Avatar // Orchid // Part 1 of ?
Title: Orchid
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: K+
Word Count: 677
Summary: The people on the other side are always traitors, and traitors always die.
Other: Oh Mai, why are you so easy to write? For 31_days 10-13-06.
feel my heart beat
*
Knowledge of loss came in intellectual manner.
Azula is dead. The Fire Lord is dead. I am under arrest. The Avatar was victorious. We were not victorious. We lost.
We lost. Azula is dead. Mai wondered, half idly and half out of her own morbid curiosity, whether her friend's body would be cremated or buried at sea. It seemed that burial at sea was more likely, but who could tell with times as they were?
She should have been dead. Obviously: that was what happened to loyalists during usurpations of power. The people on the other side were always traitors. Traitors always die.
Strange, that she was a traitor now, but neither was she dead. Mai's room was locked and guarded, well-furnished and possessed of an excellent view. A good sign. She had been subjected to the indignity of a full search, and as such entirely disarmed. Not as good a sign.
The last of the coronation day cheers had passed hours ago. The feast would be nearing its mid-point. There were no service entrances in her room; Mai had checked as soon as the front door closed and latched shut. Azula was dead. Fire Lord Ozai was dead. They lost.
She was going to die. Or not, as it were. She was not dead yet, after all.
Azula was dead - Azula was not supposed to be dead. Azula was supposed to be Fire Lord.
An odd, half-empty sensation welled up and out to envelope her chest, not at all akin to the indifference with which she had approached nearly everything in the past.
Mai's room was dull, red and black, with a bookshelf in one corner stocked with dry, overwrought scrolls of history and philosophy. She hadn't taken any enjoyment from philosophy since she was a child. There was a bowl of fruit on the table near the center of the room and a small, elegant bed behind a fine, elegant lacquered screen on the end opposite the bookshelf. The walls were steel, almost like the inside of a ship. Gas lamps provided dull, flickering light.
There was a window, barred. It overlooked a small, stylized garden. Mai had drawn the drapes shut as soon as she had finished checking for a way out.
Were she a prisoner, she would have been held in a cell in the palace's perfectly adequate dungeon. This was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a cell, and not a in any manner a dungeon.
Mai sighed and drew a scroll from the shelf - a work that dated from Avatar Roku's youth, it described its author's vision of an ideal society. She did not remember it being particularly horrible, and so knelt on the silk cushion beside the table to read.
The door had opened and shut in the time it took her to raise her head and turn toward the door. Pri- . Fire Lo- . Zuko was armed with twin broadswords. Mai had to force herself to keep from rolling her eyes. "You don't have to arm yourself on my account, My Lord."
His lips twitched, "I don't have a reason to trust you, either."
Mai nodded and made no attempt to hide her appraisal of the new Fire Lord. Zuko had already taken on a distinctly tired look, his arms drooping with the weight of his robes and the weight of his swords. He was overdressed, in red and gold at that. His face betrayed no emotion beside fatigue. Odd, she had expected him to mourn his father, at least.
He shifted his grip on the swords; Mai moved her hands to the tabletop very slowly, then rolled the scroll closed. The parchment crackled. She folded her hands. She wanted them in sight. Their breath fell on opposite beats, loud in the silence.
"What are we going to do with you, Mai?" Zuko asked. Ah, the imperial plural.
Mai smiled cynically. "Whatever you please," she murmured. "That is what royalty tends to do, isn't it?"
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Rating: K+
Word Count: 677
Summary: The people on the other side are always traitors, and traitors always die.
Other: Oh Mai, why are you so easy to write? For 31_days 10-13-06.
feel my heart beat
*
Knowledge of loss came in intellectual manner.
Azula is dead. The Fire Lord is dead. I am under arrest. The Avatar was victorious. We were not victorious. We lost.
We lost. Azula is dead. Mai wondered, half idly and half out of her own morbid curiosity, whether her friend's body would be cremated or buried at sea. It seemed that burial at sea was more likely, but who could tell with times as they were?
She should have been dead. Obviously: that was what happened to loyalists during usurpations of power. The people on the other side were always traitors. Traitors always die.
Strange, that she was a traitor now, but neither was she dead. Mai's room was locked and guarded, well-furnished and possessed of an excellent view. A good sign. She had been subjected to the indignity of a full search, and as such entirely disarmed. Not as good a sign.
The last of the coronation day cheers had passed hours ago. The feast would be nearing its mid-point. There were no service entrances in her room; Mai had checked as soon as the front door closed and latched shut. Azula was dead. Fire Lord Ozai was dead. They lost.
She was going to die. Or not, as it were. She was not dead yet, after all.
Azula was dead - Azula was not supposed to be dead. Azula was supposed to be Fire Lord.
An odd, half-empty sensation welled up and out to envelope her chest, not at all akin to the indifference with which she had approached nearly everything in the past.
Mai's room was dull, red and black, with a bookshelf in one corner stocked with dry, overwrought scrolls of history and philosophy. She hadn't taken any enjoyment from philosophy since she was a child. There was a bowl of fruit on the table near the center of the room and a small, elegant bed behind a fine, elegant lacquered screen on the end opposite the bookshelf. The walls were steel, almost like the inside of a ship. Gas lamps provided dull, flickering light.
There was a window, barred. It overlooked a small, stylized garden. Mai had drawn the drapes shut as soon as she had finished checking for a way out.
Were she a prisoner, she would have been held in a cell in the palace's perfectly adequate dungeon. This was not, in the strictest sense of the word, a cell, and not a in any manner a dungeon.
Mai sighed and drew a scroll from the shelf - a work that dated from Avatar Roku's youth, it described its author's vision of an ideal society. She did not remember it being particularly horrible, and so knelt on the silk cushion beside the table to read.
The door had opened and shut in the time it took her to raise her head and turn toward the door. Pri- . Fire Lo- . Zuko was armed with twin broadswords. Mai had to force herself to keep from rolling her eyes. "You don't have to arm yourself on my account, My Lord."
His lips twitched, "I don't have a reason to trust you, either."
Mai nodded and made no attempt to hide her appraisal of the new Fire Lord. Zuko had already taken on a distinctly tired look, his arms drooping with the weight of his robes and the weight of his swords. He was overdressed, in red and gold at that. His face betrayed no emotion beside fatigue. Odd, she had expected him to mourn his father, at least.
He shifted his grip on the swords; Mai moved her hands to the tabletop very slowly, then rolled the scroll closed. The parchment crackled. She folded her hands. She wanted them in sight. Their breath fell on opposite beats, loud in the silence.
"What are we going to do with you, Mai?" Zuko asked. Ah, the imperial plural.
Mai smiled cynically. "Whatever you please," she murmured. "That is what royalty tends to do, isn't it?"