Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: If you think this needs its rating bumped to an 'M,' please let me know.

Honored Soldier, Glorious Son

You are a young boy born in the rural Fire Nation to a farming family of moderate means, in the later years of Fire Lord Sozin. You are a good kid, and you are loved.

When you are four years old, you find a baby swallowdove on the ground, having fallen out of its nest. Its body is swarming with armor ants, and they are biting it, their mandibles slicing into its softest parts.

You pick it up and run for your mother, bawling loudly for help. But she shakes her head, and tells you that such fallen birds are pushed out of their nests by their parents to make way for the stronger ones.

"It's the way of nature," she says, as she washes the armor ants from your hands. "It is best not to interfere."

You bear the red marks of the ant's bites for some time, swollen like blisters.

You never see an Air Nomad in your childhood. They were banned from landing on the main islands when you were an infant, first with fines, then with harsher sanctions.

"I don't see why the sky rats are allowed even on the outer islands," your father opines. "We shouldn't be letting them onto our lands at all."

"They're strange. They mark themselves, head to toe. And no ties to anything, not even family! Not even each other. With no laws, who knows what they're capable of doing?" Your mother shivers. "I'm scared of them, frankly. Flying around… how could we defend ourselves from them, if they ever attacked?"

The Fire Nation is safer without them.

Your mother has the gift, and so do you. She is invaluable, helping you control it so you don't burn yourself or anyone else. It is a long process, involving many ruined pillows, rugs and drapes.

At six, you are ready to go into town and join a firebending class. You are not the best in your class, not by far. But you aren't bad either. You can concentrate, and you can keep the flame focused into a searing blade or unleash it in a firestorm.

You love bending. It is exciting and gratifying for you to practice this skill, and you understand what the stories mean when they describe bending as 'feeding the spirit's fire.' It's like there is nothing else in the world that matters, nothing else quite as present and alive. Bending is like stretching a muscle deep inside you, is like quenching a thirst you didn't know you had.

Your parents tell you stories of your ancestors.

"They were poor," explains your father. "And they had none of the luxuries we take for granted today; no wooden floors, no clean water, no healers who knew what they were doing. There was no public education. Why, the things they teach these days…" He shakes his head wryly. "I don't even understand the half of it."

"You live in a golden age, my son," your mother says. "Your future is brighter than any generation before you. And all thanks to our Fire Lord, Sozin."

Your father agrees. "Thanks to Fire Lord Sozin, we are the richest, most advanced nation in the world. We are the light on the hill." He puts his hand on your shoulder. "Remember this, Son. Honor your ancestors, and honor your Fire Lord. All of civilization depends on it."

"Reach inside," Your firebending Sifu says. "Draw out the heat from your breath. Fire wants to grow and consume, and our task is to allow it to do so only when and where we want it to."

You learn to use your bending as a tool. Your father's fields are often plagued by lizard-crows, pests that ruin the maize and moonpeaches, and you practice your aim on them. You get to a point where you can herd them with small flares until they are clustered together in fear of flame, then ignite the whole flock at once. You sometimes earn pocket change from other farmers for the same favor.

You could make a good living, with firebending, as a soldier or a metalsmith. But it is obvious which career is the better choice. Metalsmiths make a living, sure, but they go half-blind from the forge and their skin is always blackened with coal dust. Soldiers not only bear the finest clothes and equipment, but they shine honor around them like a light. A soldier stopping in a shop gives honor to its owner. A soldier greeting you brightens the day. Soldiers are composed of the best and brightest of Fire Nation society.

There are more recruitment posters every year, posted on the walls of shops and on lantern posts, and when you are twelve years old you read them with your imagination dancing. The Army! Sozin's Army! Brave soldiers, heroic soldiers, soldiers chosen to serve!

When you announce your intentions to your family, your parents are delighted. A son who will serve in the army is a son who has promise, who has a future! Of course, you'll have to wait a few years yet, but not many. Your time will come.

Your father comes home one day with a tractor. It is a clunky, strange looking thing that coughs smoke like a dragon and rips up the soil with the power of ten Komodo Rhinos. Your father loves it.

"And to think, in the Dirt Kingdom they still till by hand with rocks and bones!" Your father laughs. "Incredible, isn't it? I feel sorry for them."

You nod. Everyone knows that the Earth Kingdom is an incredibly primitive place. They bind their women's feet, did you know that? They never wash, did you know that? They still trade with those bison-jockey Air Nomads, did you know that?

There is a parade a few weeks after your sixteenth birthday, with dragon dances and fireworks and waving flags. And there is an army recruiter, promising golden careers of honor and prestige. You are swift to sign up.

Army training is much like your firebending classes, but more intense. Starting before sunrise, your superiors make you run, climb, jump, and lift until your every muscle aches, and then the firebending starts. But you know that this is all part of the test, all part of determining if you are worthy of being a soldier.

