This-AU-Needs-A-Name: Birth

[weirdlet]

The AU: Princess Zura was pregnant when she was exiled- now she roams the world with a child in tow, seeking the Avatar as her chance at redemption- for herself and her daughter...

The Summary: Having made it past a crisis point in her exile, Zura faces the next one- childbirth. Trouble and visions abound as she seeks aid, stuck in a small swamp-town for the duration.

The Fic:

“After we floated past the Eastern temple, the General figured it was time to put in for shore and wait for the lying-in, and with our princess as she was, well, we figured about the same.

“She’s a tough one, our princess, but any girl would want a woman with her when she’s brought to the couch, and one who knows what she’s doing, not just a soldier-girl who’s seen blood and explosions but never handled a child in her life.

“Unfortunately, the journey to the next village we thought was going to take three days took two weeks- the villages ‘round about the southern tip of the continent don’t take kindly to the Fire Nation, and then you have the cliffs making it a pain to even get to most of them- and Kyoshi may be neutral, but they’ve no love for us. So the General pushes us up towards the equator- with the princess’s permission, of course- and checks around for a good port.

“So we finally arrive and anchor off-shore of this little village where the river meets the sea. We get there thinking we’re just in time- and then the kid doesn’t wanna move. For two and a half weeks, we’re stuck in this hot, sticky summer, with the princess waddling around cranky and tired and the locals telling us they’ll send by the local healer when it’s time. You haven’t seen cranky until you’ve seen our Zura, and one night she just- explodes, orders us to comb the swamps if we have to, but bring that healer by, she wants this kid out.

“And that’s where things got a little exciting…”

…

It’s almost like home in the monsoon season, and for once, Zura is not happy about that.

It’s. Too. Fucking. Hot.

The air that rises up from the paddies and the brackish waterways under the piers is sticky and fills her too-short breaths up like soup- it beads on her forehead and sticks her robe, good for keeping off the chill out at sea, to her skin. She can hardly move, her head is full of cobwebs and muzzy cotton packing, and the crew move around her chair on the deck skittishly, fearful of her snapping.

The local food’s pretty good, though, when she can eat.

Uncle has been making inquiries as to the local midwife or healer in the village, and apparently they make do with some swamp-witch who’s known as Mama Binh. They keep saying she’ll show up, when it’s time, but Zura does not have time for peasant platitudes.

She wants to at least meet the woman before she goes into labor.

The days are long and lazy, and the nights are long and restless. Zura rests on the deck or on the dock, borrowing one of Uncle’s fans. Uncle himself is often out in the village, scouring the marketplace for necessary (and not so necessary) things. Lt. Jee doesn’t hover- but he checks in on her, when Uncle doesn’t, makes sure one of the privates is on hand to bring her cool drinks or run errands, keep the umbrella holding off the sun in place.

She dreams a lot.

When the day’s simmering and she fades in and out of dozing under the shade, she doesn’t hear crackling skin or Azulon’s whispers. Instead, she finds her dreams ranging wider and farther than they have in a long time. Her cousin laughs and plays with her, Lu Ten who’s five years dead. They’re little again, and play hide-and-seek amid the reeds and the vines and the too-tall trees, splashing mud and getting dirty and not having to make excuses to anyone.

The tall, tall figure of her father picks her up, and he’s only a beard and strong hands, no breastplate between her and the sound of his heart.

She sees water dancing, and air whirling with it, and rocks keeping the beat in time. The time that fire gives to it, in flickers and pulses. There are smiles, and strength, and she doesn’t know what to think of that one when she wakes up.

The baby rolls in her, and she dreams of her mother, dancing with blades and fire.

Some of them are relaxing. Others put her so off-kilter that she wants to duel something when she gets up.

…

“She hasn’t threatened anyone’s manhood in two days,” says Quan, a midshipman from the Yu-Yan province. The mess is bustling, the crew heartily enjoying the cook’s experiment with the local staples. “I’m worried.”

He needn’t be.

Zura explodes into the mess, face a mask of rage.

“GET OUT! Get out there and find that woman!”

“Is something wrong, Princess?” Lt. Jee rises, grim and business-like.

