Sun Child: Zura Alone
Dec. 26th, 2009 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdletThe Prompt: Zuko Alone, as played by Zura and Lan Min.
The Fic:
The road is a bare track and the plains go on forever, rolling up and down into hilly places and cracked here and there with rocky valleys. A lone ostrich-horse walks at an exhausted pace between far-flung earthen coins, remnants of long-ago battles.
In another time, another place, Zura might have been able to conjure up reports about the historical significance, the tactical advantages of the terrain, the length of road and logistics of feeding soldiers on this stretch of land.
Now all she knows is that she is thirsty, and her daughter is hungry, and her milk has almost vanished along with their supplies.
Lan Min snuffles exhaustedly, her tears and cries worn out- she has known storms and strife but never hunger nor thirst before. Her baby-cheeks are sunburnt, and Zura can only try to shade her more with the sling and urge the ostrich-horse on.
Once, she smells meat and turns to glance over the stony ridge, stomach achingly empty. Her swords are in one hand, the other moving to unstrap her daughter-
-and it’s a young couple, a husband and a wife on the verge of being a new mother, and she knows if she lets herself beg half she’ll spring for it and take it all.
If they’re on this road, that means there must be a settlement around here somewhere.
It’s all she’s got to go on, and she grits her teeth and pushes forward.
…
The stranger rides into town with swords on her back and a toddler on her front. There’s a story in those eyes, in the battered boys’ clothes and cut hair. The scar’s just icing on the cake.
The soldiers don’t take kindly to strangers, especially not ones who don’t cower.
If this girl ever cowered, she’s killed that self long ago.
…
“Can I get some water, a bag of feed and something hot to eat?”
“Not enough here for a hot meal…” the merchant says, sympathetic- but not about to cut into his own too-thin margins; he has to eat too. He looks at the tired, fussy child, and grimaces. “I can give you two bags of feed- and there’s a couple up the way with a few milk-sows, they might have somethin’ to spare for the kid…”
He goes back inside, and the girl stands there, the weight of the kid in the sling pulling her forward and maybe stubborn pride holding her up.
…
Zura glances at the chuckling kids, urchins the likes of which she would have ignored or bought off to go away in the past.
When the egg flies past, the thing that screams to mind is I could have eaten that, you idiots! When the lounging soldiers approach, it’s I don’t need this crap.
“You throwin’ eggs at us, girl?”
“No.”
“You see who did?”
“No.”
Her hand is on her swords, her arm around the heavy sling where her daughter clings to her, whimpering.
She doesn’t bother to respond to the joker, but “Egg had to come from somewhere,” well, that’s a straight line if ever she heard one.
“Maybe a chicken flew over.” And maybe her sense of humor has gone the way of the dragons, hunted down and killed in its every appearance until there’s none left. She doesn’t care- the merchant’s back from his storehouse, and if she can feed the damn bird she can move along and find the well, and maybe the stuff will stew up soft enough so that she can eat it as a mash…
“The army thanks you for your contribution. You’d better leave town, stranger- ‘less you wanna contribute a little more,” and there’s no mistaking the leer, even for an ugly girl with few charms and much standoffishness.
Her hands stay on her hilts, and the set of her shoulders is so tight it trembles as they walk away with her coarse-grain feed.
The merchant does not, she notes, offer to replace the feed, or refund her money. She walks away in the middle of his explanation about how the soldiers are just a bunch of thugs, she can see that for herself just fine thank you.
One of the urchins pops his head out from behind the ostrich-horse.
“Thanks for not ratting me out!” She mounts up, tries to pull away, and the boy grabs her reigns.
“I’ll take you to my house and feed your ostrich-horse for you-“ she hesitates, long enough for him to start leading them along. “C’mon, I owe you!”
Lan Min whimpers again, her newly-learned words abandoning her in her misery, and Zura finally just goes along.
…
The kid is chatty and curious and Zura thinks he’s treating her like a substitute big brother, and that’s fair enough since she looks sort of like one at the moment. He’s curious about Lan Min, and Zura holds him off with a “She’s cranky right now.”
“Oh,” the boy says, briefly quiet. “Maybe she’ll feel better after dinner!”
