Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What exactly am I looking at right now?” Mai hopes the corollary, and why is it my problem? is evident from her tone of voice.

Maybe it would be evident, provided she were talking to anyone besides Avatar Aang. Literally bouncing on his toes, he explains, “A proposal for all the schools in the country to enact lessons on traditional Fire Nation dances as a standard part of their curriculum! While we were travelling around the country before the Day of Black Sun, there was this one school I attended for a few days that made me think –”

“What.”

“Oh yeah, so in this one town we stopped in, I guess I accidentally stole a school uniform –”

“First of all,” Mai heads him off, rolling up the scroll as she talks, “I really don’t want to know. Second of all, please tell me your plan to present this to the Minister of Education does not rely on a charming anecdote about enemy insurgents infiltrating the Fire Nation’s school system undetected. His head might actually explode if you did that. Which could be fun to watch, except that I don’t mean that in a literal sense.”

Aang visibly deflates. He sighs – much more forlornly than Mai thinks this situation calls for – and settling down across from Mai says, “See, this is why I’m showing the draft to you and not Zuko. Zuko’s more of a big picture guy. You’re better all of the,” he wiggles his fingers vaguely, “little detail stuff.”

If “little detail stuff” means Mai has a functional sense of subtlety and knows enough to play the game of politics in a way that doesn’t get herself and everyone she – and, more saliently, Zuko – cares about killed, then yeah, she’s a lot better at the little detail stuff than Zuko is.

In this case though, she’s pretty sure Zuko would probably say the same thing she does.

“Educational changes aren’t a priority right now beyond the extensive measures we’re already taking to rollback wartime propaganda.”

That alone had taken over a week of non-stop meetings with the Education Minister and his staff. Mai hadn’t attended any of them herself – being the Firelord’s girlfriend doesn’t constitute and official position in the royal court – but Zuko had needed all the help he could get to workshop strategies for presenting his and Aang’s plans for changes without horribly offending the stodgy, traditionalist, grump of a man.

In the end, the minister’s sensibilities were only mildly ruffled and he’d ultimately agreed to most of the policy points proposed by the new regent; Zuko sensibilities, on the other hand, were deeply offended by the need to tiptoe around his convictions in order to actually make any progress on the matter. The whole process had been excruciating.

Aang puts on a wise Avatar face. Mai doesn’t know him well yet, but she still recognizes it as one he tends to put on for dignitaries and nobles at formal events. “You don’t have to read it right now, but I think this would be good for helping the fire nation reconnect with some of the cultural stuff you guys lost or forgot about during the war. One hundred years ago you guys had amazing dancers and musicians and all kinds of festivals all the time where that got to be celebrated.” He gets more excited as he talks, “And it’d be really good for morale! I mean, who doesn’t like dancing?”

“I don’t.” Mai says immediately, deadpan.

Aang somehow rolls his eyes with his whole body, “Oh come on, I bet you’ve never even been to a dance party! The school I was at for a few days didn’t even let you tap your feet in music class!”

Mai really, really doesn’t want to know. Instead of dignifying that with a response, she takes his proposal and tucks it into a far corner of her desk, well behind all of the more pressing projects she needs to get to.

Aang, inexplicably, doesn’t seem particularly disheartened by this. “I’m taking your lack of a defense as confirmation that you’ve never been to a dance party.”

Mai sighs.

A few seconds of quiet stretches between them, only just long enough to start to be a bit awkward. The background murmur of cicada-crickets – ever present this late in the summer – occupies the moment.

“So, uh,” Aang hedges, taking in the truly significant number of scrolls on Mai’s desk. “Is there that anything I can do to help you? You’re looking over all this stuff to help keep Zuko from putting his foot in his mouth in all his meetings with his councilors and ministers, right?”

The corners of Mai’s mouth twitch up, just a bit. “That’s not an inaccurate way of putting it.”

Aang grins at her – and for a moment Mai lets herself appreciate how deeply surreal everything about her current reality feels. A hundred years of war came to a screeching halt practically overnight, and somehow that’s landed her spending the better part of her days doing boring secretarial work. Boring secretarial work, moreover, that she volunteered to do, even if only to avoid being bored by her boyfriend spending every waking moment looking over paperwork. And now she’s being distracted from that work by a not entirely unpleasant conversation with none other than the Avatar who, incidentally, most had assumed was dead and long gone from this world up until not even a full year ago.

“Seriously though,” Aang says, “There’s not a lot for me to do right now.”

“You’re bored, so you want to help with paperwork?” Mai asks sardonically.

Aang laughs at that. He doesn’t leave though, so Mai thinks she might as well as take him up on his offer.

She rummages through some of the papers on her desk and produces a long scroll.

“Here,” she says, “you could help me review these spending records for the last few years – there’s a report summarizing them from one of the palace aides, but I want to double check and make sure nothing’s out of place–”

“Oh, uh,” Aang cuts in before she can get too far into her spiel, “I mean, I’d love to help with that, but Zuko told me that the Minister of Finance thought it wouldn’t be a good idea for the Avatar to be too involved in all the Fire Nation’s money or finance-y stuff.”

Mai narrows her eyes, taking in Aang’s perfectly innocent smile. He sheepishly rubs the back of his bald head.

A beat.

Under Mai’s continued scrutiny, Aang spreads his hands in a sheepish What are you going to do? gesture.

Mai genuinely can’t tell if he’s lying.

But even if he is, she doesn’t doubt that some of the more traditionalist nobles – the ones that see Aang’s presence here the other nations’ strategy for keeping the Fire Nation in line – will absolutely treat anything Aang touches as suspicious, budgetary or otherwise. Depending on how the court politics shake out in the next few months, it could evolve into a playing piece they can lay out whenever they want to stonewall any new policies Zuko tries to roll out.

Aang’s innocent demeanor doesn’t waver for an instant in the long moment Mai takes to contemplate all of this. Finally, she sighs, waving dismissively at him. “Fine. I have work to do. Find something else to do to entertain yourself.”

Aang makes what might be a suspiciously hasty escape. In the grand scheme of things, Mai doesn’t really care.

***

“No Aang, tonight?” Mai asks Zuko, finally joining him for supper later that evening. Amazing how hungry she gets after a day filled with little more than staring at accounting tables until her eyes are ready to bleed out her skull.

“Nah, I think being stuck in the palace all the time is making him feel antsy. He said he thought Appa was feeling neglected, but I think he might have just wanted an excuse to explore the city.” He looks thoughtfully at a dumpling. “Now that I think about it, I guess that might be an Air Nomad thing, you know?”

Mai’s not sure she does. If the week of torture with the Education Minister taught her anything, it was what little she remembers from history classes – which didn’t exactly cover much on Air Nomads to begin with – is probably wrong.

Alleged Air Nomad tendencies aside, maybe Aang getting out among the people will help to ingratiate himself to the general public. Sure, he deposed their last Firelord, but he can’t be that bad if he also supports local businesses, right?

“You’re definitely right about him being bored,” Mai says instead of commenting on any of that, “he came by while I was working today and sort of offered to help with paperwork.”

“‘Sort of?’”

“He ran away as soon as I took out the scrolls from the Finance Minister.”

Zuko laughs at that, and Mai smiles a bit.

“Those all looked to be pretty much in order, by the way,” she tells him, “I caught a few arithmetic errors, but the ones I left on your desk should all be correct.”

Zuko groans, “I’m not excited for the budget meeting, Mai.”

Mai hums sympathetically through a mouthful of noodles and silently thanks the spirits that she will not be expected to attend said budget meeting.

“I have no idea how I’m going to convince them that we need to work some reparations into the budget. And that’s probably going to be the easy part, we basically need to restructure the entire economy. I don’t know how to do that! I don’t know if anyone knows how to do that!” He gesticulates throughout this tirade, nearly knocking over his tea.

“You’ve still got two days to pull it all together,” Mai points out.

“It feels like yesterday you were telling me I still had two weeks to figure it all out.”

“And you’ve come up with some solid ideas in that time. Tomorrow we can polish our plans for presenting them and work on your speech, you’ve got most of the day open.”

Zuko winces at that.

Mai sighs. “Who did you add to your meetings for tomorrow?”

Zuko looks sheepish. “You’re not going to be happy…”

Mai raises her eyebrows and makes a get on with it gesture.

“The Education Minister.”

“No.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Ugh, what does he even want to talk about? I thought we were done with him.”

“He said he had a few concerns about the proposals we’d agreed on, but didn’t say what. I guess I’ll find out.”

Mai puts down her chopsticks and buries her face in her hands.

“If you don’t want to have to deal with that again, Mai, I totally get it. Aang and I can figure it out; we’re the ones that wanted to make so many changes.”

Mai has to sigh again, because, well, of course she has a choice with Zuko. Unfortunately, that’s half the reason she isn’t willing to give up on helping him.

Looking at him, she says, “Tell me what he wants after the meeting.”

“Okay,” Zuko says, “if that’s what you want.”

“Oh, it’s really not,” Mai hastens to assure him. Reaching out to intertwin his fingers with hers she says, “But I care about you, and you care about this. So here we are.”

“As long as that’s what you want,” Zuko repeats, earnest. “You’ve been so helpful, and I can’t thank you enough for that, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to help me with this stuff just because you’re my girlfriend.”

Mai smiles at him, “I’m not just doing it because we’re dating.”

Part of it – a big part, really – is because she cares about Zuko. But it’s also because Zuko is one of the small number of people she’s ever known to be completely sincere about his intentions. If she can help him be successful in this brave new post-war political landscape – apparently that’s worth something to her, and she’s not willing to let that go.

She’s also not willing to let go of dinners with her boyfriend, which is where they’ll be if she doesn’t help him get through the mountains of paperwork that go along with being the new Firelord under the best of circumstances, much less when trying to reverse a century of wartime policy.

“Not just because we’re dating?” Zuko asks.

“No.” She leans in close. “It’s also because someone’s got to make sure you don’t get yourself killed.”

His breath tastes like garlic and spice when she kisses him.

“Okay, fine,” he relents as they pull apart. “As long as you’re happy making sure Aang and I don’t offend stuffy old ministers with over inflated senses of their own importance.”

“I am.” She says, because, mountains of paperwork notwithstanding, she is happy. Happier than she ever really thought she’d be able to be, if she allows herself a rare indulgence in emotional honesty.

Zuko looks thoughtful for a moment. “It’s probably bad that I didn’t think about this until now, but I don’t know if I’ve actually ever asked if there’s any policy you want to push through. You’ve been awesome about the stuff Aang and I care about. But we’ve never talked about what you care about.”

Earnestness really is a good look on him, Mai thinks.

“Prison reform.” She says dryly.

“Oh,” Zuko says, eyes wide. “That’s actually a really good point. We probably need to work some checks and balances into the justice system. I mean, members of the royal family shouldn’t just be able to throw people into prison without a least bringing in like, a local magistrate, or something –”

“Zuko,” Mai says, fond. She puts a hand on his cheek. “It was a joke.”

He blushes, “Even so…”

“Zuko!” She laughs. “I’ve had enough politics for tonight.”

“The last two weeks have been enough politics for a lifetime,” Zuko says, very sincerely. He pushes back his empty dishes – they’ve both finished eating. “Hopefully it won’t be too hard to find something more interesting to do with our time for the evening,” he says conspiratorially.

Oh no, Mai thinks, that doesn’t sound too hard at all.

Albeit, their options are limited by his still healing wounds. “Just as long as you also think losing to me at Pai Sho is fun.”

Zuko opens his mouth, indignant, but Mai cuts him off before he can get going with another kiss.

***

The next morning gets off to a decent start before stepping out to take a steep dive off of a cliff.

Per the new normal of the last few weeks, Mai wakes up early, and changes into something suitable for training down in the palace yards.

Coming down from her room – one of the palace’s many guest suites – she waves a good morning to the boys, who are similarly using the early hour to get in some fire bending training.

Well, Aang is training while Zuko coaches him, not yet cleared by the boys’ waterbending friend – Katara – to partake in any strenuous activity.

Mai’s been on the receiving end of at least four rants from Zuko about thinking he’d hear less of his friend’s continued nagging after she’d left with her brother and father for the South Pole, and they’d left not even two weeks ago. The palace physician presumably agrees with their friend’s assessment, but Mai has her doubts about his ability to convince Zuko to take some time to rest and heal absent the full force of Katara’s persistent badgering.

Mai enjoys an hour of actually getting to move – the rest of the day is undoubtedly going to bring hours of sitting behind a desk. She probably needs to put something up for target practice in the room that has effectively become her office to help manage the monotony.

A part of her longs for a hazy future, Zuko’s reign secure, Mai free to do… something. She hasn’t quite figured out what yet, but it will involve a lot more responsibility delegation and a lot less sitting behind a desk.

Her morning exercise complete, she returns to her rooms.

The day starts building its funeral pyre in the form of a letter.

The scroll sits innocently on her pillow, no doubt placed there by one of the palace servants. She picks it up and immediately recognizes the familiar seal.

Mai bites her tongue on a litany of creative curses.

She skims the letter from her mother, skipping over empty pleasantries and flowery asides and oh, Mai, we’ve been so worried about you’s. The actual point of the letter, beneath all of that – Mai’s family is returning to the Fire Nation; they expect to be back in the capital in about two weeks.

“Ugh,” Mai bemoans to the universe at large. She’d known this was coming – ending the war means ending the Fire Nation’s occupation of the colonies, which means no more Fire Nation governors.

Which means Mai’s family isn’t going to be half a world away for much longer.

Mai stands statue still, considering the letter. She carefully does not rip it into a thousand pieces, instead placing it undamaged on the bedside table.

It’s a good thing she’s not a firebender – ashes would be all that remained of it.

Whatever. She’s got two more weeks before she has to deal with her parents.

The final death knell for the day comes with another visit from Aang, looking rather more dispirited today than he did the day before.

“Do I need to sit down for this?” she asks as he settles down across from her.

“You’re already – ohhh, ha, good one Mai.” Aang chuckles, the shadow hanging over his face briefly lifting.

“What’s going on?” she prompts.

“So. Zuko asked me to come talk to you.” Aang says, once again looking concerningly somber. Mai sits ramrod straight, waiting for the ax to come down. Aang takes a deep breath before continuing. “The meeting with the Minister of Finance and everyone else on that council got pushed up.”

Mai looks at him sharply, “When?”

“Uh, now. Right now.”

Mai’s halfway out of her seat before she realizes there’s literally nothing she can do. Well, nothing productive – bursting into the meeting isn’t exactly an option.

Her life would be so much easier if more of her problems could be solved with violence.

“Yeah,” Aang continues, “I guess someone had a family emergency or something come up and they wanted to squeeze in this meeting before they had to leave, I didn’t catch all of the details.”

Zuko can handle this, Mai tells herself, we had several solid plans in place, he’s got the corrected accounting information, he knows what his priorities are. He can handle this.

Having to sit on her hands though, while Zuko handles this without her, seriously sucks.

But if she can’t do anything, why did Zuko send Aang up to tell her this?

“Is there anything else Zuko wanted me to know about?” Mai asks.

Aang nods, still looking very unhappy. Mai braces herself.

“So, the meeting with the Education Minister,” Aang starts.

Mai groans, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.

“Well, the good news is, he’s going along with most of our proposals with corrections on how the history of the Fire Nation is taught. Zuko had some old scrolls from the Fire Sages that he said, uhm, something about being a verifiable and trustworthy primary source or something.”

“Okay,” Mai says, finding herself again waiting for the hammer to fall.

“The bad news is, he said he’ll need more than the word of an 112 year old kid to update the curriculum on the history of the Air Nomads,” Aang says bitterly, screwing up his face a bit and fixing his gaze at a spot on the floor as he finishes.

Mai takes a moment to process this. “So… I’m guessing he wants a ‘primary source’ then.”

To update a curriculum that currently says that a pacifist culture had an army that was so big of a threat, Sozin decided to –

Mai strangles that thought in its tracks.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what he wants.” Aang sighs deeply. “He actually had a halfway decent rationale for wanting it too – said that having primary sources before making curricular changes would make a good precedent.”

Mai huffs. “Well, that’s certainly a different tact than what he was trying a week ago.”

“Zuko said the same thing. He was pretty mad about it all. Honestly, so am I.”

Mai likewise feels that strangling the Education Minister would be more fun than anything she else has planned for the rest of the day. But possibly for different reasons than Zuko – it’s eminently frustrating that after a week of going back and forward with the man, he’s figured out Zuko’s idealism well enough to play at something like this. And to do so, unfortunately, very effectively.

“So,” Mai says, pushing that all aside, “I’m guessing Zuko wants us to brainstorm some ideas for how to tackle this.”

“Actually, we already came up with an idea for where to start. Some of the air temples have libraries that are really, really hard to get into.”

“Really hard to get into, as in…” Mai gestures for him to elaborate.

“As in Zuko tried to get into these libraries back when he was, you know, trying to track me down three years ago, and it super did not work.”

“I feel like there’s some very obvious problems with this plan.”

“Well,” Aang draws out the word, very transparently aiming for a dramatic effect, “These libraries are next to impossible to get into… unless you’re traveling with a master airbender.”

Mai rolls her eyes.

Aang smiles, “So, yep. That’s our plan. Appa and I are going to head to the Western Air Temple first thing tomorrow; we’ll spend the night there and hopefully be back late the next day.”

Mai ponders this for a moment. Replays the last few minutes of conversation in her head. Considers all the implications of the Education Minister’s demands.

“I think,” she finally says, reluctantly, “that I should probably come with you.”

“Oh.” Aang says, “Wait, really?”

“Unfortunately. If you go without any witnesses… well, I’d rather head off any arguments the Education Minister might make on that front.”

“Oh.” Aang wrinkles his nose – Mai’s pretty sure his grimace is for the Education Minister, and not the thought of having to travel with her.

This is confirmed when Aang's face abruptly brightens and he says, “Well, Mai, I hope you’re ready for a life changing field trip with the Avatar! Zuko went on one with me earlier in the summer. This should be fun!”

Mai is certain there will be nothing fun or life changing about hanging off of a fluffy flying monster for the better part of the day, snooping around a dusty old temple, and then making an hours long return flight on the same fluffy monster. She decides to go the tactful route and not say any of this.

Aang makes to take his leave. Halfway out the door, he pauses to call over his shoulder, “Hey, I’m sure the budget meeting is going fine – you and Zuko have been prepping for like a week and a half.”

Mai groans. “Thanks for reminding me that I really don’t have anything better to do than worry about that for the rest of the afternoon.”

“You’re even more pessimistic than Sokka. It’s really very impressive.”

Mai, a porcelain image of poise and maturity, does not stick her tongue out at him until after he’s closed the door behind him.

***

The rest of the afternoon is spent wishing she had something in this little office that she could use for target practice.

She also discovers that agricultural reports are the absolute driest reading material in all of existence and thus downright terrible at effectively distracting her.

Zuko finally comes in close to dusk. He works on pulling his hair out of his top knot out as soon as he crosses the threshold, his hair flopping down unceremoniously. He collapses down opposite her, completing his entrance by throwing his head back with a truly melodramatic groan.

“Was it that bad?”

“Ugh,” Zuko replies.

Mai laces her fingers together atop her desk. “Zuko.”

He sighs. “It could have been worse. But who decided it’s acceptable for these meetings to last so long.” He looks up at her to say that, and his anguish is clear on his face. “There’s no way anyone actually enjoys that. And we barely got through an eighth of the stuff we need to figure out, if that.”

“So the silver lining is that this counselor’s ‘family emergency’ means it will be awhile before you have to do this again?”

“Small mercies,” Zuko agrees.

“Did that seem…”

“Legitimate? I honestly don’t know. She was really apologetic about it. I tried to say if she needed to leave now, we could try to push stuff back, but I guess the ferry to the island her family only comes and goes twice a day, so she was going to be stuck here until the evening. Supposedly the consensus was to get started while we can even if we have to table the discussion for a week. And I feel like I have to assume it’s real so I don’t come off as a huge jerk if it is.”

Mai pulls a face at that, but grudgingly agrees. “I guess. How was the initial reception to what we put together?”

Zuko considers. “Lukewarm? I could tell no one’s excited about making sure there’s funds left over for reparations, but most of this meeting was figuring out strategies to keep the economy afloat as we shut down wartime industries. I think we made some progress. And now we’ll have plenty of time to run the numbers before the next meeting.”

“Joy.”

“I know. They were glad you caught the errors in the initial accounting sheets, by the way.”

“I’m so glad your ministers are impressed by my ability to do simple math.”

“You’re probably better at math than me at this point. You know, missing like three years of math tutoring.”

The fact that he hadn’t had any tutoring during his three years in exile is just as much a confirmation as anything else that Ozai had never intended for him to return as the crown prince, much less the Firelord.

“Doesn’t sailing involve all kinds of math?” Mai asks, eyebrow raised.