“Yes. The villagers have been giving us the run-around about this healer for two. Weeks. I want to know who’s delivering my child. I want this nonsense to stop. I want this kid out, and that can’t happen until this Mama Binh stops making herself scarce!” The princess is gripping the edge of the table, her knuckles white.

“Princess Zura-“ General Iroh starts, but the teenager’s glare gives even him pause. He doesn’t quail, but he acquiesces, giving a small nod. “I’ll organize a search-party. Lieutenant, if you will come with me-?”

Half the mess-hall empties out, and Zura sits down hard on a bench, resting her head in her hands.

The party is organized in record time, Jee leading a goodly number with orders to find the mysterious Mama Binh if he has to comb through the entire swamp to do it. They set out mid-afternoon, and even after nightfall they don’t dare return without her.

…

It’s well after midnight, and Zura is pacing the decks, unable to sleep, unable to sit, unable to just take it easy like Uncle Iroh wants her to. He’s sitting at a little table near to the rail, just out of range of her path, enjoying a torchlit game of Pai Sho against the guard whose watch it’s supposed to be.

There’s a faint splash, and a light is moving amongst the ripples in the water. Zura looks over the rail, fire filling her half-clenched hand like a lantern.

“Who goes there?!”

There’s two men poling a little flat skiff along in the water below, heads down, backs bent. The red light falls over a plump figure in the middle; a leaf-hat rises to show a wide-smiling, wrinkled face beneath, dark grey eyes twinkling.

“Heard you was lookin’ for me- I’m Mama Binh. What’s this I hear about a girl in trouble?”

Down at the waterline, there can be heard a distant ‘finally!’, and in short order the gangplank’s lowered and a small escort of soldiers, dressed fancy as you please, take an old woman’s bag and guide her up onto the deck of the big metal ship.

…

Zura waits in her cabin to talk with the old woman, the blazing outrage starting to drain from her and just leaving her tired and scared and almost too tired to be that.

“I just- I need to know what to do. Even after this part’s done- there’s just so much I don’t know how to do, and I don’t have anyone to ask,” she says, and Mama Binh nods her head, leaf-hat bobbing.

She looks sort of like Lo and Li might have forty years ago, without beautifying treatments or anti-wrinkle stuff or the blood of young virgins. Her hands are tough and knuckley and gentle, and once she settles in, Zura feels like she’s in the presence of Uncle, but twenty times more serene.

There are questions, plenty of them, and Zura opens her robes to let the older woman examine her belly. She only starts a little when the woman- the waterbender- coats her hands in flowing water and sets them on her, glowing coolly against her skin.

The baby likes that, and moves oddly enough to leave her breathless.

“What was that?” she asks, and the look Mama Binh gives her is amused but not unkind.

“That’s just gettin’ curious. You’ll do, my girl- babe’ll be along soon, any time now.”

“But when?” Zura asks, at the end of her wits and her patience. “Hasn’t it been long enough?” Mama Binh laughs, and pats her hand firmly.

“Your uncle can tell you- I’d be along when the time came. And so I am. You should rest for now- the hard work will come soon enough.”

Uncle knocks then, and she lets him sit with her. He and Mama Binh get to talking in hushed voices, and Zura wants to be annoyed, but the old woman is right, and she’s been up more than half the night and soon she drifts off again, feeling the faint rocking of the ship and the weight of her belly where she cradles it.

…

She dreams again.

There’s a woman in a whirlwind, blades and blazing flame, and sometimes it’s her, and sometimes it’s her mother. She fights phantom opponents in the middle of the swamp, the sounds of battle echoing, sunlight blazing down through the leaves and striking her so that she disappears. There’s a girl, climbing the bare face of a great tree, grinning and she’s so bright it hurts to look at her.

There’s her mother, cloak on her back and swords out, and she plants one in the ground and raises the other in guard-stance, and Zura wonders, what have I forgotten?

The tide changes, rises, becomes a looming wall of water. Swords out, line drawn, Ursa stands it down.

…

Zura wakes in the morning to find that her back aches, her stomach cramps and she has not, in fact, wet herself.

It just feels that way.

Mama Binh laughs at the face she makes- can she ever stop being cheerful? –and helps her up and about.

“Is it all going to be this nasty?”

