Fic: Memories (PG13) ch5 of 5 -- Complete!
Title: Memories
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Pairings: Mai/ Zuko
Summary: After three years apart, Mai and Zuko revisit some old memories together.
Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4||
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Mai huffs in irritation as he knocks her hand away, but before she can protest, he leans over and extinguishes the candle, plunging the room into utter darkness. “Get over yourself, Zuko, it’s just a scar,” Mai snaps, and then immediately regrets it. After all, they have been apart for three years: he does not know how blunt she has grown since, and she does not know if he is still the sensitive boy he once was.
Beside her, Zuko hisses and then runs his hand restlessly through his hair. He is taken aback by her curt manner, but it seems as if he is not entirely displeased - a revelation that appears as unexpected to him as it is to her.
Brushing the episode aside, Mai snuggles deeply into his embrace, and it is this unsaid gesture that ultimately mollifies him, that makes him beam again with love and pride.
“You’ve changed,” he murmurs as he trails his fingers through her hair.
“It’s been awhile,” she concedes. She would never have dared to snap at him in the past.
Mai closes her eyes and stretches out against him, basking in the warm glow of his attention. She loves the way he holds her - oh so gently, oh so reverently, as if she were something precious. She loves the feel of his fingers as they dance lightly up and down her neck, and then smiles smugly at the feel of his awakening body.
Patiently, she waits for him to advance their love play, but his touch remains chaste, and she realizes with a start that he has possibly never been with a woman before. The thought tickles her, but the implications are serious, and so she quickly sobers up.
He doesn’t yet know that she has grown into a whore.
Sensing a change in her thoughts, Zuko touches her cheek lightly and raises an eyebrow, cueing her to speak, but Mai just frowns and looks away. How is she supposed to break the news to him? How is she even supposed to start?
“Kissed many girls?” Mai says at last. She speaks lightly, teasingly, testing him for a reaction, but Zuko shoots her a withering look and clicks his tongue in irritation.
Glaring, he gestures angrily at his scar. It takes her a moment to figure it out, but when she does understand, Mai cringes. She hadn’t meant to insult him. It has certainly never crossed her mind that the scar might affect his chances with the girls. “I wasn’t talking about that, Zuko,” she sighs.
“You winced when you saw it,” he says accusingly.
“I didn’t do that because I thought it was ugly,” she snaps back. “I cringed because it hurts!”
A pensive silence descends upon them both. The Agni kai is too sore a topic for both of them, and the reunion has reopened this old wound, so that it now swells and throbs with renewed fervor.
“Does it still…hurt?” Mai asks quietly, keeping her question deliberately vague, and then tenses when Zuko sucks in his breath. He frowns, and shrugs, and then dips his head. After what feels like eternity, he nods, and from the length of time it has taken him to answer, Mai knows that he is not just referring to the physical pain.
“And you?” he says, redirecting her question back to her.
Mai flinches. It has been so long since she has let herself think of that incident. The last thing she wants to do is to drown in those memories, but the topic has been broached and her mind is no longer in control of itself, and so she finds herself transported back into the unforgiving past.
=======
Mai flung herself on her bed and howled. She knew well enough that she would be thoroughly caned for her defiance, but for now, she didn’t care. Let her parents beat her black and blue. What did it matter! All she wanted was to see him one last time before he disappeared forever, and she had been denied even that.
The pain was unbearable. It felt as if someone had smeared ground chili all over her insides. It felt as if that same person had then layered the back of her chest with spearmint so that she burned with twin sensations of hot and cold, and then crushed her windpipe with hands so strong that she struggled to breathe.
Mai squeezed her eyes shut and tried in vain to block out the pain, but a hundred invisible fingers yanked and pulled and pinched her mercilessly. Small, wicked teeth gnawed at her fingertips until they were numb and raw. It made her want to scream. It made her want to die.
So this was what betrayal felt like. If only she had known.
Mai tossed her head in a silent scream. How could it be that things could fall apart just like that, without a hint of warning? Just yesterday they had sat together in the shade of the garden. He had smiled so warmly, and they had almost held hands, but she had been too shy to let him touch her.
Stupid, stupid! How stupid of her. She should have let him. They both would have been all the happier for it. Instead she had taken him for granted, and now he was gone, and she would never see him again.
