Shortfic: Reach this Moment
Oct. 22nd, 2017 07:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishDisclaimer: I don't own Avatar: the Last Airbender. If I did, there would be a a lot more Mai.
Summary: Princess Mai didn’t know which was more galling, the fact that she had fallen just short of becoming Earth Queen, or that she could be done away with so easily. Still, if she was to marry the Firelord, who was she to have a say?
Author's Note: Written for Fall Maiko Week 2017. Additional information about this universe can be found at my tumblr, where my screenname is Attackfish.
Reach this Moment
Summary: Princess Mai didn’t know which was more galling, the fact that she had fallen just short of becoming Earth Queen, or that she could be done away with so easily. Still, if she was to marry the Firelord, who was she to have a say?
Author's Note: Written for Fall Maiko Week 2017. Additional information about this universe can be found at my tumblr, where my screenname is Attackfish.
Reach this Moment
Redirect
It was humiliating, of course, but that was only to be expected. These kinds of things shouldn’t have bothered her anymore.
She wore green, staring out over the side of the ship at the moon floating above the ocean, sea spray wetting her clothes and her hair. And her face. And it was sea spray, not tears. She hadn’t yet come to disgrace herself that badly. She wore green on the ship, for what she knew was probably the very last time. Tomorrow, she would land in the Fire Nation, and they would drown her in red, smother her in their expectations. She was to be their Firelady. She was to marry their Firelord and belong to them.
She wondered if it was worth it, to her parents, to the people of Ba Sing Se, if it was worth it to her father to humiliate his daughter and his own house to get her off the throne and himself back on, in name only, with Long Feng to hold his puppet strings. If it was worth it to her mother, to help her husband usurp her daughter, so that someday she could be the mother of a King instead of a Queen. If even the citizens of Ba Sing Se who didn’t see her as a collaborator and traitor, or walking scandal, the ones who saw her as a bulwark against the full force of Fire Nation tyranny, saw it as worth it to take Long Feng back, just to make everything go back to the way it had been before.
She hadn’t been, Earth Queen yet, but at the end of the war, even Long Feng had admitted it was only a matter of time. She wondered how many people thought it was worth it to sell an Earth Princess to the Fire Nation to buy a peace the new Firelord was already obligated to hold, just to keep that from happening. She suspected it wasn’t as many as Long Feng and her father were betting on.
It wasn’t her problem anymore. They had gotten what they wanted. Her hands were tied.
Her hands clenched around the ship’s metal railing, but her nails could find no purchase. She wanted to scream into the night, to demand that the universe tell her how she’d gotten here. She could remember every step down the road that had led to this moment and she still couldn’t fathom it. Impossibility upon impossibility had come her way, until this last impossibility, an Earth Princess sent out to marry a foreigner, seemed both even more impossible, and a terrible anticlimax. Perhaps it was fate, inevitable, inexorable, but the fact remained, she had been a ruler, and now she was only marrying one.
“It does not help anyone to brood on the past,” a voice murmured into the still night air.
“I know,” she told her bridegroom’s uncle, The Dragon of the West, and Azula’s uncle too. “Please go away so I can do so anyway.”
Passion
She had never understood her mother, or her grandmother, dead before she was born. Her father’s sister and her royal great aunts she understood only too well, and had regarded with pity tinged with fear, while they regarded her with a wry kind of sorrow. What they were, she someday would be. Someday she too would become resigned to the perfumed, cloistered halls allotted to the royal women. Back then, she had wished so many times that her family were just a little lower in rank, so that she wouldn’t be trapped there, so she could venture past the palace wall, and marry, and do what girls who weren’t princesses did.
It was probably fitting that she got to do all of those things, after her ambitions had grown so much more extravagant.
She once told her aunt about the gnawing restlessness down deep in the core of her, urging her to run, to break out and shout no. Her aunt had smiled sadly, and told her that she was a passionate girl and this was not such a bad thing. Her mother called it defiance. Long Feng was the one who called it ambition, and looked at her like they had something in common.
“If I did not know better, I would think you were a general leading an army.”
Mai ignored him, striding down the gangway and down the dock, back straight, head held high. Behind her, she could feel his lips twitch upwards, as he followed her.
“You will certainly fool my nephew.” Iroh paused. “Or perhaps not. He is smarter than he thinks he is.”
