Title: In The Land Of The Morning Star

Author: overlithe

Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender

Summary: Sozin's Air Nomad informant did not do it out of greed, jealousy, anger, or malice. The truth was a thousand times more terrible.

Characters/Pairings: OMC (he's based on a character from the card game, but I've given him a rather different history and motivations), Sozin; gen

Prompt: avatar_500 prompt 033. Trust; fanfic100 prompt 064. Fall

Word Count: 496

Rating: T

Warnings: There's nothing above a T rating, but there's obviously references to genocide and the various justifications thereof, so serious creepiness ahead.

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and concepts created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, and owned by Nickelodeon and various other corporations/people. I'm not making any money and do not intend any copyright or trademark infringement. The title comes from a Scorpions song (more details in the end notes). I am aware that the actual morning star shows up in the east and not the west. ;)

Author's Note: In my reading of the canon, Sozin is an object lesson in how neither good intentions, nor sincerity, nor absolute certainty that you have the right answers mean that you won't do mind-bendingly awful things. In fact, sometimes they just usher you down that road all the faster. Card game canonicity aside, I've always assumed Sozin had one or more Air Nomad informant(s), given the nature of the attack on the Air Temples and the statements Aang makes about their inaccessibility. This story is a companion piece of sorts to my ficlet Reasonable Doubt, but it stands completely on its own.

In The Land Of The Morning Star

His first impression of the Fire Nation was red tile and white stone gleaming in sunlight as sweet and endless as childhood.

His second impression was the scent of hot chillies, steamed ginger, eye-watering pickled plums, something dark and rich he later learned was called chocolate.

For an instant he was absurdly sure this land must have a great ruler.

He pushed the thought aside, but when he met Sozin, it was like being around the sun.

:=:

The Air Nomads were poor in ranks and rich in friends, but even so Afiko sometimes found it hard to believe he spent so much time in the Fire Lord's gardens, much less that he was hearing Sozin telling him about the world.

Not the world as it was. The world as it could be.

'Do you really think all that's possible?' Afiko blurted out. A lizard-peacock cry rose into a sky of unbroken blue.

'It's a pleasant dream,' Sozin said.

Afiko didn't answer, too busy thinking of a place where even the paving stones shone.

:=:

He had been taught to love the world. That all life was sacred. Brothers and sisters from the humblest firefly to nobles draped in silk and jade.

Once he asked Brother Yong about injustice, and was told only love could vanquish suffering.

But lately he'd dream of a great black cloud, swollen with something terrible, and wake up to sweat-soaked cloth. He knew he wasn't the only one. His people would sometimes have premonitions; he felt the future's cold shiver in his bones.

The world was full of whispers of war, blood-hungry blades, sickness and violence and want.

Love wasn't enough.

Somebody had to do something.

:=:

The old Avatar hadn't wanted the new world. The new Avatar wouldn't either.

The Air Nomads did not believe in possessions, but they did believe in children. They would never give them up.

One strike, and it would all be over. The birth pangs of a stronger, loving world.

Dreadful and logical.

'You won't have to see any of it,' Sozin said. 'That's not a burden you should have to carry.'

When the sun spoke to you you couldn't not trust, not believe.

So Afiko told him: temples, mountains, secret passages, his throat aching with horror and hope.

He wasn't even the only one who did.

:=:

He'd been given the poppy seeds by one of his fellows, a woman who had been a nun in the Western Temple. His compatriot in a hidden, terrible country.

Sweet smoke filled the room. He didn't hear Sozin step in.

'The war will be over soon. I am sure.' Sozin's voice was brittle. Then he stood up and turned around, a star, a comet, brilliant and burning. 'We—I haven't done certain things because I could. Some things, we do because we have to.'

Now we become ghosts, Nima had said. Forget.

But the ghosts were outside, scrabbling at the shutters, eyeless faces pressed against the glass.

++The End++

Notes: I love writing/exploring fictional characters who make me deeply, deeply uncomfortable, but I have to tamp down the part of my brain that's going "Hey, you want to avoid being all upset about having collaborated with genocide? THEN DON'T DO IT, GENIUS. Also, cry moar." ;) The lines "Now we become ghosts. Forget." come from a Cold Case episode in which the Scorpions song I reference in the title was used for the ending montage. Since Cold Case is a mystery series, I'm not going to spoil the episode's plot for you, but apparently the Scorpions' Send Me An Angel is the official theme tune of selling people to genocide, who knew? ;) The line "a stronger, loving world" comes from the John Cale song Sanities, and is a reference to chapter XII of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (obvious reference is obvious).