Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being born into the Fire Nation royal family was far from the best start to my second life. Being Ozai’s firstborn was just the icing on that bitter cake. Fortunately or unfortunately, I wasn’t Zuko. I was born two years before him, even earlier into my new parents’ unhappy forced marriage, with the name of Hiroshi. Ursa was doting and Ozai was not, and my siblings were born as per canon. Zuko was honestly too nice for the semi-feudal politics around this place and Azula generally went with whatever Ozai wanted, which was usually horrible. I was distant from them both. I wasn’t really sure what to do with them, and I believe Ozai actively encouraged that distance.

I was bookish, lazy, and meek, and on top of all that I was a poor bender. Ozai tolerated precisely none of those things. I’ve never been one for extensive physical activity and such things never came easily to me. I was drilled to perfection on the katas, but I lacked motivation for real power and skill. On top of that, my bending came in late. I was fit and I was ahead of Zuko in firebending, but that was all I had going for me. Ozai hid his contempt for my lack of ability less and less each day, and stopped altogether when Mother disappeared after Azulon’s death. I think he was looking for excuses to get rid of me, especially after my failed attempts to connect with Azula to stop her from becoming his mini-me.

Me, being the absolute imbecile that I am, handed him one on a silver platter. At the age of fourteen, I asked my uncle, Iroh, to be included in war councils. I was allowed to do so, despite lacking much of the closeness with Iroh that Zuko enjoyed. I observed and kept my mouth shut, as I was supposed to, as Zuko couldn’t, in another world.

I became well used to the poor planning of many of the top generals of the Fire Nation. Many of the best ones had been ousted by Ozai because of their loyalty to his late father or hated brother. Their replacements were incompetent sycophants who couldn’t plan their way out of a paper bag, even with a hundred firebenders to help them. Ozai was no help in this, he had not studied tactics or strategy, and didn’t much care about the war so long as it didn’t hurt his position.

I offered little during or after these sessions. While Iroh took care of some of the more egregious plans himself, he didn’t offer much else, and I didn’t want to end up like Zuko had. I had begun picking up a reputation, however. Following Iroh around and sitting in on war councils with him made others think that he was grooming me as a general. Considering Iroh’s dim view of the war, I found that unlikely.

Then one day, Zuko joined me. I was fifteen by then, and had gotten used to the routine of the meetings. Seeing Zuko shocked me out of it in an abrupt and chilling manner. I knew what would happen to him, and even if we were distant, I really didn’t want to see him burned, even if nothing quite felt real here. He was just a kid. I just wasn’t sure how to prevent it, not with the contents of this meeting being what they were.

The meeting continued, unaware of my dilemma. One of the generals proposed the fateful plan, pushing a small figurine representing Fire Nation soldiers towards several smaller figurines representing Earth Kingdom units.

“The Earth Kingdom defenses are concentrated here, several battalions of their strongest earthbenders and fiercest warriors. So I am recommending the 41st division.”

“But the 41st is entirely new recruits, how do you expect them to defeat such a powerful Earth Kingdom force?” came the only objection, quickly shelved.

“I don’t. They’ll be used as a distraction while we mount an attack from the rear with General Sanraku’s Corps. What better to use as bait than fresh meat?”

Zuko looked mutinous and the general looked pleased with himself, giving a smug grin. That grin rather quickly faded at what occurred next.

I was foolish. It was an impulse, one I should have restrained and crushed with the logic and reason I had always prided myself on. When I saw Zuko beginning to speak, I stepped forwards instead.

“Ah, general, while I do see some merit in your plan, I believe that-”

I tried to calmly object, except Zuko shouted over me anyways, and I faltered, trailing off.

“You can’t sacrifice an entire division like that! Those soldiers love and defend our nation, how can you betray them?”

Zuko glared at the rest of the room, including myself. Perhaps he thought I supported this buffoon’s plan. I just prayed to Agni that Ozai either hadn’t noticed my words or didn’t care.

Sadly for me, Ozai noticed us both. Zuko was challenged to an Agni Kai for his disrespect, as was I. I had thought, with mingled dread and anticipation, that it meant that we would both fight Ozai and that this would somehow end with both of us scarred and exiled.

But that didn’t make sense, even to my somewhat deluded self. I knew there would be something that I didn’t expect. Zuko’s fight was first, and I observed. It went exactly as I expected it to. Zuko thought he would face a general, got his father, and begged for mercy.

“...and suffering will be your teacher!”

