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“You kept my hairpiece.” Sozin said, bizarrely.
Roku blinked. Just a moment ago, he had been choking on volcanic ashes, toxic fumes turning his windpipe to mush. And now he was airborne, Fang flying behind him, as he laid on top of Sheng and Sozin tended to his wounds.
This was wrong. The two of them hadn’t been this close in decades. Not since Roku had left his old friend hanging on the ruins of his palace and turned his back on the royal court of the Fire Nation.
Dimly, Roku realized that he should probably say something. They had spent long years apart, but he still recognized every mannerism of Sozin’s. The face that had once been so dear to him, now lined by the passing of the years, was unmistakably twisted with apprehension.
“Your hairpiece?” he choked out, voice still hoarse from volcanic fumes. “I was under the impression that it was a gift to me. I’ve worn it for longer than you have.”
Sozin huffed, just the hint of a snarl flitting across his face. It was moments like these where Roku saw the truth in the legends, how the Line of Agni were indeed descended from the first dragons.
“I thought that you would have renounced anything that had to do with me, after that day.” he sneered.
Roku closed his eyes. He didn’t want to face the bitter old man his best friend had become in his absence.
“I kept it as a reminder of better times.” Roku exhaled quietly, so soft that the howling winds threatened to spirit away his confession.
But Sozin’s ears had always been keen, far keener than any mortal man’s.
His old friend turned away, looking towards the horizon.
After a long moment, he spoke. “I never took you to be a masochist, Roku.”
“What about an optimist?” Roku said, tiredly.
“Optimistic about what?” Sozin snapped, turning back to glare at Roku. His golden eyes blazed with the ferocious intensity of Agni’s spirit, the draconic snarl returning to his face.
Sozin had always masked his hurt with anger, lashing out with bluster when his careful plans went awry.
“I wanted to build a future with you. And you turned your back on me. You turned your back on your country and your Fire Lord!” he accused, jabbing his finger in Roku’s face.
It was remarkably childish, for a venerable Fire Lord well into his eighties. Somehow, in spite of the juxtaposition between his immature finger-pointing and his aged countenance, Roku didn’t find it an incongruent picture. In his darkest moments, the Sozin that his mind recalled was always the mischievous boy who would whisper the wrong answer to Roku whenever he fell asleep during lessons, only to take time out of his busy schedule afterward to make sure he learned it properly. When he thought of Sozin, his mind inevitably conjured images of a laughing, handsome youth with a warm and gentle spirit, not the cold and withdrawn Fire Lord whose palace he had demolished.
Roku couldn’t believe that they were having this conversation on the back of Sozin’s dragon, fleeing the ashes of the worst volcanic eruption in the history of the Fire Nation, as two old, tired, bitter men with far too many regrets in life.
He returned Sozin’s glare with one of his own. “You wanted to conquer the world. You invaded the Earth Kingdom! As the Avatar, it is my duty-”
“You were my friend before you became the Avatar!” Sozin snarled. He spat the word Avatar as though it was a curse. Which, Roku supposed, was a fair assessment. Everything had changed when he became the Avatar. His destiny was not to stand by Sozin’s side, but tend to the woes of the world, irrespective of his personal loyalties.
Roku was still feeling faint from the toxins, but he couldn’t let that stand. “And you were my friend before you became Fire Lord.” he countered, forcing himself to rasp as evenly as he could. “Surely, you know as well as I do that our duties to our people come before our personal feelings.”
He expected the stubborn prince- no, Fire Lord, before him to snipe back at him with more sharp words. Even as a boy, Sozin’s wit had been razor-sharp, and he’d expected that it would’ve grown sharper with all the time he had spent ruling the nation, in a court full of serpents and vipers conspiring to mould the will of Agni in imitation of their baser desires.
Instead, Fire Lord Sozin slumped onto his dragon, as though the wind had been knocked out of him.
“We could have been great together.” he whispered.
