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The Residency	By : gaijinsakka Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > General Views: 9869 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. I make no money from the writing/publication of this.

Chapter List
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Chapter 1: The Bargain
Song was refilling the porch oil lamps in the late afternoon haze when a rider on an ostrich-horse rode up, a second on a halter behind. Curious, she watched as he unstrapped his douli hat. When that scar came into view, however, her eyes first widened in recognition, then narrowed in fury.
“YOU! You’ve got some nerve coming back here after what you did. Mother! Come quick!” She grabbed a broom and held it as threateningly as she could. “Get out of here, now!”
Zuko took this with as much patience he could manage at the end of a long day’s trip, halfway through a world trek incognito. “I am TRYING to apologize to you! To both of you,” he added, as the older woman emerged from the sliding door.
“Well, we’re not interested in any ‘apology’! So just leave us alone, ‘Lee’, or whatever your name is!” Song shot back.
“Look, I’m sorry. Here.” He grabbed the reins of the ostrich horse and held it towards her. “Take him. His name is Susanoo, and he’s yours.”
Song glanced at him sideways, then eyed the mount critically. “Magnificent. The finest ostrich horse I’ve ever seen.” She turned back and headed inside. “I don’t want him.”
“Why not?” Zuko growled.
“Because he’s a lady’s riding ostrich. You probably just stole him from someone else – ”
“I did not!”
“ – and even if you didn’t, what would I do with him? Too expensive to keep, and I can’t sell him to anyone around here since he’d be no good on a farm.” The girl tried sliding the door shut in his face, but her mother took her arm.
“Song, the young man is obviously sincere in his attempt to make things right. Let’s at least hear him out.”
“Fine. Come inside, but keep your hands where I can see them at all times!”
Seated at the table, Zuko gratefully accepted Mistress Ch’oe’s offer of tea. Jasmine. Even Uncle would be proud of this brew.
“You can start by telling us your name,” Song said, still watching him intently. “Your real name, this time.”
The boy hesitated. “It’s Zuko. Firelord Zuko.”
Song scoffed. “That’s ridiculous!”
Her mother nodded. “Yes, very ridiculous. Of course, that makes it no less true.” Song turned to her in amazement. “All the news lately has been about the end of the war. About the new Firelord; young, handsome despite the scar he received at the hands of his father, the golden eyes of the royal family, a friend to the Avatar. About his uncle who liberated Ba Sing Se. I take it that was ‘Mushi’?” Zuko nodded. “You see? It all fits.”
When the girl turned back to him, Zuko thought he’d rather she look angry, instead of the total revulsion she now viewed him with. “Your soldiers took my father, burned our village, burned me, and then you steal from us?”
“I am trying to make amends for the destruction my family has caused. And for what I’ve done.”
“There is nothing you can do.”
“Anything you ask. I promise. If it is in my power to grant. You want a different ostrich horse? You want a whole herd? Say it.”
Song looked at the table in thought for a moment. “Now why would I want that? I should thank you, I suppose, for showing me how the world works.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I guess your Majesty wouldn’t. When you stole our ostrich horse from us, we lost more than just a beast of burden. We lost an investment. We lost standing in the village. We nearly lost the house. And something else happened. I noticed that boys stopped coming around, or no longer tried to chat when I walked through the village. If I were to take you up on your offer, I’m sure they’d change their tune; but then what would I want with them?” She mused for a few more moments. “You said anything? Fine. I want you to take me to the Fire Nation capital.”
Zuko looked at her in confusion. “You want to go with me to Kaikyo? It’s a long and difficult journey, and I doubt my fiancée would like me making it alone with another woman.”
“Well, there’s a lot that she isn’t going to like. Because there’s more. I want you to make me your concubine, and give me a child.”
The young Firelord choked on his tea; he was only a little more shocked than her mother. “Song, no! Nice girls don’t – “
“Nice girls don’t do much of anything, Mother. Nice girls starve. I’m not so nice; but I made sure we didn’t starve.” Seeing her mother’s stricken face, she softened. “I’m still a virgin, Mom. But I did what I had to do.”