Zuko, I’m sorry! Please come back…
Through the clouds in her mind, Mai heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Pride bit deep. She absolutely refused to let her parents see her in pain. Not now, not when she had seen the cold-blooded disregard of a parent towards his own child. She had no desire to end up like Zuko. No, she could not afford to let her own parents see her like this. She could not afford to show them any sign of vulnerability, not when she knew that it would just allow them exploit her weaknesses. She had no trust left in grown-ups to expect anything less.
And so she had gritted her teeth and wept silently while her parents listened anxiously in the corridor. She cursed them in her heart, while tears of sheer hatred flowed steadily from her eyes.
When the silence alarmed them enough to unbolt the door and peer inside, Mai kept her body rigid and her eyes vacant and unblinking. It was not hard to deaden herself: the world disgusted her, and she had no desire to see the expressions of mock sympathy on her parents’ faces. Her ears however, refused to shut down, and against her will, she could make out the muffled sound of her mother crying. Well, let the bitch cry. Mai had no use for such crocodile tears.
“Is this what you want?!” Mai screamed inwardly, beside herself with hurt. “You’re awful, the whole stinking lot of you, and I hate you all!”
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A long-forgotten part of her shudders. Now that the memory has been revisited, the pain is shockingly intense. She can clearly remember her rage and despair in the aftermath, but Mai merely grits her teeth and hurriedly locks her hurt away before it has a chance to consume her.
“Did it hurt?” she muses, and then shrugs dismissively. “I guess. I mean… it was so long ago…” she continues, and then forcibly turns her attention back to more pressing matters. She had lost her boyfriend once, and had been badly hurt in the process. What if she were to loose him again now?
Dimly, she wonders if Zuko is a traditionalist, the kind of man who expects chastity of his woman. She will not be surprised if he is; he kind of strikes her as the type. Briefly, she toys with the idea of keeping her past a secret from him, but dismisses the thought almost immediately: sooner or later, news of her past would reach him, and when it does, he will be even more upset at her for attempting to hide it. He has never liked to be kept in the dark.
Mai sighed. Affairs of the heart are just too damn complicated. Oh well, it would be better to take up the gamble and loose him now, while she still remembers what it is like to live without him. At this moment, she is fairly confident that she can convince herself to stop caring: a few more days as his girlfriend will make that option absolutely impossible.
“Zuko…” she begins, “do you remember the time we went down to the river?” she says quietly, and waits for him to nod. “Do you remember why?”
Beside her, Zuko frowns suspiciously, wondering where the conversation is headed. “But they stopped, didn’t they,” he says uncertainly. “I don’t remember your parents ever raising the subject of marriage after that.”
“They stopped because the crown prince seemed interested. How long do you think they waited once they learnt you had been…” she pauses, and nods in his direction. It has been three years but she still cannot bring herself to say the word “banished”.
“Think, Zuko,” she says seriously, and turns to face him. “What do you think I needed to do to make them stop?”
=======
For weeks, Mai kept up her act, purely out of spite. Every time she heard footsteps approaching, she quickly crept into bed and deadened her features. Once the adults had left, she would rise again, and then go about her business in the privacy of her room. There was nothing much she could do except cry and grieve, but even then it was better than wandering about the house. At least she was able to torment her parents with her “condition”. It pacified her to see them beside themselves with worry. Serve them right for hurting her this way. They deserved it. She hoped that they would never smile again.
It wasn’t long however, before she overheard something that chilled her to the bone. In his anxiety, her father had called in a witch doctor, and had been given a straightforward piece of advice: If heartbreak was a disease, then marriage was its best medicine. The most effective way to stop a girl from pining over a lost love would be to provide her with a new husband and some children of her own.
It was these words that finally stemmed the flow of her tears and turned Mai’s heart to stone. She had thought her faith in humanity could fall no lower. She was dully amused to be proven wrong.
From then on, nothing surprised her anymore. It didn’t surprise her when her parents began to hold tea parties again. It didn’t surprise her when the servants carried her, kicking and screaming, to be scrubbed clean and sprinkled with perfume. And it certainly didn’t surprise her to learn that she had been betrothed to a wealthy young man whose father worked in the same office as hers. What did she care? Life was a farce anyway, as was the illusion that one had control over one’s own destiny. She knew now that her life did not belong to her. It never had.
