Shortfic: Esther and Vashti
May. 12th, 2019 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishDisclaimer: Yeah if I owned Avatar the Last Airbender, it wouldn't have a fandom.
Summary: In the Book of Esther, the King of Persia had another wife before her, killed for refusing him. Ozai did not kill Ursa, because she gave him what she wanted. After the war, she is the only person other than Mai, who knows what it’s like to be married to him, and the only one who also knows what it means to love his son.
Warnings: Past rape/current rape recovery and trauma, past suicide attempt discussed, forced pregnancy, stillbirth and grief related to it
Author's Note: Written for May Maiko Week 2019. Sequel to “The Gleaming Darkness”: [Link].
Esther and Vashti
Ending
Mai takes a sip of her tea. There’s a weight to it, a heaviness in her mouth that tells her, as if she didn’t already know, that the tea is from the cool volcanic slopes of the Fire Nation home islands. It’s nothing like the lighter, brighter tea from the Earth Kingdom. When they were stationed in Omashu, her parents had real Fire Nation tea shipped from the islands. On special occasions, when her parents had someone to impress, she would drink it, trying not to focus on the way it tasted a little bit dead.
Not this though. This is fresh. Only the best for the Firelord’s mother.
Mai resists the urge to put the cup down. She is holding it to have somewhere to put her hands, and putting it down would defeat the purpose. “Why did you summon me?”
Ursa’s brow furrows. “Summon?”
“You’re the Firelord’s mother. You request a meeting, I have to say yes.”
Ursa frowns. “You don’t with Zuko.”
“With Zuko I know what I can get away with.”
Ursa snorts, and there’s something there under the amusement that Mai can’t quite guess at. “I forgot what it’s like when people think you have power. Ozai did a lot of asking that wasn’t really asking.”
“I remember,” Mai tells her.
“I wanted to talk to the person who confessed her love to my son in a graveyard yesterday.”
Mai almost drops the cup. She puts it down instead. “That’s not what I said.”
“I figured,” Ursa says. “But that’s what he heard. I thought I should warn you. And I wanted to apologize.”
Mai put her hands in her lap and tried not to stare. “What for?”
“I had no idea Ozai would take another wife.” Ursa swallows. “If I had, I would have stayed.”
“What?” Mai rasps. It doesn’t connect. It doesn’t make sense.
“He never wanted to marry me.” Ursa looks down at her own cup of tea. “And he had his two children. If I had known what he was going to do, I would have persuaded him to let me stay, reminded him that nobody knew his father had been murdered, that sending me away would only look suspicious.”
“Are you jealous?” Mai demands, aghast and struggling to hide it.
“No!” Ursa stares at her like she doesn’t really know what to do with her, a look with which Mai is very familiar. “No. There are things you don’t want anybody else to have because you like them too much to give them up, and then there are things that you keep, roles you play, because if you give them up, someone will have to take your place, and you don’t want anybody else to suffer like you did, even if it means you keep suffering. And what he did to my children…” she trails off, and Mai is the one left staring.
“You are not the person I need an apology from,” Mai chokes out as she walks away.
Quiet
It was so easy to pretend, with Zuko’s hand clamped tight within hers, with his face next to her own, that this was his child she was birthing, and that the Firelord she had been married to had been him. It was so easy to pretend that nothing had gone wrong. It was easy to pretend, and just then, with pain wracking her body, the strength to face the black yawning void of terror that was the reality of her circumstance seemed beyond her strength to face.
She turned away and closed her eyes, and met the next contraction with a push of her own, until her body shook with exertion, until the pain and the exhaustion drowned out the royal physician’s constant instructions, and the soft drone of Zuko’s whispered words of encouragement.
With the next contraction, the scream burst forth out of her, raw and unwilling. It went on and on, and hung in the air, and when the scream stopped, she felt its weight sink down on her. The royal physician babbled above her about the head, and it was almost over, but it seemed as if he were somewhere else, as if even as she groaned and pushed down with everything she had left, that she wasn’t there anymore, as if she had left her body with the scream.
And then there was another human being slipping out from between her legs, and she was crashing back down into her body as the royal physician cried out that the child was a boy. She was soaked, in sweat, and in fluids Mai felt no urge to identify. There was blood sticking to the inside of her thighs, and the terrible smell of the flower water they had bathed her face with as she had labored. She heaved air into her lungs, ignoring the smells, and lay back, pulling her hand way from Zuko’s.