“I've met him,” she reminded him coolly, turning her head to meet his eyes. “And he isn’t.”
“Then you have nothing to be afraid of,” Iroh told her. “My brother and niece are in prison. If Zuko is just a stupid little boy, he shouldn’t be any trouble for you.”
He was there waiting for her at the bottom of the gangway, his retainer of guards and servants fanned out behind him, helping to push back the crowds that thronged the harbor, hoping to get a glimpse of the Firelord and his bride. When she reached the bottom, he bowed to her, a proper bow, not too deep, not too shallow, one of respect. She did not bow back, and she could feel the crowd hush. After a moment of irritated reluctance, she sank into a deep curtsey and rose, careful to keep her head level the entire time. Her father had refused to send any handmaids with her, and she suspected her headdress would simply topple off otherwise.
No, she had never understood her mother at all. Neither the passionate nature her aunt insisted she had, nor cold, steely ambition, could make her understand why her mother had locked herself away just so she could whisper in the ear of a puppet king. And as she rose and stood next to the Firelord, that understanding was further away than ever.
Belonging
“My Lady,” he said gravely. “I have a carriage waiting for us.”
“The proper address is ‘Your Highness,’” Mai responded, only a hint of frostiness bleeding into her words. “We haven’t married yet. I am still an Earth Princess.”
The young Firelord blinked. “I’m sorry.”
It made her angry, incongruously, his apology. In Ba Sing Se, he had been consumed with remorse. Until he and his sister had left, he had looked like the world had ended it and it was his fault. It had, and it was, but it wasn’t her world Zuko cared about, or her city’s. It was his own, and his uncle’s, and so his sad, numb looks just mad her angrier. Back then, she would have given anything for an apology out of his mouth, or his sister’s, or from anybody who wasn’t hurting just as bad as she was. Now she had her apology, and it was for getting her title wrong. She wanted to scream. She wished that was something she could do.
“Your Highness,” he tried again. “We have a carriage waiting to take us to the palace.”
This time, Mai took his hand, not knowing what else she could do. Together, they stepped into the carriage, and as Iroh followed, Zuko pushed back the curtains to wave at the crowd through the window. With a sigh of something that might have been distaste, or perhaps just apprehension pretending to be distaste to spare her pride, Mai lifted her own curtain to do the same.
The Fire Nation faces rushed past in a red, swirling haze, alien and unfathomable. Were they happy? she wondered, that the war was over, that their new lord was marrying a foreigner? Was the disgrace the Earth Kingdom bore balanced by honor done to the Fire Nation, or was it just degradation for all?
“Did you have a good journey?” her... betrothed asked.
“There weren’t any problems,” Mai told him. “It was uneventful.”
“That’s good I guess.
Mai’s mind wandered back to the dinners they had shared in Ba Sing Se. Back then, he had simmered with anger and shame. That was all gone now, washed away and replaced by an anxious sort of earnestness. It was almost enough to make her miss his anger. That, at least, she had known what to do with.
“I wish this was the first time we met,” he burst out, after a silence Mai hadn’t even noticed building.
“Oh?” Mai replied blandly. “You didn’t enjoy our time together in Ba Sing Se?”
“Did you?”
“But I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Neither was I,” he snapped at last. “Azula meant our ‘dates’ to horrible for both of us.”
Mai kept waiting for Iroh to say something, but he held his tongue, watching them. Eventually, she gave up and turned away, back toward the window and the crowds still lining the streets all along their route, and didn’t respond. She didn’t say anything at all until long after they had reached the palace.
Forget
The sunrise poured in through the windows, unhindered by the heavy curtains, tied up and out of the way. Mai kept her eyes firmly shut. “Those were closed when I went to sleep.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Ty Lee.”
She looked exactly as she had in Ba Sing Se, draped in pink puffs, her midriff bare. Only a dirt-muncher would be stupid enough not to recognize a Fire Nation noble, her Fire Nation guard had sneered. Look at her shoulder points!
“Forgive me,” she remembered saying. “In the Earth Kingdom, our nobles are wealthy enough to afford sufficient fine fabrics to clothe themselves properly. I had no idea the Fire Nation had fallen on such hard times.”
She had paid for it. It made Azula decide she was amusing.
Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Ty Lee sashayed over to the bed. “You really do have to get up, Your Highness, we have to get you ready for the wedding.”
For a moment, Mai couldn’t make any reply. Her mouth wouldn’t work. Her wedding. They had given her one night, not even a full day between setting foot in the Fire Nation and marrying its ruler. Everything had been prepared before she had even arrived, even her measurements sent ahead of her, so her wedding robes could be waiting for her. The sages had insisted it was about finding the most auspicious day, when the stars would be in perfect alignment for a royal wedding night, but Mai knew it was all about remaking her into a known quantity as quickly as possible, turning her from an Earth Princess into her Firelady, before they had to figure out what to do with an Earth Princess. She had even spent the night in the Firelady’s chambers, a courtesy, the servants insisted. Everyone was so insistent.
Ty Lee beamed at her as she pushed aside the blankets and rose to her feet. She reached out for Mai’s hand, but Mai kept them demurely in her lap. “Are you the Firelord’s mistress?”
She pulled a face. “What? No!”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m part of the Kyoshi Warriors for real now. We’re here to protect Zuko from assassination.” She offered her hand again. “I’m here to protect you.”
Mai let her lead her into a washroom, where a gaggle of servants waited. A hard eyed old woman broke away from the others and grabbed Mai’s hair. “Could be worse. At least the barbarians left her hair alone.”
Ty Lee’s smile suddenly turned knife sharp. “This woman is becoming your Firelady today.”
The woman let go, hands slipping into her sleeves as if she could pretend it didn’t happen. Mai eyed her imperiously. “I’m here to protect you,” Ty Lee had said. Mai wondered what precisely that entailed.
Ty Lee unwrapped the rice paper package, revealing a glimpse of shimmering silk. “If it’s any consolation, your wedding robes are really beautiful.”
No it wasn’t any consolation at all.
Sunder
From the dais, the nobles and sages below seemed so distant almost as if there was a pane of glass between them and her. Almost as if she and her new husband were in a display case. It was a dangerous feeling. It afforded an air of privacy, when of course she had no privacy up there at all.
Still, it was hard to ignore the sense of separation from the people below, to remember she was there to be viewed.
“Do you like your robes?” her husband asked. “Ty Lee went over the designs. We didn’t know what you would like, and everything had to be very traditional...”
Her fingers bushed across the thick border of red and gold brocade. “I expected more red.”
“White’s a mourning color.” He glanced away, embarrassed, before bringing his eyes up to meet hers again. “The bride’s supposed to be mourning leaving her family and her old life behind.”
“Appropriate,” she said dryly.
He flushed. “It’s a really old tradition. It isn’t like that anymore.”
Mai plucked a dumpling from her bowl and popped it into her mouth to avoid answering. With every bite came surprise and unease, the sense of wrongness that came from the flavors that were almost, yet nothing like, the ones from home.
He took her silence as an invitation to keep talking. “I got you something. My uncle says you wear a knife.” He pulled a knife out of the pocket of his robe and handed it to her reverently. “My uncle gave it to me. He got it from the Earth Kingdom general who surrendered when the outer wall fell.”
“Thank you,” she said, too numb to think of a better answer to such a present. Uncharitably, she wondered if he meant it as a taunt. But no. He probably meant it as some kind of return. “I assume my gift to you has already been received.”
He choked and swallowed hard, blinking and fighting to recover. His uncle’s safe return as her chaperone, instead of arrest and imprisonment for the siege of her city. Mai glanced at his uncle, seated in the father of the groom’s place, and then back up at her husband through her bangs. A fine wedding present indeed.
As she grasped the knife, her hair rose. She could almost feel the Kyoshi Warriors on either side of them tense as she drew it. The words engraved in the steel seemed to jump off the blade at her, like they were blades themselves, aimed at her.
Never give up without a fight.
She had walked away from Ba Sing Se without a word to her father, without protesting, challenging, or even saying anything at all. What else had she done but give up without a fight?
Mai swallowed down the laughter that threatened to bubble up, because she knew it would have turned into tears. Where would she have been then, crying in public because her new husband had given her a gift.
Linger
The Firelady’s rooms weren’t empty when General Iroh led her back to them. As she stood in the doorway, Iroh gave her a wry, sympathetic look. “Be kind to my nephew. I promise he is trying.”
