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...Ten years.
Befriending the airbenders was a pain that pooled bile in Sozin’s mouth, but feigning confidence with them was easier than dancing politics with any statesman.
It was easy.
Almost too easy.
The thought ran away from him before Sozin could ponder it more. The suspicion was silly. Easy trust from easy people should be expected. The Air Nomads were too simple and peaceful to be anything more than welcoming. They were born without the ability to tip their hearts’ scales into black or white. Their neutrality was as grey as their eyes.
But as Sozin, stiff and wrinkled like a walking scar, stepped from his dragon and bowed to one of the more decorated old men, he couldn’t help but wonder. It truly was a miracle that the Air Nomads survived so long. Life was cruel. History was even crueler. Trust freely given was a noose around any man’s neck.
All it took was a sob story about his old age and grief for them to welcome him. Sozin was aching from his years, even moreso from the loss of his best friend. His tears were his testament, and the break in his voice shattered the daydream air filling the temple like a gas. He could find solace nowhere else; he pleaded for a chance to find inner peace where his brother once was and where he would take on new life.
They were reluctant at first, but only because of Talon. Sozin’s teal dragon was as massive as he was deadly, and he was tame as a loaded crossbow. Talon licked their fear from their air and purred a growl that trembled a warning like a mountain’s last groan before collapsing.
The old men were as wary of his dragon as they were of him. It almost made Sozin smile. They could sense a dragon in bison’s clothing easily enough. Maybe healthy suspicion was how they survived for so long?
Sozin was certain he was going to be asked to leave, but a stranger with eyes and lips wrinkled into a permanent smile vouched for him. The stranger’s smile slipped into his voice, slow and smooth, like a cat curling to sleep on a sun-baked stone.
Sozin had to force his jaw to relax. He never liked listening to the airbenders speak. The air that left them was alien like their voices were crawling into his ears instead of traveling through space like normal.
He gave the newcomer a once-over like any good soldier might. His weaknesses, strengths, and chances of becoming a meaningful threat were tucked into a new file and bookmarked in Sozin’s mind.
But his reconnaissance was cut short by the toddler waddling at the stranger’s heels. The boy barely older than a babe grabbed hold of the old man’s — his father’s? guardian’s? — robe and latched on, teething, on a fold of orange fabric.
Then he looked at Sozin with eyes a shade of grey different from all the others’. The airbenders had eyes like stormclouds gathering. The boy had eyes like ash.
Sozin turned away and coughed.
The boy chewed some more on his favored piece of orange robe. The elder didn’t pay any mind.
(But Sozin caught the way he leaned closer to the boy like a sabretooth moose-lion before its cub.)
Ten years...Ten years and twenty-two days.
Roku had spoken fondly and often of Sozin to the monk named Gyatso. Gyatso smiled wide and warm like the sun cresting the horizon, and he welcomed the Firelord as a fellow brother mourning Roku’s passing.
After a few more pleasantries, he invited Sozin to the prayer room where Roku meditated when something heavy weighed on his mind.
Sozin nodded and followed. His attention, however, didn’t want to leave Gyatso’s young charge.
The boy — Aang was his name? — patted his fist on the now wet section of orange robe like he was knocking on a door. Gyatso offered him his hand, and Aang nearly jumped to greet it in his impatience to hold it. He leaned on his mentor and trotted with his weight resting against his not-father’s leg. It was like the boy was a cart missing a wheel but still rolling forward and scraping against a tunnel’s wall for support.
And then Aang closed his eyes and smiled like accidents could never happen.
And the sight almost made Sozin reconsider.
Almost.
The prayer room was empty when Gyatso finally opened the doors. It took a few minutes since he coddled his charge with gentle words and instructions to wield his airbending to open the lock.
A puff of dust greeted them with an annoying sting to their eyes. Gyatso apologized and cleaned the room with a wave of his hand, tossing the dust out the window.
Sozin inhaled a breath of the stuff, but he cleared his throat to suppress the urge to cough.
But then the boy sneezed, and Sozin looked down at him.
The pain from the error was swift and brutal. Something hi Sozin’s back like water from a broken dam carrying momentum faster than lightning. On impact, it sprayed him into a bloody mist like pieces of porcelain after meeting asphalt.
The hacking fit was a compulsion Sozin couldn’t fight, and it would have put him on his knees if he hadn't stopped it at a kneel.
The eyes of ash misted with tears and were pleading and concerned. The boy patted Sozin’s shoulder with a hand yet able to perform the action without looking like he was trying to beat him instead of comfort him.
The feeling was nostalgic. It almost made Sozin reconsider.
Almost.
...Five years.
