Lost and Found: Part One
Jul. 26th, 2019 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
attackfishDisclaimer: If I owned Avatar: the Last Airbender, I would have the money to donate to charity myself.
Summary: In a world where Mai's family never sent her to the Royal Academy for Girls, they see marrying her off as the best way to raise their prospects. Faced with marriage to a stranger, she runs away, only to find herself hunted.
Author's Note: Written for avrelia on Tumblr as a reward for donating 20 dollars to RAICES, a charity that aid immigrants and refugees coming to the US and are fighting Trump’s crimes against humanity. She wanted a fic in which Mai’s parents never left their home town, so Mai’s never met anyone from the royal family. When her parents tried to arrange a marriage she didn’t like, Mai ran away to Earth Kingdom and ended up June’s apprentice.
Warnings: None
PART TWO
PART ONE
"So where are you from?" She had her boots up on the table like she didn't care what anybody thought.
Mai shrugged. "Doesn't matter."
"Me, I'm a colony brat." She smirked with a lazy self confidence, but underneath, Mai could feel her watching her, calculating, sizing her up like a cat with a lizard-mouse. "Mom's Fire Nation, no idea about my dad, but you know what, you're right. That doesn't matter. What matters is where you're going. So where are you going?"
"That's my own business," Mai replied, tired of the back and forth. "Not yours."
"Just trying to make conversation," she said shrugging. "Drink your tea, it's getting cold."
Mai didn't touch her tea. "You know what, I need to get going. Thanks for the tea."
As she stood up, the woman stood up too, tall and wiry, and probably capable of taking almost anyone she wanted in a fight. "Let's cut the crap, Mai. Drink your tea, and when you wake up, you'll be home. Or we can do this the hard way. I get paid the same either way."
Mai raised an eyebrow, picked up the tea, and brought it to her lips. Then, abruptly, she threw the hot tea in the bounty hunter's face and bolted.
o0O0o
Two nights later, Mai woke up in the dark, to the sound of a creaking floorboard. She slipped out of bed and pressed herself to the wall next to the door, and when it slid open, she stabbed the hand that reached around the frame, pinning it to the frame by the thin webbing between the thumb and fingers. As the bounty hunter screamed with pain, Mai grabbed her things and dove out the inn window.
o0O0o
It was five days before the bounty hunter caught up with her again. She had stayed off the popular roads and hadn't spoken to anybody. She had no idea how the woman had found her again, and it left her unsettled. The woman had a bandage on her hand, and a furious expression as she and her enormous mount wove through the trees after her. They were faster over clear ground, but in the dense forest, she could duck and bob, and they couldn't.
There was a loop of root sticking up out of the ground, and her foot caught in it before she had a chance to see it. Pitched to the loamy forest floor, she caught herself on her arms and crawled forward, pulling her legs up under her to get back to her feet, but it was too late. The bounty hunter's beast's tongue whipped out of its mouth and jabbed into her shoulder. It barely had time to hurt before the numbness spread through her, dropping her back to the forest floor.
The bounty hunter leaned over and hooked an arm around Mai, hauling her up onto the beast, in front of her saddle, easily as if she were a small child, and not a girl of fifteen. "Aww, don't feel too bad. You gave me a better chase than I've had in a while."
"Go throw yourself off a dock," Mai spat, relieved to find her mouth at least worked fine.
"Careful, kid," the bounty hunter drawled. "You stabbed me. I'm not inclined to be gentle with you. I'll cut you some slack because you're a kid, but if you push me..."
"You'll what?" Mai couldn't feel the beast under her, couldn't feel the bumps and jostling, but she could feel it in the way her head moved. It was strange and nauseating, and she closed her eyes, willing her stomach to settle. "You can't hurt me. You wouldn't want to piss off your customers."
"Like I said before, I don't think they'll mind a few bruises."
Trying to force her fingers to move, Mai said nothing.
"Why'd you run away, anyway? Looked like a pretty cushy life, being a highborn country noble."