Roku inhaled, and exhaled, performing the basic breathing exercises that he had learned so long ago, in a golden courtyard with a brilliant boy by his side. This was a mistake, as he started coughing violently again, and Sozin sat up, staring at him in alarm.
When the coughing finally subsided, he spoke. “It’s not too late, my friend. You saved me today, when you could have left me behind to die.”
“I could have left you behind.” Sozin agreed, golden eyes glazed with confusion. “I could have left you behind, and that would leave me free to conquer the world. What have I done?” he whispered.
There were many ways that Roku could have responded to that. It was evident that his old friend had saved him out of impulse, not because he had had a sudden change in heart, or because he suddenly decided to become an honourable Fire Lord.
There was so little left of the warm-hearted Prince he had known and adored in the man who stood before him. Yet his heart still ached; insistently, inexplicably.
Forget about being the Avatar. That had never been who he was to Sozin.
“I’m glad that you did. Because if you left me there to die, I would have come back to haunt you for the rest of your life as a ghost.” Roku joked. “I’d haunt your descendants as well, for as long as it takes for you stubborn royal asses to admit that you were wrong.”
“Ghosts aren’t real.” Sozin scoffed.
“Says the descendant of Agni, father of dragons.” Roku rolled his eyes playfully.
It was easy, all too easy, to slip back into the familiar banter of their boyhood.
“That’s different!” Sozin threw up his hands, falling into their old rhythm.
Tui and La.
Push and pull.
That was the way the world worked.
Being the Avatar meant maintaining the balance of the world. For so long, Roku himself had been out of balance, even as he transcended the divisions of the Four Nations, mediating conflict and fostering bonds of kinship.
In pursuing his duty, his heart and soul had fallen out of balance.
Faintly, Roku recalled a passage that he had learnt, back when he was a young boy accompanying Sozin in his studies. He had yawned his way through the Book of Rites, but stayed for Sozin’s sake.
“To bring forth a virtuous world, one must first cultivate the self, care for one’s family, and tend to one’s nation. Only then can the world be pacified." He quoted.
“You always did prefer the lessons in poetry.” Sozin murmured, as hazy, half-forgotten memories wove their way to the forefront of their minds. “A great leader first concerns himself with the people, and feels not joy till the world rejoices.”
“Memorial to Yueyang Tower.” Roku said softly. In his own strange way, Sozin had committed himself to the teachings of the ancient poets. How many lonely nights had his old friend passed in that empty palace, surrounded by nothing but his scrolls and candlelight? He had no wife, no child… Did Fire Lord Sozin even have a single friend?
“You and I.” Roku began, then paused to think of his next words. “We were born to do something together. I don’t know what that is, and I was once scared of the destiny awaiting us and our overwhelming power. And I still am. But I believe in you, Sozin. We can’t erase the past, but you saved me today, when you could have let me go, and I believe that it counts for something.”
“You’re naïve.” Sozin scoffed. “A soft-hearted fool. Someone like you has no place in the empire I will build.”
“Me, soft-hearted?” Roku exhaled, a wry smile finding its way to his lips. “I’m not the one who turned his back on his lifelong ambitions of world domination for a single hairpiece.”
“I could still kill you. It would be easy for me to push you off the dragon and let you fall to your death.” Sozin said.
“But you won’t.” Roku countered. He didn’t know where this confidence came from, but somehow, he knew that Sozin had made his choice on the island. A choice which meant having Roku in his future.
“No, I won’t.” Sozin murmured, that dazed, confused look returning to his face. When Roku dissolved into another coughing fit, he shifted closer, running a broad palm up his back. “Cough it out.” He commanded.
Roku had rarely ever said no to that tone of voice.
After that, the two of them slipped into a companionable silence, with Sozin occasionally stroking his back comfortingly. And for the first time in over thirty years, Roku smiled as the clear azure skies of the Caldera unfolded before him.