The cadets are sorted into several tiers of skill, and while you don't achieve the top tier, you make it into the second. You mix with other tiers during meals and your rare off-hours, and you soon befriend other cadets.

There is Taka, a firebender of the highest tier, one who shows promise for generating lightning. Taka has a bawdy sense of humor and a great love of betting, often emptying everyone else's pockets in tile games. You think that Taka is rather chubby for a soldier, and he is often teased for his ill-fitting armor.

You also meet Enquar, an eighteen-year-old in your tier, who is already married and with an infant daughter. He is soft-spoken, and says that he joined the army to provide a steady income for his family. His home village in the highland jungles of the Fire Nation sounds like a different world from the village you grew up in, and you enjoy swapping stories of your families and traditions.

Once you graduate from basic training, you serve as a guard, protecting the manor of a local lord on one of the Fire Nation's islands. It's quiet. Enquar stays with you, and on your off hours he gushes about his daughter, how cute she is, how clever, how she's taking her first steps already. You find the subject tiresome, but put up with it for the sake of company on the long nights of guard work. When you go home, your family gives you as royal a treatment as they can afford, and they beam as you show them your full suit of official armor.

Then, one day, a meeting is called in the town hall, for all the firebenders who had undergone military training. There, an official flanked by scarlet banners tells you that Fire Lord Sozin is calling firebenders together, is amassing his loyal servants for a great stride that will change the world forever. There is an omen coming, a blessing, a comet, and it will give you power over the flame the like of which you now can only imagine. Even the weakest of you will be made like the strongest, and the strongest will reach peaks of firebending never before seen. You are the best, you are the brightest lights the Fire Nation has to offer, and it was time to spread, to grow.

All this time, you and your peers are told, the Fire Nation has been preparing for this glorious destiny. This is our purpose, given to us by Agni himself. This was why we have the gift of flame. This was why we are Fire Nation. This was why we are here.

Your heart beats a powerful tattoo in your chest that does not fade, even after the meeting is over, even after you go to bed. You stay awake like the sun is setting your blood afire. Your mind is buzzing. The other nations would never be able to withstand this. Not a chance. And then, the world would be Fire Nation. The whole surface of the earth would be covered with the scarlet of life. No more peasants digging in the mud. No more savages in the howling wilderness. No more bandits stealing away children and women to populate their sky-enclaves. No more of the uncivilized mess that is the rest of the world. All would be Fire Nation. All would be orderly, and good, and right.

You are nearly eighteen, and your boat to the Western Air Temple is going to leave later than those to the other temples, because the Western is closer. As you wait in the military compound near the edge of the Fire Nation, you spend time with Enquar, and with Taka, who you have reunited with.

"I hope we will not be gone long," says Enquar. "I hate to spend so much time away from my family."

"I will never marry," says Taka. "I cannot imagine being tied down like that. Enquar, no offense, but I would simply die if I were in your place, Hotman."

You laugh. Though honestly, you aren't sure at all if you would marry or not. There were some pretty servant girls at the manor you guarded, and you occasionally would flirt with them, but servants aren't marriage material. Not for a soldier like you!

"To freedom!" cries Taka, lifting a cup of sake. "To us! May we be young and reckless forever!"

You toast, and so does Enquar, though the married man is, in your opinion, far from reckless.

The cliffs around the Western Air Temple dive into the sea, great fjords winding miles inland. The fleet makes it up the channels with only minor technical difficulties. It makes port in a natural harbor in the middle of the night, still a long way from the Temple.

You clamber on shore in the darkness, surrounded by hundreds of other firebenders, all clad in identical facemasks. You shiver in your armor. You've never left the Fire Nation before, and it is cold this far north. A catowl hoots as your regiment works its way along the base of the cliff. You breathe, stoking your inner fire, and try to quell your heart's trembling. It's almost time.

"Dawn already?" says someone to your right, and you look up. To your surprise, the sky is indeed turning orange, though it must be three in the morning. You cannot see the comet from where you stand at the base of the cliff, but you feel warm.

You've never quite mastered this next part, which was fine. Most of the soldiers are less than proficient at using fire to fly, even Taka, though everyone has learned to use it to extend jumps and hasten running. But now, when you call your fire from within, it rolls out in waves, and you are propelled into the air like a firecracker.

Your flight is swift, and uncontrolled, and wonderful. You want to stop and explore this new power. You want to play with it, to let your flames grow as big as possible, to go up until you can go no higher. Your heart is giddy with power and possibility.

But no. You have a job to do, and so you stifle your joy.

There are the buildings, hanging upside-down like wolfbats, just as the Captain had described. You reduce your flame and land roughly in the orange light. Everything is eerily quiet. The airbenders must still be in bed.