“I’m sure he’s exceptionally trying.”
“Oh he is.” The Dragon of the west inclined his head. “But so are you.”
Mai narrowed her eyes, but Iroh only smiled. “Good night, Firelady,” he murmured as he walked away, leaving her there. For a moment, she hung back, watching Ty Lee, in full Kyoshi Warrior uniform, direct servant women carrying boxes.
Finally, she cleared her throat. Ty Lee turned and bowed to her. “Firelady Mai.”
When she rose, Mai did her best to sweep in imperiously. The servant women each stopped what they were doing to bow low, as two servants moved to close the doors behind her. Mai kept her eyes straight ahead of her. “I expected my husband.”
Ty Lee nodded. “He is waiting for you in his chambers. I’ll show you the way, but first, we’ll get you out of those robes and into something more practical.”
Mai’s hand felt numb in Ty Lee’s, limp and clammy, as Ty Lee led her back into the dressing room, trailing the servants behind.
Mai stood perfectly still as Ty Lee worked the rest of the pins free and unbraided her hair. It felt disconcertingly normal, being undressed and unmade at the end of the day. Even if Ty Lee was nothing like her attendants at home, quiet girls who had been sent to her in the hopes that they might whisper in the ear of someone who could whisper in the ear of a puppet king, who learned quickly there was no point. Ty Lee loosened her sash and slid her robes off her shoulders, and handed it to a servant woman to fold and put away, while another brought a red night robe for Ty Lee to help her into.
As soon as she had tied the sash, Ty Lee dismissed the servants. “There’s a secret door between your bedroom and Zuko’s. Press the fire lily on the panel just to the left of the bed.” With that, she walked away, leaving Mai there.
Mai picked up the knife and went to face the panel. The dregs of her anger had spilled away, leaving only fear. She knew what was waiting for her. The graffiti and political cartoons that littered the streets of Ba Sing Se after the conquest made it graphically clear. This was why a woman wore a knife. Not royal women, safe in the palace, but noblewomen, and merchants’ daughters with pretensions. It was a last resort, a pledge to die before allowing themselves to be dishonored. The man who had given her the knife and called himself her husband comprehended none of this. He thought it was a weapon.
Mai set the knife down on the table beside the bed, took a deep shuddering breath, and pressed the fire lily.
Reflection
The fire lily popped up from the panel as the hidden door clicked open. Mai pulled the fire lily handle, and the door swung toward her with remarkable ease for its weight. “Clever.”
The Firelord stood up from the bed and padded over to her. “Watch this.” He pulled the door shut behind her, and when it latched, the matching fire lily handle retracted back into the panel.
“Very clever.”
“Azula found it a few months after our father became Firelord,” he told her. “When he caught her, she told him I showed her how.”
Mai raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Did he believe her?”
He shrugged, and his robe slid off his shoulder. He pushed it back up hastily. “I don’t think so, but he called me in to yell at me anyway. That’s how I found out about it and how it worked.”
She stared back at the door, her skin prickling with nervous energy. She almost wanted it to just happen, however bad it was, for the Firelord to just start so they could get it over with.
“I, uh, I know it’s our wedding night and all,” he started, and icy dread suddenly poured down her spine. “But I actually just wanted to talk to you.”
Her legs went weak. She sank down onto the bed. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know how to say this, but I said yes to marrying you because you ruled Ba Sing Se, and I never really expected to rule anything, and I thought you could help.”
“If you’re looking for a puppetmaster,” she said, startled, “Your uncle is the Dragon of the West.”
He shook his head. “I tried to get Uncle to take the throne when the war ended. He said no. Anyway, I’m not looking for someone to rule for me.”
“Do you even know what you are looking for?” she wondered. “Look, I’m tired. If that’s all you want to talk about, I’m going to sleep.”
He sighed in acquiescence, and as he did, the lamps around the room guttered and winked out. “You know,” he said into the sudden darkness. “It’s okay if we don’t, uh, consummate for a while.”
It took all of her willpower not to smack him in the face with her pillow.
“If it makes you feel better,” he said, voice tight with embarrassment. “It’s not like I’ve ever either.”
“Really,” she drawled.