It was quiet. There was muttering and hissing, but otherwise it was quiet. Mai bolted upright, ignoring the protests of her sore and battered body. “What’s going on?”
Zuko leapt to his feet. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, wheeling on the royal physician. “Tell her!”
The royal physician eyed Zuko as if he thought his new young Firelord might kill him on the spot, in front of his no longer stepmother. “The child isn’t breathing, my Lady,” he said, deciding she was the safer of the two. “We are doing all we can to revive him.”
Mai went rigid. “Is my son dead?”
“We are doing all we can,” the royal physician repeated. So Mai swallowed down her fear, and waited (and hoped, and begged) for her baby’s cries.
But it stayed quiet. Her son never cried, because he never drew breath. Eventually the physician and his assistants had to give up. They had done all they could to no avail.
And then there was nothing to do but wait for the afterbirth and stare at the ceiling like it might have some answers.
Blood
“What name should I give for the father?” Zuko asked. “Mine or my…” he trailed off. “Mine or Ozai’s?”
“Whatever.” She tried for cool and unaffected. Her face lacked expression. But her eyes were red and puffy, because even when she cried alone where no one could see, there was always something to give her away, and no amount of cold water could wash it away completely. “It’s not like I know which one of you is the actual father anyway.”
Zuko put his hand over hers. She snatched her hand away.
“It’s probably Ozai’s. He fucked me more than you ever got to.” It was crude, and cruel, and painful, but it felt good to say, like pus coming out of a boil, like her whole being was a festering wound and she was lancing it a little at a time.
“That’s not the point,” Zuko tried to tell her, brow furrowed. And it wasn’t, she knew. It was about what kind of story she wanted to tell. But she was so tired of stories, and of managing what everybody else was supposed to think. She was so tired of thinking about politics and the fate of nations when inside she was crumbling.
It never occurred to her that there would be a time she was less able to deal with the mess of it all than Zuko. “You pick. I don’t care.”
“Mai…”
“I don’t care,” she said again, willing it to be true. Such a strange feeling, caring so much about something, and yet not knowing how she felt, only that she did. And having nothing left within her capable of choosing. “You get to choose, brother or son. I don’t get a choice. Either way, he’s my son.”
With all her being, Mai wanted him to leave, so she could endure the breakdown she knew was coming alone. But Zuko didn’t leave. “Son,” he breathed into her silence. “We’ll list him as my son.”
He looked at her then, as if he expected now that he had made a choice, she would suddenly decide she objected. Maybe that was what he wanted. If so, she disappointed him. “Fine.”
“Do you…” he hesitated. “Is there a name you want to give him?”
“I don’t know Zuko, she snapped. “If you’ve decided you’re this baby’s father, you can at least give him his name.”
“Fine,” Zuko snapped back. “I will.”
As Mai settled herself down deeper into her pillows, his eye narrowed down to match its scarred mate. Every day, she grew more grateful for his scar, for the way it distinguished his face from his father’s. It was something she could see and touch that let her know the man who bore it could never be Ozai. And he could glare at her all he wanted, because she could stare coolly back until he gave up and left her alone, storming out of the room he had given her, self disgust heavy in the air around them.
Childhood
She went to the royal graveyard alone, and when she came back to the palace, she went to the room Zuko had given her and packed her things. She dressed in her old clothes, and did her hair like an unmarried girl in the tradition of her parents’ home island, and when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the way out, it was like going back in time.
Her body was her own again. There was nothing inside her but herself.
Ty Lee was waiting for her outside the door. “Does Zuko have you guarding me?” she asked neutrally. Ty Lee did not deserve the resentment bubbling up in her gut at the thought.
Shaking her head, Ty Lee gave her a sunny smile, but like all of Ty Lee’s sunniest smiles, there was an edge to it, like she knew exactly what Mai was trying her best to hide. “I’m off duty. I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me, but you sounded busy.”
“I’m moving out.”
“You aren’t going back home are you?” she asked, worried.
Mai shook her head. “I have an aunt who owns a flower shop in town. I figured I’d ask her.”
Ty Lee nodded. “Want some help?”
