.com]

I loved this so much! Ozai is definitely not one of my favorite characters and I think this fic has only reminded me why... and I mean that in the most positive way possible. :D I think you've really captured his personality so well in this fic and I love how you describe his state of mind and his perception of reality,. Amazing fic! :)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Ozai in the way I enjoy any good antagonist (i.e. from a very long way away and with great relief that no such person exists in my RL :-). Except in Aang's dream sequences, he's played with such Jacobean-revenge-tragedy brio that he brings out the English major in me, and I start using words like "henceforth" and "politic" in all seriousness. It's fun to let my internal thesaurus off the leash every now and again.

[jill-rg.livejournal.com]

Some of the best Avatar fic I've ever read. Good Ozai fic always turn to be so cool, emphasis on "good." Favorite parts:

- #3; surprisingly, hardly anyone tries to capture how horrifying it would be to lose a part of your soul, and you capture it perfectly!
- a hawk straining after poisoned meat
oooh, great metaphor
- Without the Avatar to prop you up, you would fall, he accuses Zuko, and accepts the boy's mute headshake as proof.
- Each one stands well on tis own, but the last one really connects them all together very well, and you're able to see the process and the end it has been building up to.

In short, a highly satisfying read. *Memory.*

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Some of the best Avatar fic I've ever read.

Well, [blush]. Thank you. And thanks for the specific favorites!

- #3; surprisingly, hardly anyone tries to capture how horrifying it would be to lose a part of your soul, and you capture it perfectly!

I knew I wanted to write about that, but I also knew it was going to require a really good set of metaphors and a light touch (or else it risked getting bathetic). I'm glad you find it worked.

"a hawk straining after poisoned meat" -- oooh, great metaphor

I'm proud of that one. It came in early and stuck through all the revisions (I think the only change was from a simile to a metaphor, in order to keep the word count under 100).

- Each one stands well on its own, but the last one really connects them all together very well, and you're able to see the process and the end it has been building up to.

Woot! That's what I was going for. Yay for success! :-)

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I see you went with perpetual eclipse! (Which I actually preferred anyway.)

In general, my opinion of "Hot damn!" from the night before stands. Ozai seriosuly fascinates me - not just on the level of a villain, but on the level of a son who's been raised in the grand family tradition and ended up as the losing generation just through the genetic draw.

Also Azula's fate... whoo. I love that you mentioned Zuko wearing white in that drabble.

That last line was a gut puncher - but then, I'm on the side of "Ozai and Ursa probably were very much in love or at least happily married for a few years there." It's interesting to think how the storyline is altered a bit if she hadn't been forced from the palace in the end.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I see you went with perpetual eclipse! (Which I actually preferred anyway.)

Great minds think alike. :-)

Ozai seriously fascinates me - not just on the level of a villain, but on the level of a son who's been raised in the grand family tradition and ended up as the losing generation just through the genetic draw.

Yes: if he's a psychopath (even a high-functioning one, up till the end) he's got a bit of the tragic figure about him because he's not entirely the master of his fate. (In a story with a more developed cosmology, I'd be coming up with "sport of the gods" metaphors.) Sozin, in full possession of all his faculties and eaten up by ambition, is a far more culpable figure, IMO (though tragic in another way, choosing that ambition over friendship at the last possible moment).

Also Azula's fate... whoo. I love that you mentioned Zuko wearing white in that drabble.

It's the details that make these things for me (though I admit I had this "Shoot, wait -- are Fire Nation mourning clothes white?" moment after I posted last night. Thank goodness for screencaps.).

That last line was a gut puncher - but then, I'm on the side of "Ozai and Ursa probably were very much in love or at least happily married for a few years there."

I haven't considered their early life together all that much -- historically speaking, kings and queens on the scale of things in the Fire Nation live in an oxymoronic combination of intimacy and separation: they'd be heads of parallel court households on a grand scale, almost certainly with separate personal living suites, but at the same time they'd have very little privacy, so that even if they became personally estranged, there'd be an enormous amount of social and political pressure to appear "normal" in the course of their public duties. One might conjecture that Ursa spends so much time with her children as an acceptable alternative to interacting with her husband. Or that, given that "romantic" royal marriages are the exception rather than the rule, they're rubbing along perfectly well together in largely separate spheres, but that Ozai hasn't shared the depths of his ambitions with her, so that his attempted coup takes her by surprise and leads her to desperate measures. Hmm ...