“Bein’ born’s a messy business, same as dyin’- they’re both just changes of state, and you can’t make anything worth the effort without makin’ a little mess,” Binh says, bundling the wet robe away while Zura pulls on fresh.

“That’s comforting.”

An hour or two later, the cramps have become slow and regular, although Zura can feel how they’re picking up. There’s commotion outside her cabin, from up on deck, and she groans as she remembers the crew she sent out on a wild turkeyduck chase.

Well, nobody’s coming to complain about it now.

…

“What did you see?”

“I- I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh come on, we all shared!”

“My- my mother-in-law, okay! Hey- stop laughing, she was really nice me-!”

Lt. Jee, acting as if he does not have a twig in his hair and mud in his boots, reports to the General.

“We seem to have encountered- hallucinatory gas or insects, in the swamp. Some of the men got separated- turned around. Fortunately, we mostly managed to stumble out at approximately the same place and regrouped-“ The General nods, and Jee reflects that this is probably the one man he’d be able to say I think I saw the spirit of my dear departed grandfather and he almost nagged my ear off to and not get slapped down for drunk-on-duty and like hell is he going to say it anyway.

“Unfortunately, we- did not find the swamp-witch before the, ah, visions started-“

“That situation has resolved itself,” General Iroh smiles, and Jee can detect both strain and relief on his face.

“Then, the princess-?”

“Is being attended to. It will be some time before anything dramatic happens, so-“ and he’s cut off by the muffled echo of an outraged shriek, distorted by metal hallways. Both men cringe, and the General looks over his shoulder with a grimace.

“Errr- let’s get the men sorted out, and then we can go and check on things.”

…

It is later. Pain is happening.

Zura is on her knees, and heat goes through her in waves. Mama Binh holds her hand and cools her brow, and listens to her growls and tears with the same gentle nods. It’s getting close to- something- but all she knows is that she has to hold back for now, and that this is long and painful and boring when it’s not hurting and oh she wishes it would go back to boring…

“Almost there, my girl- soon comes the hard work-“

“I thought this was the hard work!”

At some point she stops sending him away when her uncle knocks at the door. The Dragon of the West steps into the room and kneels at his niece’s side, gives her his hand to grip, and holds on. Binh raises a brow but doesn’t comment, and simply works around him.

Lt. Jee shows up and Zura is beyond embarrassment and possibly out the other side- she commandeers him, and the two old men hold her up so she can push.

Iroh has seen blood, battles, and birth before. Those things, in and of themselves, do not scare him. He has seen and caused and narrowly escaped grievous harm and grotesque disruption to the human body.

He has seen his son crushed from the waist down, held up like a half-mounted scarecrow in the dirt of Ba Sing Se.

The hissing scream his niece bites back between her teeth is what cuts him to the quick, and he dares not show it.

Jee concentrates on how much he’s enjoying not feeling his fingers, and studiously averts his eyes when the swamp-witch woman settles between the princess’s knees, loose sleeves rolled to the elbows.

…

Some of the men are in their bunks, some are on the deck. A lot of them are waiting in the mess, and one of the ensigns reports that the lamps outside the door in question are still blazing and fading in distinctive rhythm, so no, no news yet.

Some of them, fathers, widowers- spirits, everyone was shook up after that night they spent in the swamp- are looking at their tea and wishing desperately that it were time to break out the sake.

It’s lasted the day ‘round, and approaching a bad hour to be born in the Fire Nation. It’s been said that the same thing happened when the princess herself was born, and if there’s any amateur sages looking to predict doom, they’re wisely keeping shut.

One of the men who just happened to be going past that way has his head in his hands. “-it’s not the screams that are bad- means they’re fighting-mad and objecting. It’s when they get to sounding broken-“

His fellows shush him and pass him a flask- it’s a bad night, and if there are any officers about, they look the other way.

…

Zura lets out the last half of a tautly-held breath as a moan, and immediately has to breathe deep again, concentrating in a way that would have delighted her firebending tutors had they been able to instill it in her.

The midwife looks down with meditative focus, steady as a rock- Zura can’t do anything but leave her to it. Something slips, gives- and she has to drag in another breath, preparing to do it all over again.