Zuko was still reeling from this ultimatum. “Why? You’ve made it plain that you hate me.”
Song shrugged. “Like I said, you showed me how the world works. I will live in a palace and bear the child of one of the most powerful men in the world. Better than staying here in a backwards village and tending to smelly sunburned farmers until one takes pity on me and I get to raise smelly sunburned kids.”
“I…I can’t do this!”
“You said anything in your power. Either accept my terms, or break your promise.”
Zuko slumped, defeated. “I gave my word. And I have to make up for violating your hospitality. But you have no idea what kind of trouble you’re getting into.”
“Life in the Palace will be much more secure than life out here.”
Zuko grunted. “Sure, aside from the assassination plots, invasions, coup attempts, kidnappings, extortions…You probably never heard the stories about my grandfather Azulon, how he nearly lost his throne in a decade-long feud between his wife and his favorite concubine; the Blood Silk Affair is still used to frighten children.”
Song was undeterred, and spent much of the evening packing. Her mother pleaded with the Firelord, but Zuko felt trapped. “I’ll try to convince her to give up the idea, but I won’t go back on my promise. Maybe Mai can talk some sense into her…if she doesn’t just kill us both. Kidding!” he said, trying to allay her alarm. Except I don’t think I am…
Zuko slept that night in the living room, the women on the other side of the screen in often heated conversation. In the morning, Mistress Ch’oe tried to press a small purse into Zuko’s hands, but the young man wouldn’t take it. “I can’t possibly accept this, not now, not ever.”
“Please,” she begged through her tears. “It is Song’s dowry. At least this way I can tell myself that she’s honorably married and not…”
And not a foreign king’s whore, Zuko thought with a grimace. Fortunately, his etiquette classes had given him a way out. “In that case, Honored Mother-in-Law, I would be shamed to not give you a gift in return.” Going to his saddlebag, he deposited the purse and retrieved a glittering gold brooch with a large ruby surrounded by fire opals, and some folded pieces of paper. “Jewels are easier to carry than gold,” he explained with a shrug. He handed the items to the awestruck lady, who had likely never seen as much wealth in all her life. “Give these notes to any moneychanger, or a rich merchant, and they’ll exchange it for cash. Fire Nation weight; don’t let them cheat you by pawing off Earth Kingdom coins instead.”
She goggled at the amount of one. “10,000? That is far too much…”
“Use it to keep the hospital running. We have to a world to rebuild, and we’ll need healers.”
“Okay, I’m ready,” Song said as she stepped out onto the porch. Zuko’s eyes widened despite himself. Before, she had been cute, in a general sort of way. Now she was…really cute. Her face looked more defined somehow, her hair looked to be done up with more care, and her clothes were a lot nicer, if in the same general style: a pale green blouse, silk, as hard as it was to believe given her family’s straits, and a high-waisted voluminous cotton charcoal skirt. Folded in her arms she had a light linen traveling cloak, undyed, but it looked soft and cool.
“What are you wearing?”
“My festival hanbok. It’s the nicest thing I have,” she said defensively.
“It’s…fine. Just, not sure why you’d want to wear it for traveling, is all,” he muttered.
“I plan on living in style from now on.”
Zuko’s face went flat. “This is so not going to work.”
The women made their goodbyes tearfully, the mother still trying to dissuade her daughter, and Song still insistent on going. At last giving in, Mistress Ch’oe turned to Zuko. “Promise me you’ll take care of her!”
“I swear, on my honor and that of the Fire Nation.” He decided he didn’t hear Song’s scoffing.
The first problem came immediately after. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, as the Firelord put his foot into Susanoo’s stirrup. “You said he was mine.”
“And you said you didn’t want him!”
“I changed my mind.”
“Well I can’t ride the packhorse, not with everything you brought, and I’m not walking all the way to Kaikyo!”
“Then you’ll just have to buy another one,” Song said, shouldering past him to mount the spirited ostrich horse. She then nearly fell off, her skirts, scarred leg, and lack of practice all conspiring against her.
