[Fic] Bound
Title: Bound
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Mai/Zuko
Word Count: 647
Summary: Mai's never been quite sure what it was that brought them together.
Notes: This is actually my first time posting an Avatar fanfic online. Dunno what took me so long, but it's better late than never.;) (Note: Originally posted at my old journal here on 4/19/09.)
It began because he was the only one who seemed to agree with her. Which was significant enough.
Maybe it was because her mother told her things like, "Ribbons are to be given the utmost attention, dear. You can't be bored while choosing them!" She would hold up silk threads in shades of many magentas and jet blacks, from the Earth Kingdom's hidden isles, lost deserts, "places where they'll bend the grass from under your very feet!"
For years Mai thought Earthbenders could bend grass.
Ribbons were dull. Sometimes when her mother wasn't looking she'd spin them around her index finger like tiny serpents, round and round - like the stone dragons that wove around the palace pillars. Round and round, until the blood from her tiny fingers fled and they turned cold and tingly.
One afternoon, as the girls searched for fire-dragonflies, she watched from afar, pulling ribbons into shredded confetti wisps and twining them around her pinky, a stray twig. That was when he surprised her by approaching, looking sullen and shy.
"What are you doing?" he asked, koala-sheepishly.
"Nothing." She looked down hurriedly, brushing red fluff off her skirt - the remains of ribbons' lifeless bodies. "What are you doing here?"
"Mom's making me...watch 'Zula." He shuffled his feet.
"Right..."
"Really! Why else would I be here?"
"I don't know." She picked at her last ribbon, tickling the back of her neck. Yanked it loose.
"So what are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you messing up your ribbons?"
"Cause I'm bored." She began to tear the crimson snake carefully down the middle.
"Why don't you ever play with 'Zula and Ty Lee?"
"I do."
"You don't."
"Yes I do. Just not when it's boring!" She bit at the ribbon, eyes not meeting the prince's.
She had intended for him to leave, she had wanted him to. But what had followed had almost been a friendship, seeming to float like her ribbons in the wind, in a direction neither of the two could have foreseen. Maybe not so much a friendship as a little on-going conference over surprising similarities, one that continued for many a tired autumn afternoon to follow. Ones that smelt of burnt fireflakes and felt like a heavy, rusty orange. (She'd always hated those most - until that day.)
She talked about her hatred of ribbons, Azula's silly games. How the Royal Fire Academy for Girls had uniforms that made you feel like the bright-clothed dolls in the Fire Festivals that she actually used to almost like. How her mother insisted a lady was never bored with all her duties to occupy her, how her father was always just a bit too busy to talk or play darts like they used to. She played by herself now - she liked the whistle of the flight through the air, the feeling that she could control the uncontrollable.
He talked about how he sometimes didn't really care about bending at all, even forgot it existed within him. And then other times it was all he was, it was a constant burning obsession to master that next move. How his father sometimes told him to take a break from training while he practiced a few more moves with Azula alone, told him to go ask his mother to tell him the tales of the great battles of the Air Temples. How those particular stories always seemed to lack something - the life he felt in a simple ember burning in his palm, a simple fairy-tale about real dragons (not like those stone ones Mai spent her days gazing at, dreamy eyed).
Looking back, she had always thought it was these things, the things in life they found so dull or strangely empty, that connected them. (Bound them like her ribbons were supposed to.)
It wasn't until years had passed that she realized it was just the opposite.
Rating: G
Characters/Pairings: Mai/Zuko
Word Count: 647
Summary: Mai's never been quite sure what it was that brought them together.
Notes: This is actually my first time posting an Avatar fanfic online. Dunno what took me so long, but it's better late than never.;) (Note: Originally posted at my old journal here on 4/19/09.)
It began because he was the only one who seemed to agree with her. Which was significant enough.
Maybe it was because her mother told her things like, "Ribbons are to be given the utmost attention, dear. You can't be bored while choosing them!" She would hold up silk threads in shades of many magentas and jet blacks, from the Earth Kingdom's hidden isles, lost deserts, "places where they'll bend the grass from under your very feet!"
For years Mai thought Earthbenders could bend grass.
Ribbons were dull. Sometimes when her mother wasn't looking she'd spin them around her index finger like tiny serpents, round and round - like the stone dragons that wove around the palace pillars. Round and round, until the blood from her tiny fingers fled and they turned cold and tingly.
One afternoon, as the girls searched for fire-dragonflies, she watched from afar, pulling ribbons into shredded confetti wisps and twining them around her pinky, a stray twig. That was when he surprised her by approaching, looking sullen and shy.
"What are you doing?" he asked, koala-sheepishly.
"Nothing." She looked down hurriedly, brushing red fluff off her skirt - the remains of ribbons' lifeless bodies. "What are you doing here?"
"Mom's making me...watch 'Zula." He shuffled his feet.
"Right..."
"Really! Why else would I be here?"
"I don't know." She picked at her last ribbon, tickling the back of her neck. Yanked it loose.
"So what are you doing?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you messing up your ribbons?"
"Cause I'm bored." She began to tear the crimson snake carefully down the middle.
"Why don't you ever play with 'Zula and Ty Lee?"
"I do."
"You don't."
"Yes I do. Just not when it's boring!" She bit at the ribbon, eyes not meeting the prince's.
She had intended for him to leave, she had wanted him to. But what had followed had almost been a friendship, seeming to float like her ribbons in the wind, in a direction neither of the two could have foreseen. Maybe not so much a friendship as a little on-going conference over surprising similarities, one that continued for many a tired autumn afternoon to follow. Ones that smelt of burnt fireflakes and felt like a heavy, rusty orange. (She'd always hated those most - until that day.)
She talked about her hatred of ribbons, Azula's silly games. How the Royal Fire Academy for Girls had uniforms that made you feel like the bright-clothed dolls in the Fire Festivals that she actually used to almost like. How her mother insisted a lady was never bored with all her duties to occupy her, how her father was always just a bit too busy to talk or play darts like they used to. She played by herself now - she liked the whistle of the flight through the air, the feeling that she could control the uncontrollable.
He talked about how he sometimes didn't really care about bending at all, even forgot it existed within him. And then other times it was all he was, it was a constant burning obsession to master that next move. How his father sometimes told him to take a break from training while he practiced a few more moves with Azula alone, told him to go ask his mother to tell him the tales of the great battles of the Air Temples. How those particular stories always seemed to lack something - the life he felt in a simple ember burning in his palm, a simple fairy-tale about real dragons (not like those stone ones Mai spent her days gazing at, dreamy eyed).
Looking back, she had always thought it was these things, the things in life they found so dull or strangely empty, that connected them. (Bound them like her ribbons were supposed to.)
It wasn't until years had passed that she realized it was just the opposite.