Sozin had done worse for longer. It wasn’t like it would break him. What was left of himself had been torn apart and fed to the volcano back on that day. All that mattered was his nation.
His nation.
The Fire Nation.
For his country to be reborn, there had to be ashes.
Five years...Five years and sixteen days.
For his nation, Sozin could do it. He could endure every Pai Sho game and forced bout of laughter. He could endure the nuns and the reckless younglings who wouldn’t leave him the hell alone whenever he visited the Temples.
He brought them gifts every time. Operational conditioning. Same as with a dragon. To tame a beast — to make it complacent — create positive associations.
They were far too trusting. The skybison were ‘companions’. The Air Nomads knew nothing of training.
...Three years.
Sozin wasn’t sure how much longer he could take it.
They were watching him. All of them were.
Their strange secret language — that damn whistle-speak — tricked his mind into thinking it was music so it could hide its secrets from him. It was like listening to singing behind a wall. He could hear the suspicion. He could hear the murmuring. He heard everything they didn’t want him to in passing, and their sung secrets were heavy and thick with a contempt he couldn’t yet decipher.
They were toying with him.
That wasn’t how this was supposed to be.
Sozin wouldn’t let himself be controlled. The Nomads were fools if they thought they could muzzle a Dragon.
He was the one in control here.
Sozin knew how to control people through fear. These damn people did something far worse. They controlled through trust. It was cruel — it was wrong .
The boy — Aang was his name — wove a pillow-soft tune out of braided winds. He made sure he had the other youngling’s attention before darting up the tree, scaring the lemurs from their perches.
Sozin cringed. Even the children were speaking of him — hiding from him.
Eyes of ash peeked at him through the leaves and curved upwards as if smiling.
Sozin turned his cough into an old man’s laugh and dug his nails into his knees.
Three years...Three years and two days.
Gyatso poured their tea and whistle-spoke something to the spies in the trees.
Sozin’s nails nearly drew blood. It was true. It was all of them: the elders, the masters, the skybison, the lemurs — hell, even the children —
He knew it.
The airbenders were a menace.
They controlled others with invisible chains and lured people into a sense of peace like it was a defense mechanism. Their kindness, like their whistle-speak, was nothing more than a siren’s song.
Sozin needed to watch his step. The airbenders had a sophisticated network of communication. They were like one giant organism—a hive incubating enough workers to take over the world.
Nomads. He wanted to spit on the very thought.
He can’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner.
They had been collecting information on the nations just as he had been collecting information on them. Their war tactics were so subtle it was nearly frightening.
They knew he was onto them.
They knew what he was doing.
They kept him in their sights and watched him even when he was in the Fire Nation. Their grey gazes stuck to him like poison powder from a deadly mushroom. He jumped into the ocean before he stepped back on his homeland for fear of spreading their virus.
The wind pet the grass in a lick of something warm and calm. Sozin cringed. Their spoken wind was words without words, and they curled around him like they carried their own life.
Even the damn wind was watching him.
Every time he visited the damn Temples he was surrounded by the spies and their attention. He would have barely landed his dragon before a sea of grey eyes consumed his vision like they were storm clouds gathering.
He hated it.
But he needn't wait too much longer.
...One year.
The Gyatso fellow was as nice as a spy could be. It was almost regretful that he had to die.
Sozin thought to himself as he moved a Pai Sho tile with a ‘clap’ of lacquer and wood. Almost was too strong a word. Inconvenient? That sounded about right. No one had bested Sozin in Pai Sho before. Stupid White Lotus gambit got him every time. It would be annoying to find something new to waste his time on.
One year...One year and twelve days.
His blueprints of the temples were all but complete. One year. One year was all he needed. At this point, his visits were pleasantries, just a means to save face.
The old men were getting nervous but about what they wouldn't say.
Sozin made himself their refuge. He promised them aid.
He could help them so much more if they would kindly tell him who the Avatar was.
They refused, as always, but Sozin was as patient as he was calculating. He kept his voice soft, made the same joke, and laughed along with them even when those stupid flying creatures swatted his beard.
They stared at him, too. Everything did.
Just one year...Just one year and twelve days.
Just a little longer, now. The wild dragons had all been collected and were finishing their training. The old men of the Southern Temple threw a festival in Sozin’s honor. They wouldn’t kill the mammoth green-scaled drakaina that had curled up in their mountains. Their bison were easy pickings to such a creature. They thanked him for giving it a proper home.
Stupid fools. They hardly mourned the loss of their own. They would probably stand against the wall if he asked them.
There was a second festival to be held that day, almost like a shared birthday.
The time was so close that Sozin could almost taste it—dry and dusty like ashes of victory over his tongue. In one year and twelve days, the crimson cloth being draped in the halls would be replaced by fire.