I think by the time this sequence ends, though, Ozai is far enough around the twist that, whatever feelings he he once had for her, they're ashes now.

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Squee! You wrote Avatar! I especially loved the line:"At dawn the whole valley blushes like a maiden at her lover's fond approach, but that heady passion no longer animates him." It's pure poetry. You really do get across the point that Ozai's silence is the only power he has over his son.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Squee! You wrote Avatar!

Three times now. (http://nebroadwe.livejournal.com/tag/avatar) :-)

I especially loved the line:"At dawn the whole valley blushes like a maiden at her lover's fond approach, but that heady passion no longer animates him."

You know, it's funny, but Ozai's thing about sunlight was supposed to be the point of drabble #2, but that one decided to take a left turn into politics (which was supposed to be the point of another drabble entirely, and a rather more confrontational moment between father and son, but oh, well ...). So I was left with what I was sure was going to be an impossible half-an-idea, made a few notes, and went to bed. I swear I was up every five minutes for the next half-hour, jotting down lines as they emerged. I finally got a very large piece of paper and stopped turning on the light and picked a different corner each time I had another brainstorm. Inspiration is an odd thing ...

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

I guess Ozai figured if he was gonna silently torture Zuko he might as well pick on you too. He's twisted to begin with. XD

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Heh. I did feel most of the time as if I had the upper hand, though, seeing as I knew and could reveal things about his character that he either was properly aware of or didn't want to face. Creativity as blackmail. :-)

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Bwahahha! Creativity as blackmail is something Edward Elric usually fears.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Which is why I haven't told him about the Chibi Drabbles series. [snickers wickedly]

[mulzrule.livejournal.com]

Bwahahah! *Ed hides behind armor!Al*

[tehlobster.livejournal.com]

This was amazing. Just. There are no words. It was beautiful and poetic and perfect. I especially loved the opening, but the entire thing was just. Wow.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I'll take beautiful and poetic (and thank you kindly for the compliment!), but right now I'm at the "kill your darlings! kill them all!" stage and can't accept perfect. Give me another week and it'll look like the heartbreaking work of staggering genius it was when I first posted it again. Writing is an ever-repeating cycle of manic-depression. :-)

I especially loved the opening ...

Boy, am I glad to hear that's doing it for people, because (as I think I've said up-comment) that first paragraph gave me all kinds of trouble. I knew what I wanted to say, but actually saying it in a way that would start the whole sequence off with a bang (and not run over 100 words or be too grammatically awkward or stupidly pompous) was quite difficult. Phew.

[kittyjimjams.livejournal.com]

Oof, that was awesome. So many good lines and such an interesting take on Ozai's character - he's always felt a little one-dimensional to me but this is a much more realised set of motivations and conclusions.

I like your little moments of Zuko, too.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Thanks! One of the good things writing a drabble sequence forces me to do is examine a character from multiple angles; since each drabble is self-contained, as well as part of the whole, and since I don't like to repeat myself, I had to keep finding new facets of Ozai (cruelty, depression, megalomania) to examine in each as I turned over the main idea that his life in prison is all about coming (or, rather, failing to come) to grips with his loss of power. I don't think he's self-reflective enough to get any closer to the idea that he's misused his power than he does in his dream of Azula.

I like your little moments of Zuko, too.

He's just as important here, if only because I can use what we know about him to throw Ozai's skewed perspectives into sharper relief.

[arielen.livejournal.com]

This few words are enough to describe Ozais mind and thoughts, as I have seen it in the last episodes (which aired in Nick Germany for the first time yesterday evening). I like, how you catch his subtile madness and how it changes at the end. Now he has lost the last strip of power over Zuko and that is, what breaks him now.

The story was very impressive in my eyes. thank you.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ich freue mich sehr daran, dass Sie diese Geschichte moegen. Ich wusste vom Anfang, wie ich das Ende schreiben wollte -- ich habe die erste, dritte und letzte -- um -- Drabbeln? -- zuerst geschrieben. (Es war vielleicht grausam, Azula so schnell umzubringen, aber ich wollte Ozais Wahnsinn zeigen. Zumindest in seinem Traum ist er ein bisschen traurig.)

Bitte entschuldigen Sie mir die Fehler! Ich habe seit ein Paar Jahre Deutsch nur gelesen und nicht geschrieben oder gesprochen. Ich habe auch leider kein Umlaut auf diesem Computer, argh.