And then one day, while she was embroidering a pillowcase that would serve as part of her dowry, Mai spied a small, plush box beneath her bed. Curious, she fished it out and blew the dust off, and only then did she recognize the set of knives that Zuko had given her, all those years ago.
Zuko…
His name on her lips sounded weird. It had been so long ago… too long… and yet not long enough. She could still remember him clearly. His smile, his warmth, the sparkle in his eyes. She remembered playing together, and growing up together, and falling in love…
She remembered how she had once resisted the idea of marrying a faceless someone. How things had changed! Once, her mind screamed in protest at the thought of belonging to a man who couldn’t care less about her, and now, she was about to marry a man she couldn’t care less about. What a sellout. What would Zuko think if he were to know what she had become?
But then again, it didn’t matter what Zuko would think. He wouldn’t understand. Things were different now. She would never care about anyone else, ever again, so why fight? It would be so easy to just go along with the wedding, to just let herself be given away to this new man, to serve him, to run his household, to bear his children…
Against her will, Mai shuddered at the idea of a foreign growth inside her. Could she really bring herself to bear the child of a stranger? Already, she could feel her body tighten in protest. Just the thought was enough to leave her feeling violated.
For the first time in months, Mai buried her head in her hands and wept.
Later that night, she went to bed with her box of knives, and clung to it like she would a cushion. Her head hurt, but she didn’t know why. All she knew was that two paths had opened up before her, and she had no idea which path to take. On one side was the path that her family had chosen for her. It would be so easy to just go along and accept whatever life had to throw at her. It would be so easy to banish all hope and just live day by day, moment by moment, second by second, never knowing anything better…
Only… only she had known something better. She had known what it was like to mean something to someone. And that made things a whole lot more difficult.
Mai sighed and ran her fingers across the old cardboard box. The first option might not be desirable, but if she turned from the path that her parents had chosen, what would become of her? There was no guarantee that she would ever find happiness with another. And even if by some stroke of good fortune, Zuko were to return, he would be a changed man. It would come as no surprise if his years in exile would leave him incapable of loving her the way he once did.
Two paths, each as bleak as the other. One bearing only the throbbing ache of a life lived in defeat, the other bearing the chilling emptiness of a life lived alone.
Suppressing a sob, Mai curled up in bed and buried her head in her pillow. It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.
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“So then… so you… made yourself --”
“Unmarryable? Yes,” Mai replies stonily.
Zuko sucks in his breath and then rubs his face, trying to digest the meaning of her words. It is all a bit much for him, and he shakes his head wearily. “I don’t understand,” he says at last.
“I don’t expect you to,” she says, and grits her teeth when he sighs harshly. He wants her to talk, to share her side of the story, to make him understand what caused it all, but she knows all that is pointless. He will not get it because it is beyond him. His concerns are different, they revolve around face and valour and honour, and there is no way he can understand how she can throw her dignity away like that.
So instead, she shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. “I was thirteen,” she says quietly. It is a good excuse, she thinks to herself. It implies so much while explaining so little.
Zuko shakes his head again and runs his hand through his hair. “Do you, you know…”
“Do I regret?” she asks, reading his meaning plainly on his face. She had though that his years in exile would have hardened him, and is surprised to see that he still wears his heart on his sleeve. “You mean… do I regret that I’m here now, travelling beyond the boarders, talking with you?” she continues, and then faces him squarely and lowers her voice to a purr. “Because you know what would have happened if I hadn’t slept around? The marriage would have proceeded as planned, and I’d have ended up locked away in some man’s house. Just a thing for him to dress up and show off when his friends come over. Just a body for him to have his way with whenever he wants, however he wants, for as long as he wants.”
“And how is that any different from what you did!”
“Because this way, I choose who and when. If that man had married me I’d have no voice. Any time he demands it I’ll have to spread my legs for him --”
“Stop it--” Zuko hisses.
“-- and let him into me.”
“I said that’s enough.”
“-- and accept his seed until I grow swollen and pregnant with no will and no say and no thought of my own.”
“I told you to shut up!” Zuko thunders, and raises his fist. She has never seen him like this before, muscles taught, all coiled up like a tiger and trembling with rage. For a moment, she thinks that he is about to hit her for her, and tenses in alarm, but instead he turns to a wall hanging and blasts it full of flame.
