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Blue Mask	By : PatPat Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality > Het- Male/Female Views: 11083 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Blue Mask, Two Swords, and Sozin’s Comet
Fight for Life
By Pat Squared

________________________________________

The child looked upon her father with hatred. He had used her to secure his power. He had used her need for her father’s love to motivate her to kill his enemies. He had twisted her into something that she hated.

All she wanted was someone to love her like her mother loved Zuko. It seemed that all her memories of her mother was tainted by Zuko’s presence. Zuko was born lucky to have her mother’s love.
Why did mother love Zuko? If some drunken rock-ape raped me like father did mother and got me knocked up, I would hate that child! I would kill it before it was even born. and when it came out...Zuko was not even healhty. Yet mother perfered that bastard brother of mine than me!

Azula tried in vain to prove to her father that she was worthy of his love. Even if she was to be given away in marriage to the worst wife beater in the history of the world, the lifetime of misery and pain would have been worth it if she had earned her father’s love for just one moment.

The man who had sired her was being attended to by a healer and two muscular types who use to teach hand-to-hand combat at the Imperial War Academy. The left side of his body was paralyzed from the lightning she rained down upon her father in their private little Agni Kai two days ago. She had hurt him so badly that he would never walk or talk again.

Azula remembered the battle. Her father acted like he was the most powerful fire bender in the world, but Ozai was weak and out of practice. He threw the balls of flames like all fire benders are expected to, but he was no match for her mastery of the forbidden element of lightning. She had defeated him. He had defeated himself by underestimating her desire for revenge and power.

The old man had actually surrendered to her. He begged her forgiven and promise to swear any oath of loyalty. He was no Prince Zuko or Jian Li. Both men would have fought to the end even wqhen they were dying, both fought if they had any breath. Ozai kept his power via a lie and fear. After sixteen years, Ozai's daughter had called his bluff.

Killing the old man would have been counterproductive. The traditionalist were loath to accept a female in power. However, letting the council and public know that her father had suffered a severe brain fit earned her influence and she quickly moved to secure the regency. Jian Li had taught her well.

She remembered the time Jian Li had delivered Zuko’s head to her.

"Banishing Zuko was the biggest mistake your father made. It caused the other nobles to question your father’s mental stability."

"What? How dare you criticize the Fire Lord?"

"Let us be objective, your highness. If Zuko was such a mistake, your father should have merely sent him to lead the 41st division on the suicide mission to Bad Sing Se. You know that surrender was not a word in his vocabulary. There he would have become a martyr – a symbol to the masses of the Fire Nation that even the royal family too would sacrifice something of value for the good of the Nation. Zuko’s memory could have been used as a rallying cry and you as his suffering sister would reluctantly assume the mantle of your brother’s duties. Your actions would not be perceived as a grab for power, but a noble lady stepping up to fulfill her familial obligations and live up to her martyr brother's memory.”

She had let her father become a martyr to the nation – the Fire Lord that sacrificed his health for the good of the nation.

In public, she acted like she reluctantly took the position as her father’s regent and took great pains to appear to take the advice of the council with great seriousness. She played the roll of suffering daughter who reluctantly assumed power for the good of the Fire Nation while anxiously waiting for her father to recover and return to reclaim his power. She never sat on her father’s seat, but instead sat upon the cushions reserved for the heir. The little game allowed her to rule without having to directly battle the Council of Lords. If she could hold the nation together long enough, her de facto position as Fire Lady would be undisputed when she would end her father's life. Her ascension to the dais her ancestors held unto for forty seven generations since Sozin the First deposed the weak and corrupt Fire King Tang Xi Wu would be uncontestable.

Her father would soon quietly, pass away in his sleep at her convinence. She will publicly mourn him as she lit his pyre and utter the proper words of thanks, but she will forget about him even before his ashes are cooled.

“Nurse Hou, my father and our Fire Lord needs his rest if he is to recover and once again guide our nation on the path to victory. Give him something to relax him.”

“Yes, Lady Azula.”