The boy’s name is Lee, and his family is small and strained but welcoming. The mother offers them food right away, and Zura wants to hold off but she’s got nothing and Lan Min wakes up and she makes a deal- she’ll work with Gonzu the husband on the roof for a while, her daughter can have some of the milk that’s already been gathered for today. There’s an implication that she shouldn’t have to work for her supper- or to stand up to the soldiers. But she learned a long time ago that just because you shouldn’t have to, doesn’t mean you don’t need to.
Still, they let her earn her keep- and Lan Min eats first of all of them, so Zura is satisfied.
…
She beds down in the barn, and the decent meal lays heavy and satisfying in her so that she’s able to be almost amused when the boy sneaks in and makes off with her swords.
Lan Min sleeps quietly, face slack and sweet with baby dreams. The little fringe of bangs she’d had is growing ragged, and Zura mostly slicks it in with the rest of her hair when she can. There are no spidersnakes or ratweasels in the barn, so far as she can tell, but she bundles her daughter along anyway, careful and quiet in the pleasant night air.
Lee is hacking merrily away at the sunflowers with the dao, and offers them back with a sigh when she startles him into tumbling over. He’s iffy about learning sword techniques from a girl- but Zura asks him how many boys around here know how to use them and are willing to teach?
They play quietly, and Lan Min sleeps through it all, though when she makes a burbling snore Zura missteps and Lee manages to score with his pretend leaf-blades.
They run through their energy and amble off to bed, and Zura thinks that if this is what being a big sister to a little brother had been like, she might have tried harder. Azulon never needed her protection- he certainly never needed her advice or lessons.
Sometimes- when she’s very, very far away from what he’s done or doing- that makes her sad.
But the night is clear and the hay is softer than most places she’s slept lately, and simple exhaustion makes for the best, quietest dreams of all.
…
The gang of soldiers rides up as she’s about to leave, and of course the good times couldn’t last. Sen-su, Lee’s big brother, has been captured- and the leader Gao, with his big hammers and his equally fine sense of humor grinds it in with all the grace of a hippocow. Zura’s been worked over by experts- she thinks if she dared bother, she could fault their technique such as to leave them in shreds.
The jabs don’t have to be refined to hit their mark, though, and the family that sheltered her in the night is suddenly on the verge of tearing to shreds and blowing apart with the dusty wind. She can’t stay. She can’t be a big sister to Lee, not with the secrets she carries and the storm she seems to pull along behind her. Not with her goals.
Still, for the moment- she can’t think of a better piece of advice to give him than her knife, and the words inscribed below the hilt.
Never give up without a fight.
Never.
Even if that means withdrawing and taking the fight with you to unleash at another time, another place- and that’s what she needs to do now.
…
Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.
That’s as true now as it was then, when the words fell from her mother’s lips and not her own.
Lan Min might not understand- all she knows is that she’s finally eaten something, and Uncle is not here to bounce her or tell her stories, and she wants him. But Zura couldn’t look after two people- not with things like the white jade plant and Uncle being sure he could risk experimenting with it; after all, he had his niece to back him up didn’t he? She couldn’t listen to her daughter fuss in hunger and come home empty-handed, no matter how low it sunk her.
The pretty things, she could admit, had been a mistake. Dead weight, too distinctive, too- too much. They weren’t what she was entitled to, even- just flashy, neuveau-riche junk that had had some of the elements of wealth, of power, but none of the substance.
She had needed to focus.
Right now, though, she lets her mind drift as her daughter watched the clouds with her, laying amid tall grass while the ostrich-horse crops weeds.
Lee’s mother comes riding up in her rattletrap cart, and it looks like no good deed goes unpunished- ever.
“When the soldiers ordered us to give them food, Lee pulled a knife on them- I don’t even know where he got a knife-“
Zura bows her head, and then pushes Lan Min into the weeping woman’s arms. It’s her mess- she ought to clean it up.
“I’ll get your son back.”
…
They’ve got Lee tied to the watchtower when she rides into town. Good kid, to try to run away- the actual army wouldn’t take a kid that small, so it’s down to the mercenaries to mold him into one of their fellow-thugs, and that won’t be a nice process at all.
She dismounts, and pulls off her hat, and stares down the leader right in the street.
“Let him go.”
Gao laughs, big and uproarious.