“This is all I’ve got,” Mai told her, holding up the small trunk she had been carrying under one arm. Her stomach twisted as Ty Lee’s face fell. “But I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“Good,” Ty Lee said decisively. “You’ve been alone too much. Hiding.”
“Thanks.”
“Visiting graves by yourself. Wallowing.”
Mai rolled her eyes and ignored her. Ty Lee smiled that knowing smile of hers, and the silence between them grew comfortable and familiar, and the illusion that they had traveled back in time, that they were children again, the princess’s companions walking home from the palace together, only grew stronger with each step.
It wasn’t until they both stood in the sunlight outside the palace that Mai spoke again. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes it is.” Mai looked away so she wouldn’t see Ty Lee’s face. “I stopped eating, when he had me under house arrest. I tried to starve myself.”
“Mai!” and it sounded as if that one word had taken all the air out of her.
“I’m sorry,” Mai told her, staring at her own hand.
Ty Lee gasped, like she was going to start crying. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“You risked your life to save mine. You went to prison.” Mai still couldn’t bring herself to look at her. “And after that, I tried to commit suicide.”
With that, Ty Lee threw her arms around Mai, and pulled her into a tight hug, that she didn’t have the energy to protest. She remembered, much too sharply, as if it was happening, not had happened, what it had felt like at the Boiling Rock when she thought she was going to watch Zuko die. So she hugged Ty Lee back.
Connection
She took her brother and ran. It didn’t feel like a choice. And in the quiet of the flower shop the next morning before they opened, she wondered what it said that none of the most important choices she made felt like choices at all.
How dare you? She had wanted to ask her father. He raped me, and you want him back? This was what her father’s scheming and his service to Ozai had gotten them, his daughter raped, his grandson dead, and his son too young to defend himself from whatever use his father wanted to put him to. She wanted to shout all of that in his face, to fling it at him like her shuriken, but instead she didn’t say anything to him as he told her he would make her Firelady again, as if that wasn’t exactly what she was afraid of.
Her father thought he had won before. He had a daughter who was Firelady. He had a daughter who tried to starve herself to death rather than give Ozai a child because she knew what Ozai did to his children. He had a daughter who took her brother because she knew what Ukano did to his.
Late afternoon sunlight streamed through every window when the royal palanquin stopped in front of the shop. Mai’s skin prickled all over. It wasn’t Ozai. She knew that. She knew… And it wasn’t Azula either. And she was ready to march outside and order Zuko away. He would listen to her. That was probably why she didn’t…
It wasn’t Zuko who walked through the door. It was General Iroh.
Tom-Tom wiggled to be put down. She didn’t remember picking him up, yet there he was, clutched to her chest. She set him down on the floor. “I thought you were in Ba Sing Se.”
“My nephew had a journey to make, and he asked me to stand in for him,” Iroh said placidly. He glanced down at Tom-Tom. “And this must be your brother.”
“Are you here to demand I give him back?”
He shook his head. “I am here to order flowers for my nephew’s return. Things could use some brightening up.”
Mai didn’t restrain her eye roll.
“I meant to come earlier,” he said with a smile. “To see how you were, and to offer you a job. But you found something on your own, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have taken it,” Mai replied, weighing her words carefully. “No offence, but I needed to get away from your entire family for a while.”
He gave her an understanding nod, and Mai wished everybody would stop being so horribly understanding.
“Why did you come now?” she asked sharply. “I’m doing okay now.”
“Your mother came to complain that you had kidnapped her son,” he said conspiratorially. “And I thought you might wish to talk.”
Mai heaved a disgusted sigh. “What’s there to talk about?”
He smiled down at Tom-Tom before glancing back up at her wryly.
Endure
Iroh’s words rang in her head as he left the shop, and echoed around for weeks and weeks, as she put her brother to bed at night and dressed him in the mornings, as she watched him play and cajoled him into eating all his food. And when she watched him nap in the middle of the day, his cheek pressed into his blanket, it was easy, so easy and so painful to imagine what her son might have looked like at that age, sleeping just like that.
And she wondered if maybe she really had just taken him to fill her own empty arms. It wasn’t what Iroh had said, but maybe he was fooling himself too.
Or maybe the real commonality between herself and the great General Iroh, Dragon of the West, was that they had each stolen a son from Ozai.