The middle aged nurse bowed. One of the burly men picked up her father as a mother would pick up a baby and carried him off to his quarters.

Azula was now the regent for her father Lord Ozai.

Upon seizing power, she was appalled to find that her nation was in shambles.

Her father focused on the war and ignored the economy. He had run the once most powerful economy in the world into the ground. Despite her distain for her mother’s blood, she had called upon her distant cousins from her mother’s family. Clan Kozun and Clan Ming control the most influential merchant house in the Fire Nation. Via investments and strategic marriages, they exerted influence over dozen different merchant clans both in the Fire Nation and in parts of the Earth Kingdom via arrangement with the descendants of the old Earth Kingdom factors who took over with teh Earth Kingdom nationalized the Fire Nation trading enclaves at the start of the war. While she could pass laws, the clan masters of Clan Kozun and Clan Ming could destroy the economy as surely as an executioner’s ax can sever a man’s head.

Azula had let the Clan Regent of House Kozun have free reign over the troubled economy as interim finance minister. The Clan Master of House Ming headed the administration of the occupied territories as they were pacified by the Fire Nation military. She had replaced the old, doddering generals with bright, young staff officers who had recently fought in the Earth Kingdom. She was in the honeymoon period of her reign and knew that she had to cement the loyalty of her people and make everyone accept that the gods gave her the throne because she was talented enough to keep the nation together in times of crisis. She would be remembered as Azula the Great.

Everything was going well save for two things. One, Mai and Ty Lee both wanted her dead. Second, the one man she wanted as consort was not in her grasp. Azula remembered the sickening feeling as her dagger entered his chest. Jian Li’s skills in battle has terrified her to the point that she instinctively drew the dagger that she always keep up her sleeve.

She had replayed every moment of that battle in the Earth Kingdom’s governor’s office. She knew that she was the better fire bender. She knew that he did not move with the effortless grace and precision she did. Hand-to-hand would have been a battle between his strength and her dexterity. However, his skills with the dual sabers and determination to fight had her on the losing side of the battle. He had pushed her to panic and in her panic she had stabbed the one person she loved in the chest. He had taught her in that moment that will was more important than talent or skill. Jian Li was perhaps the only person more stubborn than her deceased older brother.

She had gained a province for her nation, but had lost her prize.

The Avatar had seized him. She knew that the Avatar was looking for a fire master. There were only three fire masters in the world who were not in the service of the Fire Nation. Generals Iroh and Jeong Jeong. And Jian Li.

Jian Li was perfect, far too perfect for her to let him fall into the hands of the Avatar. Iroh was a hedonist who spent hours drinking tea and chasing skirts. Jeong Jeong retreated into the path of mysticism. Jian Li was the brutal trainer to shape a soft child-like Avatar into a deadly weapon.

Jian Li belongs to me. Not some childish Air Nomad who does not have the grace to up and die with the rest of his tribe a century ago.

Azula could not let the Avatar seize the loyalty of her red string soul mate. Her only leverage over the man was to find her two childhood companions. Jian Li might not care about them, but he would care about the secret they could reveal about him and perhaps the children they carry for him. By this time next year, Azula vowed to have the child of Li and have another growing in her belly. She will have his love. She will have someone that loved her, something that she never had.

________________________________________

“Is he still alive?”

Katara ignored the question.

Why can’t Sokka figure out that if he was already dead, I would have him gather firewood?

She remembered the prince’s request to be burned if he died. She remember the kiss in the forest, the return of her necklace, and the time she kissed him back. She remembered the scene in the clearing.

She wanted to hate him. She wanted to be able to cut the growing pain out of her heart, but she could not.

“Aang, he is on the cusp of life and death. I have done all I can. It is the gods’ will now.”

Katara placed her ears next to his chest. The breathing was ragged. The lung flux was only becoming more severe. The dagger thrust only made things worst. Every night, when the others were asleep, she stood watch over the Fire Nation prince. She bent out the excess fluid in his lungs.

Thankfully, only Aang and Katara knew about Jian Li’s real past. To Sokka, the boy was just the Blue Spirit.