Zuko grumbled all the way into the heart of the village, Silla, where only three mounts were to be had for any sum. He grossly overpaid for the least decrepit one, a scruffy hammer-nosed gelding that had seen better days but still looked like he had good staying power. “He isn’t worth half that, you know,” Song ‘helpfully’ pointed out as Zuko tightened the girth.
“I’m well aware of that!” he growled. “What are you looking so smug about?”
“I have my reasons,” she replied, cutting her eyes at a couple of village louts who were staring slack-jawed at her, perched as she was with all the pride she could manage despite lacking the right saddle for her position.
“Let me guess: some of the boys who stopped coming around?” She nodded tightly.
He chewed his lip for a second, then reached into his saddlebag again. “Here. Wear this,” he said, taking out a second brooch, this one of red-enameled gold worked in the figure of a dragon. She seemed even more stunned than her mother had been, the corners of her mouth twitching up in an almost-smile as she pinned it to her cloak.
Zuko decided to restock on everything, since he had not anticipated his return trek accompanied. The selection wasn’t bad for a remote village: rope, oil, soap, tea, flour, rice, tofu, some vegetables, a couple of extra water skins, even dried moose-cow jerky. “Sixty gold,” the shopkeeper said with a predatory grin.
“Sixty?! That’s outrageous, everything in your shop isn’t worth that! 13, and not a penny more.”
The fat merchant leaned back against the wall of his stall. “It seems to me that anyone traveling in such finery and jewelry, on such a nice ostrich horse, can afford it. Sixty.”
Zuko scowled, seeing that, once again, no good deed could go unpunished. At least not for him. “And it seems to me that jewels are hard to eat, and this village desperately needs the cash.” He dumped his purse out onto the counter, taking three of the smaller silver coins back. “16 gold and 18 silver, Fire Nation weight. That’s worth about 35 Earth Kingdom, and it’s all we’ve got. Take it or leave it.”
The merchant hesitated, but then scooped them up. “Deal. And that will be three silvers for the exchange fee.” He held out his hand, that shark-turtle grin even wider.
The Firelord reached up to finger the hilt of his dao swords. “The ‘exchange fee’ is me not drubbing you senseless and then letting the village elders take a closer look at your weights.” The avarice vanished as a light of fear bloomed in the shopkeeper’s eyes, especially in reference to his scales. He gulped and nodded, and Zuko stormed away with Song in tow.
“That was…impressive,” she said.
“I can’t stand cheats, and I can’t stand merchants, not that I had to say it twice.”
“But what are we going to do now? We’re almost out of money.”
“Heh. That’s what he thinks. He assumed that I only have the one purse. Now stay close. I don’t trust him not to try something. By the way, can you fight?” he asked, looking at one last stall. It sold mainly farming implements, but the odd weapon stood out here and there.
“Me? I’m a healer. I fix people, I don’t hurt them. That’s what you do.”
“Sometimes, I have to. Some people need to be reminded, like that merchant back there. And if you expect to survive the road, much less the court, you’d better learn how to protect yourself. We can start you on the staff, you’re less likely to hurt yourself with it.” He ignored her sputtering protests, and with the leftover silver bought a good, straight yew staff.
They rode out of the village quietly, Song already looking with longing at the houses and fields. “It’s still not too late – ”
“Don’t you start that. My mind is made up. But do you really think that we’ll have trouble on the road?”
“Knowing my life, it’s a guarantee. With you along, I expect even more. Bandits, deserters, your Admiral Yi’s Coast Guards, wild animals, you name it.”
“At least we won’t have to worry about the Coast Guards just yet. The coast is southeast, and I thought we were headed west!”
He looked back at her sardonically. “You don’t honestly think I rode the whole way across the Earth Kingdom, did you? We’ll take a ship from the merchants’ pier at Lyushun. If we’re lucky, there’ll be a Fire Nation navy vessel there. If not, we either wait for one or take our chances with a merchant ship. The only ones that aren’t pirates are targets for pirates.”
“Hmph. As if there’s a difference between Fire Nation and pirates, anyway.”