And when she found herself at her son’s grave, again, tracing his name with her finger, it wasn’t a surprise.
Ichiro, son of Mai and Firelord Zuko. Zuko had all the subtlety of a hammer blow.
She lit the incense stick and watched it burn, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and no words for her son.
It had long since burned down and the smoke dissipated, sunset having bled away to dusk and then to true night, when Mai was jolted out of her daze by the sound of footsteps behind her. “I’m sorry,” Zuko said. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“How could you?” Mai said without heat. “You didn’t know I was here.”
“I could go,” he offered quickly.
“No.” Mai stood up. “Be’s your son. You should spend time with him too.”
“Did I make the right choice, doing that?” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear. “Are you happy with it?”
“I don’t know.” Mai looked at him. “Would I be happier with Ozai as his father?” Part of her wished he was still inside her, before she had to answer those questions, when she had fear and dread to keep her awake at night instead of emptiness.
Zuko looked away, kneeling down on the ground and busying himself with the incense.
“Just think, if he had lived,” Mai said mostly to herself, cruelly in spite of that. “Every rebel group in the nation would proclaim him Ozai’s son and fight in his name. How relieved you must be.”
Zuko’s head snapped up. “No.”
Mai folded her arms. “Yes.”
“Are you?” Zuko shot back. “Relieved he’s dead? This way you don’t have to find out if you could love him when you were afraid he was my fa- Ozai’s son. Easier to love a corpse.”
Mai felt the blood leach out of her face, leaving it ice cold and hard. “I never doubted I could love a son of Ozai,” she spat. Since she already loved one. She didn’t say it aloud, but she knew Zuko heard it, and it was far too dangerous an admission.
Beginning
“Ozai’s cell is that way,” Ursa points out the window.
“I don’t want to hear him tell me he’s sorry either,” Mai tells her without turning around. “I never want to hear his voice again.”
“Oh, believe me, I understand,” Ursa murmurs, both bleak and amused. “Before you go, I do have to ask if you love my son.
Mai stops. “That really isn’t any of your business.”
“Maybe not,” Ursa sighs. “But either way you should tell him. He loves you.”
Mai knows that already. She isn’t stupid. “Is he waiting outside?”
“Probably. He knows you’re here.”
Mai glowers. “Coward.”
“You or him?” Ursa asks, eyebrows raised. “There’s mothing to be afraid of. He’s not Ozai.”
“No.” And Mai herself isn’t sure if it is acknowledgement or denial.
“I feel… I know what it’s like, Mai, and I thought maybe somebody needed to remind you that life goes on after him, that once you get away, you really are free, and you have a right to live your life. He can’t take that away from you now.”
“Don’t you dare!” Mai snarls, rounding on her. “You don’t get to manipulate me into dating your son to spite the man who raped me!”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” Ursa’s voice grows hard. “If you want to tell him no, do it. Don’t be afraid he will act like Ozai, because he is not Ozai. If you want to say yes, you don’t need to be afraid he will turn into Ozai. Either way, he deserves your honesty. He won’t hurt you with it because he’s not Ozai.”
“I love him,” Mai mutters. “But I can’t. I’m not ready. I can’t be his Firelady right now. I can’t do it. I can’t.”
Ursa smiles at her, sad. “Then that’s what you need to tell him.”
But what if I don’t want to, she wants to ask. What if I just want to run away?
Mai starts for the door again shaking. Her hands slip on the handle. “While we’re sharing secrets here, Ozai never would have let you stay.” She grips the door handle, but she doesn’t open it. She just holds it, letting it steady her. “He wanted you gone. Ozai gets what he wants.”
“Not anymore. He’s in a prison cell.” Mai hears the smile in her voice.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes.”
“But my point,” Mai begins, voice calm when the rest of her is not. “Is that what he did isn’t your fault.”
Ursa sighs again, weariness creeping into her words. “It’s not your fault either.”
And that’s when Mai opens the door and walks out, dry eyed but still shaking. And as predicted, Zuko is there outside in the corridor, back against the opposite wall, studiously not looking at her. “Zuko.”
“Hey, Mai,” he says, suddenly and obviously embarrassed.
“I need to talk to you.” She swallows. The words stick in her throat and she forces them out. “I have something to say.”