[arielen.livejournal.com]

Danke für die Antwort in Deutsch, darüber habe ich mich sehr gefreut. Dass die Umlaute fehlen ist auch nicht so schlimm.

I know how difficult it is to write and speak in a language, which is not your own. I think, I have the same problems in English. I can understand it very well, but it is another thing to speak and write, if you did not stay on to practice it.

Your story now inspired me to try it myself.

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Danke für die Antwort in Deutsch, darüber habe ich mich sehr gefreut. Dass die Umlaute fehlen ist auch nicht so schlimm.

Dankeschoen. Das Internet zu Hause ist gescrozzelt; natuerlich gibt es dort Umlaute [grumble mutter gripe].

I know how difficult it is to write and speak in a language, which is not your own. I think, I have the same problems in English. I can understand it very well, but it is another thing to speak and write, if you did not stay on to practice it.

Yes, definitely. Es hilft mir nicht, dass ich jetzt drei andere Sprache als Englisch studiert habe -- Deutsch, Lateinisch und Japanisch -- und sie kaempfen immer ueber Kontrolle meines Mundes, als ich eine Fremdsprache benutzen will. Meine Saetze oft totemo macaronic ni narimasu, which makes vitam difficilior. (Loose translation: I end up trying to speak three languages at once, which doesn't work very well. :-)

Your story now inspired me to try it myself.

Ich habe dein Versuch gesehen. I'll get around to leaving a comment eventually ...

[arielen.livejournal.com]

Du hast gleich drei Sprachen gelernt? Und dann noch so unterschiedliche! Auch ich hatte Latein in der Schule (im Gymnasium - hier weiß ich nicht ob das mit der High-School vergleichbar ist), aber meine Erinnerung ist nach über zwanzig Jahren so gering, dass ich gerade noch ahnen kann, was gemeint ist und das ein oder andere Wort Französisch, Spanisch oder Italienisch verstehe.

I knew what you mean. This happens to me with German and English sometimes, especially when I try to write english but thinking in German.

And thank you for your comment to my story. It made me very happy!

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Du hast gleich drei Sprachen gelernt? Und dann noch so unterschiedliche!

Es gab einen Professor bei meiner Uni, der immer sagte, dass man mehr Sprachen als Englisch studieren sollte -- mindestens Französisch, Deutsch, Spanisch, Italienisch, Russisch, Altgriechisch und Latein, sowie eine Sprache, die nicht aus der centum Seite der indo-europäischen Sprachfamilie stammt. Wir haben ihn gefragt, "Wie viele wissen Sie?" Er antwortete, "Vierzehn." Wir waren ein bisschen ... erstaunt. (Dann erzählte er uns, dass er einen Master-Abschluss in Turksprache hatte. Cheater.) Fremdsprachen gefallen mir -- Philologie auch. I'm a language geek: I love comparing the different grammatical and syntactic structures. Ich wünsche nur, dass ich als Kind eine Fremdsprache lernen könnte. I'd love to be truly bilingual.

Auch ich hatte Latein in der Schule (im Gymnasium - hier weiß ich nicht ob das mit der High-School vergleichbar ist) ...

Ja, es ist vergleichbar.

... aber meine Erinnerung ist nach über zwanzig Jahren so gering, dass ich gerade noch ahnen kann, was gemeint ist und das ein oder andere Wort Französisch, Spanisch oder Italienisch verstehe.

Ich muss jetzt Latein bei meiner Arbeit in der Bibliothek benutzen; deshalb kommt es Stück für Stück wieder. Ich konnte nicht auf Lateinisch viel schreiben, aber ich kann genug lesen. Barely. :-)

And thank you for your comment to my story. It made me very happy!

You're welcome! I trained as a literary scholar before I went to work in the library, so talking about fiction is as much fun for me as writing it.

[arielen.livejournal.com]

Ich hatte ursprünglich auch vor, in eine Bibliothek oder ein Archiv zu gehen, aber als ich noch zur Schule ging, war mein Interesse für Sprachen noch nicht so groß. Auch fehlt mir eigentlich Sprachbegabung. Als Kind und in der Schule lagen mir Mathematik und die Naturwissenschaften mehr, so dass ich sogar einige Jahre Mathematik studierte und Informatik/Data Science (Ich habe aber keinen Abschluss)

Erst nach der Schule, als ich intensiv zu schreiben anfing veränderte ich mich. Ich frischte meine Englischkenntnisse auf und erarbeitete mir beim Schreiben auch meinen eigenen Stil.