Then, the quiet shatters. It's time.

The briefing had made everything seem so orderly. Move in this fashion, in these groups and at this rate. Do this here, then repeat. The invasion had been presented like a formula, a system, like a machine with inputs and outputs. Put several hundred firebenders into a temple and come out with one Avatar.

You barge in with a group of others into a room where a nun is sleeping. "Where is the Avatar?" someone shouts, as you all have been ordered to, and she blinks in confusion and surprise. You all pause for a moment. You were told to eliminate any airbenders who are uncooperative, under suspicion of aiding the Avatar. Is this 'uncooperative?' What is 'uncooperative?' What are you supposed to do now?

Then an airblast comes, as the nun regains her senses, and your training kicks in. One of your fellows is sent flying out the door, and the rest of you release your comet fire as one. It does not take even five seconds for her to die.

You have never killed a person before. You have been burned, and are familiar with burns from training, from sparring. This is not like that. She is there one moment, and then she is a blackened husk.

There is no time to think, or feel or consider or reflect. There is another room, and another, and your group soon learns that most of the airbenders are 'uncooperative.' They do not even understand what is going on, at first. Later, they do, and strike back. You kill, and kill again. Eventually, you stop asking about the Avatar. All about you, other soldiers are doing the same. It is what you are supposed to do. What else can you do, when everyone else is doing it? You can't stop, can't pause, or you'll be blown away.

You see atrocities, things outside the realm of reason. You see the lighting-struck bodies lying about the plaza like dropped sacks of clothing. You see a dead woman violated. You see children running, screaming, women carrying babies, and then they are consumed by fire. You see infants killed by swinging them into the walls. You see bodies that are still moving, trying to get up with their legs and arms burnt away.

Did you do these things? You are masked. You look like everyone, cloaked in a freeing, frightening anonymity. You could be anyone. Anyone could be you. You could do anything. No one would ever know.

It ends, at some point. On your final sweep, you find a child who has shoved herself into a cupboard, her gangly legs folded up into the tiniest space possible. Fire kills her. Is it yours? Does it matter?

You return a week later to great cheering and celebration. Victory music plays from every string, every pipe. The strikes against the other temples, apparently, have been successful, though none of them report finding the Avatar.

You are eighteen, and you decide to retire. You have earned enough from the army to start up a farm stand, and that's all you feel the desire to do. The war will be over soon anyway.

Because you have experience, you are drafted again a year later. You are still a soldier in the eyes of the Nation. Refusing is deserting, and no one deserts the Fire Nation Army.

You are assigned to a specialist group that hunts down escaped airbenders suspected of hiding or aiding the Avatar, and you spend the next few years on the road, chasing rumors and windstorms.

It is not overly difficult. Airbenders flock like birds to the temple refuse you bait them with, and if that isn't sufficient, you hire someone to shave their head and paint on arrows.

You are good at it. You ambush and kill so many airbenders you can't keep track. You burn towns and villages where they are hiding, and shoot down bison that try to flee. You've gotten better at lightning.

It is on the road that you reunite with Enquar and Taka. Enquar has been assigned as a guard in one of the new colonies, and Taka is on leave from the front. Taka suggests that you all go to the tavern, and you agree.

Between drinks, you and Taka speak in low voices about what you've been up to the past few years. The places you've been, the battles you've seen, the girls you've romanced. Enquar doesn't say much. Not about his daughter, or his wife. He mostly sits silent, nursing his rice wine.

"Damn, you're still doing it, aren't you?" asks Taka, and you nod.

Before long, all of you are drunk.

"I hate 'im," says Taka. "Hate 'im."

Enquar looks up. "Hate who?"

"Th' Fire Lord Sozin. Hate him."

"You can't say that," says Enquar, his voice breaking. "You can never say that."

"I dun' care. He's ruined everyone. Everyone's ruined." Taka bursts into tears.

You have another drink. You want to say It was for the greater good or They had it coming or even just Orders are orders. But nothing comes out, so you just lean your head back and stare at the ceiling.

Enquar lets out a long, agonized moan. "The little girl. There were little girls, a nursery, and they were like my little Naya, and I couldn't burn them. But everyone was burning them and then I did burn them. I did, I did."

You feel like a black stone is settling itself in your stomach. You can't hate the Fire Lord. The Fire Lord is leading the Fire Nation into glory. You have to trust and honor the Fire Lord because shit, who else are you supposed to trust and honor?

Taka has passed out, and the sound of Enquar moaning is unbearable. You step outside into the evening and start to walk.

You walk away from the bar, away from the tiny outpost that passes for a village in this part of the Earth Kingdom. You walk out into the darkness, until the only light you see is that of the stars, sparks dancing against an endless, eternal sky.