Summary: In the Book of Esther, the King of Persia had another wife before her, killed for refusing him. Ozai did not kill Ursa, because she gave him what she wanted. After the war, she is the only person other than Mai, who knows what it’s like to be married to him, and the only one who also knows what it means to love his son.
Warnings: Past rape/current rape recovery and trauma, past suicide attempt discussed, forced pregnancy, stillbirth and grief related to it
Author's Note: Written for May Maiko Week 2019. Sequel to “The Gleaming Darkness”: [Link].
Esther and Vashti
Ending
Mai takes a sip of her tea. There’s a weight to it, a heaviness in her mouth that tells her, as if she didn’t already know, that the tea is from the cool volcanic slopes of the Fire Nation home islands. It’s nothing like the lighter, brighter tea from the Earth Kingdom. When they were stationed in Omashu, her parents had real Fire Nation tea shipped from the islands. On special occasions, when her parents had someone to impress, she would drink it, trying not to focus on the way it tasted a little bit dead.
Not this though. This is fresh. Only the best for the Firelord’s mother.
Mai resists the urge to put the cup down. She is holding it to have somewhere to put her hands, and putting it down would defeat the purpose. “Why did you summon me?”
Ursa’s brow furrows. “Summon?”
“You’re the Firelord’s mother. You request a meeting, I have to say yes.”
Ursa frowns. “You don’t with Zuko.”
“With Zuko I know what I can get away with.”
Ursa snorts, and there’s something there under the amusement that Mai can’t quite guess at. “I forgot what it’s like when people think you have power. Ozai did a lot of asking that wasn’t really asking.”
“I remember,” Mai tells her.
“I wanted to talk to the person who confessed her love to my son in a graveyard yesterday.”
Mai almost drops the cup. She puts it down instead. “That’s not what I said.”
“I figured,” Ursa says. “But that’s what he heard. I thought I should warn you. And I wanted to apologize.”
Mai put her hands in her lap and tried not to stare. “What for?”
“I had no idea Ozai would take another wife.” Ursa swallows. “If I had, I would have stayed.”
“What?” Mai rasps. It doesn’t connect. It doesn’t make sense.
“He never wanted to marry me.” Ursa looks down at her own cup of tea. “And he had his two children. If I had known what he was going to do, I would have persuaded him to let me stay, reminded him that nobody knew his father had been murdered, that sending me away would only look suspicious.”
“Are you jealous?” Mai demands, aghast and struggling to hide it.
“No!” Ursa stares at her like she doesn’t really know what to do with her, a look with which Mai is very familiar. “No. There are things you don’t want anybody else to have because you like them too much to give them up, and then there are things that you keep, roles you play, because if you give them up, someone will have to take your place, and you don’t want anybody else to suffer like you did, even if it means you keep suffering. And what he did to my children…” she trails off, and Mai is the one left staring.
“You are not the person I need an apology from,” Mai chokes out as she walks away.
Quiet
It was so easy to pretend, with Zuko’s hand clamped tight within hers, with his face next to her own, that this was his child she was birthing, and that the Firelord she had been married to had been him. It was so easy to pretend that nothing had gone wrong. It was easy to pretend, and just then, with pain wracking her body, the strength to face the black yawning void of terror that was the reality of her circumstance seemed beyond her strength to face.
She turned away and closed her eyes, and met the next contraction with a push of her own, until her body shook with exertion, until the pain and the exhaustion drowned out the royal physician’s constant instructions, and the soft drone of Zuko’s whispered words of encouragement.
With the next contraction, the scream burst forth out of her, raw and unwilling. It went on and on, and hung in the air, and when the scream stopped, she felt its weight sink down on her. The royal physician babbled above her about the head, and it was almost over, but it seemed as if he were somewhere else, as if even as she groaned and pushed down with everything she had left, that she wasn’t there anymore, as if she had left her body with the scream.
And then there was another human being slipping out from between her legs, and she was crashing back down into her body as the royal physician cried out that the child was a boy. She was soaked, in sweat, and in fluids Mai felt no urge to identify. There was blood sticking to the inside of her thighs, and the terrible smell of the flower water they had bathed her face with as she had labored. She heaved air into her lungs, ignoring the smells, and lay back, pulling her hand way from Zuko’s.