He did not receive it.

Even knowing it was going to happen, I winced, but didn’t close my eyes like Iroh had. His screams echoed in my ears and the sight was one I was unlikely to forget. My first true reminder of the cost of my indecisiveness. I tried to arrest the trembling of my hands as Ozai finished proclaiming his son’s punishment. Poor Zuko was dragged off and I entered the arena, clad in a traditional Agni Kai mantle. I was surprised when Ozai, instead of turning to face me, walked away. I stood there for a moment, stunned.

Then my opponent emerged. It was the general Zuko thought he would be facing. I was bewildered, but I observed the formal ceremony of the duel. We stood opposite one another and faced away from each other, doffing our mantles, leaving our torsos bare. At the signal, we turned around and the fight began.

The old man was slow, his movements were stiff, his flames cool. If he had ever bent fire against an enemy in his life, that day was long behind him. Even my bending was more than his match. We exchanged blows for a time, my style more defensive and reactive than his aggressive one. Every burst of his flame was countered or dodged before he overextended, and I moved in for the finisher. I sent a flurry of fiery blasts that he couldn’t move fast enough to block, one of which knocked him to his knees. I delivered a nasty burn to the man’s arm with my final attack as he raised it to shield his face, claiming victory. The crowd gave some lackluster applause, either too stunned and unsettled by the previous match or too underwhelmed by this one.

For a moment, I indulged in my naivete and thought that that was it. That having to fight some old man was the extent of my punishment. That there was no other shoe waiting to drop on me from high above. Then my logic asserted itself and informed me that I was, in fact, being naive. I didn’t really sleep that night, kept awake by dread and fear. I woke and carried on through my morning routine as normal. At noon, however, I was addressed by a palace servant.

“Prince Hiroshi, Fire Lord Ozai requests your presence in the war room as soon as possible.”

“I will be along shortly.” I replied, face as blank as I could make it.

I knew, then, that this was the other shoe I had been waiting for. I walked to that room like a man that was going to the gallows and knew it. I knocked politely on the door and a servant opened it for me. Ozai greeted me as I entered, his voice somehow conveying a sneer in sound form.

“Prince Hiroshi, congratulations on your victory yesterday. It was hard won.”

I bowed before replying, fear and dread causing a slight stutter which made Ozai’s frown even deeper.

“Th-Thank you father. May I ask why I have been summoned here?”

“It has come to my attention that you wish to contribute to the war effort. While you should not have spoken during the meeting, your...tutoring...by General Iroh indicates that you may have something to offer. As you agreed with the broad strokes of General Bujing’s plan,” he said, inclining his head towards the general I had fought the day before. I hadn’t even noticed he was in the room. My eyes were drawn to his arm, which was bulky beneath his clothing, likely bandaged. “...but had some suggestions on the details, you will be placed within the command structure of the Fire Nation military as a Major General, under the command of Lieutenant General Sanraku.”

My eyes widened for a moment. So this was his play. Major General was a higher rank than expected though, enough to command...a division. I drew in a breath when I realized what his game really was, what he planned to have me do. He couldn’t burn and exile us both. However, there were other ways of getting rid of someone. With that, I knew how my second life would end. I was going to die. Again.

Even though his voice didn’t change, Ozai’s eyes shone with glee.

“You will take command of the 41st division, effective immediately. You leave tonight.”

What better way to get rid of both of your disappointing sons than to exile them both at the same time after giving them just enough rope to hang themselves?

Chapter Text

Huh. I thought as I surveyed the carnage in front of me. I’m still alive.

A banner, bearing the black flame on a red field of the Fire Nation, whipped in the wind from its place on the field. It was planted there by a handful of non-bending soldiers in red armor that were currently occupied in stacking and burning corpses. I carefully avoided looking at the pile of red armor that made up one such pile. The small metal identification disks carried by all Fire Nation soldiers were piled into a bag off to the side, to be brought with us until we had tallied our dead. Most of the corpses wore green and dark, earthy colors. I snorted to myself at the mental pun. I got a worried look from my young adjutant, Kazuo, but that was fine. I was just happy that he and I were both still breathing and that a majority of my men shared that trait. A slimmer majority than I would prefer, perhaps, but better than expected.

The division’s standard was finally dragged out from wherever it had been and set up next to the flag by one of our firebenders. The young woman, more a girl really, had lost her helmet and had what looked to be a nasty gash across her nose, from the way the blood soaked through her bandages. She, like most of the unit, seemed to be some variant of shocked at their survival and in shock at the brutal measures that it took to ensure it.