“Zuko!” she cries. Her fear is suddenly forgotten. She hates seeing him like this. She hates to think that he might have grown up to become a hot-tempered jerk.
“Shut up!” he yells in reply. For awhile, they face off, glaring squarely at each other, but then the anger fades and he strides silently off.
And then the door clicks shut, and Mai casts around, lost. Now that he has walked out on her, she does not know what to think. All she knows is that she feels awful. It is like the separation is happening all over again, and she wonders dully if she is about to break down.
Sighing, she briskly reaches for an incense stick, snaps it in half, and lights it. The stick should burn for maybe fifteen minutes. It will be more than enough time for her to crawl into bed and wallow in self-pity. And then the stick will burn itself out, and she will bury this incident and never think of it again.
At least, that was her plan. Now that her stick is lighted, Mai feels… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even her fingers seem numb, and so she clenches and unclenches her fist a few times to get the blood running again.
How irksome.
For hours, Mai stretches herself out and stares unseeingly at the ceiling, but at length, she gives up trying to sleep and dons her fur-lined cloak. She usually hates the cold ocean wind, but this time, perhaps its burning chill against her cheeks would help to clear her mind.
She doesn’t expect Zuko to have had the same idea.
“Aren’t you cold?” The words leave her lips before she even had a chance to think, but to her relief, he merely utters some nonsense about his father and the homeland. Nothing about their earlier tiff. Nothing about his upset.
That he speaks to her at all is heartening. That he trusts her with his fears makes her smile. Still, it is not like Zuko to forget so easily. It is even less like him to forgive if he feels he has been wronged. And so she can only assume that he is avoiding the topic on purpose, while he straightens out his feelings about her past.
“Mai,” he says quietly, as she is about to leave. “How do you…” he begins, and then trails off. She knows that there is no way to describe the depth of his perplexity. She knows that he will never find the words, and so she hands him a metaphor that he is more familiar with.
“How do I live with the scar?” she says bluntly, and holds his gaze defiantly, willing him to understand. She sees his eyes widen slightly as he makes the link between his shame and hers, sees his brows furrow as he tries to resist it, and then finally watches his shoulders sag as the full implications of the Agni kai finally sink in. Only then does she look away.
Wordlessly, she leans against the side of the ship and gazes out into the horizon. She can already begin to make out silhouettes of the mountains that shape the Homeland, and remembers his disjointed ramblings about his father. For all his blather about honour, perhaps all he truly craves for is his father’s forgiveness. Perhaps forgiveness is all anyone ever craves, even though they don’t need it. Even though they know they aren’t really in the wrong.
Eventually, she leans into him, and he wraps an arm possessively around her waist. Perhaps all has not been forgiven, not yet. He still hates her past, but is willing to love her in spite of it, and for now, that is all she asks of him. Breathily, she murmurs his name, and is gratified to hear her own fall from his lips. And then he catches her in a kiss so sweet, so tender, so full of yearning that it leaves her utterly lightheaded.
He feels so warm and solid against her. Warm and solid and immensely reassuring. She’s missed this, the feeling of being valued and accepted in spite of everything that she is. She’s missed the feeling of standing before someone and knowing that he sees past the layers of masks that she wears and speaks directly to the part of her that truly matters.
For years, she has kept her emotions tightly bottled up inside, but as he holds her now, she gradually feels the restraints fall away. She feels lighter already. For the first time in years, she feels that perhaps, just this once, she might be free to love.
~ End ~
Endnotes: YAY, that's it, that's IT!!!! Man, this chapter was SO DIFFICULT to do, it kept coming out wrong, and there were so many elements which just refused to sort itself out. Had to do at least three different rewrites before it started to come together. Hope its decent now :DDD
I also did something slightly blasphemous... I'm not a huge fan of AUs, and I've always avoided recasting/ rewriting a canon scene (cos i'm priggish that way) so I really really REALLY did not want to touch that scene in Book 3 Ep 1 where they talk on the deck of the ship. Unfortunately it was the only way I could think of to gel both bits of the story together without messing up the Avatar timeline (Am pretty sure the boat ride does NOT take 3D2N). Tried to compensate by making the actual canon event as vague and internal as possible. Forgive meeee!
And of course, THANK YOU for reading/ staying this long! Hope you enjoyed, and do leave concrit if you see something that needs improving <3 <3 <3
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Pairings: Mai/ Zuko
Summary: After three years apart, Mai and Zuko revisit some old memories together.