She internally winces as soon as the words leave her mouth – she still doesn’t know much about that chapter of his life, hadn’t asked when they’d dated while he was still playing at being a loyal son. She’d been too eager to enjoy being together and hadn’t wanted to bring up anything that might remind them how tenuous his position – and, by extension, how fragile their happiness – was.

Now, on the other side of the war, they’ve been too busy. Finding out what Zuko’s life had been like while he was gone hadn’t been at the top of her priority list.

But Zuko apparently doesn’t register her question as tactless. He just looks a bit bemused. “Oh, yeah…” He appears to consider this deeply for a moment, the idea that sailing involved practical mathematics experience apparently an entirely novel concept.

Mai can’t help but let a small smile creep onto her face.

Zuko pulls himself out of his contemplations. “That reminds me. I asked Aang about him wanting to help you yesterday, and he tried to convince me that Air Nomads don’t believe in math. Or no, wait. He wouldn’t want to, uh, not uphold the Air Nomad belief… Ugh, it was funnier the way he said it.”

Mai takes pity on him. “It was still kind of funny.”

Zuko looks utterly exasperated with himself, but visibly relaxes after a moment. He looks much less tense than when he walked in the room.

Mai doesn’t really want to say anything that will remind him of the weight of all his responsibilities, but better to go over everything now and then try to enjoy the rest of the night.

“So. Aang told me about the Education Minister.”

Predictably, Zuko groans. “Would it be so much to ask that one of my ministers was totally on board with – not even everything we’re trying to do here, but more than what we’re currently getting?”

“I wish. At least the Fire Sages are backing you. Anyways, Aang and I are going to leave tomorrow for one of the Air Temples tomorrow to try to get something that will appease him.”

“Oh,” Zuko says, surprised, “You’re going too?”

“I don’t want to give the Education Minister room to, you know. Question something Aang brings back.”

Zuko frowns, “Oh,” he says, thinking it through, then with more understanding. “Because it’s Aang, and he might think...” He pulls a deeply bitter face. “Yeah, I wouldn’t put something like that past him.”

“And, as the new Firelord, you can’t leave the palace. And I don’t trust anyone else.”

Zuko nods tiredly. He glances up at the room’s window, and Mai follows his gaze so that they simultaneously realize how dark it’s gotten outside.

By wordless mutual agreement they stand up and head out of the room to get a late dinner. They make their way down to the lower levels of the palace, crossing through the courtyards first to see if Aang’s around and wants to join them.

Stepping out into the twilight, Zuko comments, “I think it will be good for Aang to have someone to go with him; I’m starting to be a little worried about him. He’s been… so quiet lately.”

Aang chooses that moment to pop in out of the blue – in the most literal sense possible; he must have been flying around the palace grounds and seen them walking out – so Mai doesn’t get a chance to ask for Zuko to elaborate on what he means by that.

As it is, Aang is as chatty as Mai has ever known him to be during dinner, providing commentary on some trouble his lemur had gotten into with the turtle ducks that afternoon. Said lemur snoozes, picture perfect hedonism after stuffing itself with the entire contents of a plate of fruit prepared by the kitchens.

Zuko is too prone to worry for her to always worry by proxy, Mai decides.

A pleasant evening comes to an end with an improbably deep yawn from Aang.

“Welp, Momo,” he directs at his reluctantly roused lemur. “Probably a good idea to get to bed early. Mai and I have an early start tomorrow and you’re going to be in charge of keeping Zuko out of trouble while we’re gone.”

Mai can’t help but smirk at Zuko, who’s apparently too bewildered by the harmless teasing to get in a rejoinder before Aang has finished waving them a cheery goodnight.

***

The sky is an endless blue overhead, and the ocean below does a good job of pretending to be an equally endless blue. In Mai’s opinion, It’s horribly monochrome.

All things said though, the trip isn’t quite as tedious as she’d thought it would be. She’d worried flying in the open saddle would be too windy to be conducive to getting much work done, but had been pleasantly surprised to find it to be not much of a problem at all. A constant gentle breeze, but not enough to get in the way of reading a few reports, provided she keeps the ones she’s not looking at tucked away.

Mai catches herself thinking, Ty Lee would like this.

Forcing herself to focus back on her agricultural reports, Mai discovers that they are still incredibly boring. At least she’s making progress.

Able to better focus on them today, Mai notices that the reports don’t seem to be telling a consistent story. Two months ago, one of the southern provinces was reporting concerns that the harvest would not yield much this year. Then, two weeks ago, the same province suddenly has no concerns. It takes her the better part of the afternoon to figure out how to interpret the data that’s included with the reports, but once she’s got a handle on it, the numbers from two months ago seem to bear out the concerns; the ones from two weeks ago, if anything, seem to promise an unusually fruitful harvest. A similar pattern is present when she looks at the reports from the eastern island chain.

Ugh. She’s going to have to go through every set of reports from every province with this level of detail to figure out exactly what’s going on well enough to put together an accurate summary.

For his part, Aang seems content to let her work. He lounges behind the bison’s reins, seeming perfectly at home in the sky.

***

Dusk has nearly given way to night by the time they reach the temple. It’s difficult to make out the shape of the temple until they’re close to it. Mai admittedly hadn’t expected it to be so –

Well, the hanging off the side of a cliff is definitely a surprise. And, with her previous experience with temples mostly limited to ancestral shrines, the Western Air Temple is much bigger than she had expected.

She’s internally debating how much of a reaction to let Aang see, but he doesn’t seem to expect one from her. Upon landing, he murmurs a thanks to the bison and floats down from his perch on the bison’s head.

Stretching out the kinks of a day of flying, he turns to her as she makes a passably graceful attempt at dismounting from the bison’s saddle. “So, the library we want to get to is in this part of the temple. Feel up to getting in there and getting what we need? That way we’ll be ready to fly back first thing in the morning.”

Mai nods her assent.

Turning to the bison, Aang says, “Appa, you can just focus on getting a good night’s rest. We really appreciate how hard you work, flying us around all day.”

The bison snuffles affectionately at Aang’s collar and Aang pats him back before letting the bison pull off to find a place to rest for the night.

Mai must be more tired than she’d realized after flying all day because she’d swear, as the bison shuffles away, that it gives her a wary look. The look seems to say that she’s proven herself trustworthy for this long, but she’d better not get up to any funny business while she and its human go do something where it can’t keep an eye on them.

Shaking herself into something resembling alertness, Mai shoulders her pack and says, “Let’s get this over with.”

They set off, Aang holding up a small handful of fire to light their path as they walk into the building they landed by. He sends a smile back at Mai as he leads the way. “Thanks for coming with me to do this. As much as I wish the Education Minister wasn’t making everything so complicated, it’s nice to have an excuse to get out of the palace.”

“Don’t let any of the royal advisors hear you say that. They’d find some way to use that to discredit you and Zuko,” she says, watching her step carefully enter the building.

“That’s exactly why I’m happy to be away from the palace!” Aang gesticulates broadly, the light in his hands casting strange shadows as he moves it about. Then he sighs, cupping the flame closer to his chest again. “I guess I just thought things would be easier after ending the war.”

Mai tactfully doesn’t point out the war won’t technically be over until a treaty with the Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom is finalized and signed. That’s on track to happen after a delegation of representatives meets to hash out the details and then everything is signed at a ceremony in Ba Sing Se. As it is, she’s pretty sure Aang knows all that, it’s just immaterial to his current point.

Instead, she says, “That’s politics for you. Unrepentantly soul sucking.”

“Tell me about it,” Aang says, deeply aggrieved.

He leads the way through the temple, sure footed. Mai finds herself wondering how many times he’d been here before.

With a forlorn sigh Aang goes on, “We’re just kids. Who thought we should be the ones in charge of figuring out how to put the world back together?”

“I think most of Zuko’s councilors would vastly prefer if you guys weren’t so insistent that you know better than them how to do that.”

“Yeah,” Aang agrees easily. “Still, it’d be nice if some of them would decide to be helpful.” They step into a stairwell deeper inside the building and start working their way up. He heaves another sigh, “And it’d be nice if more of our friends had been able to stick around and help with all of the messy Fire Nation politics stuff.”

Their footsteps make clattering echoes throughout the stairwell. The temple doesn’t necessarily feel creepy. It’s definitely old and it's more than a bit unnerving to think too long about how high they must be suspended above solid ground. But something about it also just feels… empty.

Mai doesn’t love idle small talk, but right now it seems preferable to silence, so she asks, “Have you heard from any of your friends lately?”

Aang nods. “I get a letter from Katara almost every day, but we’re always a little out of sync, you know? Like, I’m responding to what happened three days ago for her, and she’s doing the same for me. I guess that’s just how letters work, but it’s weird to get used to. Sokka also writes pretty often, but sometimes his handwriting is really hard to read.”

Mai laughs. “Zuko complains about that too after he gets letters from Sokka.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” Aang says, sounding fond. “But between the two of them it sounds like stuff at the South Pole is going pretty well, and there’s enough folks down there from the Northern Water Tribe that rebuilding efforts are going reasonably smoothly.”

“And your earthbending friend?” The words are out of her mouth before she remembers the girl is blind. “Oh, I guess she probably can’t write…”

“No, she doesn’t know how. But Zuko’s Uncle’s written a couple to me for her, and I guess he reads her any letters she gets from us. Ba Sing Se’s still not Toph’s, uh, favorite place in the whole world. But it sounds like she likes getting to yell at all the politicians and generals.”

Reaching the top of the stairwell, they start making their way down a wide hallway.

“I take it Earth Kingdom politics require less… subtlety than Fire Nation politics do right now?”

“Well, probably. But I think that might just be Toph.”

Aang stops in front of two elaborately carved doors, the exact details of which Mai can’t make out in the dim light. Their destination evidently reached, she pulls out a lantern from her pack for Aang to light, freeing up his hands for the next part.

He takes a few steps back. Closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. In. And out.

Then, cycling his arms, he summons gale force winds that threaten to extinguish the lantern even as Mai shields it.

Through squinted eyes, Mai watches as the wind precisely knocks at a series of at least twenty pegs comprising an intricate locking mechanism hidden in the door’s carvings, the design portraying a trio of sky bison.

There’s a quiet cacophony of simultaneous clicks as each peg moves into place, followed by a louder thunk. At this, Aang stops his airbending, and the doors slowly start to creak open.

Nearly impossible to get into without a master airbender, indeed, Mai thinks. She certainly can’t think of any other way to work the complicated locking mechanism.

Aang glances over, nodding for her to follow him. Together they step over the library’s threshold.

Mai hoists the lantern and Aang does the same with a newly summoned tongue of flame to shed some light over the interior.

The library fills a huge space, probably at least two times as large as the royal palace’s library.

“Oh,” Aang says. His voice is impossibly small and sad.

The shelves that once filled this must have held hundreds of thousands of scrolls. All that remains of them now is splintered wood and ash.

Nearly impossible to get into without a master airbender, echoes in Mai’s mind.

Of course, once the doors are open, it’s easy enough for anyone to walk in. Mai’s presence here is proof enough of that. Her imagination conjures a terrible series of images – airbenders opening the library’s doors, perhaps hoping for a place of refuge in the heart of their temple. Soldiers catching up to them before they can close the doors, burning it all down.

Aang walks forward a few steps, looking around, eyes wide and shining with tears that haven’t quite shed yet. He stops halfway down the entryway and drops to his knees, back curved underneath the heavy burden of grief. It’s a weight around his shoulders that Mai’s never noticed before.

Seeing it now so plainly she wonders how she possibly could have missed it.

The room flashes suddenly with a bright, blue white light; Mai realizes after a moment that it’s coming from Aang’s tattoos. A breeze cycles through the enclosed space and begins to pick up threateningly. Mai unconsciously takes half a step backward.

Then, just as quickly as the strangeness started, it abates. A candle lit and snuffed out in quick succession.

Aang remains alone with his grief in the center of the room.

“Do you want me to…” Mai hesitates, not knowing what to do.

Aang is silent for a long moment. The quiet reverberates horribly in this huge and utterly empty space.

“I need to be alone for a little bit,” he finally says, voice hoarse but steady.

Mai, guiltily, feels relieved at being given an out from witnessing his grief. “I’ll be outside with the bison.”

Making her way back down the stairs, no chatter to distract her this time, Mai focuses instead on the sound of her footsteps.

***

Mai sleeps horribly that night.

She’s never been one for camping. The ground is too hard, she’s cold, and the sounds of nature are entirely too loud to allow for anything vaguely resembling peaceful rest.

It takes her what feels like hours of tossing and turning to fall asleep only for her to wake up too early, the temple’s courtyard half visible with a predawn light. Across the space, she can make out Aang curled up asleep on one of the bison’s front legs.

Searching in vain for a position comfortable enough to let her sleep just a bit longer, Mai rolls onto her stomach. Then her left side, then her right. Repeat.

The sun is half risen when she finally resigns herself to being awake. She pins her hair up and makes her way to a corner of the courtyard. Pointedly not looking over the side to confirm how far up she is, she quietly practices some simple calisthenics in lieu of her typical morning training while she waits for Aang to wake up.

She doesn’t have to wait that long. Aang wanders over her way as she’s finishing up a set of pushups.

“I’d ask how you slept,” Aang pauses for a jaw creaking yawn, “but it looks like the answer is not very well.”

“Camping’s not really my thing,” she says dryly.

Aang acknowledges this with a nod. “I’m sorry this trip didn’t get us anything useful.”

Mai grimaces. “It’s not your fault.”

Aang shrugs, like that’s immaterial. He gazes out across the courtyard. A pair of white birds of some sort lazily fly past, interrupting the view of open sky and the cliffside on the opposite part of the canyon. Mai is uncomfortably reminded of how far up they are.

“Before we go,” Aang says, “Could I show you a part of the temple I’ve always liked?”

Mai would honestly rather leave as soon as possible. Everything about this trip so far has served only to dig a pit of existential discomfort deep into her soul. The sooner they leave, the sooner she can work on figuring out how to ignore it and go on with her life.

Unfairly, in this particular moment, Aang’s soulful gaze is nearly as effective as Ty Lee’s eager pleading at convincing her of things she’d really rather not do.

“Sure,” she says, aiming for nonchalant neutrality, not sure if she hits the mark.

***

Whatever he wants to show her is apparently in another part of the temple, so they pack up and load everything onto Appa before flying over.

The sun is properly up now, and with proper lighting, Mai sees that the temple is even bigger than she had appreciated the previous night. In addition to all of the hanging buildings, including the one they spent the night at, there’s a network of outcroppings and statues visible a bit further below as well.

Mai catches herself wondering how many people once lived here before sternly redirecting her train of thought somewhere else.

Their destination is apparently not far from one of these outcroppings. Aang pats Appa a thank you for the short jaunt over before leading Mai down a short hallway to a small room, well-lit by the morning sun coming in through an open window.

“This is the room they taught lessons in,” Aang explains, disconcertingly chipper, “I only came to this temple a few times – usually when I was in the area after visiting some of my friends in the Fire Nation.”

Mai starts to think, Oh, friends that are probably also long dead, before mentally slamming the door on all of the increasingly depressing places that would go if she followed it any further.

She forces herself to glance around the room. All things said, it’s fairly plain – one might say monastic – with the exception of a mural on the far side of the room.

The mural – a relief carved into the teal-gray stone of the temple’s interior – depicts a grand tree growing on what appears to be a cliff’s edge.

On one side of the tree, a woman stands – despite the simple, impressionistic style, she clearly has arrows in the same style as Aang’s. She appears to be encouraging a smaller figure, this one sans arrows and holding a glider. She must succeed – the mural depicts snapshots of a whimsical flight path taken by the smaller airbender. Off the side of the cliff, looping up and around the highest branches of the tree, and finally landing back on the other side.

On this side of the tree, what looks to be the same woman waits, arms open to embrace the smaller figure as they land.

The child airbender in the mural has no defining features, no arrows. But looking at it, the whimsy of their flight…

A solemn echo of Aang’s lost childhood rings through the simple stone carvings.

Aang watches Mai take it in. “Zuko liked it too, when I showed him,” he says.

Mai hadn’t known they’d both been back at this temple together at some point. She looks away from the mural for a moment to meet Aang’s eyes. Reflected in them, she catches a glimpse of a loss so immeasurably huge, she can’t even begin to fathom how to make sense of it.

How on earth does Aang manage to hold all of that inside him? She can barely stand this small glimpse of it. How, she wonders, does he not burst from the weight of it all? Shattered into a million pieces to be scattered in the wind, just like the ashes of his people.

Mai is less productive than she’d like to be on the long trip home.

***

They get back late enough that Mai doesn’t get a chance to see Zuko that night. Bidding Aang a good night, she makes her way back to the room she’s been staying in for the past three weeks.

She’s briefly tempted by the notion of sneaking into Zuko’s rooms, but discards it as the product of a sleep deprived brain. While she has no doubt she could get in undetected, no doubt a servant would discover them together in the morning, and a scandal like that is the last thing they need to deal with right now.

Be nice if the court cared more about important things than who the Firelord sleeps with, she thinks bitterly before getting some much-needed restful sleep after nearly two days of nonstop travel.

***

She’s in the middle of trying to put together a summary of the agricultural reports the next afternoon, having finally gotten through a first pass of them all that morning – the pattern of ‘suddenly it looks like the harvest will be good, actually,’ has borne out, so it should be a straight forward summary at least – before she gets to see Zuko.

“Mai!” he greets her, poking his head through the door. “Will I be interrupting if I come in?”

Mai feels a huge amount of tension released at the sight of his smile. “Get in here.”

She meets him halfway across the room with a hug.

“Miss me that much?” he asks in a voice he probably thinks is smooth. It’s absolutely not, but that doesn’t keep Mai from grinning like a fool.

“It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” he says, pressing a quick kiss onto her forehead that makes Mai feel momentarily at peace with the universe. Hand in hand, they both start to migrate towards her desk.

“So, uh,” Zuko coughs apologetically, “At the meeting with the Fire Sages this morning, Aang mentioned that your trip didn’t go as well as you’d hoped.”

Mai sighs, and decides this is a conversation that she’d rather have sitting on top of her desk than sitting properly in chairs. She moves a few stacks of scrolls around to make room, hops up, and pats the spot next to her, motioning for Zuko to follow suit. He does, looking a bit bemused. Mai, leaning her head against his shoulder, figures the palace can handle them using the furniture not exactly as intended.

“It did not go as well as we’d hoped,” Mai confirms. “What did Aang tell you?”

“Not much, we were pretty busy getting through all the stuff we needed to with the Fire Sages, and then he said he had to go check on Appa and Momo when we were done.”

Mai grimaces. She’d been half hoping she’d be able to get out of this.

“Everything in the library was destroyed. Burned.”

“What?!” Zuko pulls back to look her in the eye. Mai mourns the loss of her comfortable headrest.

“It probably happened, you know. When the temple was attacked.” She mulls over her phrasing for a moment, then corrects herself, the words bitter in her mouth, “When we attacked the temple.”

Zuko looks away, curling a fist in his hair, disrupting his already precarious top knot.

“This is why the Education Minister makes me so mad!” he bursts out. “I want to take his smug face and –” Zuko completes this with noise that, while not eloquent and in fact rather reminiscent of an enraged turtleduck, perfectly communicates the horrors he would like to inflict upon the Education Minister’s face.

“It’s a pity that the current political situation precludes us from doing anything to his smug face or otherwise inflicting bodily harm,” Mai agrees.

“Sorry,” Zuko says, deflating slightly. “This is just such a stupid thing for him to be stubborn about. The honorable thing for us to do is to acknowledge the horrible things we’ve done as a nation! That way we can start building the foundations for peace and a world that we can be proud to pass onto future generations!”

Zuko’s many political ramblings of the last few weeks have had the tendency to evoke a deep fondness in Mai. It’s, well, nice to see him so… self-assured. It reminds Mai of when they were kids. Before, it had felt like something that had been lost during the long three years of his banishment.

“We’ll figure something out,” Mai says, pulling her legs up to sit cross legged. “If nothing else, you can fire him in a year or two when your reign is more secure.”

Zuko doesn’t look completely satisfied by this, but nods. “We might have time to look around the other temples as well after the peace treaty is finalized.”

Mai inclines her head in agreement, but shudders to think that they could visit all of the Air Temples only to find the same thing, all records of the Air Nomad’s culture – Aang’s culture – lost forever. But that’s a problem for another day.

They sit together for a moment. Not for the first time, Mai considers how much they’re trying to change. It feels a potentially insurmountable challenge. Then again, she’d also thought Zuko was chasing a foolish and misguided pipe dream, going on about “saving his country” not even two months ago, and look where they are now.

“Since we’re already depressed,” Mai starts, feeling uncharacteristically brave.

Zuko looks at her. “I already love where this is going.”