“I mean...” he trailed off. “I kissed Ty Lee when I was twelve. She got all giggly, and I thought she was laughing at me, so I ran off and sulked for the rest of the day.”
Oh, thought Mai. “This is going to be a disaster.”
“The first few times, yeah,” Zuko said sheepishly. “But we’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe,” Mai heard herself say. She lay there next to him, the thousand impossibilities that had grabbed hold of her to bring her to that moment, catching up with her, her past reflected in his, and in their future. “It’s possible.”
It was humiliating, of course, but that was only to be expected. These kinds of things shouldn’t have bothered her anymore.
She wore green, staring out over the side of the ship at the moon floating above the ocean, sea spray wetting her clothes and her hair. And her face. And it was sea spray, not tears. She hadn’t yet come to disgrace herself that badly. She wore green on the ship, for what she knew was probably the very last time. Tomorrow, she would land in the Fire Nation, and they would drown her in red, smother her in their expectations. She was to be their Firelady. She was to marry their Firelord and belong to them.
She wondered if it was worth it, to her parents, to the people of Ba Sing Se, if it was worth it to her father to humiliate his daughter and his own house to get her off the throne and himself back on, in name only, with Long Feng to hold his puppet strings. If it was worth it to her mother, to help her husband usurp her daughter, so that someday she could be the mother of a King instead of a Queen. If even the citizens of Ba Sing Se who didn’t see her as a collaborator and traitor, or walking scandal, the ones who saw her as a bulwark against the full force of Fire Nation tyranny, saw it as worth it to take Long Feng back, just to make everything go back to the way it had been before.
She hadn’t been, Earth Queen yet, but at the end of the war, even Long Feng had admitted it was only a matter of time. She wondered how many people thought it was worth it to sell an Earth Princess to the Fire Nation to buy a peace the new Firelord was already obligated to hold, just to keep that from happening. She suspected it wasn’t as many as Long Feng and her father were betting on.
It wasn’t her problem anymore. They had gotten what they wanted. Her hands were tied.
Her hands clenched around the ship’s metal railing, but her nails could find no purchase. She wanted to scream into the night, to demand that the universe tell her how she’d gotten here. She could remember every step down the road that had led to this moment and she still couldn’t fathom it. Impossibility upon impossibility had come her way, until this last impossibility, an Earth Princess sent out to marry a foreigner, seemed both even more impossible, and a terrible anticlimax. Perhaps it was fate, inevitable, inexorable, but the fact remained, she had been a ruler, and now she was only marrying one.
“It does not help anyone to brood on the past,” a voice murmured into the still night air.
“I know,” she told her bridegroom’s uncle, The Dragon of the West, and Azula’s uncle too. “Please go away so I can do so anyway.”
Passion
She had never understood her mother, or her grandmother, dead before she was born. Her father’s sister and her royal great aunts she understood only too well, and had regarded with pity tinged with fear, while they regarded her with a wry kind of sorrow. What they were, she someday would be. Someday she too would become resigned to the perfumed, cloistered halls allotted to the royal women. Back then, she had wished so many times that her family were just a little lower in rank, so that she wouldn’t be trapped there, so she could venture past the palace wall, and marry, and do what girls who weren’t princesses did.
It was probably fitting that she got to do all of those things, after her ambitions had grown so much more extravagant.
She once told her aunt about the gnawing restlessness down deep in the core of her, urging her to run, to break out and shout no. Her aunt had smiled sadly, and told her that she was a passionate girl and this was not such a bad thing. Her mother called it defiance. Long Feng was the one who called it ambition, and looked at her like they had something in common.
“If I did not know better, I would think you were a general leading an army.”
Mai ignored him, striding down the gangway and down the dock, back straight, head held high. Behind her, she could feel his lips twitch upwards, as he followed her.
“You will certainly fool my nephew.” Iroh paused. “Or perhaps not. He is smarter than he thinks he is.”
“I've met him,” she reminded him coolly, turning her head to meet his eyes. “And he isn’t.”
“Then you have nothing to be afraid of,” Iroh told her. “My brother and niece are in prison. If Zuko is just a stupid little boy, he shouldn’t be any trouble for you.”