Chapter 1 || Chapter 2 || Chapter 3 || Chapter 4||
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Mai huffs in irritation as he knocks her hand away, but before she can protest, he leans over and extinguishes the candle, plunging the room into utter darkness. “Get over yourself, Zuko, it’s just a scar,” Mai snaps, and then immediately regrets it. After all, they have been apart for three years: he does not know how blunt she has grown since, and she does not know if he is still the sensitive boy he once was.
Beside her, Zuko hisses and then runs his hand restlessly through his hair. He is taken aback by her curt manner, but it seems as if he is not entirely displeased - a revelation that appears as unexpected to him as it is to her.
Brushing the episode aside, Mai snuggles deeply into his embrace, and it is this unsaid gesture that ultimately mollifies him, that makes him beam again with love and pride.
“You’ve changed,” he murmurs as he trails his fingers through her hair.
“It’s been awhile,” she concedes. She would never have dared to snap at him in the past.
Mai closes her eyes and stretches out against him, basking in the warm glow of his attention. She loves the way he holds her - oh so gently, oh so reverently, as if she were something precious. She loves the feel of his fingers as they dance lightly up and down her neck, and then smiles smugly at the feel of his awakening body.
Patiently, she waits for him to advance their love play, but his touch remains chaste, and she realizes with a start that he has possibly never been with a woman before. The thought tickles her, but the implications are serious, and so she quickly sobers up.
He doesn’t yet know that she has grown into a whore.
Sensing a change in her thoughts, Zuko touches her cheek lightly and raises an eyebrow, cueing her to speak, but Mai just frowns and looks away. How is she supposed to break the news to him? How is she even supposed to start?
“Kissed many girls?” Mai says at last. She speaks lightly, teasingly, testing him for a reaction, but Zuko shoots her a withering look and clicks his tongue in irritation.
Glaring, he gestures angrily at his scar. It takes her a moment to figure it out, but when she does understand, Mai cringes. She hadn’t meant to insult him. It has certainly never crossed her mind that the scar might affect his chances with the girls. “I wasn’t talking about that, Zuko,” she sighs.
“You winced when you saw it,” he says accusingly.
“I didn’t do that because I thought it was ugly,” she snaps back. “I cringed because it hurts!”
A pensive silence descends upon them both. The Agni kai is too sore a topic for both of them, and the reunion has reopened this old wound, so that it now swells and throbs with renewed fervor.
“Does it still…hurt?” Mai asks quietly, keeping her question deliberately vague, and then tenses when Zuko sucks in his breath. He frowns, and shrugs, and then dips his head. After what feels like eternity, he nods, and from the length of time it has taken him to answer, Mai knows that he is not just referring to the physical pain.
“And you?” he says, redirecting her question back to her.
Mai flinches. It has been so long since she has let herself think of that incident. The last thing she wants to do is to drown in those memories, but the topic has been broached and her mind is no longer in control of itself, and so she finds herself transported back into the unforgiving past.
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Mai flung herself on her bed and howled. She knew well enough that she would be thoroughly caned for her defiance, but for now, she didn’t care. Let her parents beat her black and blue. What did it matter! All she wanted was to see him one last time before he disappeared forever, and she had been denied even that.
The pain was unbearable. It felt as if someone had smeared ground chili all over her insides. It felt as if that same person had then layered the back of her chest with spearmint so that she burned with twin sensations of hot and cold, and then crushed her windpipe with hands so strong that she struggled to breathe.
Mai squeezed her eyes shut and tried in vain to block out the pain, but a hundred invisible fingers yanked and pulled and pinched her mercilessly. Small, wicked teeth gnawed at her fingertips until they were numb and raw. It made her want to scream. It made her want to die.
So this was what betrayal felt like. If only she had known.
Mai tossed her head in a silent scream. How could it be that things could fall apart just like that, without a hint of warning? Just yesterday they had sat together in the shade of the garden. He had smiled so warmly, and they had almost held hands, but she had been too shy to let him touch her.
Stupid, stupid! How stupid of her. She should have let him. They both would have been all the happier for it. Instead she had taken him for granted, and now he was gone, and she would never see him again.