“Kazuo, have men check the seismographs!” I barked, shaking myself out of my thoughts for a moment. He pulled a passing private aside and sent him off, hopefully to deliver good news.

Every fire nation unit of a certain size had a handful of seismographs, delicate contraptions of springs and weights that could detect the telltale vibrations of earthbending or actual earthquakes and would write representations of those vibrations on a roll of paper attached to it. They had been rolled out a handful of years before, at the behest of War Minister Qin who had obtained them somewhere, along with some other nice toys. I looked forward to getting tanks sometime in the future.

“Prince Hiroshi, sir…”

I turned towards the man who had walked up to me and spoken. I should have noticed him. Perhaps I was more affected by this than I had thought. He was also almost startlingly young, something he had in common with most of the unit, myself included. I guess that’s what you get with a unit that even the generals back in the Caldera called ‘barely trained and green’.

“Something to report, corporal?” I replied. I hoped he hadn’t heard the shaky note in my voice. Unfortunately, the understanding look he shot me indicated that he had. No matter, it wasn’t like he would report back to Ozai. While I thought about this, he nodded.

“Missives for you from the other divisions, sir.” he said, handing me a sealed envelope.

I quickly broke the seal and almost fumbled the letter in my haste to read it. General Sanraku was my superior at the moment and in charge of the operation that had just taken place. My unit, the 41st, had been a diversion. A sacrifice dictated by the old men back in the capital. The more experienced units under Sanraku’s direct command were to be the actual attack, striking at the enemy’s rear while we died in the front. I frowned at the letter’s contents, then spoke, summarizing its contents.

“The 32nd and 28th divisions have completed their objectives with minimal losses. The 33rd was caught while dispersed and defeated in detail by the Earth Kingdom and the General is missing in action. As the highest ranking soldier in the field, I have command of the Corps.”

I had to wonder what the hell Sanraku had even been doing. His unit, the 33rd, was supposed to be with the 32nd and 28th, but was instead miles off, heading towards some of the towns this little bastion had been defending. He certainly hadn’t informed us, his subordinate officers, what he was doing. Fortunately, the 28th’s scouts had caught sight of his men burning some structures before an Earth Kingdom army fell upon them. They had informed their generals who had in turn informed me. Perhaps Sanraku had received orders from above and not told anyone else, or maybe he had just taken a bad gamble looking for glory and prestige. It hardly mattered now.

This was actually not that bad. A mixed blessing, of sorts. The war council hadn’t given contingencies for a partial success or for the loss of over a quarter of our forces, meaning that the commander in the field would have full control with no orders from above, beyond some overall directives that applied to the military as a whole. Typically, no soldier outranked a prince, although courtesy dictated that royals not start ordering generals around unless they were also themselves generals. However, in my case, the Fire Lord had explicitly informed me and the war council that Sanraku would be my superior. Now, with Ozai’s sycophant done for, I had free reign to conduct the following battles as I saw fit.

I would need that freedom. Even with much of the Earth Kingdom sitting out the war, they could call on a massive population with a corresponding massive number of soldiers. The Fire Nation’s population, even with that of the colonies, wasn’t quite so large as theirs. The terrain also heavily favored earthbenders, with firebenders and other soldiers having to maintain constant mobility during combat, causing rapid exhaustion. Consequently, the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom typically maintained rough force parity along most of the front. It was no wonder the war had been in a century-long stalemate.

However, due to the incompetence of a number of my countrymen, the Earth Kingdom outnumbered and outmatched us here. The 11th Corps consisted of four divisions, these being the 28th, 32nd, 33rd, and 41st, each of which had ten-thousand men. The loss of the entire 33rd brought us from forty-thousand to thirty-thousand, and the heavy losses of the 41st brought that down to no more than twenty-seven-thousand. The 41st had no cavalry but the other units had all had at least a few hundred each. Komodo-rhinos made it harder for earthbenders to drag you under and were like meaty tanks themselves, perfect for our purposes. It was a shame we had so few.

Our scouts reported that the Earth Kingdom had around sixty-thousand men in the region. They lost more than we had in the recent engagements, but only if you didn’t count the 33rd’s loss. That left us outnumbered by a significant margin, as high as two-to-one, perhaps higher. Not only that, but the 41st was made up entirely of green troops fresh out of basic, making nearly a third of the men I had left difficult to utilize. The four battalions we had fought to take these fortifications had less than half of our numbers but were elite and expected to beat us easily by both their generals and ours. Through some arcane miracle I had managed to pull, they were all proven wrong. Thankfully, the loss of their most elite earthbending units restricted my opponents’ options severely and gave us a minor advantage.