Mai rolls her eyes. “I’ve been realizing,” she holds her breath for a moment, then pushes forward, “we’ve never really talked about what happened or what it was like during the three years you were gone. Banished.” The word tastes faintly of taboo, a reminder of something she’d decided was more comfortable to forget up until now. She feels Zuko stiffen slightly as she says it.

“I guess… we really haven’t,” sounding like this might be a completely new revelation for him.

“I mean, you’ve apparently been to all of the air temples, and I only found that out in a passing conversation.” Mai aims for a lighthearted tone but isn’t sure if she quite hits it.

Zuko looks pensive at this. Then with a teasing grin he says, “I mean, I do kind of remember you saying something about not wanting to hear my whole life story.”

Back then your whole life story seemed to boil down to being worried that your dad didn’t love you, Mai thinks, but very deliberately does not say. Even now that Zuko’s so completely moved past the need for validation from Ozai, it feels like it would be crossing a line to discuss it so callously.

“I guess I want to know now,” Mai says simply.

Rubbing the back of his head awkwardly, he says, “There’s not much to tell for most of it. A lot of sailing around the world chasing hundred-year-old leads. It’s weird to think about. I was so… naïve back then.”

Mai hums. She feels naïve now – she hasn’t travelled nearly as much as Zuko has, but she has been halfway across the world and back again in the past few months – the Caldera, Omashu, Ba Sing Se, then back to the Caldera again. But it hasn’t been until the past few weeks that the world has seemed so impossibly huge, so full of possibilities – both good and horrible – that she’d never thought to imagine before now.

She’s startled out of her reverie by Zuko standing up, grabbing her hand, and pulling her up off the desk after him. “Actually,” he says by way of explanation as he leads them out of the room, “Aang was there for a lot of the parts that weren’t boring. You know, chasing him and all of that. We can tell you all about all that stuff over some tea.”

***

“So there I am, chained up, no hope of escape, and my frogs are melting…”

“The frogs!” Zuko interjects, “I can’t believe I completely forgot about the frogs! I wasn’t able to figure out what they could possibly be for, I thought that was the weirdest thing!”

Mai is a lot less concerned about the frogs and a lot more concerned about how on earth Zuko got to be involved in this story. Aang is a decent storyteller – certainly not as prone to jumping around and leaving out important details like Zuko can be – but he has a tendency to go on tangents. Mai was hoping this one was one of those, but –

“I also thought they were weird, but they totally worked! Who would have thought? Anyways, my frogs are melting, and then I hear fighting outside of my cell. And then the doors open, and there’s this guy with swords and a creepy blue mask –”

“It was a Blue Spirit mask!”

Oh no, Mai thinks.

She says, “A Blue Spirit mask? Tacky.”

“Okay, this guy comes in in a ‘Blue Spirit mask,’ and he runs at me with his swords! But instead of killing me, he cuts me out of the chains!”

Mai sips on her tea, wishing it were something much stronger, as Aang details a daring escape. She’s long since known that Zuko has essentially zero self-preservation skills, but it’s faintly terrifying to think all of the ways this stunt could have gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Zuko lounges next to her, looking very relaxed and perfectly content to listen to Aang’s animated recounting of their misadventures. Mai isn’t sure whether his unconcerned attitude should make her feel fond or annoyed.

She did ask for this. And at least she’ll be around for any future ridiculous situations he gets himself into to watch his back.

She’s enough of a realist to realize that’s probably the best she can hope for – it would be beyond her capacities as a mere human being to actually prevent any of his life-threatening stunts. Or, apparently, terrible fashion choices.

***

It’s several more days after that before Mai works up the bravery to talk about the Air Temple again.

She almost doesn’t. But Aang leaves his pet lemur with Zuko and Mai one night after dinner. Ostensibly because the creature enjoys spending time with them. In reality, Mai’s pretty sure it stuffed itself on mango slices it had swiped from the table when no one was looking during dinner and had promptly decided to sleep off the overindulgence. Aang had been too soft hearted to wake it up when he left.

Mai had made the mistake of contemplating what a strange creature the lemur was – watching it snore and snuffle in its sleep, one of its abnormally human-like animal hands resting on an overstuffed belly. She’s literally never seen an animal quite like it before. Racoon squirrels come to mind as something halfway similar – they at least have the same weirdly human hand thing going on. But they definitely are neither capable of flight nor domesticated.

Her brain had then helpfully popped in with a reminder that there are so few flying lemurs – and flying bison too for that matter – because Firelord Sozin had decided a hundred years ago that razing Air Temples would make a fun summer hobby for the army.

It’s been over a week since she and Aang traveled to the temple – she should really be better at curbing these depression spirals before they happen at this point.

Whatever. If she’s managed to so heartily tank her mood for the night, she may as well ask the questions that've been on the tip of her tongue for the last few days.

“Zuko,” she starts, so that he stops what looks like his own deep contemplation of lemur napping habits and meets her eyes. “When you decided to leave, you know, to help the Ava- to help Aang a few months ago. Was that… because of what we did to the Air Nation?”

Based on the slightly bewildered look on his face as he processes this question, it is immediately clear that Zuko’s parallel deep thoughts on sleeping lemurs had not led him down the same depressing paths hers had.

He takes a moment to think before answering. “Probably not as much as it should have been? But kind of?”

He pauses for long enough that Mai is trying to figure out how to politely ask him to elaborate, please and thank you.

He starts talking again without her having to prompt him. “I think I’d mostly figured out that the war wasn’t justified before I came back with you guys earlier in the summer. So, a lot of my time here I was either trying to figure out how to justify it or just ignoring how… guilty and ashamed I felt for being complicit in allowing it to continue. For my role in helping Azula conquer Ba Sing Se.” He glances at Mai here. “You know that she wasn’t actually lying when she said she killed the Avatar, right?”

Mai glances at the door that Aang left through a few minutes ago in confusion. “He seems… like he’s doing pretty okay despite that?”

“Katara had some… spirit water or something? I never actually asked for the details.” He frowns. “I’m realizing my communication skills with my friends could use some work.”

“I mean. It’s not every day you have to walk up to someone and ask them why they aren’t dead,” Mai offers.

Zuko laughs. “You’re not wrong. Asking them to let me join their group was already so awkward, there definitely wasn’t a good place to throw that in.”

Mai is absolutely curious, but they’ve gotten a bit off what she was hoping to figure out with this conversation. “So the reason you left,” she prompts.

“Oh yeah. Well, the main thing was definitely my dad’s plan to use Sozin’s comet to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground.”

Mai blinks. She had completely missed that detail. The retellings of Zuko’s friends’ victories from that day had mentioned a fleet of airships. The phrase “airship slice” had been liberally thrown around. But Mai had kind of assumed that they’d been deployed to brutally put down some sort of rebellion in the Earth Kingdom or something.

“You may have a point about communication skills,” she says faintly.

Zuko’s eyes widen – comically, Mai would think given any other topic of conversation. “If it makes you feel better,” he says awkwardly, “I didn’t tell Aang or the rest of our friends about that until like three days before the comet?”

Mai stares at him incredulously.

“I thought it would make them over-worried!”

Mai tries and fails to find an appropriate response for that. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“I’ve been told my judgement isn’t always the best.”

Mai sighs. “I think your judgement – or at least your instincts – are fine. It’s your planning that needs work. Okay, so a horribly misguided plan to destroy valuable farmland aside–”

“Those agricultural reports have gotten to you, haven’t they?”

“I thought I was done with them days ago and somehow there’s still more for me to read on crop rotation cycles. We’re definitely not discussing them right now. You said that was your main reason – were there other reasons too?”

“I mean, I guess also just realizing that my dad is a jerk. And my uncle had given me the notion that it was my destiny to help the Avatar.” Zuko gives her a considering look for a moment, “Is there a reason you’re asking about all of this all the sudden?”

Mai grimaces. She’s been curious about this for days but she has carefully avoided thinking about why. “My really depressing trip with Aang – and I cannot emphasize enough that it was really, really depressing – made me curious.” Zuko’s bared a lot of his soul tonight, so Mai reluctantly makes an attempt to dig a bit deeper than that. “I’d never really… thought about that before. Even knowing it’s something you and Aang feel strongly about.” She huffs a sigh, and confesses, “I’m asking you now because I was thinking about how our country’s the reason there aren’t more flying lemurs in the world.”

The only flying lemur she knows continues to snore loudly on the table as they both turn their attention back to it for a moment. Zuko gives it a few scritches behind its ears. It opens its eyes for a moment to peer at him and promptly rolls over and falls back asleep.

“Thanks for telling me,” Mai says.

“Thanks for asking. I forget who was around for what, the past few weeks have been so crazy. Was there… anything else you wanted to know about?”

Mai thinks about it for a moment. “Was there a reason you left on the Day of Black Sun? It seems like it almost would have been easier to sneak out another time when the city wasn’t on a lock down. Oh wait, was it so you could track Aang afterwards?”

Zuko clears his throat. “Well that. And I was planning on breaking my uncle out of prison, but he did that on his own without my help. And I figured it was a good time to tell my dad I was leaving with getting… you know, barbequed?”

Mai blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Uh, which part was confusing?”

“The part where instead of sneaking out like any sane person would have done, you told your dad to his face that you were leaving?”

“It seemed appropriate? At the time?”

“Why didn’t you just leave him a letter!”

“Uh…”

Mai glares at him for a moment. In return, he offers nothing but a stupidly befuddled, albeit slightly apologetic, look.

“Zuko,” Mai takes a deep breath. “I am begging you. Please, please come find me the next time you have the urge to do something impulsive. I’m not saying I’ll stop you, but I’ll at least help you come up with plans that have a lower probability of horrible death.”

Zuko, to her horror, has the gall to look horribly sappy at that. “Are you saying you care about me?”

“I’m saying I prefer you alive,” she says, perfectly level. Zuko looks even more smitten at that. She gives up. “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” he says.

“Unfortunately,” she sighs, permitting him to steal a kiss that proves his point entirely too well.

Chapter Text

Zuko finally gets a clear bill of health from the palace physician a few days later. Mai comes down to train one morning and stops for a moment to watch the boys’ firebending practice.

It’s a lot more interesting to watch now that Zuko has permission – likely both from the physician and, more saliently, the boys’ waterbending friend – to do more than yell corrections at Aang from the sidelines. Instead, he yells corrections while shooting fireballs at his friend.

“Don’t be so timid! You have to hit me with all you’ve got! Better! Good block, but you need to rally faster to keep your opponent on their toes! No airbending, that’s cheating!”

In late summer, the Caldera is in the midst of the heaviest part of the rainy season. Which is to say that while it’s more likely to rain in the afternoon than early morning, no matter what it’s going to be disgustingly humid the moment you step outside.

Mai assumes that it’s as a concession to this fact of Fire Nation living that both Aang and Zuko have taken off their shirts to spar.

It’s the first time she’s seen Zuko since the Agni Kai with his bandages off. The scar, even at a distance, looks angry, the skin on his chest puckered and gnarled.

Aang has an older but eerily similar one to match on his back.

Mai supposes, if it weren’t for Ty Lee’s intervention, she might have one too.

Well. Just a scar would be the optimistic outcome.

“Mai!” Aang shouts at her from across the training yard, pulling her out of her reverie. “You should come spar with us!”

Zuko glances behind him – apparently not having realized she was there until this moment – and waves a good morning in her direction before turning back to Aang. “Sparring with Mai isn’t going to help you master this form, we still need to do a lot of work on your blocks.”

“But Sifu Hotman,” Aang whines, prompting Zuko to grumble something under his breath that Mai can’t make out at this distance. “I also need to keep up with waterbending and earthbending practice! Katara won’t be happy if my waterbending is sloppy the next time I see her and Toph probably has a grueling training planned for me no matter what, but it’ll be worse if I’m out of practice with my earthbending.”

“Sparring could be fun,” Mai puts in, and is gratified by the betrayed expression Zuko levels her way for contributing to Aang’s efforts to derail this morning’s lesson plan. She’s unrepentant – you can only find so many ways to throw knives at an unmoving target before it gets boring.

“Ugh, fine,” Zuko says.

“Yes!” Aang crows, immediately taking a stance that even Mai – with her limited knowledge of firebending mechanics – can tell is not a firebending stance.

It’s a fairly unstructured match – they’re not playing to win, just moving about and more or less showing off their respective abilities.

It’s fun – more fun than Mai thinks she’s had in weeks. She manages to pin Aang twice and Zuko once over the course of it – more of a challenge that it would normally be given their limited attire in the early morning heat. She also feels pretty proud of a tricky shot she pulled off at one point to knock an ice dagger off course.

They’ve all worked up a sweat by the end of it and Mai’s legs burn from running and ducking about the arena to dodge the boy’s elemental attacks. Her breath comes in hard pants. It makes her feel alive.

“We should do that again tomorrow,” Aang says as they wrap up and start heading back to the palace.

“We do actually have to work on your firebending some of the time,” Zuko says, seeming exasperated but also a bit fond. “And I’m not going to have time tomorrow – I’m stuck in meetings with the Finance council literally sunrise to dusk.”

“You should bring your swords next time,” Mai puts in.

Zuko rolls his eyes but doesn’t put up any more token protests.

***

Mai’s soap bubble of happiness from the morning is prematurely burst by way of a letter sitting on her bed, once again with an all too familiar seal. It serves to inform her that her family is officially back in the Caldera and that her mother simply insists that she breakfast with her family the next morning.

“Why so glum, Mai?” Aang asks that night at dinner. Mai prickles a bit at his forwardness.

“You do seem a bit more… dour that usual,” Zuko hedges when she doesn’t immediately respond, instead using her chopsticks perhaps a bit more aggressively than necessary to separate her meat into bite sized pieces.

She sighs. “My family’s back in town.”

“Oh,” Zuko says, immediately understanding.

Aang, on the other hand, looks confused. “Uh, is that… a bad thing?”

Mai grimaces, sucking on her teeth in lieu of a response.

“Mai’s parent’s can be… a bit –” Zuko tries but struggles to produce the right adjective.

“Overbearing. Stifling. Soul sucking,” Mai offers.

“Much,” Zuko settles on.

Aang watches this with a look of deep consternation on his face. “Oh. I’m sorry,” he says, still sounding confused.

“Thanks,” Mai says, surly.

“Oh!” Aang says again after a moment, “Does that mean your little brother is in town too?”

“Yes. I’d have to assume he’s in town too. Unless my parents decided to take their hands off parenting approach to even greater extremes than they already have.”

They continue to eat in what Mai is willing to admit is an awkward silence that’s probably entirely her fault. Unfortunately for everyone, she’s not willing to stop wallowing in indulgent self-pity for long enough to do anything about it.

After Aang excuses himself for the night, making his escape more or less as soon as he’s finished eating, Zuko turns to Mai with a concerned look on his face. Mai braces herself.

“Are you worried your parents are going to… I don’t know, make you do something you don’t want to do?”

Mai sighs. “Not really. I’m just dreading the prospect of making polite conversation with them for an hour tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” Zuko says, still looking concerned. “I mean, if you are – worried about anything, that is – I could probably find a way to give you an official position in court. Undersecretary to the Firelord or something?”

Mai feels reluctantly warmed by his earnestness. “You probably could, but I don’t think you’ll have to. My parents won’t want to get on your bad side. Probably half the reason they want to talk to me at all is to figure out what their next steps should be to secure their political position under your regime.”

Zuko huffs a sigh. “I’m sorry you have to deal with them.”

“Me too,” Mai says.

A moment of silence passes. The cicada-crickets take advantage and their background hum becomes all encompassing.

Mai sighs, and leans into Zuko; he automatically wraps an arm around her shoulder comfortingly.

“My parents,” Mai starts.

Zuko hums his attentiveness.

“They’re obsessed with their status in court,” she continues, emboldened, “So you can imagine they weren’t very happy with me after everything that happened at the Boiling Rock.”

“Did you hear from them while you were in prison?” Zuko asks.

“No. But my Uncle found me while I was being transferred out of his prison. He also wasn’t happy with me, but he thought I ought to know that my parents were planning on disowning me.”

He’d also wanted her to know that he’d tried to have her kept at his prison so he could ensure she’d be treated well, but that was neither here nor there.

“‘Planning on?’ Were they waiting for some reason?”

Mai snorts. “Probably for people to forget about them losing Omashu. Or some politically appropriate time to ensure that the Firelord was reassured of their loyalty and continued support for his reign.”

Zuko seems to process this for a moment, rubbing small, comforting circles into her back. “That’s rough,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

“The worst part,” Mai says, bitter, “is that I doubt either of them will even mention it tomorrow. It certainly hasn’t come up in any of their letters.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says again.

“It’s not your fault,” Mai sighs.

“It’s not yours either.”

Mai manages to spare a small smile for him. “I know. But thanks.”

They sit together in peaceful quiet, the roiling in Mai’s stomach temporarily abated. Mai leaves only reluctantly that night, dreading the day to come.

***

The next morning the sky is bright and clear – both not unusual for a summer morning and utterly irritating.

Mai considers taking a scenic route – challenging given how close her family’s estate is to the palace but certainly not impossible – and letting herself be tardy to breakfast. She decides against it – that would only give her mother something to snidely complain about for the entirety of the meal. Dutifully, she makes her way to what will undoubtedly be the most brain numbingly boring meal she’s had to suffer through in weeks.

She’s just barely made it off the palace grounds – her dread increasing with every footstep – when she’s surprised by Aang, who quite literally drops out of the sky to chat with her.

“Morning, Mai!”

“Please tell me you’re here to let me know about an emergency going on at the palace that will let me get out of this breakfast.”

“Oh, uh. No.”

Mai sighs and continues walking toward her imminent doom. Aang hurries along to keep up with her.

“I am here to tell you that since Zuko’s meeting with the Finance people all day today and the Sages don’t need anything from me, I basically have the whole day free. So, I thought I’d offer to join you for breakfast. I mean, if that’s okay with you?”

Mai mulls this over. Finally, she says, “As much as I’d welcome a buffer between me and my parents, they probably wouldn’t be happy to welcome the Avatar into their home. Since you kind of kidnapped their son.”

“Oh,” Aang says, like this hadn’t occurred to him. “For the record, we didn’t actually kidnap Tom Tom?”

Another story Mai apparently only knows half of. “I don’t care. We can talk about it after,” Mai says. “Wish me luck.”

Aang does. Then leaps back into the sky, leaving Mai to face the inevitable.

Mai steels herself and completes the short walk to her house. With a sigh, she knocks.

A servant answers. He welcomes her and quickly ushers her back into the breakfast room.

“Mai,” Mother greets, already kneeling at the table. “I’m so happy you could come for breakfast.” She gestures for Mai to sit with her. “Your father unfortunately won’t be able to join us – an opportunity to meet up with an old political associate came up. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” Mai says. She takes her place at the table – settings have been put out for her next to her mother. “That’s just what I’d expect of Dad.”

If her mother hears any of Mai’s ire, she ignores it. “He’s always working so hard to ensure good things for our family.”

Mai is saved from having to come up with an appropriately polite response to that by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Mother calls.

Another servant comes in holding Mai’s little brother.

Catching sight of her as the servant passes the boy over to her mother, Tom Tom squeals a delighted, “Meh-meh!”

Mai blinks, feeling faintly bewildered. “Is he… talking now?”

“Oh, yes,” her mother says, adjusting as she accepts Tom Tom. He squirms around to look at Mai, reaching her direction with grabby hands. “He started not long after you left. And, oh, he’s gotten to be such a handful. All things considered, I’m a bit glad to be back in the capital – I was so nervous about hiring a nanny in the colonies. So much harder to find someone trustworthy.”

Tom Tom continues to wriggle in her arms while she talks, still reaching out with chubby hands towards Mai. Looking at him, Mai can see that in addition to picking up some communicative abilities in the past month, he’s also gotten a bit bigger. Sensing that he wants her attention but not really sure what to do with information, Mai offers him one of her hands, thinking he’ll be satisfied with holding onto it for a bit.

He does grab it, or rather, he grabs her index finger with one hand and her pinky finger in the other and contemplates her palm thoughtfully for a moment. Then he pulls her hand even closer and sticks her middle and ring fingers in his mouth.

“Gross,” Mai says, but doesn’t pull her hand away.

Mother rolls her eyes at this. “He might be too much of a handful to stay with us the whole time we’re eating, but I thought you might want to see him.”

Tom Tom takes Mai’s fingers out of his mouth and considers them for a moment. Then he drops her hand and goes back to reaching towards her. “Meh-meh!”

Mai surprises herself by saying, “I can take him.”

Mother raises her eyebrows, but she passes him over to Mai without comment. Tom Tom lets out an incoherent stream of excited babbling – Mai will take that to mean he’s pleased with this turn of events.

“Oh, Mai,” her mother sighs, “There’s so much to talk about. It’s so good to see you after so long.”