Zuko, I’m sorry! Please come back…
Through the clouds in her mind, Mai heard the sound of footsteps approaching. Pride bit deep. She absolutely refused to let her parents see her in pain. Not now, not when she had seen the cold-blooded disregard of a parent towards his own child. She had no desire to end up like Zuko. No, she could not afford to let her own parents see her like this. She could not afford to show them any sign of vulnerability, not when she knew that it would just allow them exploit her weaknesses. She had no trust left in grown-ups to expect anything less.
And so she had gritted her teeth and wept silently while her parents listened anxiously in the corridor. She cursed them in her heart, while tears of sheer hatred flowed steadily from her eyes.
When the silence alarmed them enough to unbolt the door and peer inside, Mai kept her body rigid and her eyes vacant and unblinking. It was not hard to deaden herself: the world disgusted her, and she had no desire to see the expressions of mock sympathy on her parents’ faces. Her ears however, refused to shut down, and against her will, she could make out the muffled sound of her mother crying. Well, let the bitch cry. Mai had no use for such crocodile tears.
“Is this what you want?!” Mai screamed inwardly, beside herself with hurt. “You’re awful, the whole stinking lot of you, and I hate you all!”
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A long-forgotten part of her shudders. Now that the memory has been revisited, the pain is shockingly intense. She can clearly remember her rage and despair in the aftermath, but Mai merely grits her teeth and hurriedly locks her hurt away before it has a chance to consume her.
“Did it hurt?” she muses, and then shrugs dismissively. “I guess. I mean… it was so long ago…” she continues, and then forcibly turns her attention back to more pressing matters. She had lost her boyfriend once, and had been badly hurt in the process. What if she were to loose him again now?
Dimly, she wonders if Zuko is a traditionalist, the kind of man who expects chastity of his woman. She will not be surprised if he is; he kind of strikes her as the type. Briefly, she toys with the idea of keeping her past a secret from him, but dismisses the thought almost immediately: sooner or later, news of her past would reach him, and when it does, he will be even more upset at her for attempting to hide it. He has never liked to be kept in the dark.
Mai sighed. Affairs of the heart are just too damn complicated. Oh well, it would be better to take up the gamble and loose him now, while she still remembers what it is like to live without him. At this moment, she is fairly confident that she can convince herself to stop caring: a few more days as his girlfriend will make that option absolutely impossible.
“Zuko…” she begins, “do you remember the time we went down to the river?” she says quietly, and waits for him to nod. “Do you remember why?”
Beside her, Zuko frowns suspiciously, wondering where the conversation is headed. “But they stopped, didn’t they,” he says uncertainly. “I don’t remember your parents ever raising the subject of marriage after that.”
“They stopped because the crown prince seemed interested. How long do you think they waited once they learnt you had been…” she pauses, and nods in his direction. It has been three years but she still cannot bring herself to say the word “banished”.
“Think, Zuko,” she says seriously, and turns to face him. “What do you think I needed to do to make them stop?”
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For weeks, Mai kept up her act, purely out of spite. Every time she heard footsteps approaching, she quickly crept into bed and deadened her features. Once the adults had left, she would rise again, and then go about her business in the privacy of her room. There was nothing much she could do except cry and grieve, but even then it was better than wandering about the house. At least she was able to torment her parents with her “condition”. It pacified her to see them beside themselves with worry. Serve them right for hurting her this way. They deserved it. She hoped that they would never smile again.
It wasn’t long however, before she overheard something that chilled her to the bone. In his anxiety, her father had called in a witch doctor, and had been given a straightforward piece of advice: If heartbreak was a disease, then marriage was its best medicine. The most effective way to stop a girl from pining over a lost love would be to provide her with a new husband and some children of her own.
It was these words that finally stemmed the flow of her tears and turned Mai’s heart to stone. She had thought her faith in humanity could fall no lower. She was dully amused to be proven wrong.
From then on, nothing surprised her anymore. It didn’t surprise her when her parents began to hold tea parties again. It didn’t surprise her when the servants carried her, kicking and screaming, to be scrubbed clean and sprinkled with perfume. And it certainly didn’t surprise her to learn that she had been betrothed to a wealthy young man whose father worked in the same office as hers. What did she care? Life was a farce anyway, as was the illusion that one had control over one’s own destiny. She knew now that her life did not belong to her. It never had.