Aang looked down upon the fallen fire bender.

“I have to go to the spirit world. His soul is trapped in between this world and the next. I cannot promise you much – only that either he will return with me or move onto the next life.”

Aang kissed Toph and went off to mediate.

Sokka went hunting while Katara and Toph started to prepare some broth.

________________________________________

There was a mandrill sitting in the lotus position meditating.

“Go…away. The one you are looking for is not worth your time”

Aang had visited this place before. The mandrill was still contemplating some mystery.

“Then tell me where to find Avatar Roku.”

The mandrill sighed and pointed to a firefly.

“Just think of what you seek and the firefly will leave you down the twisted to enlightenment.”

Aang bowed and followed the firefly.

“Good riddance,” muttered the meditating primate.

________________________________________

It has been days since he wandered. He was a little boy tripping over his two swords. His hands were small, too small to hold the blades. He was lost.

“Mother! Mother!”

But his mom was nowhere in this strange land. The child knelt and cups his hands. He brought the water to his mouth, instinctively tasting the coolness before drinking it down. He was hungry, tired, and lost. The child climbed into the trees and cried himself asleep.

________________________________________

The Avatar followed the firefly into the forest. It stopped at the water’s edge. The steady light dimmed and then disappeared.

“You are seeking what the god’s seek to keep imprisoned.”

There was no speaker but the words resonated in Aang’s mind.

“Who or what are you talking about?”

“The chaos child. The pebble tossed into the cosmic pond.”

“I seek...”

“I know who, what, and why you seek. But this one shall remain here.”

“Why?”

“Here he neither dies or lives. Here he will not be reborn. Here he will not challenge fate. Find another master to teach you how to light a candle.”

“But there is no time.”

“There is always time. In the grand scheme, it matters not if you win or lose at the end of this summer. Eventually the Fire Empire will implode and it’s enemies will take advantage to rise up and destroy it as it destroyed your race. Then the Earth Nation shall rise and eventually implode in it’s due time. Then the Water Tribe will rise and fall. At various times empires will rise and fall. It is the nature of empires. Go and fight your silly wars child. I have seen your kind before and I will see your incarnations many more times in the future.”

Aang did not care if the gods did not care about the comet. Zuko was his only hope to master the last element.

He scanned the water line and spotted small footprints. Using the tracking skills that Sokka showed him, the avatar followed them to a tree. High in the branches a child slept fitfully crying out for it’s mother.

“Leave the child here.”

Aang climbed into the tree. He could not leave someone who once saved his life behind.

________________________________________

Katara heard the sputtering cough. Zuko tried to roll up into a fighting position, but he failed. His eyes were not registering her presence and he was trying to fight off something.

“Stand back.” Toph orders.

Zuko sunk up to his neck into the earth.

“Toph! Why?”

“He can’t hurt himself or anyone else for now. Even I can see that he is still fighting something in his mind.

________________________________________

The child resisted. He kicked at the strange big boy with the blue arrow on it’s head. This was his tree. If arrow boy wants a tree then there were hundreds of trees around him.

“Zuko. It’s me.”

Enemy screamed the voice inside the boy’s head. The boy knew no Zuko. The boy knew no name. He only remembered his mother’s hugs and some one hitting him because he was weak. The boy was running away. Here he felt only hunger, not pain. Here was loneliness. He did not need stoopid big boys to push him around.

“Back, find your own tree. This is my place.”

The child was fighting the best he knew how. He cried, swung his arms, kicked his feet, and tried to bite the big boy.

The branch snapped and the last thing the boy remembered was falling.

________________________________________

Aang looked down upon the child lying on the earth below. The child was not moving.

“You almost sent him to the next life. We cannot have that.”

A gust of wind knocked the Avatar off the branches to join the child on the earth below.

Aang sat up. The boy was muttering in his unconscious state asking for his mother. Aang scooped up the child and made his way to the gate. However the gate was guarded.

“Put the child down and you may leave.”

Aang knew that he could not comply. He would have to fight to bring a former enemy back into the land of the living.
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Blue Mask