Mai carefully does not stiffen and instead takes advantage of the distraction Tom Tom affords. He latches a fist in one of her hair tails. She carefully works his oddly sticky fingers apart to free her hair.

“It has been a while,” she agrees once her hair is free and tossed safely over her shoulder.

Mother takes that as permission to launch into a long-winded account of their long journey home. It’s less of a story and more of a laundry list of her mother’s complaints from the last six months. The horrible uncertainty that had followed losing Omashu, the seasickness on the trip home, the challenges of keeping an eye on a toddler amidst all of the chaos.

One piece of information that Mai does glean from this otherwise trite, one-sided conversation: her family had stayed in a military camp outside Omashu after the Day of Black Sun, hoping that with Sozin’s comet coming so soon they’d be able to take back the city and have her father reinstituted as the governor. Apparently they’d received word that King Bumi had left the city a few days before the comet, so up until they’d received word of the cease fire Zuko had put out to all military outposts in the hours after his Agni Kai for the throne, they’d thought they had a good chance of reclaiming the city.

It occurs to Mai how worthless her parents’ loyalty to Ozai ultimately proved to be – had his plans for the comet come to fruition, her parents would almost certainly have been as much a part of the casualties as the rest of the populace of the Earth Kingdom.

Her mother’s lamenting finally comes to an end when a few servants bring in their breakfast. In addition to rice porridge for Mai and her mother, a small plate with chunks of fruit is placed at one of the empty spots; one of the servants summarily plucks Tom Tom from Mai’s lap and places him in front of it.

“Enough about me,” Mother says. “I wanted to ask about what you’ve been doing for the past month. It’s been smart of you to make yourself valuable to the new Firelord. While it’s certainly not what any of us expected, in some ways, all this change could be very fortuitous for our family…”

Mai fights down a hot flush of anger at this. “It’s been fine,” she says shortly, “Lots of paperwork, mostly.”

“Well, yes, of course, that’s what all political work ultimately comes down to.”

Why even ask then? Mai wonders. “Yep.” she agrees. “It’s been very boring.”

Mother’s brow pinches in annoyance. “Well, surely you must have more to tell me about your work than that?”

Mai takes a big mouthful of her rice porridge, mostly to give herself the space to calm down a bit. “Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know,” Mai says, just laconic enough to not be an outburst.

Mother frowns. She takes a moment to wipe her mouth with her napkin. “I suppose I just want to know what your goals are, dear.”

Mai doesn’t roll her eyes, but it’s a close thing. “Would you be disappointed if my only goal right now is to help Zuko?”

“Well, that’s a fine goal for the moment, Mai, but I was thinking more long-term goals,” mother presses.

Mai hates everything about this conversation. Who could have possibly seen that coming? “I’m going to have to ask you to be more specific, Mom.”

“Mai,” Mother starts, and Mai mentally settles in for the long talking-to she’s brought upon herself. “Ever since you were a little girl your father and I have been trying to ensure that your future – our family’s future – is secure.”

You mean you’ve been trying to make up for the mistakes grandfather made with the family’s finances and insinuate yourselves back into good standing with high society, Mai thinks.

Mother gives a tittering laugh. “In some ways, it’s funny how this has all come full circle. You don’t know this, but when you were, oh, ten or eleven, your father and I managed to secure your engagement to the then-prince.”

Mai wonders, with a sense of vague detachment, if this might have been how Zuko and Aang felt when they were struck by lightning. She struggles to focus as her mother’s voice continues, “We got it annulled, naturally, as soon as we could after his banishment.”

Feeling like she might like to throw up, Mai sets down her spoon and places her hands in her lap. “So what you’re trying to say,” she says, very evenly, “is that I’d be doing you and dad such a big favor if I made a point of –”

Her mother cleanly cuts her off before she can say something crude. “Well, it would be good for our family. But there’s no need to say it so plainly, dear.”

“Sorry,” Mai says, unapologetic.

“If you must insist on speaking frankly,” Mother says, apparently taking offense to Mai’s tone, “Then allow me to say that even if you’ve decided you need to spend your nights at the palace for some reason that I can’t fathom, it’s been smart of you to avoid sleeping in his rooms. We wouldn’t want any… untoward rumors to start spreading before anything is finalized.”

Mai’s blood has reached its boiling point; it thunders in her ears. “What makes you think,” Mai says, carefully, dangerously calm, “that you have any right to talk to me about this.”

Mother looks immediately disappointed. “Mai, your father and I are only thinking about your future.”

Mai looks at Tom Tom so she won’t have to look at her mother. He idly gnaws at a slice of mango, utterly unaware of both the sticky juice dripping down the length of his forearm and the tension bleeding from his sister and mother’s conversation.

She considers calling her mother out on all of it. They’re not worried about her future any more than they were a month and a half ago when she was still in prison. They’re only worried about what they can gain from this, from the possibility of the most impulsive decision of Mai’s life making their lives easier by slotting her into good graces with the unexpected new Firelord.

But what would talking about it gain her? This is how it’s always been with her parents. Other kids’ parents pulled their daughters out of school, or at least advised not actively seeking out Azula’s interest once it became clear what that interest entailed.

Mai’s not sure her parents paid close enough attention to ever even notice that Mai’s friendship with Azula represented anything more than a political opportunity for them. And now, it’s the exact same thing with her relationship with Zuko.

So Mai doesn’t say anything. Instead she thanks her mother for her concern, picks up her spoon, and finishes her rice porridge. She excuses herself, allows her mother to extract a promise that she’ll join them for a meal at least once a week, and says goodbye to Tom Tom, who waves with a chubby hand and says, “Bye-bye, Meh-meh.”

She leaves feeling gutted.

***

Aang finds her not long after, partway through an idle stroll through the palace gardens to clear her head before diving back into the paperwork.

“You look,” he peers at her face as he falls in step with her, “at least as grumpy as you did last night.”

“Well,” Mai says, not breaking her step. “It went at least as badly as I thought it would.”

“Oh. Do you want to–?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Got it, got it. But, uhm. Can I ask how your brother is doing?”

“My brother who you kidnapped?” Mai asks, sardonic. She’s not sure that she cares about this story, but it has the potential to be as good a distraction as any.

“We didn’t kidnap him! He just kind of showed up? And then we all doted on him, because he was really cute. And then your parents offered to trade him for Bumi and we just… went with it? We kind of thought it was a trap, and then it was a trap, but we made sure he made it back to your parents in the end. They whole hostage exchange thing was kind of pointless in the end. Bumi apparently could have escaped the whole time, but he wanted to give me a lesson in ‘listening and waiting’ instead.”

Mai feels her lips twitch up involuntarily – the whole thing is so utterly ridiculous and so utterly the sort of trouble Aang seems to attract. “You seem pretty familiar with the King of Omashu,” she comments, “not using his title and all.”

“Oh yeah,” Aang says, like it hadn’t occurred to him she wouldn’t have known that. “I actually knew Bumi when we were both kids back a hundred years ago.”

“Wow. I knew he was an old geezer, but I didn’t realize he’s ancient.”

Aang laughs. He teases, “Hey, shouldn’t you show some respect to your elders?”

“Hmm,” Mai says, pretending to deeply consider the matter. “Well, I suppose he can have some respect. He did liberate Omashu and then Ba Sing Se within the span of about two months.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty cool,” Aang agrees. “So, we’ve established that I didn’t kidnap your brother and that Bumi is both very old and very awesome. I’m still curious about how your little brother is doing, though. Has he grown a lot since you last saw him?”

Mai sighs out of habit, but decides she doesn’t actually mind talking about Tom Tom. “He is bigger. And he’s talking now, sort of. He seemed like he knew my name, and bye-bye. So that’s new.”

“Aww, he must have missed you,” Aang says with a small smile.

Mai’s not sure that quite makes sense – she barely spent any time with Tom Tom before she left with Azula. 

“I take it you like little kids,” Mai observes.

Aang nods. “Growing up there were always little kids around. Sometimes Monk Gyatso and I would get to help take care of them, which was always fun.”

Mai’s brain threatens to go down a dark path involving dead airbender babies. In an effort to avoid that she says, “But babies are just so… weird. And messy.”

Aang laughs. “Babies definitely aren’t known for their table manners,” he agrees. A pensive look comes over his face. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You’ve asked me multiple questions already in this conversation. But I suppose I can permit one more.”

“No, I mean. It’s maybe not a very nice question.”

Mai shrugs a so what. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time she’s been fielded ‘not very nice questions.’ Not very nice questions were one of Azula’s specialties.

“Okay,” Aang says, “So I get the feeling that you care about your brother. At least in your own kind of way. Has anyone ever told you that you can be kind of hard to read?”

“Never,” Mai deadpans.

Aang spares her a smile at this. “So, I guess knowing that and knowing you better… I’m kind of confused why you went along with not exchanging your brother for Bumi.”

“Oh, Mai says, dry, “you’re asking how I could be so heartless to leave my baby brother to his fate in the hands of his dreadful kidnappers.”

She means it as a joke, and feels a bit bad when Aang winces. “I mean. It’s just that it’s the kind of thing that made sense when I was thinking of you as one of the bad guys. Now that I know you better, I can’t make sense of it.”

“It’s a fair question,” she acknowledges as she considers it, then shrugs. “Asking me to call off the hostage negotiations was Azula’s way of assessing my loyalty. And, well. Let’s just say I’d long since learned it’s best not to let Azula know the things you care about.”

Aang doesn’t say anything to that right away. After mulling it over for a bit he finally says, “I guess that makes a bit more sense. Thank you.”

“Yeah.” As they get closer to her office, Mai says, “You know, probably not any time soon, but one of these days, maybe once meals with my parents reach a point of unbearable boredom, maybe you can join me and see how big Tom Tom has gotten for yourself.” And let Mai amuse herself with her mother’s look of horror as Aang tries to explain the not-actually-a-kidnapping kidnapping of Tom Tom.

“That would be fun,” Aang says, smiling. “Maybe I could bring Momo, too – Tom Tom seemed to really like him.”

“Why not?” Mai says, because the comedic potential of watching her mother navigate the perils of a flying lemur at the dinner table is truly off the charts.

As they walk into Mai’s office, Aang asks, “Do you need help with anything today? I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t have anything going on today, what with Zuko so busy and the Finance Minister still worried I’ll contaminate any budget report I look at.”

“I can check, but I don’t think so,” Mai says absently as she starts to flip through the papers on her desk, trying to decide what to start on today. The pile has if anything grown even bigger in the past few weeks, which feels decidedly unfair.

There are a few drafts of the national budget – she'll make updates after Zuko’s meetings today, but no sense in starting on it yet.

A few straggling agricultural reports – Mai would really rather stab her eyes out than try to get through those right now.

A packet detailing the plans for the initial peace talks scheduled for next week.

Hmm. That’s new and therefore more interesting than anything else Mai has been working on. It looks like the initial invitations have already been sent out in an effort to speed the process along and a couple of places in the Earth Kingdom have been proposed as possible locations.

She glances at the guest list – then does a double take, and then reads through the guest list more carefully.

“Aang,” she calls.

Aang bounds over to her desk. “Did you find something?”

“Take a look at this,” she says, handing him the guest list.

Aang looks it over. Mai watches him scan both sides of it, then start back at the top, flipping it over. “Is there a page missing?”

Mai’s pretty sure there’s not, but she looks through the stack of papers on her desk anyways. Coming up empty, she shakes her head.

“Well,” Aang says, “then it definitely looks like someone forgot to invite the Southern Water Tribe to the peace talks.”

***

The rest of Mai and Aang’s day is a flurry of figuring out how this happened and who can take care of the gross oversight while Zuko remains stuck in meetings all day.

Aang’s very insistent he doesn’t want to get anyone who doesn’t deserve it fired over this mishap. “After all,” he jokes, “we can’t blame individuals for the inaccuracies perpetuated by the Fire Nation’s schooling system.”

Mai’s impressed he can make such a joke without sounding bitter. She’s also very annoyed by how tedious the process of subtly asking around about the planning is. Not that it would have been less tedious to go to the top and delicately ask the new Minister of Foreign Relations – who holds one of the few positions Zuko had the luxury of creating from scratch at the start of his reign – how he could have been so mind-bogglingly incompetent.

They finally hunt down the aide who put the documents together midafternoon. She’s a mousy looking young woman and extremely apologetic as she makes excuses for the oversight.

“I am so, so sorry! I was certain that we did have representatives from the Water Tribes included!” She frantically grabs the documents from Mai, looking them over with a pinched brow.

Aang helpfully pops in, pointing out where the Northern Water Tribe’s names are listed. “You did get invitations to people from the Northern Water Tribe,” he says, flipping the document with a smooth bit of airbending over to show the aide the other side, “but no one was from the Southern Water Tribe is on the list.”

The aide’s eyebrows furrow even as her eyes remain wide. “There isn’t… a central seat of government for the Water Tribes?”

Mai narrowly avoids lying down on the floor and allowing death to take her right there.

Aang patiently explains that yes, the Southern and the Northern Water Tribe are in fact separate entities. He somehow manages to do so without pointing out that they’re literally on opposite sides of the world or that there are several invitees from the various seats of power of the Earth Kingdom even though the Earth Kingdom, technically, is centrally governed by the Earth King in Ba Sing Se.

Having convinced her of her folly, Mai and Aang find themselves spending the rest of the afternoon helping the aide to prepare an invitation packet for the Southern Water Tribe and triple and quadruple checking that no other important parties had been left off of the guest list.

“So all things said, it was a pretty easy fix,” Aang says later that night as he regales Zuko with a tale of their adventures. Never mind that he was apparently born over a hundred years ago – Aang’s upbeat attitude is really is the most unbelievable thing about him. “But… there was one other issue I noticed with the plans.”

Mai barely restrains the urge to rest her forehead on the table in despair – why has the universe decided that ending a three generations long war has to be so difficult? “You couldn’t have said something earlier?” she asks wearily.

“Sorry,” Aang smiles, sheepish. “But I couldn’t think of a fix for it, so I thought it would be better to talk about it with Zuko here.”

In body if not in spirit. Mai watches as Zuko tries and fails to stifle a yawn, his all-day long budget meeting apparently having worn him down. “What’s the other problem, Aang?” he says, rubbing at his face.

“So, the documents with the briefing on the location for the talks said they’d chosen the place because it was never a site of any hostilities during the war,” Aang says.

“I’m impressed they managed to find somewhere like that,” Zuko says, mild surprise chasing out some of the exhaustion covering his face.

Mai nods in agreement.

Oh, wait –

“That’s the problem,” Aang says, “they didn’t. The peace talks are supposed to happen on Kyoshi Island.”

“Oh,” Zuko says, looking more resigned than anything. “Why weren’t we paying more attention to this?”

“Because the Foreign Affairs Minister is filling a new position, so he never served your father in any capacity and has thus far been very accommodating of all of your policy plans,” Mai says. “And even though we captured Kyoshi Island’s warriors–”

“And impersonated them to conquer Ba Sing Se,” Aang helpfully adds.

“–this could well be the best option,” Mai finishes, admittedly less convinced than when she started her sentence.

Zuko groans and does give into resting his forehead on the table. 

Mai rubs the back of his neck as she continues, “But having the talks somewhere that was never directly attacked or occupied could still help keep tensions down,” Mai suggests halfheartedly. She catches sight of the boys’ faces. “Unless I’m missing something.”

Zuko looks beseechingly at Aang.

“So Zuko might have… burned down a decent amount of the harbor village on Kyoshi Island back when he was chasing me.”

That slots the last piece of the puzzle into place in this mess that’s shaping up to be a horrible platypus bear egg omelet. “And it wasn’t recorded as a military engagement because Zuko’s ship wasn’t part of the formal chain of command,” Mai realizes aloud. “Well. This is not good.”

They all sit for a moment in silent contemplation of how not good it is.

“Maybe we could reframe it as an attempt at humility?” Aang hedges.

“That… could work,” Zuko says, considering. Ruefully, he adds, “Especially since I personally was the one to attack Kyoshi.”

“Do you really think that General Shinu will go for that?” Mai says.

“He might,” Zuko says, a sly spark in his eyes, “if I point out that I could probably get rid of him for his involvement in the planning for Sozin’s comet. I happen to have a very detailed summary of all of the provinces’ agricultural reports that make a convincing argument for all of the reasons why burning down the Earth Kingdom’s farmland would have been a really bad idea.”

Well, Mai thinks, good to know those agricultural reports were good for something.

They spend the rest of the meal strategizing for the peace talks. Mai’s a bit relieved to finally retire for bed, a much needed respite after a long day.

***

The scene resolves into focus – hazy sepia tones, half a memory and half a dream.

A shriek of denial, disbelief: “No, you should have feared me more!”

The edges of this memory are blurred by the inanities of dream logic. The crackle of ozone might have been real – but not the white-blue lightning that follows.

Its path is jagged but unerring.

Observing the scene unfold before her, Mai’s hands remain neatly folded in her sleeves; she doesn’t reach for her knives. Her face looks calm, belying the magnitude of the oncoming horror.

The lightning strikes its target, briefly illuminating a rictus of pain.

From a vantage over Azula’s shoulder, Mai watches as Ty Lee crumples, felled.

***

Mai’s heart pounds as she wakes.

For a few moments, she lies perfectly still, staring at the canopy above her bed. Beams of moonlight slip in through the curtains that drift lazily in a warm night breeze.

Mai contemplates trying to fall back asleep. 

It’s not the first time she’s had some variation of that dream, nor, she assumes, will it be the last. Her subconscious likes to fiddle around with who plays the role of Azula’s victim and, unfortunately, does not yet seem to have bored of the game. Each time before she’s pushed it away, rolled over, and slept until morning.

Fuck it, she thinks, and slides out of her bed.

Her mother would be horrified to find out that Mai swears, even if only in the privacy of her own mind.

She’d be even more horrified by what Mai intends to do next.

Slipping unseen and unheard through the bowels of the palace well after midnight is just as effortless as Mai had always thought it would be each of the times she’s been tempted to do this in the past.

It’s a bit harder to get past the guards into the Firelord’s rooms, but Mai spent a decent chunk of her childhood exploring the palace’s secret passageways with Azula, Ty Lee, and, on a few memorable occasions, Zuko. All things said, she’s able to do it with enough ease to give her some concerns about the strength of the palace’s security.

Joining Zuko in bed, though, feels less rebellious than Mai thought it would. Mostly it just feels like coming home.

“Mai?” Zuko mutters, sounding half asleep, as she curls up next to him.

“Go back to sleep,” Mai murmurs.

He doesn’t listen to her – typical, Mai thinks fondly – instead shifting to rearrange himself to embrace her. Mai resettles accordingly, bringing her head to rest on his shoulder, her left arm loosely looped over his right hip.

It’s frankly too hot to cuddle like this, and Mai’s right arm is probably going to fall asleep if they stay like this.

But right now, it’s everything Mai could have ever asked for.

“You okay?” Zuko asks into her hair.

Mai smiles into his chest. “I am now.”

***

Mai probably should have foreseen Zuko waking up at a ridiculously early hour. Waking up at dawn might be a firebender thing or it might be a neurotic members of the royal family thing. Either way, feeling Zuko slip out of bed, Mai also finds herself awake when the sun has just barely peeked over the horizon, the barest hint of light spilling through the window.

“Why are you up so early?” she groans.

“Sorry – didn’t mean to wake you.” Zuko’s voice is quiet in the early morning. He leans back to deposit a kiss on her forehead.

“Probably for the best,” she sighs. “We wouldn’t want to cause a scandal.”

She makes to leave the way she came – unseen and unheard.

“Mai,” Zuko catches her hand before she can get too far. “I wouldn’t mind causing a scandal. I mean. Whenever you’re comfortable with it.”

She stares at him for a moment, trying to parse the implications with a still half asleep brain. He kisses her goodbye.

Mai thinks, slipping back through the secret passage ways, that once she’s built up the courage for it, she wouldn’t mind causing a scandal either.

***

The week leading up to the peace talks on Kyoshi, Mai had been looking forward to an excuse to get out of a weekly meal and tense conversation with her parents and for a break from Fire Nation politics.

It turns out that trading stodgy Fire Nation nobility for stodgy Earth Kingdom nobility isn’t quite the reprieve Mai had been hoping for. To make matters worse, the relaxed formality outside of the prying eyes of court means that Mai can attend the meetings as an observer. Like a fool, she decides that it could be a useful opportunity to get a better sense of international politics, which means she gets a front seat to the banality of it all.

The first morning of the talks starts out decently enough – the meeting is dominated by an array of Earth Nation representatives, and they start everything off by airing their concerns about the pace of troop evacuations. Zuko does a tidy job – in Mai’s humble and not at all biased opinion – of reassuring them that the Fire Nation’s military presence is being removed from the Earth Kingdom as quickly as possible, but ultimately it’s proving to take more than a few weeks to reverse the machinations of a war engine that’s been 100 years in the making.