It was quiet. There was muttering and hissing, but otherwise it was quiet. Mai bolted upright, ignoring the protests of her sore and battered body. “What’s going on?”
Zuko leapt to his feet. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, wheeling on the royal physician. “Tell her!”
The royal physician eyed Zuko as if he thought his new young Firelord might kill him on the spot, in front of his no longer stepmother. “The child isn’t breathing, my Lady,” he said, deciding she was the safer of the two. “We are doing all we can to revive him.”
Mai went rigid. “Is my son dead?”
“We are doing all we can,” the royal physician repeated. So Mai swallowed down her fear, and waited (and hoped, and begged) for her baby’s cries.
But it stayed quiet. Her son never cried, because he never drew breath. Eventually the physician and his assistants had to give up. They had done all they could to no avail.
And then there was nothing to do but wait for the afterbirth and stare at the ceiling like it might have some answers.
Blood
“What name should I give for the father?” Zuko asked. “Mine or my…” he trailed off. “Mine or Ozai’s?”
“Whatever.” She tried for cool and unaffected. Her face lacked expression. But her eyes were red and puffy, because even when she cried alone where no one could see, there was always something to give her away, and no amount of cold water could wash it away completely. “It’s not like I know which one of you is the actual father anyway.”
Zuko put his hand over hers. She snatched her hand away.
“It’s probably Ozai’s. He fucked me more than you ever got to.” It was crude, and cruel, and painful, but it felt good to say, like pus coming out of a boil, like her whole being was a festering wound and she was lancing it a little at a time.
“That’s not the point,” Zuko tried to tell her, brow furrowed. And it wasn’t, she knew. It was about what kind of story she wanted to tell. But she was so tired of stories, and of managing what everybody else was supposed to think. She was so tired of thinking about politics and the fate of nations when inside she was crumbling.
It never occurred to her that there would be a time she was less able to deal with the mess of it all than Zuko. “You pick. I don’t care.”
“Mai…”
“I don’t care,” she said again, willing it to be true. Such a strange feeling, caring so much about something, and yet not knowing how she felt, only that she did. And having nothing left within her capable of choosing. “You get to choose, brother or son. I don’t get a choice. Either way, he’s my son.”
With all her being, Mai wanted him to leave, so she could endure the breakdown she knew was coming alone. But Zuko didn’t leave. “Son,” he breathed into her silence. “We’ll list him as my son.”
He looked at her then, as if he expected now that he had made a choice, she would suddenly decide she objected. Maybe that was what he wanted. If so, she disappointed him. “Fine.”
“Do you…” he hesitated. “Is there a name you want to give him?”
“I don’t know Zuko, she snapped. “If you’ve decided you’re this baby’s father, you can at least give him his name.”
“Fine,” Zuko snapped back. “I will.”
As Mai settled herself down deeper into her pillows, his eye narrowed down to match its scarred mate. Every day, she grew more grateful for his scar, for the way it distinguished his face from his father’s. It was something she could see and touch that let her know the man who bore it could never be Ozai. And he could glare at her all he wanted, because she could stare coolly back until he gave up and left her alone, storming out of the room he had given her, self disgust heavy in the air around them.
Childhood
She went to the royal graveyard alone, and when she came back to the palace, she went to the room Zuko had given her and packed her things. She dressed in her old clothes, and did her hair like an unmarried girl in the tradition of her parents’ home island, and when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the way out, it was like going back in time.
Her body was her own again. There was nothing inside her but herself.
Ty Lee was waiting for her outside the door. “Does Zuko have you guarding me?” she asked neutrally. Ty Lee did not deserve the resentment bubbling up in her gut at the thought.
Shaking her head, Ty Lee gave her a sunny smile, but like all of Ty Lee’s sunniest smiles, there was an edge to it, like she knew exactly what Mai was trying her best to hide. “I’m off duty. I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me, but you sounded busy.”
“I’m moving out.”
“You aren’t going back home are you?” she asked, worried.
Mai shook her head. “I have an aunt who owns a flower shop in town. I figured I’d ask her.”
Ty Lee nodded. “Want some help?”
“This is all I’ve got,” Mai told her, holding up the small trunk she had been carrying under one arm. Her stomach twisted as Ty Lee’s face fell. “But I wouldn’t mind the company.”