As I looked up from my musings, I noticed how the soldier who brought me the letter had gone from natural Fire Nation pale to ghostly pale. I looked behind him to see if he’d been stabbed or shot while I was distracted. I couldn’t see anything, so I returned my gaze to him. He was muttering to himself such happy things as “We’re all going to die” and “Agni preserve us”. I awkwardly clapped him on the shoulder.

“No time for that, soldier. Give me a moment and I’ll have some letters for you to send back.”

He just kind of stared at me. Withdrawing some paper from a pouch at my side, I clumsily wrote messages to the Lieutenant Generals that were now under my command. They were a bit bare, just confirming my command and asking for status updates. I folded them and handed them off to the corporal, who seemed to have finally stopped panicking. He took them and strode off. Hopefully to deliver them and not to desert.

The corpse collection was done, the burning in progress. We would be ready to move soon, and needed a defensible position. Or at least a place to make camp that wasn’t horrifically vulnerable. There wasn’t really such a thing as defensible when it came to fighting earthbenders, not without water or metal. The plateau to the west would just make it easier for them to tunnel underneath us, and the wooded area to the north would make it harder to spot them and easier for us to set the whole place on fire by accident.

Best to just camp on the hill nearby, then. We couldn’t use the fortifications the earthbenders had built here, not without risking them being turned against us. We would need to raise a wooden palisade and place our tents within it. Metal would be better but we didn’t exactly have the necessary materials for that. I issued orders to that effect and Kazuo moved to gather runners to inform my subordinate officers.

The private from before jogged up to me and stood at attention, waiting to speak. I looked at him. He should have been back within a minute or two, not taken so long.

“The seismographs?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Um, well sir, we think that they say that the Earth Kingdom men who escaped are retreating. We’re not really sure?” he said, his last sentence trailing off into a question.

Ah. That was almost worse than an attack. It meant that the people who were trained to operate the critical equipment were either dead or wounded, somehow. Or weren’t trained at all, come to think of it. The 41st hadn’t had to take a reading yet, they had been provided by the other units.

“Alert me immediately if the situation changes at all.” I finally replied.

As this occurred, a dozen komodo-rhinos approached me, two of which were ridden by older men in armor. The other generals, then. Kenjiro and Yoshiteru were their names, and they were both reasonably competent, which was more than I could say for far too many of their rank. They dismounted and approached me before bowing, gestures of respect. Staying mounted when speaking to a superior outside of combat was frowned upon, probably because people don’t like being looked down on. Their bows were a tad deeper than was warranted by my military rank but just about perfect for my royal one. I was still crown prince, Ozai hadn’t disinherited me yet, hadn’t thought it necessary since he was sending me to die anyways. I cleared my throat of my sudden nervousness and spoke.

“Generals. How are your divisions?”

“The 28th is in good shape, less than five-hundred dead or wounded.” Kenjiro replied, his diction a bit more informal than I had expected from his interactions with Sanraku.

“The 32nd fared slightly worse, about nine-thousand still combat effective.” Yoshiteru answered for his division. Interestingly, I had noticed before that his accent had an Earth Kingdom tinge that all but screamed ‘colonial’. I saw now that his eyes were green too. I hadn’t seen him bend earth, but I would bet my crown that he was of mixed heritage at the very least. Perhaps he had been placed under politically reliable Sanraku because he was seen as unreliable? Something to think about.

“Very good. We camp on the hills to the east,” I said, gesturing at Kazuo to pull out a map. I pointed at three locations to the left of our position.

“The 41st here, the 28th here, and the 32nd here. Heavy patrols, the Earth Kingdom will likely try to press their advantage.”

Neither of the generals objected to my plan or seemed as if they wished to, so I considered that agreement.

“Dismissed.”

I turned to look out on the mingled mass of soldiers and considered the future. I had an understrength green division and two experienced ones to fight against nigh twice their number in Earth Kingdom troops. Victory wasn’t impossible, but it would not be easily taken. We would have several long years ahead of us. The avatar wasn’t due for another three years or so, and none of us were likely to be called home before then. I certainly wouldn’t be.

One way or another, this was going to get nasty.