Some would escape, but a few roaches always did when their nest was exposed to the sun. He knew enough to lay traps. They wouldn’t be the sirens anymore.
It was easy to discern what made this home so attractive to the fliers. They needed the thin air. They were as free as the gusts of air that licked the tops of the mountains they lived in. They preferred altitudes that would leave lesser men sick and on their deathbed. (Sozin had prepared for this. Every soldier had trained on dragonback as high as the beasts would fly.)
(It was a shame that the dragons would have to be killed, too. After , that is. The Avatar born into the Water Tribes couldn’t have a source from which to learn firebending. That was unacceptable.)
Sozin winced. The hum of the prayer bell was annoying and the acrobats of air were even moreso. He sat up straight and forced his respects to the boy as he stood. Aang’s smile was brighter than cherry-red metal that had sat in a forge overnight, and it was almost just as warm.
Aang, if Sozin remembered correctly, had just had his twelfth birthday. He was young for a master.
The boy looked at him. His eyes were grey like the rest of his people’s, but his eyes weren’t grey like metal.
Aang’s eyes were the color ash, but they carried the life of something that had never been burned.
Sozin looked away and coughed.
The ceremony and the food were tolerable. The part that came after was almost okay.
The prayer bell — damn that thing — rang one last time.
Like a flame going out, so did the quiet. The younger masters all cheered like soldiers at a bar after returning from their first campaign. Aang was up from his seat in the next second and sprinting like his life depended on it.
“Get back here, Aang!”
“You know the rules! You’re one of us now!”
“It’s tradition!”
The boy laughed and shouted back at them with equal parts fun and fear. He moved more like the lemurs than even the lemurs did. It was like he was made of water, slipping out of the young masters’ hands and dodging a dozen bodies trying to dogpile him.
The old men laughed and reminisced. Some of them pretended not to and forced themselves to chastise the young ones on principle. The lemurs chattered along with all their laughs.
“No, no, no! Hahaha! — C-C’mon, guys! I — Haha! — Y-You know I can’t — Hahaha! ”
One of them gasped dramatically. “Did you hear that?”
“ Yes , I did , and I simply cannot believe my ears!”
“For shame , Pupil Aang!” The young master flicked Aang’s new arrow. The ink was blue like lightning since it was new and not stretched by the skin. He didn’t wince, though. Sozin didn’t know whether to commend the boy for his tolerance of the pain or the monks for making the aftermath of the process painless (Sozin heard the previous day how much it wasn’t...His screams were muffled by a gag Sozin assumed he was given. He was only allowed by the room as it was performed).
The young men laughed with Aang some more, and they picked on their surrogate little brother for even longer. They only let him go once he was crying from laughing so hard. Two of them threw Aang onto their shoulders. Aang took the opportunity to flick their arrows in turn, and his fraternity of big brothers swooned like they were mortally wounded before they all laughed twice as hard. Aang hugged their heads and swung his legs, and he puffed with something like pride. He looked like a king on his throne, and they sang a song with something that wasn’t words.
It was that thrice-damned whistle-speak again. Oh , how Sozin loathed their secret language. Had Roku learned this?
Gyatso laughed long and warmly, but his age crackled in his voice. The sound was dead leaves crunching underfoot, and the way he fondly spoke of his pupil slid into Sozin’s ears as charred kindling collapsing into embers.
“Woah, woah, woah !”
A roar shook the canyon, and Sozin nearly leapt from his seat. One of the bison landed on the cluster of young masters, and he pawed through the lump of bodies until he found the smallest, laughing one. He picked Aang up by his scruff between his teeth and grumpily shuffled away from the young masters. Curling up, he held the boy in his front paws and looked almost like he was trying to hide his skyrider under his chin. He bared his teeth and growled at the pouting young masters climbing over him like an infestation.
It almost made Sozin think about smiling. The furry creature was more like a dragon with its horde than it was like the flying filth that were its kin.
“Thanks for the rescue, buddy!”
Sozin looked at the boy without knowing that he was.
The boy turned.
Eyes, grey and laughing—ash and mocking him—, caught him in their snare.
Sozin coughed, but, this time, he couldn't turn away. He lifted his sleeve to his mouth to catch the rest. His chest tightened. The air being bent around him was too thick and dusty like he was standing in a room full of mold.
It needed to be burned. The mold needed to be cleansed before it spread and poisoned anything else.
The boy looked away. His smile was infectious.
One year and twelve days. Time was a funny thing.
Because as Sozin stood atop Talon’s back and searched the crowd of faces below him — looking for those eyes of ashes — he remembered the ceremony like it was yesterday.