He was there waiting for her at the bottom of the gangway, his retainer of guards and servants fanned out behind him, helping to push back the crowds that thronged the harbor, hoping to get a glimpse of the Firelord and his bride. When she reached the bottom, he bowed to her, a proper bow, not too deep, not too shallow, one of respect. She did not bow back, and she could feel the crowd hush. After a moment of irritated reluctance, she sank into a deep curtsey and rose, careful to keep her head level the entire time. Her father had refused to send any handmaids with her, and she suspected her headdress would simply topple off otherwise.
No, she had never understood her mother at all. Neither the passionate nature her aunt insisted she had, nor cold, steely ambition, could make her understand why her mother had locked herself away just so she could whisper in the ear of a puppet king. And as she rose and stood next to the Firelord, that understanding was further away than ever.
Belonging
“My Lady,” he said gravely. “I have a carriage waiting for us.”
“The proper address is ‘Your Highness,’” Mai responded, only a hint of frostiness bleeding into her words. “We haven’t married yet. I am still an Earth Princess.”
The young Firelord blinked. “I’m sorry.”
It made her angry, incongruously, his apology. In Ba Sing Se, he had been consumed with remorse. Until he and his sister had left, he had looked like the world had ended it and it was his fault. It had, and it was, but it wasn’t her world Zuko cared about, or her city’s. It was his own, and his uncle’s, and so his sad, numb looks just mad her angrier. Back then, she would have given anything for an apology out of his mouth, or his sister’s, or from anybody who wasn’t hurting just as bad as she was. Now she had her apology, and it was for getting her title wrong. She wanted to scream. She wished that was something she could do.
“Your Highness,” he tried again. “We have a carriage waiting to take us to the palace.”
This time, Mai took his hand, not knowing what else she could do. Together, they stepped into the carriage, and as Iroh followed, Zuko pushed back the curtains to wave at the crowd through the window. With a sigh of something that might have been distaste, or perhaps just apprehension pretending to be distaste to spare her pride, Mai lifted her own curtain to do the same.
The Fire Nation faces rushed past in a red, swirling haze, alien and unfathomable. Were they happy? she wondered, that the war was over, that their new lord was marrying a foreigner? Was the disgrace the Earth Kingdom bore balanced by honor done to the Fire Nation, or was it just degradation for all?
“Did you have a good journey?” her... betrothed asked.
“There weren’t any problems,” Mai told him. “It was uneventful.”
“That’s good I guess.
Mai’s mind wandered back to the dinners they had shared in Ba Sing Se. Back then, he had simmered with anger and shame. That was all gone now, washed away and replaced by an anxious sort of earnestness. It was almost enough to make her miss his anger. That, at least, she had known what to do with.
“I wish this was the first time we met,” he burst out, after a silence Mai hadn’t even noticed building.
“Oh?” Mai replied blandly. “You didn’t enjoy our time together in Ba Sing Se?”
“Did you?”
“But I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Neither was I,” he snapped at last. “Azula meant our ‘dates’ to horrible for both of us.”
Mai kept waiting for Iroh to say something, but he held his tongue, watching them. Eventually, she gave up and turned away, back toward the window and the crowds still lining the streets all along their route, and didn’t respond. She didn’t say anything at all until long after they had reached the palace.
Forget
The sunrise poured in through the windows, unhindered by the heavy curtains, tied up and out of the way. Mai kept her eyes firmly shut. “Those were closed when I went to sleep.”
“Good morning to you too.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Ty Lee.”
She looked exactly as she had in Ba Sing Se, draped in pink puffs, her midriff bare. Only a dirt-muncher would be stupid enough not to recognize a Fire Nation noble, her Fire Nation guard had sneered. Look at her shoulder points!
“Forgive me,” she remembered saying. “In the Earth Kingdom, our nobles are wealthy enough to afford sufficient fine fabrics to clothe themselves properly. I had no idea the Fire Nation had fallen on such hard times.”
She had paid for it. It made Azula decide she was amusing.
Bouncing on the balls of her feet, Ty Lee sashayed over to the bed. “You really do have to get up, Your Highness, we have to get you ready for the wedding.”