Up and down the scales, it sings through her, and suddenly Binh’s got something bloody and big in her hands, flips it over and gives it a smack. A splurt, a cough, and she hears indignant screaming that isn’t coming from her.

She thought she couldn’t feel anything below the ribs- and it is just all a wash of hurt in different notes, it’s true, all blending together. Then the water-bender woman lays a little human-shaped bundle on her belly, leaving smears of red against white skin, warm and shaking and with grasping little fists.

Zura can’t believe that’s hers.

She unwraps a hand from someone’s fingers, and reaches out to touch slimy, birth-draggled hair. Then the old woman scoops the baby up and brings it forward, pushing it right into the crook of her arm, and she’s too raw-voiced to ask.

“Suckling closes the womb- best thing for now,” Mama Binh dictates calmly, and proceeds with some arcane cleaning process that Zura isn’t paying attention to right now.

There’s a hungry mouth, and screwed-tight eyes, and she’s not entirely sure the kid’s paying attention right now either. Uncle is exclaiming, and Jee is curled around his hand with a look of nausea, and she brings up her arms to hold it close, keep it from slipping away.

“-a fine daughter, my niece-“ and she looks down and so it is. So she is.

This is her daughter.

For a moment she’s blank- isn’t she supposed to feel something? Either disgust or attachment, rejection or devotion?

The grip on her breast changes, and she knows the first person who tries to touch this child will die with her hands on them.

There’s glowing from where Mama Binh is working, and Uncle is hovering and she’s about ready to fall asleep in his arms. Jee looks to her, and she looks back, and she has to smile a little.

She might never have known this girl.

“Mine,” she whispers, and strokes the sticky hair.

…

An hour before dawn, the General comes out to the mess, face in a beatific smile.

“A toast,” he says, “to your new princess!”

The cheer shakes the ship.

…

…

That’s not the end, of course.

The princess sleeps the sleep of the exhausted, and Mama Binh collects the afterbirth, physical evidence of mother and child’s mingled spirits, and packs it away to bury someplace safe. She’ll lay it with small offerings to thank those who guard the gateways, and right now she whispers thanks and shooing motions to those who gather around the girl, brought near by the closeness that gathers in the swamp.

She’s a tough one, that girl, and good thing, too- just fifteen, already dragging destiny around behind her like a half-tamed ostrich-horse. Mama’s seen people bent under the weight of what the world wants them to do, and thinks that there couldn’t be a better match in this one- she’s got her papa’s wild dragon heart and her mama’s sane dragon eyes, and the ghost of a boy with needles in his sleeves that pretends he’s not interested but flicks little slivers at the sort of crawling nasties that like to gather when a body’s laid low.

She passes a glowing hand over them both, from belly to the top of the head- no one ever said Mama wasn’t thorough- and soothes what little hurts she can find. Nothing to be done about the brand- that’s big, bad powerful stuff and already being reclaimed as flesh of her flesh, emblazoned with too many things to stir up. The just-born girlchild is mostly just new clay, lightly stamped with an imperial dragon but utterly malleable beyond the basic warm shape of her self.

Her mother wakes, opening her eyes without so much as a flutter.

“…s’it over?”

Mama Binh smiles.

“That part, yes.”

“If you say the hard part’s still coming…” the princess glowers, arms tightening as she looks down at the tiny, well-scrubbed infant’s face, and decides that getting up right now isn’t the greatest idea.

“Would you rather I lied to you?” the old woman says, her easy smile still buoyant and kind. “You done a good job- now congratulations, you get another. Isn’t that how it works among soldiers?”

The princess takes a deep, slow breath, adjusts her hold, and leans her head back on the pallet.

“Yeah.”

…

By the time the ship leaves harbor, Zura is up and walking, and her daughter has a name. It comes about half by committee, half by chance- Zura likes parts of the meaning, Iroh likes the sound. Either way, she is beautiful, or will be, unfolding like a flower; and Zura hopes she will also be sharp and clever, like the boy she wants for her father.

Lan Min has had no great ceremonies or had her name trumpeted from the ramparts. Provinces will not send tribute to celebrate her birth. But Zura swears- she swears- that she will see her home again, and stand un-shadowed before her people.