Things start to get a bit unbearable as the topic of formal reparations comes up. Surprisingly, Aang and Zuko’s proposal for payments made in installments over the course of the next several decades had gone over surprisingly well. Unfortunately, several of the Earth Kingdom representatives had decided to use this forum to quibble over the niceties of how to fairly distribute reparations to different parts of the Earth Kingdom.

Mai admittedly doesn’t have enough of a grasp on Earth Kingdom politics to follow the discussion well – a General Fong seems very insistent in repeating his opinion several times and a General Sung has a tendency of loudly announcing his opinion before folding at the slightest opposition to it – but she feels very confident in saying that it’s both a very boring and unnecessary use of everyone’s time. These conversations seem like something the Earth Kingdom can have on its own without dragging everyone else into it. She’s certain sure she’s not the only one who feels this way – she can’t see Zuko and Aang’s faces from her spot behind them in the back of the room, but across the table, several of the Northern and Southern Water Tribe representatives look ready to fall asleep.

“They’ve been at this nonsense all week,” one of the Kyoshi warriors, providing security for the proceedings, complains under their breath.

It takes Mai a moment to recognize this comment as an invitation for conversation.

“I didn’t realize they’d been here so long,” she murmurs back.

“Just the Earth Kingdom representatives – they’ve been debating everything from the menu to the color of the curtains,” the girl tells her. With her mask of face paint, Mai can’t tell whether or not she’s met this woman before. She feels like her shorter hair ought to be a hint – most of the Kyoshi Warriors had seemed to prefer elaborate styles only possible with longer hair – but apparently she hadn’t paid enough attention when Azula had captured a contingent of their members nor during Zuko’s coronation.

Mai feels a pang of regret. Less about not paying better attention to the Kyoshi warriors and more about not having found an opportunity to have a real conversation – more than vague pleasantries – with Ty Lee at the coronation. She just… hadn’t known what to say to her. They hadn’t seen each other since they’d both turned on Azula at the Boiling Rock – clearly someone had thought both of them had acted out of more that impulse that day and would be liable to plot against the then-heir-to-the-throne if they’d been thrown in prison together. In all the intervening months apart, Mai somehow hadn’t figured out what she wanted to say to Ty Lee.

She supposes she’ll probably see Ty Lee at some point during the peace talks. She still doesn’t know what she needs to say.

Mai pulls herself back to her present conversation. “They should definitely fire whoever made the final decision on the curtains – it looks like someone threw up all over the walls.”

“Somehow I get the feeling you’d say that about anything sufficiently colorful.”

Mai shrugs an allowance.

General Fong’s voice picks up in volume across the room. One of the Northern Water Tribe representatives – probably Chief Arnuk – tries to suggest tabling the current conversation, and is summarily ignored.

The Kyoshi Warrior shakes her head. “I really hope Kyoshi is able to go back to staying out of Earth Kingdom politics after this. I was kind of surprised that Zuko proposed our island for these talks. Or rather, that his advisors let him.”

“You’d have to ask him about that,” Mai deflects, carefully covering her surprise that this girl would refer to Zuko without his title.

Across the room, there’s some sort of a mishap – Mai must have missed whatever caused it – that ends with General Fong’s tea landing in his lap. Aang seems to take this as an opportunity to steer the conversation towards more pertinent topics like trade agreements and shipping lanes. Mai internally groans. Getting all of the delegates to agree on all of the minutiae of the treaty is going to take days at this rate, and then plans have to be made for a formal signing ceremony too.

It seems an awful lot of pomp and circumstance to end a pointless war that everyone has long since tired of – but Mai supposes successful event planning without anyone trying to kill their former enemies is as good a way as any to ensure all parties’ good intentions.

“Not to be blunt,” the Kyoshi Warrior next to Mai says, continuing their quiet conversation, “but I can’t tell if you’re just being polite or trying to cover that you don’t remember who I am.”

Mai blinks. “A bit of both,” she acknowledges after a moment. “And bluntness is probably more efficient than what everyone else in here is doing.”

The Kyoshi Warrior grins widely at that. Mai doubts she’s imaging the hint of a threat hiding beneath the wide smile. “I suppose we’ve only met a few times before – want to take a guess when?”

Mai raises an eyebrow. “I think both of us know I’ve had two prior encounters with the Kyoshi Warriors – and I’ll confess that I didn’t commit any of your names to memory either time. I suppose I owe you an apology for our first encounter.”

“You’ve met at least one of the Kyoshi Warriors more than just those two times. Gray eyes, usually wears her hair in a braid. When she’s out of uniform, she has a certain fondness for the color pink.”

Mai’s heart feels a bit warmed to hear that her old friend has apparently been so thoroughly accepted by this group of girls who’d once been their enemies. “Knowing Ty Lee’s name unfortunately doesn’t get me any closer to guessing yours.”

“I suppose that’s true.” She must decide to take pity on Mai. “It’s Suki,” she says, inclining her head in a vague approximation of a bow.

“Suki,” Mai repeats, thinking the name sounds familiar. It comes to her quickly, “I’d feel the need to apologize again for not recognizing the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors and a personal friend of the Avatar and the Firelord, but I feel there ought to be some allowance given for the face paint.”

Suki offers a winning smirk. “Maybe there’s a fair way for you to make it up to me.” Mai can tell she’s not just talking about not recognizing her. “Your friend Ty Lee was able to teach my warriors a new and exceptionally useful fighting technique while they were in prison together, but even with how long these talks will drag out, I’m not sure if there’s enough time for something like that.”

“I doubt I have anything to teach you that you don’t already know.” Afterall, her proficiency with throwing knives comes more from hours of target practice for the sake of alleviating boredom, not any secret knowledge that she could pass on to seasoned fighters.

“No worries. I was actually thinking something more along the lines of a rematch of some sort.” She glances sideways at Mai. “You seem like you have a mean Pai Sho face. Might make for a fun challenge.”

The last few minutes of conversation slowly reconfigures themselves into an offer to reconcile any past bad blood between the two of them. “Ty Lee’s Pai Sho face is better,” Mai finally says, “but mine’s not terrible.”

Suki looks triumphant. “There probably won’t be a good time for it during the peace talks – but a few of the Kyoshi Warriors and I are planning to make a point of attending the treaty signing. I’m assuming you’ll be there too.”

The conversation at the negotiating table seems to have once again devolved into the Earth Kingdom representatives politely squabbling amongst themselves. Mai picks up something about excessive tariffs levied by the port towns – which she’s fairly certain was not something mentioned in the original draft of the treaty.

Mai smiles slightly. “If we don’t die of boredom before the Earth Kingdom delegates can get around to letting everyone finalize the treaty, I’ll find you there and remind you that I owe you a game.”

“You’d better,” Suki says.

There’s abruptly a small rumble throughout the room that somehow results in one of the teapots near the Earth Kingdom delegates shattering. General Fong seems to take the brunt of the spilled tea.

Zuko, mercifully, takes this as an opportunity to call for a recess.

Mai catches Suki rolling her eyes.

“You don’t seem too worried about all of the accidents that seem to be affecting General Fong’s ability to drink tea and argue in peace,” Mai notes.

Suki offers a wry grin, “I have half a mind to tell Toph we won’t be able to pretend that Kyoshi Island sits on a fault line if all of our ‘earthquakes’ seem to have it out for him in particular.”

Mai recognizes that name – it takes her a moment to pick out the Avatar’s earthbending teacher from across the room. She’s done up in a set of more formal robes than Mai’s ever seen her in – it makes her look more like a doll than the dangerously skilled earthbender Mai knows her to be.

“Only half a mind?” Mai asks.

“General Fong’s kind of an asshole,” Suki says.

Mai is saved from having to respond to that by one of the water tribe representatives coming over their way. He hasn’t spoken much at the meeting yet – not necessarily surprising with how much of the meeting has focused on Earth Kingdom politics so far – but Mai thinks she recognizes him as Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe.

He nods at Suki first. “My son instructed me to tell me that he misses you very much and he wishes he could have come along to see you, admittedly in a much more, err, poetic fashion than I could hope to recreate. Katara also wanted you to know that you’re very missed and she’s looking forward to seeing you and the rest of her friends soon.”

“It will be wonderful to see them when we all get the chance,” Suki says, “I hope rebuilding efforts are going well – Sokka’s had a lot to say about that in his letters, some of which has been legible.”

Hakoda laughs. “He gets very excited about his projects – I think he thinks too fast for his pen to keep up with him.”

Mai starts to quietly excuse herself, but Hakoda stops her before she gets far.

“You’re Mai, right? Aang told Katara and Sokka that you were instrumental in making sure the Southern Water Tribe was represented at this meeting.”

Mai had thought that maybe they’d caught the invite snafu fast enough for no one to realize it had even happened in the first place, but she hadn’t counted on the possibility that Aang would share everything with his pen pals around the world. “I sincerely apologize for the original oversight and I’m happy to see that representatives from both the Northern and the Southern tribes have been able to participate in the peace talks,” Mai says with a bow.

Hakoda laughs – Mai thinks it’s at her formality. “The Fire Nation has proven itself less inclined to forget about the Southern Water Tribe than much of the Earth Kingdom and our sister tribe. That obviously wasn’t a good thing during the war, but I want to thank you for making sure that we’re being represented as we, well, painstakingly hammer out this treaty.”

Mai bows again, “I don’t know that I can accept your gratitude; the Avatar would have made sure that you were represented.”

Now Suki tries to hide a giggle behind her hand. Mai thinks it’s rather unfair for her attempts to be appropriately politic to be such a source of humor.

“Well, in that case – I also wanted to thank you,” Hakoda says, apparently not done subjecting Mai to this uncomfortable social situation just yet, “for saving my life and my son’s life at the Boiling Rock.”

Mai had been vaguely aware that the water tribe boy – Sokka – had been involved in that mess, but she honestly hadn’t put together that the same chief of the Southern Water Tribe she’s currently talking to had been as well.

“I was mostly focused on keeping Zuko from dying,” Mai starts, then tries to adjust course to something less blunt that faintly represents a polite response to someone thanking you for having accidently saved their life. A quick brainstorming session offers absolutely nothing. “I’m glad that worked out for you as well?”

Suki is utterly unsuccessful at hiding her laughter at this. Hakoda has the decency to merely offer her a kind smile. “I would have to say that it definitely did work out for me. Know that if you ever find yourself in the general neighborhood of the South Pole, the Southern Water Tribe will always welcome you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you very much for your kind generosity,” Mai says with another bow. Hakoda seems to have said his bit and Suki looks like she might choke on her swallowed laughter. Mai takes the opportunity to make a quick exit before she gets embroiled in any more awkward conversation.

***

Zuko very dramatically collapses face first onto a pile of cushions in the common area of their rooms after the peace talks adjourn for the first night.

“So that was excruciating,” Mai agrees, taking a moment to stretch in the relative privacy of their accommodations. “I can't decide if Earth Kingdom politics are not as bad as Fire Nation politics or equally bad but in a different way.”

Zuko grumbles something in response, but it’s unintelligibly muffled by the cushions where his face currently resides.

Mai means to ask him to repeat himself, but she’s distracted by Aang loosening the upper fastening on his robes, or more to the point, by Momo peeking out through the newly created opening in Aang’s robes.

“Please don’t tell me you had him with you the whole time.”

“Momo was going to get lonely if we left him here all day by himself.” Aang says, as if that’s an explanation, helping the lemur make its way out of his robes all the while.

Zuko raises his head, looking very beleaguered. Mai notes that some of his hair has fallen out of his top knot, which adds to a rumpled appearance, very different from the formal and put together air he’d successfully maintained over the course of the day. The duality of man, she thinks.

“You subjected Momo to all of that?”

“He just slept through it all.” Aang says with a shrug.

Zuko narrows his eyes at the lemur. “I wish we all could be so lucky to have slept through all of that.”

Momo perks up and darts over to Zuko. Mai thinks for about half a second as she watches it hop onto Zuko’s back that maybe the lemur has some pent-up energy after sleeping all day, but then it curls up on Zuko’s back and promptly falls back asleep.

Zuko groans and lets his head fall back onto the cushions in front of him.

“We should train Momo to make people shut up after they’ve been talking for too long,” Mai says, moving to sit at the table with Aang. She hopes someone will be by with dinner soon – listening to politicians all day has definitely given her an appetite.

“That’s what we have Toph for,” Aang says absently. He’s reaching into his robes again and grins triumphantly as he pulls out a set of scrolls tied off with a distinctly water tribe looking accoutrement.

Mai thinks about asking him why he’d told his friends in the Southern Water Tribe about the screw up with their invites, but decides against it when she realizes she can’t come up with a good reason for why he shouldn’t have done that. It’s possible she’s a bit swayed by how happy he looks at the prospect of reading a few letters from them.

A pang of nostalgia hits Mai – Ty Lee’s still somewhere on this island, probably taking shifts with the Kyoshi Warriors. All it would take is a little bit of asking around to find her.

“I’m guessing those are express delivery from the Southern Water Tribe, courtesy of Chief Hakoda,” she says by way of bringing herself out of those thoughts.

Aang nods. “I’m going to go read these, and then Toph wants me to come down for a training session. Ugh, she’s probably going to kick my butt extra hard so that any of the Earth Kingdom delegates watching know they shouldn’t mess with her. If I can’t walk tomorrow, you’ll know why.”

“Have fun,” Mai says dryly.

As Aang leaves, Mai moves to sit but Zuko, still collapsed on his pile of cushions. Momo looks very comfortable asleep on his back – Mai reaches out to give the lemur a scratch behind his ears like she’s seen Aang do. The lemur tilts his head into her hand, apparently pleased with this turn of events. Curled up like this she can’t see his weird hands, leaving Mai no choice but to admit to herself that Momo might actually be kind of cute.

Zuko turns his head so that he’s looking at her.

“Kind of thought you fell asleep,” she tells him.

“These pillows are very comfortable,” Zuko acknowledges. “So. Do you have any plans for tonight?”

Mai blinks. “Eating. And going to bed I guess. I think Momo has the right idea.”

“Oh. So, you’re not going to…”

“I’m not going to what?” Mai doesn’t quite snap but she does stop petting the lemur to focus all of her attention on Zuko.

Zuko gives her a look that says why are you making this difficult. Mai looks back at him, unimpressed and unmoved.

Then Zuko twists a bit, awkwardly curling his arm towards his back – it takes Mai a minute to realize that he’s trying to get up, but doesn’t want to dislodge the lemur by doing so.

Mai rolls her eyes. “You’re such a dork,” she tells him as she plucks the lemur off his back. Momo makes a chirrup of complaint, but then happily settles back down in her lap. Mai leans back on her hands – that hadn’t quite been her intention, but Kyoshi’s climate is cool enough that the warm heat radiating off the small animal isn’t going to make her uncomfortable before dinner comes.

Zuko gives her a dopey look as he sits up. “That’s the most I’ve seen you interact with Momo,” he says, reaching over to pet the lemur.

Mai shrugs noncommittally – she might be willing to acknowledge Momo’s cuteness in the privacy of her own head, but saying it out loud is another matter entirely.

Zuko looks up, and from the serious look in his eyes, Mai gives up her hope that maybe he’d let their prior topic of conversation pass by.

Mai sighs.

“Look,” Zuko says, “you don’t have to take my advice on this. But I think you’ll regret it if you don’t try to find Ty Lee and talk to her while we’re here.”

Mai avoids his eye contact. Considers a pattern in the whorls of the wood paneling that make up the floor. She still has no idea what she needs to say in that conversation. Finally, she concedes, “You’re not wrong. But we’re going to be here for a few days more at this rate, and I’m pretty tired from all of the traveling to get here. I can try another day.”

***

Mai doesn’t try on the second day of the peace talks. Mai’s not sure if Zuko’s too busy with everything going on or just got asking her about it out of his system their first night here, but either way she’s glad she doesn’t have to try to figure out an excuse.

The third day of the peace talks she has half of an excuse in the form of an impromptu evening sparring session with Aang’s earthbending instructor.

Mai will admit to herself if no one else that the Kyoshi warriors have an impressive dojo. Nonetheless, over the past few days she has preferred to train in a park unaffiliated with the Kyoshi warriors where she will not have to interact with a number of identically dressed near strangers. An hour of peace without having to interact with other people after a long day of circuitous peace talks has been crucial for her sanity on this trip.

For better or worse, the little earthbender – who Mai knows all too well should not be underestimated despite her diminutive form – announces that she will be joining Mai that night and follows Mai out to the formerly secluded park.

“I would have thought you’d want to take the time while you’re both in the same general part of the world to make sure Aang’s earthbending is coming along.”

“I gave him homework,” Toph says with a careless shrug, “and I think you could help me with something tonight.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Your knives are made of metal, right?”

“Steel,” Mai acknowledges.

“Cool. So what we’re going to do is you’re going to throw them at me and I’m going to try and use my metalbending to keep them from hitting me.”

“My aim’s too good for them to ever hit you.”

“Semantics. Fine, I’ll keep them from pining me or whatever.”

Mai considers. The constantly analytical part of her brain points out that playing with knives and experimental earthbending could prove to be dangerous.

But it also sounds kind of fun.

For the first five minutes or so, it’s not very fun. Mai throws her knives, Toph attempts and fails to metalbend the rapidly flying pieces of metal.

“Keep going, I’m starting to get a better sense of where they are when they’re flying,” Toph says after what’s probably the eighth time she’s been pinned to a tree. The first time she’d been pinning it had taken a visible effort for her to figure out how to unpin herself – purportedly, she wasn’t used to metalbending without physical contact – but now easing them out of the tree with just a bit of concentration seems to be old hat.

She hands the two knives that had pinned her back to Mai, then stomps back to take a stance in front of the same tree.

Mai sighs, and throws the knives again.

A few rounds later, Mai watches the trajectory of one of the knives suddenly veer off course at the last second. Toph is still pinned by the other knife, but she still whoops at her partial success.

Several rounds later, and Toph is consistently able to avoid being pinned.

“I’m mildly impressed,” Mai tells her as her knives are returned to her.

With a wide grin, Toph asks, “Want to make this a little bit more exciting?”

The ensuing sparring match is indeed exciting, in no small part because Toph is very willing to play dirty. Mai’s initial strategy of overwhelming her opponent’s metalbending by unleashing a barrage of knives is countered by Toph using her earthbending to create a barrier, effectively blocking her efforts.

Late into the match, Toph seems to take great delight in twisting the earth beneath Mai’s feet at precisely the moment Mai releases a knife, causing it to land about five feet off target without any metalbending influence. Mai starts using the terrain more, waiting to make a shot until she’s midair or atop an exposed tree root. After a moment’s thought, she climbs the tree to take a position on a low hanging tree branch.

“Spoilsport!” Toph accuses.

Safe from any earthbending interference from her perch, Mai releases a barrage of knives. Only a handful of them hit their target, but that’s enough to pin Toph to the ground.

Hoping down from the tree, Mai asks idly, “So does that mean I win?”

Toph’s hands flex against the earth; Mai doesn’t process this move as earthbending until she stumbles, her feet suddenly encased in the ground.

She glares at Toph. Toph, unperturbed, uses earthbending to push the knives out of the ground and free herself.

“Let’s call it a draw,” she says with a smirk, deigning to free Mai after a moment.

Realizing Toph can’t see her glare, Mai says, “My shoes are full of dirt.”

“And my clothes are full of holes,” Toph replies, unrepentant. Picking the discarded knives up and handing them to Mai she adds, “At least your knives aren’t all messed up from my metalbending, I was a little worried that would happen.”

Mai immediately checks her knives to verify that this is true.

Toph offers a jaunty wave goodbye. “Good match. We’ll have to do that again sometime.”

She leaves Mai vaguely bewildered and the park a mess of earthbending detritus.

***

The fourth day of the peace talks, Aang must pick up on Mai being ready to go out of her mind with boredom, because he asks Mai if she wouldn’t mind checking up on Appa and making sure he had enough to eat for breakfast during a recess that morning.

The walk over is pleasant – the morning air on Kyoshi Island is perfectly brisk and Mai’s enjoying the opportunity to stretch her legs. Looking around, she decides that pine trees are a very weird excuse for a tree and that she probably wouldn’t want to come here in the winter if there’s a slight chill to the air even towards the end of summer.

As she nears the stables and Appa comes into view, Mai notices a figure in green near the bison, hauling a bale of hay over to it. She feels a momentary flash of annoyance – apparently the Kyoshi Warriors sent someone over to complete the same chore. But, whatever, it got her out of the peace talks for a few minutes, so worth it, pointless task or no.

Then she gets closer and makes eye contact with the girl.

Mai stands stark still.

She recognizes this particular Kyoshi Warrior. How could she not? For most of her life, she’d been the closest thing Mai had to a real friend.