For a moment, Mai couldn’t make any reply. Her mouth wouldn’t work. Her wedding. They had given her one night, not even a full day between setting foot in the Fire Nation and marrying its ruler. Everything had been prepared before she had even arrived, even her measurements sent ahead of her, so her wedding robes could be waiting for her. The sages had insisted it was about finding the most auspicious day, when the stars would be in perfect alignment for a royal wedding night, but Mai knew it was all about remaking her into a known quantity as quickly as possible, turning her from an Earth Princess into her Firelady, before they had to figure out what to do with an Earth Princess. She had even spent the night in the Firelady’s chambers, a courtesy, the servants insisted. Everyone was so insistent.
Ty Lee beamed at her as she pushed aside the blankets and rose to her feet. She reached out for Mai’s hand, but Mai kept them demurely in her lap. “Are you the Firelord’s mistress?”
She pulled a face. “What? No!”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m part of the Kyoshi Warriors for real now. We’re here to protect Zuko from assassination.” She offered her hand again. “I’m here to protect you.”
Mai let her lead her into a washroom, where a gaggle of servants waited. A hard eyed old woman broke away from the others and grabbed Mai’s hair. “Could be worse. At least the barbarians left her hair alone.”
Ty Lee’s smile suddenly turned knife sharp. “This woman is becoming your Firelady today.”
The woman let go, hands slipping into her sleeves as if she could pretend it didn’t happen. Mai eyed her imperiously. “I’m here to protect you,” Ty Lee had said. Mai wondered what precisely that entailed.
Ty Lee unwrapped the rice paper package, revealing a glimpse of shimmering silk. “If it’s any consolation, your wedding robes are really beautiful.”
No it wasn’t any consolation at all.
Sunder
From the dais, the nobles and sages below seemed so distant almost as if there was a pane of glass between them and her. Almost as if she and her new husband were in a display case. It was a dangerous feeling. It afforded an air of privacy, when of course she had no privacy up there at all.
Still, it was hard to ignore the sense of separation from the people below, to remember she was there to be viewed.
“Do you like your robes?” her husband asked. “Ty Lee went over the designs. We didn’t know what you would like, and everything had to be very traditional...”
Her fingers bushed across the thick border of red and gold brocade. “I expected more red.”
“White’s a mourning color.” He glanced away, embarrassed, before bringing his eyes up to meet hers again. “The bride’s supposed to be mourning leaving her family and her old life behind.”
“Appropriate,” she said dryly.
He flushed. “It’s a really old tradition. It isn’t like that anymore.”
Mai plucked a dumpling from her bowl and popped it into her mouth to avoid answering. With every bite came surprise and unease, the sense of wrongness that came from the flavors that were almost, yet nothing like, the ones from home.
He took her silence as an invitation to keep talking. “I got you something. My uncle says you wear a knife.” He pulled a knife out of the pocket of his robe and handed it to her reverently. “My uncle gave it to me. He got it from the Earth Kingdom general who surrendered when the outer wall fell.”
“Thank you,” she said, too numb to think of a better answer to such a present. Uncharitably, she wondered if he meant it as a taunt. But no. He probably meant it as some kind of return. “I assume my gift to you has already been received.”
He choked and swallowed hard, blinking and fighting to recover. His uncle’s safe return as her chaperone, instead of arrest and imprisonment for the siege of her city. Mai glanced at his uncle, seated in the father of the groom’s place, and then back up at her husband through her bangs. A fine wedding present indeed.
As she grasped the knife, her hair rose. She could almost feel the Kyoshi Warriors on either side of them tense as she drew it. The words engraved in the steel seemed to jump off the blade at her, like they were blades themselves, aimed at her.
Never give up without a fight.
She had walked away from Ba Sing Se without a word to her father, without protesting, challenging, or even saying anything at all. What else had she done but give up without a fight?
Mai swallowed down the laughter that threatened to bubble up, because she knew it would have turned into tears. Where would she have been then, crying in public because her new husband had given her a gift.
Linger
The Firelady’s rooms weren’t empty when General Iroh led her back to them. As she stood in the doorway, Iroh gave her a wry, sympathetic look. “Be kind to my nephew. I promise he is trying.”
“I’m sure he’s exceptionally trying.”
“Oh he is.” The Dragon of the west inclined his head. “But so are you.”
Mai narrowed her eyes, but Iroh only smiled. “Good night, Firelady,” he murmured as he walked away, leaving her there. For a moment, she hung back, watching Ty Lee, in full Kyoshi Warrior uniform, direct servant women carrying boxes.