Again, Mai kept her silence and bided her time.
o0O0o
It was dark before her fingers would do more than twitch. She flexed her arms and legs, rolling her shoulders experimentally and looked around for the first time since she had been locked into this cabin on a merchant ship. There was a cot, which the bounty hunter hadn't bothered to put her on, and a port hole. It was too small for her to crawl through, and even if she did, she'd be left clinging to the ship's hull, so she discounted it. Other than that, there was very little in the room, and nothing of use, just rugs, a small table, the comfortable furnishings of a cabin a wealthy noblewoman like her might have enjoyed if she had booked passage herself. It clearly wasn't meant to be a cell. Even the door wasn't a cell door. The lock had a keyhole on both sides. It almost made her laugh. Even with being captured by a bounty hunter and held prisoner, the niceties had to be observed.
Not all the niceties, obviously. She straightened her overrobe, tugging harder than she needed to so that the cloth scraped against her skin, to erase the memory of the bounty hunter's cold, clinical search for her knives, and her hands perfunctorily putting her clothes back on askew. Mai had lain there helpless, calling her every name her parents didn't know she knew, but the bounty hunter had laughed at her and kept on with her job.
With one last shudder, Mai slid one of the pins out of her hair. It fit into the keyhole easily. Working it gently, she waited for the soft snick of success before opening the door as quietly as possible. The hallway was empty. Mai slid out into the shadows beyond her doorway, closing it behind her, just in case anyone came to check.
Her boots rang against the metal floor, so she stripped them off and gripped them one handed as she made her way through the dark. Her knives were probably with the bounty hunter herself, so that was where she needed to go. Mai forced down her discomfort and bent low to look through the keyhole of the door next to hers. In the gloom, she could just make out the shadow of a form on a cot. The door was locked, so she picked the lock and silently slipped inside.
Sure enough, it was the bounty hunter, in a soft sleeping robe and socks. The moonlight through the porthole glinted off two keys to her wrist, and Mai guessed they were for the two cabins. They would have to wait until she found her knives.
Her heart beat so loud in her ears she didn't know how it didn't wake the whole ship, but the bounty hunter slept on. Mai poked through the room as quietly as she could hunting for her knives, doing her best to ignore how strange her clothes felt without them underneath. The light from the porthole was not enough to dispel the shadows, so she only found the bounty hunter's pack when she tripped over it. It clanked.
With a panicked glance at the bounty hunter, who continued sleeping, to Mai's everlasting gratitude, she pulled the pack open and found her knives, still in their sheaths. She hurriedly stuffed everything else back in the pack and pulled out her thinnest knife. Delicately, she sliced through the string holding the keys to the bounty hunter's wrist, stuffed her knives into her boots, and crept out, using the newly acquired keys to lock the door behind her.
o0O0o
She sold her stolen steamer skiff for scrap as soon as she made port, and traded some of her new cash for a local peasant woman's clothes and supplies. It was cold, so she bought warm boots, an extra coat and blankets for her bed roll. There was snow on the ground, and she knew it should be winter in the north, which gave her hope she was close to Ba Sing Se. Either way, she seemed so impossibly far away from her parents' villa on the eastern edge of the Fire Nation archipelago.
But she wasn't. That was the problem. She still had a bounty hunter on her tail. And Ba Sing Se was the only place she could think of where maybe, and only maybe, she might be safe.
She wanted to break down, to yell curses at her parents for doing this to her, for trying to marry her off to a creepy old man in the first place, and for paying someone to drag her home so they could do what they wanted with her, and use her without caring about her at all. But she couldn't break down. She had to keep going, or she didn't have a chance, and they really were going to get her back and get just what they wanted. Her breath shook as she forced down the tears, and the rage, but she did it. She picked her foot up off the ground and started walking.
o0O0o
The villagers said the outer wall of Ba Sing Se was a two day trek westward, so Mai knew she would have to make camp and sleep before she was safe, but that didn't mean she had to like it. The sky was clear, and the air was mostly still, so she stepped off the road and into the pines to find a clear enough patch of ground. As she spread out her bedroll, she checked to make sure all of her knives were where they should be, even though she could feel all of them against her skin. It was going to be a long time before she stopped doing that.
o0O0o
She woke with the bounty hunter sitting beside her. Mai reached for her knives.