“Good,” Ty Lee said decisively. “You’ve been alone too much. Hiding.”
“Thanks.”
“Visiting graves by yourself. Wallowing.”
Mai rolled her eyes and ignored her. Ty Lee smiled that knowing smile of hers, and the silence between them grew comfortable and familiar, and the illusion that they had traveled back in time, that they were children again, the princess’s companions walking home from the palace together, only grew stronger with each step.
It wasn’t until they both stood in the sunlight outside the palace that Mai spoke again. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not.”
“Yes it is.” Mai looked away so she wouldn’t see Ty Lee’s face. “I stopped eating, when he had me under house arrest. I tried to starve myself.”
“Mai!” and it sounded as if that one word had taken all the air out of her.
“I’m sorry,” Mai told her, staring at her own hand.
Ty Lee gasped, like she was going to start crying. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“You risked your life to save mine. You went to prison.” Mai still couldn’t bring herself to look at her. “And after that, I tried to commit suicide.”
With that, Ty Lee threw her arms around Mai, and pulled her into a tight hug, that she didn’t have the energy to protest. She remembered, much too sharply, as if it was happening, not had happened, what it had felt like at the Boiling Rock when she thought she was going to watch Zuko die. So she hugged Ty Lee back.
Connection
She took her brother and ran. It didn’t feel like a choice. And in the quiet of the flower shop the next morning before they opened, she wondered what it said that none of the most important choices she made felt like choices at all.
How dare you? She had wanted to ask her father. He raped me, and you want him back? This was what her father’s scheming and his service to Ozai had gotten them, his daughter raped, his grandson dead, and his son too young to defend himself from whatever use his father wanted to put him to. She wanted to shout all of that in his face, to fling it at him like her shuriken, but instead she didn’t say anything to him as he told her he would make her Firelady again, as if that wasn’t exactly what she was afraid of.
Her father thought he had won before. He had a daughter who was Firelady. He had a daughter who tried to starve herself to death rather than give Ozai a child because she knew what Ozai did to his children. He had a daughter who took her brother because she knew what Ukano did to his.
Late afternoon sunlight streamed through every window when the royal palanquin stopped in front of the shop. Mai’s skin prickled all over. It wasn’t Ozai. She knew that. She knew… And it wasn’t Azula either. And she was ready to march outside and order Zuko away. He would listen to her. That was probably why she didn’t…
It wasn’t Zuko who walked through the door. It was General Iroh.
Tom-Tom wiggled to be put down. She didn’t remember picking him up, yet there he was, clutched to her chest. She set him down on the floor. “I thought you were in Ba Sing Se.”
“My nephew had a journey to make, and he asked me to stand in for him,” Iroh said placidly. He glanced down at Tom-Tom. “And this must be your brother.”
“Are you here to demand I give him back?”
He shook his head. “I am here to order flowers for my nephew’s return. Things could use some brightening up.”
Mai didn’t restrain her eye roll.
“I meant to come earlier,” he said with a smile. “To see how you were, and to offer you a job. But you found something on your own, didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have taken it,” Mai replied, weighing her words carefully. “No offence, but I needed to get away from your entire family for a while.”
He gave her an understanding nod, and Mai wished everybody would stop being so horribly understanding.
“Why did you come now?” she asked sharply. “I’m doing okay now.”
“Your mother came to complain that you had kidnapped her son,” he said conspiratorially. “And I thought you might wish to talk.”
Mai heaved a disgusted sigh. “What’s there to talk about?”
He smiled down at Tom-Tom before glancing back up at her wryly.
Endure
Iroh’s words rang in her head as he left the shop, and echoed around for weeks and weeks, as she put her brother to bed at night and dressed him in the mornings, as she watched him play and cajoled him into eating all his food. And when she watched him nap in the middle of the day, his cheek pressed into his blanket, it was easy, so easy and so painful to imagine what her son might have looked like at that age, sleeping just like that.
And she wondered if maybe she really had just taken him to fill her own empty arms. It wasn’t what Iroh had said, but maybe he was fooling himself too.
Or maybe the real commonality between herself and the great General Iroh, Dragon of the West, was that they had each stolen a son from Ozai.