“Who do you think you are, girl, telling us what to do?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am,” I still outrank you, dog, “but I know who you are. You’re not soldiers- you’re bullies.” I can count floggable offenses and not have fingers left- if you were my official headache, I’d take you out before the people we’re trying to make part of our nation and make an example of you.
Gao, being the gentleman that he is, passes off the job of shutting her up to his playfellows. They come at her one at a time. Idiots. Thump, smack, kick, and they flee without ever seeing the sharp side of her blades.
Then Gao takes out his hammers, and if she weren’t so pissed she might be glad of finally meeting a challenge.
As it is, she has to push hard to stand up to the assault- the rocks are slow but heavy, so it’s not a matter of aim so much as standing her ground to block them. She slashes stone from the air, catches one to the gut and staggers back. Some of the villagers- okay, one- is shouting encouragement from the sidelines, and she pushes forward-
The ridge of rock sprouting from the ground slams into her, knocks her breathless- but it’s the crack of her skull against a rock on the ground that sends her into the dark.
never forget
everything I’ve done
where is she
what have you done
givememydaughterI’llsaveyouneverforgetwhoyouarenomatterhowthingsseemtochangeneverforget
get up
She whirls upright in the middle of a firestorm.
The hammers that were inches away from crushing her skull are knocked away with their wielder, back into the street. She leaps forward, slashing fire at the bigger man and driving him back, finally blasting him into the side of an earthen wall.
He groans as she steps closer, swords steaming.
“Who- who are you?”
“My name is Zura,” and it’s delicious to say it again. “Daughter of Ursa and Firelord Ozai.” She sheathes her blades and sets one hand on her hip, glowering down at him from a height and daring him to spit at her. “Princess of the Fire Nation, heir to the throne, and mother of the next!”
It’s wrong it’s bad it’s a secret but damnit she is and she will not be denied. Let them know who they messed with.
It feels too good to be strong again.
The silence spreads like water in dust. Then the old man that had cheered her on thumps his cane and shouts.
“Liar! I heard a’ you- you’re not a princess, you’re an outcast! Her own father burned and disowned her for whorin’!”
So that’s how it’s bandied about. She steps expressionlessly toward Gao, who doesn’t leer- he cringes. Good.
The knife that Uncle gave her is in easy reach in his belt, and she plucks it out on the way to undo Lee’s bonds. His mother is already there, and puts herself between the princess and her son.
“Not a step closer.” Zura looks at her, at her empty arms, and all the flames that have been smoldering in the dirt go flat. She kneels, and holds out the knife to Lee, half-expecting it when he says “I hate you!” and turns away, but not paying much attention.
“Where is my daughter.” The fear in the woman’s eyes would hurt if Zura didn’t know that she was the last one to hold Lan Min. For or of, she doesn’t care.
The woman glances back to where her wagon stands in the middle of the road, and Zura stands up very slowly.
“I just stood off four big men to rescue your child,” she says, pitched just loud enough to carry. “What do you think I’ll do for mine?”
Perhaps they remember just how high the flames were when she whipped them through the air. No rocks fly as Lee’s mother sets Lan Min gingerly on the ground and lets her toddle her way to Zura. She picks her up and sets her on her hip, her little girl with the gold embroidery picked off her sleeves and face that shouldn’t be losing its chubby cheeks so soon.
The packed meal that she’d been offered was abandoned hours ago- but she’s got water, and her beast is fed. Maybe between that and the night’s rest, she can make it to the next settlement before her milk gives out completely. She might have been able to play the mother-on-the-run card, if she hadn’t flaunted her full title and that which Lan Min was entitled to.
The ostrich-horse squalls as she hauls on the reigns and guides it out of town, between rows of angry villagers beginning to heft rocks. If she’s out of town in the next few minutes, she thinks she can avoid a lynch mob, but running right now is inciting to chase.
So she keeps the pace steady, and whispers apologies to her baby as they ride into the sunset.
I wanted so much for you. I still do. And in fighting for one I lost the other, and I think you’d have liked food more than your full royal titles.
I’ll do better.
I’m still here to.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-27 11:36 am (UTC)Ack. and Aww. And oh god.
D=
no subject
Date: 2009-12-27 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-27 08:39 pm (UTC)