“Mai!” Ty Lee calls out and bounds over.

Mai braces herself, and sure enough Ty Lee wraps her in an enthusiastic hug. Mai awkwardly returns it, giving Ty Lee a few pats on the back.

Ty Lee pulls back – even with her face coated in the thick layer of paint worn by all of the Kyoshi Warriors, her blindingly bright smile is utterly familiar.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, Mai, but – “

Mai groans preemptively.

“– your aura is such a beautiful mauve, today! So much prettier than that dingy gray I’m used to! I almost didn’t recognize you!”

Mai rolls her eyes. “You know I don’t believe in auras.” She can’t help but let herself smile. “But I hardly recognized you either. All the green suits you surprisingly well.”

Ty Lee laughs. “Mai, you’re so silly. You saw this outfit weeks ago at the coronation.”

“I was running off of like two hours of sleep, so I was half asleep for most of that. My uncle getting me out of prison early necessitated traveling half the night.”

Ty Lee loses a bit of her bubbliness at that. “I’m glad we both made it out of that safe,” she says, uncharacteristically serious. Mai doesn’t know how to respond to that. Ty Lee glances into the stables, then back at Mai. “Do you have a minute to catch up?”

Does Mai have a minute? Before the recess, she’d been busy losing track of General Fong’s complaints about ostrich horse husbandry regulations or something equally inane. She definitely has a minute if it will mean not going back to that right away. She nods her assent.

Ty Lee leads Mai back into the stables, and finishes pushing a large pile of hay Appa’s direction. Appa snuffles appreciatively, going so far as to give Ty Lee a slobbery lick of gratitude. Ty Lee, unperturbed, giggles, then sits down on one of the edges of one of the water troughs. Mai elects to stay standing, averse to the idea of getting animal slobber on her butt.

“So,” Mai says, “what have you been up to?”

“Oh my gosh, Mai, so much! I’ve been having so much fun and there’s a surprising amount of cool stuff to do on an island this small. The girls and I have been teaching each other all kinds of cool combat stuff and we’re planning on setting up a tightrope out in the main square so I can help teach people how to do that! And they have all kinds of weird animals here, including this enormous sea serpent in the bay by the main harbor. It’s huge! That’s probably why no one really bothered them during the war. Well, no one except Zuko, I guess. The other girls thought it was sooo funny that you guys decided to have the peace talks here; I didn’t even know he’d been here before they told me! Anyways, they’ve also got the most amazing and delicious sweet breads here, you have to try some before you leave if you haven’t already. I do really miss spicy food though.”

Mai smiles; Ty Lee’s rambling is as familiar as breathing. She’s surprised by how comforting it is. “Maybe I’ll have to send you some fire flakes via messenger hawk.”

“Oh, Mai,” Ty Lee says, clasping her hands together, “That would be brilliant! Oh! Maybe we could be pen pals too, that could be so fun!”

“I don’t know that I’d have much to say. Dear Ty Lee. Politics are boring. Adults are stupid. The pleasures of endless piles of paperwork are just making me so glad you saved my li–”

Mai cuts herself off, feeling rather like she’d attempted to swallow a Komodo rhino egg. And to think she’s usually so good at holding her tongue. Suddenly unable to meet Ty Lee’s eyes, she focuses on Appa who by all appearances is very happy to munch on his hay, oblivious to Mai inadvertently driving this conversation well out of safe territory.

“Mai –“ Ty Lee starts.

“I’m sorry,” Mai says.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

Mai swallows. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“You don’t,” Ty Lee assures.

“Well. Then I guess I don’t know the proper thing to say to someone who could have spent the rest of their life wasting away in a Fire Nation prison because of something I did.”

Ty Lee looks at her sharply. “Don’t pretend like you can take responsibility for my choices.”

Mai stares at her. Finally, for lack of anything else to say, she says, “Sorry.”

“Seriously, Mai, stop apologizing! It’s not needed and it’s extra weird coming from you. Anyways, even if Zuko hadn’t taken the crown, there’s no way we would have been stuck in prison the rest of our lives. The Kyoshi Warriors and I were a solid 75% of the way through a foolproof escape plan when we got released. And the first thing I was going to do when we broke ourselves out was figure out where you were so I could get you out too.”

Mai has to smile at that, but she sobers quickly. “Well then maybe instead of sorry for getting you put in prison what I mean is sorry for underestimating you.” Mai crosses her arms, picks idly at the seam of one of her sleeves. “Sorry for thinking you would side with Azula over me.”

“Mai,” Ty Lee says, “I won’t pretend that wasn’t very silly of you. But it’s still not something you need to apologize for.” She shrugs, looking away. “Maybe I should be the one apologizing to you – for hiding my true face so well you didn’t know who your real friends were.”

Mai sighs, feeling horribly frustrated with this whole conversation. She’s not sure she would feel better if Ty Lee accepted her attempt at an apology, but she doesn’t know how else to cross the chasm created by her friend sacrificing her own freedom to save her from the consequences of her decision to help Zuko. “If you’re not letting me apologize,” she says, “then I’m pretty sure I can’t let you apologize either.”

Ty Lee’s responding grin is a bit disorienting; it’s amazing how fast she can switch from serious to carefree and bubbly. “That’s the spirit,” she says cheerily, “All things said and done, I think on the whole we’re both in a better place than we were a few months ago, and I’m not talking about our time in prison.”

“Speak for yourself, I stand by my assessment of the horribleness of paperwork,” Mai says reflexively.

Ty Lee laughs; she’s always seemed to appreciate Mai’s dry sense of humor.

Appa continues to chomp on his hay behind them. Mai watches Ty Lee kick her feet aimlessly from her perch on the water trough. She thinks of Zuko and his broad smile when she surprised him with her earlier-than-expected release. Aang’s cheerful chattiness as he relates a day of Momo’s misadventures. Tom Tom, reaching for her and babbling what could pass for her name. Mai meets Ty Lee’s eyes. “But I guess other than the paperwork, you might have a good point.”

Ty Lee smiles. A gentle breeze blows through the stables. A wind chime rings, faintly merry in the distance.

“Well,” Ty Lee says theatrically, “Now that you’ve gotten your depressing and morose attempts at a totally unnecessary apology out of your system, I have news to share with you.”

Mai rolls her eyes at her friend’s ribbing. “Let’s hope it’s good news, or we’re going to be stuck in depressing and morose territory.”

“That would match your sense of style, but no, it’s definitely good news. In fact, I expect nothing but exuberant happiness from you upon receiving this news.”

Mai quirks a grin. “I make no such promises.”

Ty Lee huffs an overdramatic sigh. “You are such a killjoy, Mai.”

“I live to please.”

Ty Lee rolls her eyes, then sits up very straight and tilts her head loftily. “I,” she says, with just a hint of a dramatic pause, “have a girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Mai says, processing this for a moment. She doesn’t know what she expected when Ty Lee said she had good news, but she’s pretty sure this wasn’t it. “Please tell me it’s not Suki, I’m pretty sure she hates me. Well, maybe not anymore. But still.”

Ty Lee rolls her eyes. “It’s not Suki, she’s dating that cute Water Tribe boy. And none of the Kyoshi Warriors hate you, they just haven’t had a chance to get to know you yet. And I’ve told them all about you, so you’ve got nothing to worry about on that front.”

“Ah, so they all think my favorite color is black and my aura is dingy.”

“Ugh, Mai, do you even listen to anything I say, I told you your aura today is this beautiful –”

“Mauve. I’m realizing I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Mai heads her off before their conversation completely derails. “Anyways, if your girlfriend knows all about me that means you have to tell me something about her.”

Mai never really enjoyed talking about cute boys with Ty Lee; she had always attributed that to her lack of interest in the boys Ty Lee had wanted to talk about, what with her perhaps embarrassingly long-lasting crush on Zuko. Watching her friend blush and smile in a way that sits just a bit different – perhaps more honestly – on her face, Mai realizes maybe there was another missing piece that lent itself to the grating annoyance of Ty Lee’s aimless chatter on boy-related subjects.

“Well, she’s super pretty and strong. I think she could probably bench press both of us at the same time.”

“That could literally be any of the Kyoshi Warriors – those fans are heavy. I take it you met her in prison, which, charming. What’s her name?”

“We did meet in prison, but we didn’t start dating dating until we came here. It took her forever to trust me, and it was super frustrating because I just thought she was the absolute prettiest. Anyways, her name’s Kameyo and she has a really nice smile, and without all of the face paint she gets a dimple, but just on the right side. And her family lives on Kyoshi, they’re really nice. I think her mom didn’t know what to think of me at first, but I’ve won her over with my natural charm. She has two little brothers – they’re twins – and they have so much energy, Kameyo always complains about how hard it is to keep them out of trouble.”

Mai’s a bit surprised to hear her friend has met her girlfriend’s family. She almost doesn’t say anything, but, “For the sake of… research – I take it Kyoshi Island feels differently than the Fire Nation about…”

“Lesbians? Same-sex relationships?”

“Yeah, that.”

Ty Lee laughs at her a bit for that, which is probably fair. “Yeah, I guess Avatar Kyoshi was married to a woman. They have a shrine to her that’s supposedly the same place they got married, but I guess before this was an island? I’m still figuring out all the history and culture stuff. But I guess they actually had two ceremonies – her wife’s family was all in the Fire Nation, so they also did a ceremony there.”

Mai furrows her brow. “So the Fire Nation hasn’t always been uptight about this stuff…” she trails off, wheels turning as she thinks about what she needs to look into when she gets home and how she would draft a policy brief for Zuko.

Ty Lee watches her think. Then she grins, ear to ear. “Oh my gosh, Mai. You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you?”

Mai raises her eyebrows, “If you’re thinking I’ll have another project when I get home that will require hours of boring research, then maybe.”

“In that case,” Ty Lee says, still smiling bright as day, “then you’ll definitely have to write me. I want to hear how it goes.”

“It’s probably going to be super annoying. But maybe it’ll be the last straw that gets all of Zuko’s political opponents to quit,” the wheels keep turning in Mai’s head – it’s not clear whether or not this will be the type of policy that requires getting the any of the councilors on board, that will depend on what the research shows about how all of the current marriage laws came to be – but she can’t help but mentally sort through the people she thinks will be easy to sway and the people who will dig their heels in. Her brain stutters over the Education Minister, and she can’t help but groan.

“Hmm?” Ty Lee hums an inquiry.

“Nothing.”

“I mean, it doesn’t sound like nothing,” Ty Lee points out.

“Only if you want to hear about how annoying education reform has been.” Ty Lee makes a noise of assent, so Mai goes ahead and gives her an abridged summary of their current struggles with the education minister, her and Aang’s unsuccessful Air Temple trip, and their current lack of ideas on how to get around the stipulation for primary sources.

“Well,” Ty Lee says, “that’s super obnoxious. It’s not like they needed original sources to write all of the propaganda they’ve been teaching for the past hundred years.”

“I know,” Mai says, aggrieved. “But Zuko’s worried about setting good precedents. Which is good, I guess, but also extremely tiring.”

“Hmm,” Ty Lee says thoughtfully, hand propped under her chin and toes pointed as she swings her legs. “Maybe Aang knew someone from 100 years ago who would have written stuff about Air Nomads? Or had letters or something? And you can hunt down those records? I mean, they were Nomads, that means traveling everywhere was, like, their whole thing, right?”

Mai considers this. “That’s… not a bad idea. I’ll have to ask him. He said he didn’t think any of the other temples would have anything that was preserved if things weren’t safe at the Western Air Temple, but I doubt it would be all that easy to destroy letters belonging to random citizens all around the world…”

Ty Lee tosses her braid over her shoulder. “I’m just full of good ideas. Which is just another reason why you ought to write me.”

Mai shakes her head, exasperated. “Fine, we can be pen pals. Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Ty Lee says, her smile wide and comfortingly warm. She slips off of her seat on the edge of the water trough and stretches – which for Ty Lee translates to folding herself into acrobatic contortions that seem like they shouldn’t be possible for mere mortals. “I should probably get going – I’m supposed to help teach some of the younger girls in a bit, and I want to make sure I have time to grab some food and eat before that. But it was so wonderful to talk to you, Mai!”

“You’ve saved me half a morning of listening to the delegates debate something stupid like outhouse zoning, so I can honestly say that it was nice talking to you, too.”

Ty Lee gives her a hug goodbye – Mai feels a bit more prepared for it and is able to return it a bit less awkwardly.

“Suki said she’s going to make you guys stay for a meal after all of the Earth Kingdom delegates leave – something about needing a chance to make fun of Zuko without embarrassing him in front of the rest of the world’s leadership. I think she wants all of the other warriors to get a chance to see that he’s actually just a big dork.”

She’s not wrong, Mai thinks. “Then I guess I can look forward to having a chance to see you before we leave.” She raises an eyebrow at her friend, “Maybe I can also look forward to meeting Kameyo?”

“Yes! She’ll be there too!”

“Then I’ll see both of you as soon as all of the delegates can get their priorities straight and finally approve this stupid treaty.”

Ty Lee laughs, “You’re making me really glad I’m not involved with guard duty for the talks, Mai.” She skips over to give Appa a pat goodbye, who looks a bit hopeful that she might give him more hay before giving a bison-y sigh of acceptance when she doesn’t. Making her way out of the stables, Ty Lee tells Mai, “I’ll see you soon!”

Ty Lee heads off, doing some sort of fancy flip on her way out. It’s such a Ty Lee thing to do, Mai can’t help but smile.

Appa snuffles about behind her; seemingly having accepted that he’s not getting anymore food, he lays down on his side for a late morning nap.

“Probably a bit too convenient that we were both down here to get you a midmorning snack,” Mai tells him, “but I guess I can’t say I’m upset about it.”

Appa’s ear flickers, probably to signal his disinterest in Mai’s affairs.

Mai walks out of the stables, feeling ten times lighter than she had when she’d walked in. A small smile has taken up residence on her face; she’ll permit it to stay there for at least the rest of her walk back.

***

Suki is surprisingly unsubtle about her role in pushing Ty Lee and Mai to talk with each other.

“Zuko mentioned he was concerned you were avoiding her, but Aang and I masterminded the whole thing,” she says with a sly grin over when Mai obliquely brings up everyone’s apparent concern about Appa’s dietary needs. She’s looking very relaxed out of uniform at the small party thrown after the treaty was finally finalized and a date for the official signing arranged.

Mai rolls her eyes. “I take it subtlety wasn’t what you were going for in the least.”

“Nope,” Suki says, unapologetic. “Just results.”

Mai glances across the room, where Ty Lee has gone to grab tea with her girlfriend. Her smile looks besotted even from this distance.

Meeting Ty Lee’s girlfriend had certainly been a bit awkward, Kameyo and Mai both sizing each other up but trying not to be obvious about it. Frankly, the whole party’s been awkward so far. Mai doesn’t really know anyone besides Ty Lee and – if one prior and moderately amicable conversation counts – Suki. Zuko and Aang had gotten held up talking with a few of the straggling delegates, and an hour in Mai has resigned herself to awkward small talk to a bunch of bare faced Kyoshi Warriors. All of whom apparently know a lot about Mai, courtesy of Ty Lee, while she knows nothing about them.

On the other side of the room, Ty Lee laughs loudly, and Mai allows herself to admit that, awkward or not, it’s been nice to spend some time with her old friend.

“I guess you can’t argue with results,” she tells Suki. “I’m glad Ty Lee’s found somewhere she can be happy.”

“We’re happy to have her,” Suki says, “and I know she’s happy that you’ll still be a part of her life even while you both live on opposite sides of the world.”

“I guess I’ll have to visit sometimes.” Mai sighs for effect. “She leaves me no choice, living somewhere with such nice weather in the summer.”

“Yeah, Fire Nation weather sucked,” Suki says. “Best part of coming home was the sweet, sweet freedom from being constantly drenched in my own sweat.”

Mai laughs.

In the end, Mai has more fun than she thought she would. Zuko and Aang make an appearance not much later, but Mai spends a good part of the night showing off her knife throwing talent to a small group of interested Kyoshi Warriors.

She wins a half burned candle, a lopsided glass bottle, and a hair fastening set with pearls after a few the girls challenge her to a contest of skills. Aang and Ty Lee cheer her on for the first few rounds, before getting distracted by Aang demonstrating some silly airbending trick with a marble. At the end of the night, Mai accepts her winnings graciously and accepts a few offers for rematches should they cross paths in a few weeks at the signing in Ba Sing Se. She makes a mental note to set up something for target practice in her office to make sure her skills stay sharp.

Ty Lee bids Mai, Aang, and Zuko goodnight when they go to make their departure. The three of them have an earlier morning planned to try to make it home as soon as possible. Zuko and Aang excuse themselves, leaving Mai and Ty Lee a moment to talk just the two of them.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Ty Lee says, enveloping Mai in a tight hug.

“I promised I’d write, didn’t I?” Mai says, returning the embrace.

“And I’m looking forward to hearing about your projects and the dour state of courtly politics. But it’s not the same and you know it.”

“It’s not,” Mai agrees. A pity that the world is finally at peace and both of them out from under Azula’s thumb, but they would only be able to enjoy it half a world apart.

Ty Lee brightens a bit. “At least we’ll see each other in Ba Sing Se for the signing. I think most of the other girls will be there too – I guess they never actually got to see the inside of the city and want to see what all the fuss is about. Oh, and Suki wants to see her boyfriend, which means the rest of the girls want to come to heckle them.”

“Do the girls also heckle you and Kameyo?”

“Only all the time!”

Mai smiles. “It will be good to see you all there.”

“It will be,” Ty Lee says firmly. She starts to pull away. “I hope you guys have a safe trip home.”

Mai stands on a precipice for a moment, watching her friend step away and head back towards the party, knowing it will be months before she sees her again. She hadn’t felt this way – whatever overwhelming thing it is that she’s feeling right now – when the Kyoshi Warriors had left after Zuko’s coronation, but that was probably a product of her exhaustion.

She hesitates for half a moment, and then rallies, trying to be brave enough to have the conversation that she’s self-aware enough to realize she needs before she goes home.

“Ty Lee,” she calls, and her friend instantly turns back to her. “Thank you,” she says, infusing as much sincerity as she can into that statement.

Ty Lee tilts her head, looking confused. “For helping you with your problem with the Education Minister?”

Mai blinks. “No. Well, yes, thank you for that. But I meant thank you for saving my life.”

“Oh, that?” Ty Lee laughs. “Well, I mean, of course I was going to save your life. Anytime!”

Feeling annoyed at Ty Lee’s flippancy isn’t a new experience for Mai by any stretch of the imagination. She bites out, “Don’t downplay what you did for me. It was brave and… I wouldn’t have made it out of that situation alive and in one piece if it wasn’t for you.”

Ty Lee’s smile softens. “What you did was brave too, Mai. And it’s not like you wouldn’t have done the same for me.”

Mai swallows and looks away. “You don’t know that. If our situations had been reversed… I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Mai,” Ty Lee says, resting both of her hands on Mai shoulders and staunchly meeting her gaze. “I didn’t know that I would have been brave enough to move against Azula the way I did until I did it. And I’m betting you didn’t know that either until you decided to help out Zuko. And Suki, and Suki’s boyfriend, and –“

“Wait, Suki was there too?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, the girls have asked her to tell that whole story like a million times. She apparently pulled off this really cool stunt to climb a wall or something and capture your uncle, the boys could barely keep up.”

“Alright. Good to know I accidently saved her life too, apparently.”

Ty Lee laughs. “Don’t you see, Mai! You saved even more people than I did back then.”

“I don’t think it counts if I didn’t realize I was doing it,” Mai says, but a wry smile works its way to her lips.

“It’s still a good thing. And we both saved the people we meant to that day.” She gives Mai one more tight hug. “I’m glad it won’t be too long before the treaty signing. Don’t get into too much trouble before I see you again!”

Mai smiles. Even if she’s not sure she completely buys Ty Lee’s assessment, she feels like something tight and strained inside of her has finally unspooled, finally letting her leave the broken pieces of that chapter of her life behind. “No promises. The paperwork might try to crush me to death. But I’ll do my best.”

Chapter Text

To Mai’s surprise, researching the recent history of the Fire Nation’s marriage laws is a quick and straightforward task. She shares her findings with the boys at dinner their first night back.

Spooning meat, vegetables, and broth into her bowl, she says, “It’s actually a pretty recent law – Sozin made a decree early into the war and there haven’t really been any changes in how it’s been enforced since then.”

“Huh,” Aang says with polite interest.

The wheels in Zuko’s head are visibly turning. “That makes it an easy fix though, right? If it’s just something he just decreed one day, there’s no need to get approval from any of the councilors because it was never anything more complicated than an apparently random addition to my great-grandfather’s legacy of evil and horribleness.” His mouth has pulled itself into a disgusted pout. Mai can’t say she’s surprised that he’s gotten so invested into her new project – it’s very like him to be excited that she’s expressing personal investment in something – but she is quietly pleased nonetheless.