She put her hands up for Mai to see. "Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, I just want to talk."
"Yeah right," Mai snarled.
"Look kid, I'm here to offer you a job." She cocked your head. "You got skills. You're smart, stubborn, I can respect that."
"I bet you can," Mai said without sheathing her knives. "Why do I get the feeling this is all a plot to lure me in?"
The bounty hunter smiled in what was clearly supposed to be a disarming manner. She fell miles short of the mark. "Now why would I do a thing like that?"
"Because it's a lot easier to capture somebody, when they're not struggling?"
"That's what shirshu venom is for." She smirked. "Besides, you could always just escape later. You're good at that. Locking me in my room was a nice touch."
"Thanks," Mai said coldly. But she considered. "What kind of a job?"
"Bounty hunting, what else?" She waved a hand nonchalantly through the air. "I'm looking to expand. I could use an assistant. Or an apprentice."
"And you wouldn't just turn me over to my parents for the reward money."
"Why are you running from them anyway?" she asked, and Mai couldn't detect anything other than honest curiosity. "You're not at all what I was expecting."
"My parents want to marry me to a newly promoted admiral. He's forty years old." She eyed the bounty hunter warily. "Why, what were you expecting?"
"Wow, gross." She seemed to mean it. "I was expecting some silly, spoiled little rich girl running away to see the world, but you're not that, are you. You're tough as nails."
"I try." Mai gripped her knives tightly. "So what would this job with you pay?"
"Well I could start with not charging you for the skiff you stole that I had to pay for," she drawled. "Or the doctor I had to see for the hand you stabbed. Thanks for that."
"Any time."
"See, tough as nails." She grinned. "After that, we'll see how you do. I'm June, by the way, but you, kid, can call me boss."
"I think I'll stick with June," Mai told her. "And you can call me Mai."
PART TWO
Summary: In a world where Mai's family never sent her to the Royal Academy for Girls, they see marrying her off as the best way to raise their prospects. Faced with marriage to a stranger, she runs away, only to find herself hunted.
Author's Note: Written for avrelia on Tumblr as a reward for donating 20 dollars to RAICES, a charity that aid immigrants and refugees coming to the US and are fighting Trump’s crimes against humanity. She wanted a fic in which Mai’s parents never left their home town, so Mai’s never met anyone from the royal family. When her parents tried to arrange a marriage she didn’t like, Mai ran away to Earth Kingdom and ended up June’s apprentice.
Warnings: None
PART TWO
PART ONE
"So where are you from?" She had her boots up on the table like she didn't care what anybody thought.
Mai shrugged. "Doesn't matter."
"Me, I'm a colony brat." She smirked with a lazy self confidence, but underneath, Mai could feel her watching her, calculating, sizing her up like a cat with a lizard-mouse. "Mom's Fire Nation, no idea about my dad, but you know what, you're right. That doesn't matter. What matters is where you're going. So where are you going?"
"That's my own business," Mai replied, tired of the back and forth. "Not yours."
"Just trying to make conversation," she said shrugging. "Drink your tea, it's getting cold."
Mai didn't touch her tea. "You know what, I need to get going. Thanks for the tea."
As she stood up, the woman stood up too, tall and wiry, and probably capable of taking almost anyone she wanted in a fight. "Let's cut the crap, Mai. Drink your tea, and when you wake up, you'll be home. Or we can do this the hard way. I get paid the same either way."