Finally, she cleared her throat. Ty Lee turned and bowed to her. “Firelady Mai.”
When she rose, Mai did her best to sweep in imperiously. The servant women each stopped what they were doing to bow low, as two servants moved to close the doors behind her. Mai kept her eyes straight ahead of her. “I expected my husband.”
Ty Lee nodded. “He is waiting for you in his chambers. I’ll show you the way, but first, we’ll get you out of those robes and into something more practical.”
Mai’s hand felt numb in Ty Lee’s, limp and clammy, as Ty Lee led her back into the dressing room, trailing the servants behind.
Mai stood perfectly still as Ty Lee worked the rest of the pins free and unbraided her hair. It felt disconcertingly normal, being undressed and unmade at the end of the day. Even if Ty Lee was nothing like her attendants at home, quiet girls who had been sent to her in the hopes that they might whisper in the ear of someone who could whisper in the ear of a puppet king, who learned quickly there was no point. Ty Lee loosened her sash and slid her robes off her shoulders, and handed it to a servant woman to fold and put away, while another brought a red night robe for Ty Lee to help her into.
As soon as she had tied the sash, Ty Lee dismissed the servants. “There’s a secret door between your bedroom and Zuko’s. Press the fire lily on the panel just to the left of the bed.” With that, she walked away, leaving Mai there.
Mai picked up the knife and went to face the panel. The dregs of her anger had spilled away, leaving only fear. She knew what was waiting for her. The graffiti and political cartoons that littered the streets of Ba Sing Se after the conquest made it graphically clear. This was why a woman wore a knife. Not royal women, safe in the palace, but noblewomen, and merchants’ daughters with pretensions. It was a last resort, a pledge to die before allowing themselves to be dishonored. The man who had given her the knife and called himself her husband comprehended none of this. He thought it was a weapon.
Mai set the knife down on the table beside the bed, took a deep shuddering breath, and pressed the fire lily.
Reflection
The fire lily popped up from the panel as the hidden door clicked open. Mai pulled the fire lily handle, and the door swung toward her with remarkable ease for its weight. “Clever.”
The Firelord stood up from the bed and padded over to her. “Watch this.” He pulled the door shut behind her, and when it latched, the matching fire lily handle retracted back into the panel.
“Very clever.”
“Azula found it a few months after our father became Firelord,” he told her. “When he caught her, she told him I showed her how.”
Mai raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Did he believe her?”
He shrugged, and his robe slid off his shoulder. He pushed it back up hastily. “I don’t think so, but he called me in to yell at me anyway. That’s how I found out about it and how it worked.”
She stared back at the door, her skin prickling with nervous energy. She almost wanted it to just happen, however bad it was, for the Firelord to just start so they could get it over with.
“I, uh, I know it’s our wedding night and all,” he started, and icy dread suddenly poured down her spine. “But I actually just wanted to talk to you.”
Her legs went weak. She sank down onto the bed. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know how to say this, but I said yes to marrying you because you ruled Ba Sing Se, and I never really expected to rule anything, and I thought you could help.”
“If you’re looking for a puppetmaster,” she said, startled, “Your uncle is the Dragon of the West.”
He shook his head. “I tried to get Uncle to take the throne when the war ended. He said no. Anyway, I’m not looking for someone to rule for me.”
“Do you even know what you are looking for?” she wondered. “Look, I’m tired. If that’s all you want to talk about, I’m going to sleep.”
He sighed in acquiescence, and as he did, the lamps around the room guttered and winked out. “You know,” he said into the sudden darkness. “It’s okay if we don’t, uh, consummate for a while.”
It took all of her willpower not to smack him in the face with her pillow.
“If it makes you feel better,” he said, voice tight with embarrassment. “It’s not like I’ve ever either.”
“Really,” she drawled.
“I mean...” he trailed off. “I kissed Ty Lee when I was twelve. She got all giggly, and I thought she was laughing at me, so I ran off and sulked for the rest of the day.”
Oh, thought Mai. “This is going to be a disaster.”
“The first few times, yeah,” Zuko said sheepishly. “But we’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe,” Mai heard herself say. She lay there next to him, the thousand impossibilities that had grabbed hold of her to bring her to that moment, catching up with her, her past reflected in his, and in their future. “It’s possible.”