Aang’s brow furrows. “I’m not completely sure if it was random.”

“What do you mean?” Zuko asks.

“I’m not totally sure, but…” Aang looks at Mai. “What year was the decree put out?”

Mai racks her brain. “I’d have to check, but I think the historical record I found said it was the 65th year of Sozin’s rule.”

“Oh,” Zuko says, “So that’s the same year as the last time Sozin’s comet came around.”

“Yeah,” Aang says, “that’s the same year I got frozen in the iceberg. I think the decree might have come down before that though, I kind of remember Monk Gyatso talking about it one day. Or I think that was probably what he was talking about. We were playing pai sho together one day and he was asking me questions about why a country would need to regulate different kinds of marriage and why that might look different in different places.”

“Wait,” Mai says before he can get too far into his story without further explaining. “You were frozen in an iceberg?”

“Oh, yeah,” Aang rubs his head. “That’s, you know. How I disappeared for a hundred years?”

“I didn’t know until Sokka told me when we were hanging out one night on Ember Island – I guess he and Katara found Aang one day when they were fishing.”

Mai barely takes half a second to process all of that before fixing a laser focus on Zuko, “Why on earth were you guys on Ember Island?”

“Uh, you know. We were hiding out. We’re getting off track, I want to hear what Monk Gyatso had to say about all of this.”

Mai lets Zuko get away with this blatant conversational redirection, but only because she also kind of wants to know.

“I mean, it was more like Monk Gyatso was asking me about my opinions on everything. Air Nomads didn’t have marriage laws. Like, some people definitely decided on getting married and having a ceremony according to traditional customs because it was important to them, and it was also pretty common for my people to get married according to their spouse’s customs too if they married outside of the Air Temples. But the point is it wasn’t something the Temple Elders ever governed. So we kind of talked about why the Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Water Tribes were all a bit different in that they have both marriage traditions and marriage laws.”

“Huh,” Zuko says, “I guess I’ve always thought of marriage as involving, well a wedding, obviously. But also a contract between the families.”

Aang shrugs. “I guess it makes sense to you guys that marriage would also have a legal component, but I had to wrap my head around that before Gyatso and I could talk about why a country would then want to make some types of marriage illegal. And I guess everyone kind of knew already that the Fire Nation was gearing up for war, maybe a long one. After Gyatso pointed that out… well, basically how I interpreted it was countries usually need their populations to grow if they want to have soldiers to fight and workers to make sure they have weapons and transportation and such.”

Mai and Zuko process this for a moment.

“So he was just trying to have people make lots of babies to go fight in his stupid war,” Mai finally says. “Ew.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty terrible,” Zuko agrees.

“I think we should draft something saying that the Fire Lord is not allowed to have any official opinions on marriage,” Mai says.

“That probably would require councilor approval though,” Zuko sighs.

“Baby steps,” Aang says with a small smile over his bowl of broth and vegetables.

“I can draft something that won’t require anyone else’s approval and have it on your desk to finalize by the end of tomorrow,” Mai tells Zuko.

“Yeah. Wow, that was easier than literally anything else we’ve tried to do since I became Fire Lord. Not bad for your first original policy project, Mai.”

“Don’t jinx it. But speaking of impossible policy things,” she says, turning to Aang, “were you able to think of anyone who might have passed down records of Air Nomad stuff that would appease the Education Minister?”

“I…” Aang huffs a sigh. “Maybe. But I want a day or two to think it over.” He fidgets, his fingers tapping out an anxious rhythm. “I don’t want to get my hopes up over something that might not pan out.”

Mai shrugs. “We have plenty of stuff to keep us busy. Just let me know when you’ve got something.”

***

A vaguely familiar looking aide wanders into Mai’s office the next day laden with an armful of scrolls.

Mai sighs; the work truly is never ending. “You can put them here,” she says, gesturing towards the corner of her desk, already filled with a veritable mountain of paperwork. The backlog had only grown during the peace talks on Kyoshi Island; at this rate Mai will be done with it all by the time the next comet comes around.

“Of course!” The aide squeaks. Mai watches with a detached almost-amusement as the tiny aide tries to shuffle the pile of scrolls so that she can transfer them over to the desk.

With the slow-moving inevitability of any disaster, while focusing all of her attention on scroll juggling, the aide trips on the hem of her robes.

Somehow, she manages to achieve this in precisely the manner needed to bump into the corner of the desk. All of the scrolls perched precariously in her arms cascade to the floor. As both she and her pile of scrolls come tumbling down, they collide with the pile already on the desk, and a catastrophic scroll avalanche ensues, the aide landing mostly on top of them.

Mai sighs again.

“I am so, so sorry!”

“It’s fine,” Mai says, swinging around the desk to help put everything back into something resembling order.

Her current filing system – necessitated by the ever-growing amount of work – is more just loose aggregations of scrolls arranged vaguely by priority. It has three general piles: the “you should probably work on this sometime this week even if you hate it” pile, the “nothing can be done on this until you talk to Zuko or someone else who probably thinks too highly of themselves to deign to give you more information any time soon” pile, and the “this is stupid and you should only try to deal with it when you have the patience for stupidity” pile.

Mai’s familiar enough with everything that she’s able to sort through the mess fairly quickly; the aide’s help is mostly limited to picking scrolls up off the floor and passing them up for Mai to glance at and return to their appropriate pile.

The new pile of scrolls the aide brought – a collection of preliminary details on the logistics for the treaty signing – ends up in the “you should look at this soon” pile. Mai strains her capacity for discipline by placing the budgetary scrolls that had piled up during the trip to Kyoshi in the “talk to Zuko” sub-pile of the “you need more information” pile and not the “this is stupid” pile. Everything else goes more or less back into its original position as the aide hands them up to Mai.

Despite her limited usefulness, the aide is very insistent she do what little she can to help get everything back into order. Mai watches dispassionately as the mousy woman trials several different angles of approach to get her arm at just the right angle to retrieve one last scroll that had somehow ended up underneath the desk.

When the aide is finally successful in her efforts, Mai is surprised to realize that she doesn't immediately recognize it, which raises the distinct possibility that the scroll had somehow ended up underneath the desk well before a clumsy palace aide entered the picture.

Mai glances at it – she’s 99% certain it’s not important if she doesn’t recognize it and hadn’t somehow come to wonder where it was in all of the time that it may have been under her desk, but she’d rather check now than have regrets later.

The handwriting style catches Mai’s attention before the actual content of the writing processes – there’s something about it that just seems vaguely archaic, little flourishes that might be at home in something written by her great-grandmother. Certainly not anything she’s seen in any of the rather large number of documents she’s worked on in the last few weeks, save perhaps for her recent and very quick foray into archival research.

The actual meaning of the words processes half a second later. It’s Aang’s proposal for a national dance curriculum.

Several weeks ago, Mai wouldn’t have felt guilty at all for having shoved it aside without so much as a glance at the proposal itself. Now. Well.

Mai puts the scroll in the “you should get to this this week” pile. She’s not sure that she actually will, but she doesn’t want to forget about it again.

“You really have a lot going on, don’t you?” The aide asks rhetorically. “You need to get a cabinet or something in here so that you don’t just have this huge pile on your desk like this.”

“You’re telling me.” Mai says. When the aide doesn’t immediately take her leave, Mai adds, “Did you need something else?”

“Oh! Yes, sorry! Well, I wanted to – thank you so, so much for getting the whole thing with the peace talks sorted out. You know, without me losing my job. I triple checked the guest list for the treaty signing and the Southern Water Tribe is definitely represented this time!”

Mai diplomatically does not point out that the aide’s continued employment is mostly thanks to Aang’s influence, and instead gives a vague nod of acknowledgement as she settles back into her seat to continue reading through a report on possible ways to repurpose all the factories that had heretofore been primarily engaged in production of all of the armor, ships, and weaponry needed for effective war making.

She looks back up after about five seconds. The aide is still hovering awkwardly in front of her desk.

“You’re still here,” Mai observes.

“Err. Well, I mean.” In a near incomprehensible rush, she says, “Justwantedtomakesureyoutookalookatthisone!”

She nabs one of the scrolls she’d brought – nearly toppling the whole pile again in the process. She and Mai both hold their breath as it teeters but ultimately decides not to reacquaint itself with the floor. The aide lets out a noisy sigh of relief, shoves the scroll she’d grabbed into Mai's face, and does a quick about face to retreat towards the door.

Mai raises an eyebrow incredulously before turning her attention to the scroll. As she unrolls it, a scrap of loose paper falls out.

In neat calligraphy, it reads: People are plotting against the Fire Lord – keep an eye out!!!

“You realize this tells me basically nothing, right?” Mai says before the aide can make a complete escape out the door. If reading it had made her heart skip a bit in her chest, that’s neither here nor there.

The aide squeaks, freezing in place. She slowly turns around, skittishly checking all the corners of the room as she makes her way back to Mai’s desk.

“I really don’t know very much,” she says quietly, “but there’s been a lot of whispers lately that make it sound like someone – or a few people – are planning something.”

Mai rubs her temples. It’s not exactly news that Zuko has political enemies, but it would be helpful to know more about any plots that might be actively brewing.

Sighing, she looks up at the aide, who is apparently their only current ally brave or stupid enough to try to pass information along. “What was your name again?”

The aide blushes. “Sorry! It’s Sonisay. I thought you knew - we both went to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. But I was a year ahead of you.”

Mai has no recollection of ever having seen this girl at school, but she supposes as a member of Azula’s inner circle she might have been memorable even to classmates she’d never met.

“Okay. Sonisay. I guess even though you don’t have much information on this, you’re telling me about it because I have the Fire Lord’s ear?”

Sonisay shuffles her feet. “Well, that, and. You’re pretty good at fading into the background so people forget you’re there. I thought you might have a better chance of finding more stuff out than me.”

“Do you have any leads?” Mai asks.

“I’m not totally sure, but I think some of the ministers might be involved. Oh, and, well. Your Dad’s name came up in one of the conversations I half overheard – I’m not sure whether he’s involved-involved, but you probably have a better chance than me of figuring that out!”

Mai supposes that’s better than nothing and some exclamation points.

“Are you a firebender?” Mai asks.

“Well, not a very good one…”

Mai barely succeeds in not rolling her eyes. “Are you decent enough to burn this?” Mai holds up the scrap of paper.

“Oh! Yes, I can do that.”

With that taken care of, Mai says, “Don’t go out of your way to figure anything else out, but if you do, you can let me know when you have documents to drop off here. And if it’s something urgent you can always go directly to the Fire Lord or the Avatar.”

Sonisay’s eyes widen at the suggestion of going so far up the chain of command, but she nods fervently.

Mai watches her leave, then drops her head into her hands with a groan. She indulges in self-pity for a moment – and it’s possible a faint sliver of fear asserts itself during said moment – then sets herself to the unfortunately familiar task of keeping her boyfriend from dying.

***

She gives up on trying to be productive after a few hours. Zuko’s stuck in meetings for the rest of the afternoon and her desk is making her feel claustrophobic, so she decides to take a walk around the palace gardens and hopefully shake loose some brilliant idea on where to start investigating Sonisay’s warning. The most obvious lead would suggest she ought to look through her father’s study. Ideally, she’ll be able to pull together a plan to do so without flagging his attention.

The palace gardens are objectively beautiful as always, though the late summer heat asserts itself quickly. Despite the less than ideal weather, Mai discovers she apparently wasn’t the only person today who decided to take a break in the gardens this afternoon – passing by Zuko’s favorite pond, she notices out of the corner of her eye what looks like Aang and Momo feeding the turtle ducks.

Well, Aang’s feeding the turtle ducks. Momo appears to be trying to steal the lentils Aang is tossing to the turtle ducks, with most of his efforts thwarted by angry quacking accompanied by threatening wing rustling and snapping bills. Momo eventually gives up, sulking behind Aang.

“Don’t worry, Momo. I’ll make sure you get some food later. You’d think I never feed you.” Aang glances up, and must catch sight of Mai because then he says, “Oh. Hey, Mai. Want to feed the turtle ducks with me?”

Mai considers, then figures he might have more ideas that will be helpful for her current predicament than will shake loose during a solitary walk.

She kneels down next to him and waves off his offer of a handful of lentils. Momo perks up watching this the near-exchange, then flattens his ears and curls back up when Mai doesn’t actually take anything.

Aang gives Momo an idle scratch, then goes back to tossing lentils towards the turtle ducks. There’s almost something meditative about it: Aang’s quiet focus on his task, the gentle repetition of his collecting a handful of lentils and throwing them towards the pond and collecting another handful again, the ripples made by the lentils landing in the water before they’re snatched up by a turtleduck.

“Long day?” he asks Mai.

Mai gives an amused huff of breath. “You could say that, which is really saying something when it’s only midday.” Watching Aang more closely, she notices a tired, quietly sad pull to his eyes. “You look like you’ve had a long day too.”

“Yeah,” Aang says, still looking at the turtle ducks.

His supply of lentils eventually runs out. He tucks his hands into his lap. He’s quiet for a few moments more before meeting Mai’s eyes. “Zuko just told me about how he got his scar.”

Of all of the things that Mai might have thought could have been weighing Aang down, that hadn’t really been on her radar. After a moment, she says, “I guess it didn’t occur to me that you didn’t already know about that.”

It had felt like literally everyone except Mai had known almost immediately after it had happened. Her parents had refused to tell her anything. Azula had held her ignorance over her head for a while, only relating the full story once the cruelty of the truth was more fun than watching Mai work herself up over all the possibilities. Aside from the few scenarios conjured by her imagination that had somehow involved Zuko dying and his death being sloppily covered up, nothing she'd imagined had been quite as bad as the truth.

“I guess everyone in the palace must know,” Aang says. “Zuko only told me because someone brought it up during one of our meetings. I think he decided he’d rather I have the full story from him.”

“Most of the general public might not know,” Mai offers. “There was never a formal announcement of that, just one for his banishment. But all of the nobles and ministers probably do – most of them were there when it happened.”

“Were you there?” Aang asks softly, eyes bright with faint horror and sympathy.

Mai shakes her head.

Aang nods, some of the tension releasing from his shoulders. He looks back out at the pond. This time of day, it’s brightly lit, the water an imperfect mirror for the trees and plants bordering it.

“I kind of thought,” Aang says slowly, “that after I’d defeated Ozai and ended the war I would stop feeling guilty about disappearing for a hundred years. But there's just so many bad things that might not have happened if I hadn't.”

“That’s… hard,” Mai says, for lack of anything better.

Aang spares her a small smile. “It is kind of a unique situation.”

“You know that even if you had been there it might not have –”

“– made any difference. I know. There’s a pretty good chance it wouldn’t have. But knowing that doesn’t always help me to stop feeling this way.”

Mai hesitates, then says, “It’s probably normal to have regrets – even if nothing else about your situation is normal.”

Aang laughs, but the amusement doesn’t quite meet his eyes. After a considering moment, Aang asks, “Do you have many regrets?”

Is it a regret to wish you’d realized how impossibly big the world was a long time ago? Or to have been able to not only recognize that cruelties existed, but that there were options beyond lying down and watching them happen?

“When I was younger… I used to get this notion that I could run away and find Zuko to travel with him while he was in exile.” Mai shrugs. “Probably for the best that I didn’t.”

Aang looks at her, his eyes reflecting depths of compassion Mai can scarcely fathom. “I think Zuko probably would have appreciated having you with him. He seems… calmer when you’re around. Like he’s actually able to relax for once.”

Mai gazes out over the pond, more to avoid eye contact than anything else. “Maybe. We had a lot more ups and downs before the war ended. And that’s not really what I was getting at.”

Aang hums inquisitively.

Mai huffs another sigh. It really has been a long day. “Back then my vision of a happier future involved Zuko getting to come back home by regaining his place as heir. For all we know, if I’d traveled with Zuko he would have been able to capture you. I think… the place we’re in now is a lot better than a scenario where that happened.”

Aang makes a thoughtful face. “There’s definitely always a bright side to things not going the way you want.” He glances sidelong at Mai. She catches a mischievous glint as he says, “Speaking of Zuko capturing me back then – you ought to ask Zuko about what he was up to during the Siege of the North Pole.”

“And you can’t just tell me because…”

Aang shrugs airily. “I was in the spirit world for most of it.”

Mai gives him a look.

“I’m serious! And if questionable decisions were made by a certain someone, I think you deserve to hear it directly from him. Anyways, I don’t think you came here sad because of things that happened three years ago or a hundred years ago. What’s up?”

“I wasn’t upset about them until I talked to you,” Mai quips. “So, thanks. Now I have multiple things to be sad about.”

Aang shrugs, perfectly conveying an attitude of what can you do?

Mai considers for a moment. Her current problem – in the context of a much bigger series of problems – is not having a way to easily get into her father’s office without someone noticing.

A problem like that calls for a distraction so as to enable successful sneaking around. “Actually,” Mai says, “I think I might have something you could help me with.”

***

Zuko reluctantly agrees to their plan after they brief him on it between two of his afternoon meetings. It takes a significant amount of coaxing on Mai’s part to convince him that a relatively low risk bid for more information is a better plan than just waiting around and hoping whoever’s behind plans that may or may not involve an assassination attempt is incompetent.

Mai’s parents much more readily agree to moving up their weekly meal to that night, apparently buying Mai’s barebones explanation of an unexpected conflict coming up.

Undoubtedly, they would have been much less likely to have agreed to this change in plans had they realized that Mai was planning on bringing a guest with her.

“Alright,” Aang says, “so the plan is you say you have to use the restroom and then I’ll keep an eye on your parents and distract them by having the audacity to be myself. I really don’t see how this could go wrong.”

Mai sighs, “I feel like you of all people should know that saying stuff like that is just asking for trouble.”

Aang grimaces. “I heard it as soon as it was out of my mouth.” He brightens quickly. “But no use dwelling on the past, we must embrace the uncertainties of the future!”

***

Upon seeing that Mai has brought a guest for dinner, Mother’s smile takes on a strained quality.

She pulls Mai into a hug on her way over the threshold, creating an opportunity to hiss, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” into Mai’s ear.

Aang plays his part as an obliviously pleasant guest well. He compliments the curtains, carpets, and curios ad nauseum.

To Mai’s mild amusement, her parents seem to fall back on vague politeness for lack of any better way to handle the situation. All of their obvious attempts to circumlocute the awkwardness of the conversation are entirely unsuccessful. The disappointed looks Mother and Father shoot across the table barely make a dent into the internal delight that blooms.

Unfortunately, Mai’s amusement wears off quickly. Aang’s strategy for the night appears to be quizzing her parents on every item in the dining room, and there’s only so much of that she can take. Watching Mother primly explain that the fine china was a wedding present from her Great Aunt, who had traveled to the Caldera from one the islands located towards the Eastern-most tip of the archipelago for the ceremony, is only enjoyable for the first few seconds of the long winded explanation. 

Tom Tom alone is unperturbed by the stilted awkwardness of the meal. For the first few courses, he seems to delight in making a mess of his plate of rice and papaya slices. As the evening drags on, he eventually seems to bore of that. Mai watches with detached interest as he begins toddling over towards Aang with a vaguely curious expression.

Mother and Father both stiffen entirely too obviously as their son wanders in the direction of his apparent former kidnapper.

Mother starts to call, “Tom Tom –” as Aang turns and greets the one-year-old in question with a warm, “Oh, hi there!”

Tom Tom giggles, then runs headlong towards Aang.

Her brother taking a shine to Aang while her parents watch in horror is as good a distraction as any for snooping. Mai takes the opportunity to announce, halfway out of her seat, “I have to use the restroom – be right back.”

By virtue of being halfway out the door, Mai has a hard time following exactly what happens next, but the result is definitely utter pandemonium. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Mai catches sight of Aang’s tunic suddenly squirming. Momo’s head appears out of the collar of the shirt – Tom Tom face planting onto Aang’s chest perhaps disturbed an otherwise peaceful nap for the lemur.

Tom Tom squeals with loud delight. Momo lets out a noise that Mai can only parse as a shriek of terror.

Mai allows herself a moment to distractedly ponder why on earth is the lemur here? before hightailing it the rest of the way out of the dining room.

“Mai!” Mother barks at her as she makes her hasty escape.

Glancing back, Mai is treated to a half glimpse of Tom Tom crawling onto the dining room table in a single-minded pursuit of Momo. “I am so sorry!” Aang yells, reaching for his lemur without any success at rescuing the poor creature.

“I really have to go!” Mai calls back.

A loud crash of fine china heralds her exit.

Slipping as quickly as she can down the halls to her father’s office, Mai makes a mental note to work Tom Tom’s heretofore untapped capacity for sowing chaos into future plans for making meals with her family bearable.