Mai raised an eyebrow, picked up the tea, and brought it to her lips. Then, abruptly, she threw the hot tea in the bounty hunter's face and bolted.
o0O0o
Two nights later, Mai woke up in the dark, to the sound of a creaking floorboard. She slipped out of bed and pressed herself to the wall next to the door, and when it slid open, she stabbed the hand that reached around the frame, pinning it to the frame by the thin webbing between the thumb and fingers. As the bounty hunter screamed with pain, Mai grabbed her things and dove out the inn window.
o0O0o
It was five days before the bounty hunter caught up with her again. She had stayed off the popular roads and hadn't spoken to anybody. She had no idea how the woman had found her again, and it left her unsettled. The woman had a bandage on her hand, and a furious expression as she and her enormous mount wove through the trees after her. They were faster over clear ground, but in the dense forest, she could duck and bob, and they couldn't.
There was a loop of root sticking up out of the ground, and her foot caught in it before she had a chance to see it. Pitched to the loamy forest floor, she caught herself on her arms and crawled forward, pulling her legs up under her to get back to her feet, but it was too late. The bounty hunter's beast's tongue whipped out of its mouth and jabbed into her shoulder. It barely had time to hurt before the numbness spread through her, dropping her back to the forest floor.
The bounty hunter leaned over and hooked an arm around Mai, hauling her up onto the beast, in front of her saddle, easily as if she were a small child, and not a girl of fifteen. "Aww, don't feel too bad. You gave me a better chase than I've had in a while."
"Go throw yourself off a dock," Mai spat, relieved to find her mouth at least worked fine.
"Careful, kid," the bounty hunter drawled. "You stabbed me. I'm not inclined to be gentle with you. I'll cut you some slack because you're a kid, but if you push me..."
"You'll what?" Mai couldn't feel the beast under her, couldn't feel the bumps and jostling, but she could feel it in the way her head moved. It was strange and nauseating, and she closed her eyes, willing her stomach to settle. "You can't hurt me. You wouldn't want to piss off your customers."
"Like I said before, I don't think they'll mind a few bruises."
Trying to force her fingers to move, Mai said nothing.
"Why'd you run away, anyway? Looked like a pretty cushy life, being a highborn country noble."
Again, Mai kept her silence and bided her time.
o0O0o
It was dark before her fingers would do more than twitch. She flexed her arms and legs, rolling her shoulders experimentally and looked around for the first time since she had been locked into this cabin on a merchant ship. There was a cot, which the bounty hunter hadn't bothered to put her on, and a port hole. It was too small for her to crawl through, and even if she did, she'd be left clinging to the ship's hull, so she discounted it. Other than that, there was very little in the room, and nothing of use, just rugs, a small table, the comfortable furnishings of a cabin a wealthy noblewoman like her might have enjoyed if she had booked passage herself. It clearly wasn't meant to be a cell. Even the door wasn't a cell door. The lock had a keyhole on both sides. It almost made her laugh. Even with being captured by a bounty hunter and held prisoner, the niceties had to be observed.
Not all the niceties, obviously. She straightened her overrobe, tugging harder than she needed to so that the cloth scraped against her skin, to erase the memory of the bounty hunter's cold, clinical search for her knives, and her hands perfunctorily putting her clothes back on askew. Mai had lain there helpless, calling her every name her parents didn't know she knew, but the bounty hunter had laughed at her and kept on with her job.
With one last shudder, Mai slid one of the pins out of her hair. It fit into the keyhole easily. Working it gently, she waited for the soft snick of success before opening the door as quietly as possible. The hallway was empty. Mai slid out into the shadows beyond her doorway, closing it behind her, just in case anyone came to check.
Her boots rang against the metal floor, so she stripped them off and gripped them one handed as she made her way through the dark. Her knives were probably with the bounty hunter herself, so that was where she needed to go. Mai forced down her discomfort and bent low to look through the keyhole of the door next to hers. In the gloom, she could just make out the shadow of a form on a cot. The door was locked, so she picked the lock and silently slipped inside.
Sure enough, it was the bounty hunter, in a soft sleeping robe and socks. The moonlight through the porthole glinted off two keys to her wrist, and Mai guessed they were for the two cabins. They would have to wait until she found her knives.