And when she found herself at her son’s grave, again, tracing his name with her finger, it wasn’t a surprise.
Ichiro, son of Mai and Firelord Zuko. Zuko had all the subtlety of a hammer blow.
She lit the incense stick and watched it burn, her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and no words for her son.
It had long since burned down and the smoke dissipated, sunset having bled away to dusk and then to true night, when Mai was jolted out of her daze by the sound of footsteps behind her. “I’m sorry,” Zuko said. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“How could you?” Mai said without heat. “You didn’t know I was here.”
“I could go,” he offered quickly.
“No.” Mai stood up. “Be’s your son. You should spend time with him too.”
“Did I make the right choice, doing that?” he murmured, just loud enough for her to hear. “Are you happy with it?”
“I don’t know.” Mai looked at him. “Would I be happier with Ozai as his father?” Part of her wished he was still inside her, before she had to answer those questions, when she had fear and dread to keep her awake at night instead of emptiness.
Zuko looked away, kneeling down on the ground and busying himself with the incense.
“Just think, if he had lived,” Mai said mostly to herself, cruelly in spite of that. “Every rebel group in the nation would proclaim him Ozai’s son and fight in his name. How relieved you must be.”
Zuko’s head snapped up. “No.”
Mai folded her arms. “Yes.”
“Are you?” Zuko shot back. “Relieved he’s dead? This way you don’t have to find out if you could love him when you were afraid he was my fa- Ozai’s son. Easier to love a corpse.”
Mai felt the blood leach out of her face, leaving it ice cold and hard. “I never doubted I could love a son of Ozai,” she spat. Since she already loved one. She didn’t say it aloud, but she knew Zuko heard it, and it was far too dangerous an admission.
Beginning
“Ozai’s cell is that way,” Ursa points out the window.
“I don’t want to hear him tell me he’s sorry either,” Mai tells her without turning around. “I never want to hear his voice again.”
“Oh, believe me, I understand,” Ursa murmurs, both bleak and amused. “Before you go, I do have to ask if you love my son.
Mai stops. “That really isn’t any of your business.”
“Maybe not,” Ursa sighs. “But either way you should tell him. He loves you.”
Mai knows that already. She isn’t stupid. “Is he waiting outside?”
“Probably. He knows you’re here.”
Mai glowers. “Coward.”
“You or him?” Ursa asks, eyebrows raised. “There’s mothing to be afraid of. He’s not Ozai.”
“No.” And Mai herself isn’t sure if it is acknowledgement or denial.
“I feel… I know what it’s like, Mai, and I thought maybe somebody needed to remind you that life goes on after him, that once you get away, you really are free, and you have a right to live your life. He can’t take that away from you now.”
“Don’t you dare!” Mai snarls, rounding on her. “You don’t get to manipulate me into dating your son to spite the man who raped me!”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.” Ursa’s voice grows hard. “If you want to tell him no, do it. Don’t be afraid he will act like Ozai, because he is not Ozai. If you want to say yes, you don’t need to be afraid he will turn into Ozai. Either way, he deserves your honesty. He won’t hurt you with it because he’s not Ozai.”
“I love him,” Mai mutters. “But I can’t. I’m not ready. I can’t be his Firelady right now. I can’t do it. I can’t.”
Ursa smiles at her, sad. “Then that’s what you need to tell him.”
But what if I don’t want to, she wants to ask. What if I just want to run away?
Mai starts for the door again shaking. Her hands slip on the handle. “While we’re sharing secrets here, Ozai never would have let you stay.” She grips the door handle, but she doesn’t open it. She just holds it, letting it steady her. “He wanted you gone. Ozai gets what he wants.”
“Not anymore. He’s in a prison cell.” Mai hears the smile in her voice.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes.”
“But my point,” Mai begins, voice calm when the rest of her is not. “Is that what he did isn’t your fault.”
Ursa sighs again, weariness creeping into her words. “It’s not your fault either.”
And that’s when Mai opens the door and walks out, dry eyed but still shaking. And as predicted, Zuko is there outside in the corridor, back against the opposite wall, studiously not looking at her. “Zuko.”
“Hey, Mai,” he says, suddenly and obviously embarrassed.
“I need to talk to you.” She swallows. The words stick in her throat and she forces them out. “I have something to say.”