And then one day, while she was embroidering a pillowcase that would serve as part of her dowry, Mai spied a small, plush box beneath her bed. Curious, she fished it out and blew the dust off, and only then did she recognize the set of knives that Zuko had given her, all those years ago.
Zuko…
His name on her lips sounded weird. It had been so long ago… too long… and yet not long enough. She could still remember him clearly. His smile, his warmth, the sparkle in his eyes. She remembered playing together, and growing up together, and falling in love…
She remembered how she had once resisted the idea of marrying a faceless someone. How things had changed! Once, her mind screamed in protest at the thought of belonging to a man who couldn’t care less about her, and now, she was about to marry a man she couldn’t care less about. What a sellout. What would Zuko think if he were to know what she had become?
But then again, it didn’t matter what Zuko would think. He wouldn’t understand. Things were different now. She would never care about anyone else, ever again, so why fight? It would be so easy to just go along with the wedding, to just let herself be given away to this new man, to serve him, to run his household, to bear his children…
Against her will, Mai shuddered at the idea of a foreign growth inside her. Could she really bring herself to bear the child of a stranger? Already, she could feel her body tighten in protest. Just the thought was enough to leave her feeling violated.
For the first time in months, Mai buried her head in her hands and wept.
Later that night, she went to bed with her box of knives, and clung to it like she would a cushion. Her head hurt, but she didn’t know why. All she knew was that two paths had opened up before her, and she had no idea which path to take. On one side was the path that her family had chosen for her. It would be so easy to just go along and accept whatever life had to throw at her. It would be so easy to banish all hope and just live day by day, moment by moment, second by second, never knowing anything better…
Only… only she had known something better. She had known what it was like to mean something to someone. And that made things a whole lot more difficult.
Mai sighed and ran her fingers across the old cardboard box. The first option might not be desirable, but if she turned from the path that her parents had chosen, what would become of her? There was no guarantee that she would ever find happiness with another. And even if by some stroke of good fortune, Zuko were to return, he would be a changed man. It would come as no surprise if his years in exile would leave him incapable of loving her the way he once did.
Two paths, each as bleak as the other. One bearing only the throbbing ache of a life lived in defeat, the other bearing the chilling emptiness of a life lived alone.
Suppressing a sob, Mai curled up in bed and buried her head in her pillow. It just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all.
=========
“So then… so you… made yourself --”
“Unmarryable? Yes,” Mai replies stonily.
Zuko sucks in his breath and then rubs his face, trying to digest the meaning of her words. It is all a bit much for him, and he shakes his head wearily. “I don’t understand,” he says at last.
“I don’t expect you to,” she says, and grits her teeth when he sighs harshly. He wants her to talk, to share her side of the story, to make him understand what caused it all, but she knows all that is pointless. He will not get it because it is beyond him. His concerns are different, they revolve around face and valour and honour, and there is no way he can understand how she can throw her dignity away like that.
So instead, she shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head. “I was thirteen,” she says quietly. It is a good excuse, she thinks to herself. It implies so much while explaining so little.
Zuko shakes his head again and runs his hand through his hair. “Do you, you know…”
“Do I regret?” she asks, reading his meaning plainly on his face. She had though that his years in exile would have hardened him, and is surprised to see that he still wears his heart on his sleeve. “You mean… do I regret that I’m here now, travelling beyond the boarders, talking with you?” she continues, and then faces him squarely and lowers her voice to a purr. “Because you know what would have happened if I hadn’t slept around? The marriage would have proceeded as planned, and I’d have ended up locked away in some man’s house. Just a thing for him to dress up and show off when his friends come over. Just a body for him to have his way with whenever he wants, however he wants, for as long as he wants.”
“And how is that any different from what you did!”
“Because this way, I choose who and when. If that man had married me I’d have no voice. Any time he demands it I’ll have to spread my legs for him --”
“Stop it--” Zuko hisses.
“-- and let him into me.”
“I said that’s enough.”
“-- and accept his seed until I grow swollen and pregnant with no will and no say and no thought of my own.”
“I told you to shut up!” Zuko thunders, and raises his fist. She has never seen him like this before, muscles taught, all coiled up like a tiger and trembling with rage. For a moment, she thinks that he is about to hit her for her, and tenses in alarm, but instead he turns to a wall hanging and blasts it full of flame.