Her heart beat so loud in her ears she didn't know how it didn't wake the whole ship, but the bounty hunter slept on. Mai poked through the room as quietly as she could hunting for her knives, doing her best to ignore how strange her clothes felt without them underneath. The light from the porthole was not enough to dispel the shadows, so she only found the bounty hunter's pack when she tripped over it. It clanked.
With a panicked glance at the bounty hunter, who continued sleeping, to Mai's everlasting gratitude, she pulled the pack open and found her knives, still in their sheaths. She hurriedly stuffed everything else back in the pack and pulled out her thinnest knife. Delicately, she sliced through the string holding the keys to the bounty hunter's wrist, stuffed her knives into her boots, and crept out, using the newly acquired keys to lock the door behind her.
o0O0o
She sold her stolen steamer skiff for scrap as soon as she made port, and traded some of her new cash for a local peasant woman's clothes and supplies. It was cold, so she bought warm boots, an extra coat and blankets for her bed roll. There was snow on the ground, and she knew it should be winter in the north, which gave her hope she was close to Ba Sing Se. Either way, she seemed so impossibly far away from her parents' villa on the eastern edge of the Fire Nation archipelago.
But she wasn't. That was the problem. She still had a bounty hunter on her tail. And Ba Sing Se was the only place she could think of where maybe, and only maybe, she might be safe.
She wanted to break down, to yell curses at her parents for doing this to her, for trying to marry her off to a creepy old man in the first place, and for paying someone to drag her home so they could do what they wanted with her, and use her without caring about her at all. But she couldn't break down. She had to keep going, or she didn't have a chance, and they really were going to get her back and get just what they wanted. Her breath shook as she forced down the tears, and the rage, but she did it. She picked her foot up off the ground and started walking.
o0O0o
The villagers said the outer wall of Ba Sing Se was a two day trek westward, so Mai knew she would have to make camp and sleep before she was safe, but that didn't mean she had to like it. The sky was clear, and the air was mostly still, so she stepped off the road and into the pines to find a clear enough patch of ground. As she spread out her bedroll, she checked to make sure all of her knives were where they should be, even though she could feel all of them against her skin. It was going to be a long time before she stopped doing that.
o0O0o
She woke with the bounty hunter sitting beside her. Mai reached for her knives.
She put her hands up for Mai to see. "Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, I just want to talk."
"Yeah right," Mai snarled.
"Look kid, I'm here to offer you a job." She cocked your head. "You got skills. You're smart, stubborn, I can respect that."
"I bet you can," Mai said without sheathing her knives. "Why do I get the feeling this is all a plot to lure me in?"
The bounty hunter smiled in what was clearly supposed to be a disarming manner. She fell miles short of the mark. "Now why would I do a thing like that?"
"Because it's a lot easier to capture somebody, when they're not struggling?"
"That's what shirshu venom is for." She smirked. "Besides, you could always just escape later. You're good at that. Locking me in my room was a nice touch."
"Thanks," Mai said coldly. But she considered. "What kind of a job?"
"Bounty hunting, what else?" She waved a hand nonchalantly through the air. "I'm looking to expand. I could use an assistant. Or an apprentice."
"And you wouldn't just turn me over to my parents for the reward money."
"Why are you running from them anyway?" she asked, and Mai couldn't detect anything other than honest curiosity. "You're not at all what I was expecting."
"My parents want to marry me to a newly promoted admiral. He's forty years old." She eyed the bounty hunter warily. "Why, what were you expecting?"
"Wow, gross." She seemed to mean it. "I was expecting some silly, spoiled little rich girl running away to see the world, but you're not that, are you. You're tough as nails."
"I try." Mai gripped her knives tightly. "So what would this job with you pay?"
"Well I could start with not charging you for the skiff you stole that I had to pay for," she drawled. "Or the doctor I had to see for the hand you stabbed. Thanks for that."
"Any time."
"See, tough as nails." She grinned. "After that, we'll see how you do. I'm June, by the way, but you, kid, can call me boss."
"I think I'll stick with June," Mai told her. "And you can call me Mai."
PART TWO