“Truce or not, the court is full of people who’d feel justified cutting your throat for saying that, Earth Kingdom peasant. If you want to survive Kaikyo, you’d better learn to watch your tongue.” Instead, Song just stuck it out at him.
At the end of a day’s travel, Song was very much regretting her insistence on riding the frisky Susanoo. She half-fell out of the saddle and hobbled a few steps, glaring at Zuko. “This is your fault!”
“How is it possibly my fault? You wanted to ride him.”
“You took our old horse, so I’m all out of practice.”
“Don’t blame me just because you’re saddle sore.” She limped along, muttering angrily and rubbing her aching anatomy while he set up camp. “Is…is it really that bad?” Song nodded. Zuko took a deep breath. “Show me.”
“WHAT?!”
“Look, you wanted to be a concubine, this would happen sooner or later. For right now, I just want to help you feel better. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.”
The two teens stared at each other for a long moment, mirrored blushes on their faces in the fading daylight. Finally Song turned, her jerky movements betraying her nervousness. Her skirt lifted slowly in starts and fits. “I’ve never…shown…a boy before,” she murmured, holding the hem up with one hand as the other pulled apart the sides of her linen drawers.
Zuko only stared as a pair of creamy, well-formed thighs was exposed, followed by two perfectly rounded globes. Their condition was marred, however, by the evidence that she wasn’t faking. Her whole backside was a mottled pink, with a few small abrasions where a day's jostling had rubbed especially hard. “We should go back,” he said heavily.
“No! I won’t!”
“You can’t go on like this!”
Song pouted for a moment. “Bring me my small bag. The one with the silver clasp.” As Zuko went to fetch it, she let the skirt fall back down and stretched. When he returned, she searched through a bewildering selection of bottles, packets, and pills. At last she pulled out a bottle with a thick white substance inside. She unstoppered it and started to pour some out into her hands, then apparently realized something important. Blushing even more furiously than before, she said, “you’ll have to apply it.”
Zuko gulped. “O-kay,” he said, voice cracking.
She measured the amount into his palm, then hiked up her skirt again. The girl was already trembling. “Now rub it in.”
His hands shaking so much it was clear that he was about as nervous as she, Zuko did as instructed. Song hissed at the first contact of the cooling substance, then sighed as it began to work. Nor was it just the cream; Zuko’s hands were so gentle, yet strong. They weren’t as soft as she’d imagined, either, but calloused. Swordsman’s hands. Firebender’s hands. Soon the heat had gone out, but was being replaced by heat of a different kind. Song began to melt as he kneaded her buttocks with just the right pressure. “Th-that’s enough!” she said, and Zuko jerked away.
“Good! I’ll, ah, make sure the camp is all finished! And tomorrow we can see about getting you a proper sidesaddle.”
“With extra padding,” she added with a chuckle.
“Hah, yeah, otherwise I’ll have to do that again, and we don’t want that!” Suddenly his jaw clacked shut and they couldn’t look at each other.
What Zuko had tried to avoid thinking about this whole time proved to be one last problem. And this is just the first day! “I’ve, ah, just got the one tent. And bedroll…”
Song clenched her fists, determined to be brave. “I’m ready, my lord. Or do I call you ‘husband’?” She untied her skirt and dropped it to the ground.
“What? Just Zuko. And we’re going to sleep. Only sleep,” he said, figuring out what she meant.
“But…what about…You’re not going back on your word, are you?”
“Of course not! But we’ve still got so long to go. And you don’t want your first time to be in a tent out in the woods, do you?” Zuko pleaded, vying for time.
“I guess not. But should I not please you at all? Back in the village, I let some of the boys and men…use my mouth. They paid me so we wouldn’t starve.”
Zuko’s heart sank, cooling what ardor he might have had. “Because of me. Because of the Fire Nation.” He surprised her by pulling her close. Her head pressed against his chest. “You don’t have to do anything. Let’s just get some sleep, tonight.” The teens found it surprisingly easy, not to mention comforting, to sleep chastely in each other’s arms that night. Their last thoughts were of happier times, and family: Song of the time before her father was taken away, Zuko, of another’s arms holding him tightly. Mai…
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The Residency