“Zuko!” she cries. Her fear is suddenly forgotten. She hates seeing him like this. She hates to think that he might have grown up to become a hot-tempered jerk.
“Shut up!” he yells in reply. For awhile, they face off, glaring squarely at each other, but then the anger fades and he strides silently off.
And then the door clicks shut, and Mai casts around, lost. Now that he has walked out on her, she does not know what to think. All she knows is that she feels awful. It is like the separation is happening all over again, and she wonders dully if she is about to break down.
Sighing, she briskly reaches for an incense stick, snaps it in half, and lights it. The stick should burn for maybe fifteen minutes. It will be more than enough time for her to crawl into bed and wallow in self-pity. And then the stick will burn itself out, and she will bury this incident and never think of it again.
At least, that was her plan. Now that her stick is lighted, Mai feels… nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even her fingers seem numb, and so she clenches and unclenches her fist a few times to get the blood running again.
How irksome.
For hours, Mai stretches herself out and stares unseeingly at the ceiling, but at length, she gives up trying to sleep and dons her fur-lined cloak. She usually hates the cold ocean wind, but this time, perhaps its burning chill against her cheeks would help to clear her mind.
She doesn’t expect Zuko to have had the same idea.
“Aren’t you cold?” The words leave her lips before she even had a chance to think, but to her relief, he merely utters some nonsense about his father and the homeland. Nothing about their earlier tiff. Nothing about his upset.
That he speaks to her at all is heartening. That he trusts her with his fears makes her smile. Still, it is not like Zuko to forget so easily. It is even less like him to forgive if he feels he has been wronged. And so she can only assume that he is avoiding the topic on purpose, while he straightens out his feelings about her past.
“Mai,” he says quietly, as she is about to leave. “How do you…” he begins, and then trails off. She knows that there is no way to describe the depth of his perplexity. She knows that he will never find the words, and so she hands him a metaphor that he is more familiar with.
“How do I live with the scar?” she says bluntly, and holds his gaze defiantly, willing him to understand. She sees his eyes widen slightly as he makes the link between his shame and hers, sees his brows furrow as he tries to resist it, and then finally watches his shoulders sag as the full implications of the Agni kai finally sink in. Only then does she look away.
Wordlessly, she leans against the side of the ship and gazes out into the horizon. She can already begin to make out silhouettes of the mountains that shape the Homeland, and remembers his disjointed ramblings about his father. For all his blather about honour, perhaps all he truly craves for is his father’s forgiveness. Perhaps forgiveness is all anyone ever craves, even though they don’t need it. Even though they know they aren’t really in the wrong.
Eventually, she leans into him, and he wraps an arm possessively around her waist. Perhaps all has not been forgiven, not yet. He still hates her past, but is willing to love her in spite of it, and for now, that is all she asks of him. Breathily, she murmurs his name, and is gratified to hear her own fall from his lips. And then he catches her in a kiss so sweet, so tender, so full of yearning that it leaves her utterly lightheaded.
He feels so warm and solid against her. Warm and solid and immensely reassuring. She’s missed this, the feeling of being valued and accepted in spite of everything that she is. She’s missed the feeling of standing before someone and knowing that he sees past the layers of masks that she wears and speaks directly to the part of her that truly matters.
For years, she has kept her emotions tightly bottled up inside, but as he holds her now, she gradually feels the restraints fall away. She feels lighter already. For the first time in years, she feels that perhaps, just this once, she might be free to love.
~ End ~
Endnotes: YAY, that's it, that's IT!!!! Man, this chapter was SO DIFFICULT to do, it kept coming out wrong, and there were so many elements which just refused to sort itself out. Had to do at least three different rewrites before it started to come together. Hope its decent now :DDD
I also did something slightly blasphemous... I'm not a huge fan of AUs, and I've always avoided recasting/ rewriting a canon scene (cos i'm priggish that way) so I really really REALLY did not want to touch that scene in Book 3 Ep 1 where they talk on the deck of the ship. Unfortunately it was the only way I could think of to gel both bits of the story together without messing up the Avatar timeline (Am pretty sure the boat ride does NOT take 3D2N). Tried to compensate by making the actual canon event as vague and internal as possible. Forgive meeee!
And of course, THANK YOU for reading/ staying this long! Hope you enjoyed, and do leave concrit if you see something that needs improving <3 <3 <3