***

“What on earth compelled you to bring the lemur?” Mai asks as she and Aang return to the palace. Her parents had the decency to hold off on scolding her without the Avatar as a witness, though she’s sure that awaits her at the next meal she shares with them.

“I’ll admit – in hindsight, different choices could have been made.” Aang pets a still agitated Momo consolingly. “So, did you find anything?”

“Yes,” Mai says grimly.

***

Zuko paces.

“So you found a scrap of paper on you dad’s desk that said –”

“‘We’re prepared to make a move against the Fire Lord, but the Avatar will need to be out of the picture to be able to do so successfully,’” Mai quotes for at least the third time. She and Aang sit in her office, the place having been deemed the least likely for them to be overheard, and watch Zuko’s progress back and forth across the room.

 “Okay,” he mumbles to himself, “alright. Okay.”

Aang hedges, “Maybe we should try to come up with a plan?”

Zuko keeps pacing, nodding to himself. “Yeah. That would be good.” He does not stop pacing.

Mai sighs.

After a dozen more laps, Zuko finally stops.

“You know,” he says, cupping his chin thoughtfully, “this actually could work out for us.”

Mai and Aang share an incredulous glance. “What about this situation has you embracing positive thinking?” Mai demands.

“Well, obviously it’s not ideal,” Zuko says, “but if we could draw the people involved in this out, that could make a lot of things a lot easier. That aide said that some of the ministers are involved, right?”

“Yes,” Mai says, “which leaves me confused as to why you think members of your own government plotting against you is a good thing.”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Zuko says, “for the most part it’s still not my government, it’s the remnants of my father’s government that I can’t fire –” he grins like a tiger shark “– unless I have a good reason to. And if some of them are caught committing treason, well, that’s as good a reason as they come by.”

The implications of that hit. “So, you’re hoping to draw them out, catch them in the act, and arrest them,” Aang says, eyes wide.

Zuko nods. “If we find a reason for you to be out of the palace for a little while, Aang, that might make them feel emboldened enough to make their move.”

“No,” Mai says, firm. “That’s a horrible plan.”

“Well, I can’t think of any other options!” Zuko says, visibly frustrated.

Mai grits her teeth. “For all we know Sonisay didn’t know what she was talking about and none of the ministers are actually involved!”

“It would still be better to figure out who’s trying to work against me than let them plot unhindered!”

“I’m not suggesting we do that!”

“Guys,” Aang says, patting at the air consolingly, “We need a plan, but we can’t be too loud while we try to come up with one. Just so we know what all our options are – Mai, what’s your plan?”

Mai huffs. “I don’t know. I just think we should try to gather more information before we act rashly, maybe we can catch them plotting without dangling Zuko out as bait.”

Zuko shakes his head vehemently, but he manages to keep his voice down as he says, “I’m worried that if we wait too long they might plan something, organize some sort of disaster or something, that would get Aang out of the palace for a while. If Aang leaves for something else, something they didn’t orchestrate, we don’t have to worry about that.”

Mai crosses her arms. “I would rather Aang stay around if that’s what’s holding them back right now.”

Aang stands up and crosses the room to look out the window pensively. “Maybe,” he says after a moment, “if we could make them think I’ve left for something…”

Mai considers this. “I suppose we might have a bit more control over the situation,” she allows reluctantly. “If we can make them believe they have an advantage they won’t actually have…”

They collectively consider this prospect for a moment.

“Of course, that will work best if we have a good cover story,” Zuko notes.

Mai nods. “A good excuse for Aang to be gone for a bit, something that will hold up under scrutiny.”

“I… might have an idea,” Aang says hesitantly.

Turning to look at Aang intensely, Zuko says, “Well, let’s hear it!”

Aang rubs the back of his head, turning back to them. “Remember how I said I thought I might have an idea for a lead on some Air Nomad records?”

“I suppose that could work,” Mai says after a moment, “especially since we already left to do research on that a few weeks ago. No reason for anyone to be suspicious about you doing that again.”

“How far is it?” Zuko asks Aang.

“Not far,” Aang says, “It’s on one of the islands close to here. Appa could probably make the trip in an hour or two.”

“That could be perfect,” Zuko says.

“Wait,” Mai says, “I thought the whole point was that he doesn’t actually leave when we say he’s leaving.”

Zuko shakes his head, “I think it’ll work better if he actually leaves for a bit – especially since this is something we ought to be working on anyways. If Aang just leaves for a few hours, but we spread word that the trip will take several days, then you guys just have to sneak back to the palace sooner than that.”

“‘You guys?’ You want the two people who you can actually trust to leave while there are people actively plotting against you?”

Zuko shrugs sheepishly. “It sounds like I can also trust this Sonisay person.”

“Okay, sure. So you want the only two competent people you can trust to leave while people are actively plotting against you.”

“Mai, if you let your dad know that you’re leaving to do this, then we’ll know that someone who’s involved in all this knows that Aang’s supposed to be gone for a few days. And if we don’t have to fake you guys leaving, just hide you for a few days when you get back, there’s less of a chance of the misdirection not working.”

“But more of a chance that someone gets the jump on you.” Mai says pointedly.

Zuko waves her concern off, “Any self-respecting assassin is going to attack under the cover of night, you guys won’t be gone that long.”

“Ahh,” Mai says sarcastically, “so our plan hinges on the people plotting against you adhering to traditional storytelling conventions. Absolutely no way this could possibly go wrong.”

Zuko looks at her intently. “It’s the best plan we’ve got right now.”

Mai stews for a moment. “Fine. I maintain that this is a terribly flawed plan, but I’ll go along with it.”

Aang looks a bit consternated, but he indicates his assent as well.

Zuko nods, looking relieved. “So, Aang. What’s your lead?”

Aang glances to the side, then looks at Zuko. “Do you remember the stuff I told you about my friend Kuzon?”

***

Mai stops by her office the next morning before meeting Aang out with Appa. She grabs more scrolls than she will reasonably be able to get through in a day trip; she doubts anyone will be watching them closely enough to pay attention to such details but it can’t hurt to over-commit to the façade they’re trying to create.

Even with no one around to hear her, Mai sighs. Everything about this is a gamble that could not pay off or blow up in their faces. Zuko may be used to playing the odds like this, but Mai feels she has decidedly less practice. She could barely force down anything for breakfast this morning and she expects her capacity to focus is going to be shot until she and Aang return to the capital to find Zuko – hopefully – in one piece.

Mai glances at the scrolls she collected, then back at her desk.

After a half moment of thought, she grabs one last scroll. It’s a thin scroll, composed by Aang months ago and potentially having spent most of its time since then in residence underneath her desk.

***

“Welcome to Kao La Yang Village,” Aang announces as they land on a foggy cliffside. As they slip off of Appa, he throws Mai a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Their landing site is carpeted in a verdant green, but with all the fog Mai can’t see that far beyond their immediate surroundings to have any idea that they’re close to somewhere inhabited by human beings.

“So what’s the plan?” Mai asks.

“I guess we’ll just walk into town. They used to have a little library a hundred years ago. If it’s still around, we can look up the town’s records and see if anyone related to my friend still lives here.”

Mai shrugs in acquiescence. “As long as we’re back to the capital by the end of the day, I guess I don’t really care.”

Aang turns to Appa. “I don’t know how well you remember this place buddy, but I doubt the village has gotten more bison sized since we were last here. I guess you can hang out here and graze like you used to.”

Appa lows something that might be acknowledgement; Mai’s a novice at best as far as the intricacies of flying bison communication go. He must get the message because he shuffles away and starts munching on the grass.

Aang leads as they start walking, using his staff like a walking stick. Mai’s first impression of Kao La Yang Village is one defined only by fog and grass encroaching onto a rocky trail to some unseen destination.

The fog clears a bit as they get further inland. In the distance Mai can make out a picturesque silhouette of a koala-shepherd and his flock. Even as far away as they are, the bleating of the koala sheep is audible.

The shepherd waves as they make their way down the path. “Was that you guys on the flying bison circling overhead a few minutes ago?” he shouts as they get closer.

“Wait. You could tell it was a flying bison from the ground?” Aang asks, sounding a bit eager.

“Yeah,” the guy says, “Well, I’d never seen anything like that before but it seemed like as good a guess as any. After we got news that the war ended, Auntie Alamea started telling everyone who would listen all about the Air Nomads and stuff. She seemed to think the Avatar would come by at some point and wanted people to be able to recognize him so she could meet him. Guess she was right. She usually is, so that’s not a huge surprise.”

“She wanted to meet me?”

“Yeah.” The shepherd scratches at his beard, nonchalant. “She’s been saying her grandpa Kuzon was friends with the Avatar – but the way she tells it her grandpa didn’t know his friend was the Avatar? Anyways, I guess she’s been saving some letters passed down to her that she seems to think you’d be interested in seeing.”

Mai and Aang share a significant glance; if they are what they sound like they are, those letters could be exactly what they’re looking for.

“Where exactly can we find this Auntie Alamea?” Aang says, sounding a bit breathless, gripping his staff like a lifeline.

“Just down the path into the town,” the shepherd says easily, gesturing with his thumb. “Head down the main path and take a right at the well in the center of town. Her house is the farm at the end of the road, the one with all the chili peppers drying out front. You’ll have to stay for lunch; she makes the best seven-chili soup you’ve ever tasted.”

“Thank you so much, you have no idea how helpful you’ve been.” Aang offers the man a deep bow.

The shepherd shuffles awkwardly. “Oh, yeah, of course. I should be thanking you. I just won a lot of money off of a bunch of the boys in town. Stupid of them really to bet against Auntie Alamea. I guess I can understand that you showing up to our little island sounded a bit unbelievable, but she really is never wrong.”

“Glad we could help,” Mai says dryly, stepping to follow Aang as he hurries down the road, pace seemingly quickened by his optimism.

***

Mai’s not sure what she expected from this Auntie Alamea – she doesn’t have a lot of time to prepare any presuppositions, caught between a burgeoning hope that this might pan out and the thrum of anxiety over Zuko’s wellbeing that hasn’t given her peace since their trip started.

The woman’s front porch is indeed instantly recognizable with its surfeit of drying chili peppers. A couple of koala sheep lounge next to a rocking chair, sleepily acknowledging Mai and Aang’s presence before returning to their mid-morning nap.

Aang hesitates at the front door, faltering as he goes to knock.

Mai braces herself, then asks, “What’s wrong?”

Aang shrugs, his grip still tight on his staff. After a moment he quietly says, “I’m scared of being disappointed again.”

“Well. If this time doesn’t work out, we’ll figure out something else.”

Aang shakes his head. “That’s not – I’m not as worried about that right now.” He turns to look at Mai and Mai does her best to hold his gaze, eyes reflecting all of his current vulnerability. “I’m worried about what I’m going to learn about my friend after we walk through that door.”

“Oh. Is there… something specific?” Mai asks, feeling completely out of her depth.

Aang shakes his head again more vehemently. “Maybe. I don’t know! Kuzon and I were such good friends before the war. But who knows what happened after I was gone. I’m scared of learning something that would – that would make me think less of him.”

Mai thinks of the empty temple, the library gutted and burned. She can piece together the bigger shape of Aang’s worry without needing him to say it directly. Carefully, she says, “Talking to this woman isn’t going to change anything your friend did or didn’t do. And if his family saved something about you or the Air Nomads, then I think it’s a good bet that it won’t be a worst case scenario.”

Aang shuts his eyes. He takes a slow, controlled breath, in and out. Opening his eyes and nodding at Mai he says, “Okay. Thanks, Mai.”

He raises a hand to knock on the door. Mai finds herself hoping that whatever happens next doesn’t serve to add more to the weight he always carries – one she has found all too easy to forget about again and again.

“Just a second!” a voice calls from inside the home.

There’s a pitter patter of footsteps on the other side of the door before it creaks open. A middle aged woman peaks out at them, her silvering hair pinned in a neat bun and her eyes adorned with crow’s feet. Her mouth falls open upon catching sight of Aang; Mai thinks she might find the unabashed gaping amusing if the air wasn’t practically crackling with anticipatory tension.

“Um, hi. I’m Aang. This is Mai. We were told you might be expecting –”

“The Avatar,” the woman finishes reverently, offering the deep bow that Mai had learned in her etiquette classes should be reserved only for the Firelord. Perhaps, a hundred years ago, before the war, such a sign of respect was once appropriate for both the Firelord and the Avatar. Perhaps that’s one more detail the textbooks will have to change. “Come in. We have so much to talk about.”

***

“My grandpa told me so much about you,” Auntie Alamea says, pouring tea for Aang, Mai, and herself. “Not that he knew you were the Avatar. I didn’t put it together myself until a few months ago when the wanted posters for Avatar Aang started making the rounds.”

Aang swallows thickly before saying, “He did?” His voice is a bit strained and tinged with no small amount of awe.

Mai focuses on the steam rising from her tea. She’s disciplined enough to not shift awkwardly in her seat, but she feels intrinsically that she is intruding on something private watching Aang and the Auntie Alamea talk.

Auntie Alamea’s voice is kind as she responds. “Grandpa Kuzon had all the best stories. When I was a little girl, every New Year he loved to tell the story of the two of you getting chased around town by the shoemaker.”

Aang sounds a bit embarrassed. “I don’t know how I’d almost forgotten about that. He was trying to show me how to do a new dance – the Journey of the Phoenix – and we thought it would be even cooler if we could figure out a way to add some Airbending tricks to it, but we made the mistake of testing it out behind the shoemaker’s –“

“And completely destroyed a dye job he’d been working on,” Auntie Alamea finishes.

“We didn’t mean to! He only calmed down after Kuzon’s Aunt Merpati offered to buy shoes in six different sizes made from the messed-up material. She said it was a good deal since Kuzon was growing so fast he was needing new shoes every few months.”

Auntie Alamea laughs. “Great Aunt Yuli and Great Aunt Merpati would always laugh so hard at that part. The way Great Aunt Yuli told it, the shoes were the ugliest things ever created. Grandpa Kuzon would always end the story the same way – ‘make sure to always be aware of your surroundings if you don’t want to be stuck wearing ugly shoes for the next decade.’”

Aang laughs. Mai allows herself an amused smile.

Auntie Alamea cups her tea, a shine of nostalgia in her eyes. “They made sure we knew not to share the stories about you and him in school or anywhere someone might overhear.”

Aang’s face sombers at that. Mai waits a moment to see if he’ll say something to that. When he doesn’t, she asks, “Was it safe to tell you guys in the first place?”

Auntie Alamea shrugs. “Maybe not. I guess they thought even with the risk it was still important to make sure someone was telling stories about what Air Nomads were really like, not the garbage propaganda pandered in the schools. Kao La Yang is remote enough, especially after the mines ran dry. Maybe they figured the risk was minimal. I never had children, so I never had to make those decisions myself.”

“Did Aunt Yuli and Aunt Merpati stay safe?” Aang asks quietly

Auntie Alamea nods, eyes kind. “I didn’t know they had anything to hide until I was older. I didn’t actually figure it out until after they passed away – old age, both of them less than a month apart,” she adds at Aang’s questioning glance.

“So they weren’t hurt by Sozin’s decree?” Aang says, sounding tentatively hopeful.

“Certainly not as badly as some people were,” Auntie Alamea confirms. “When I asked Grandpa Kuzon about it, years after I’d put the pieces together, he said they would always say they were glad they never went to a magistrate to make it official before the war. Made it easier to be discreet.” She glances at Mai for a moment before addressing Aang again. “A lot of things are changing for the better now that you ended the war and have people in the Fire Nation who have sided with you. Maybe that’s one more thing that can change.”

Aang smiles. “It will. Mai –”

“– Firelord Zuko should be signing a decree today to reverse Sozin’s law,” Mai cuts in, not wanting the attention on her.

“That’s truly wonderful news,” Auntie Alamea looks out at the small patch of farmland visible through the kitchen window. A cool mountain breeze trickles through the windows, wind chimes ringing in its wake. “I’ll have to make an offering tonight at Great Aunt Merpati and Great Aunt Yuli’s shrines tonight. And at Grandpa Kuzon’s.” She smiles again at Aang. “He would be so happy that I got to meet you; even only knowing you when he was a child, I think he considered you one of the dearest friends he ever had.”

Aang’s eyes shine a bit. “I was scared to come here,” he admits to Auntie Alamea, looking away from her. “And I’m scared to ask this, but I think I have to. I’ve read that there was a draft when Sozin started the war…”

Auntie Alamea shakes her head. “Grandpa Kuzon was never a soldier. He did work in the mines for a long time – they stopped operating when I was young so I don’t remember that well, and he told us he regretted doing that. My parents said that he didn’t have much of a choice – all kinds of taxes went up when the war started. He did it so our family could keep the farm. After the mines closed, we struggled until my sister opened a store in Fire Fountain City selling koala sheep wool blankets and shawls.”

A tightness in Aang’s shoulders releases. “Thank you,” he says, and it sounds like a benediction.

Auntie Alamea nods, a sad smile crinkling her eyes. Mai grips her teacup tightly.

Aang addresses Auntie Alamea again. “There’s one more thing I have to ask you. I remember Monk Gyatso used to write Aunt Merpati and Aunt Yuli. I think they were all pretty close friends – that’s how I met Kuzon in the first place. I… wondered if there was any chance you had those letters.”

Auntie Alamea smiles. “You’re in luck, Avatar Aang.” She stands up, briskly wiping her hands on the front of her apron. “Follow me.”

***

Auntie Alamea leads them into a sitting room. She pushes a few chairs to the edge of the room and flips up the corner of a rug adorned with a simple dragon motif. Tapping on a couple of the floorboards, she identifies one and eases it up with a creak. She gestures for Aang to come over and reaches her hand into the space, fishing out one, two, three sets of scrolls tied together into small bundles.

“My Grandpa showed this to me once I was old enough to understand how important it was to keep these safe. Until the news that you’d returned spread through our town, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see the day that I’d be able to pass them on to someone who could do some good with them.”

Aang touches one of the scrolls almost reverently. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“These ones,” Auntie Alamea points at two of the stacks, “have a lot of details on the day to day life in the Air Temples. Well they all do, I think Great Aunt Yuli must have had a particular interest in all the uses for bison’s milk because there’re like five that go into a lot of detail on that. But this set,” she points at the remaining bunch, “were the ones that I thought you’d be most interested in reading. Monk Gyatso had the most wonderful things to say about you, even with all the trouble it sounds like you got yourself into.”

Aang’s voice cracks with emotion as he says, “I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to read something he wrote again. The temples –”

“So much was destroyed,” Auntie Alamea finishes quietly for him when he can’t continue.

Aang nods, eyes closed. After taking a moment to collect himself, he asks, “Can we take these with us?”

“Of course. My Grandpa didn’t know who he was saving these for, just someone who could use them to do some good after all of the destruction this nation has been responsible for. I knew once the war was over they would be yours.”

Aang nods again, swallowing thickly. He glances at Mai, then at the letters. “I guess we should probably get going…”

Mai considers. On one hand, she’s still terribly anxious that something horrible will happen to Zuko in their absence.

On the other hand, what difference will a bit more time away make? This a chance for Aang to look at a few of the letters now and to talk to the descendent of one of his old friends. Who knows the next time he’ll have the chance to come out this way – he hasn’t even had time to visit half of his friends from this century in all the busyness of wrapping up the loose ends left by the war.

“How about we leave in an hour?” she offers.

The look of gratitude he gives her cements the deeply uncomfortable feeling that’s been settling at the pit of her stomach since arriving at Auntie Alamea’s house. She’s been intruding into something deeply personal for Aang the entire time they’ve been here. In an effort to give them some privacy, Mai excuses herself and escapes out to the back porch.

***

Mai chooses from one of a half dozen mismatched chairs. Curling her feet up beneath her, she finds that the wide chair – cushioned with a colorful wool blanket – is surprisingly comfortable. She spends a few minutes watching a few of the koala sheep in the open field behind the house graze and doze. 

Boring off that quickly, she digs into the pile of scrolls she brought to work on, opening a few of them and shuffling through her options a few times before admitting to herself that, bored or not, her focus is shot.

With a sigh, she grabs the one scroll she thinks she might have the capacity to parse right now: Aang’s proposal for a national dance curriculum.

For the first time since he gave it to her, Mai takes the time to read it from start to finish. Then she reads it again.

After getting used to the slightly old-fashioned style of Aang’s handwriting, there’s nothing overly complex about the proposal. A brief introduction discussing the neglect of arts and culture topics in Fire Nation schools during the war. Then a brief description of possible ways to structure a dance program at schools, with a combination of lessons on traditional dances and events hosted to allow students to express themselves by applying what they’ve learned in their lessons.

The only thing Mai can’t figure out is why this would be something Aang would care about. It might have made more sense a few months ago, when it was easier for Mai to think of him as a just a silly and rather carefree kid, albeit with ridiculously powerful Avatar abilities. Now, she’s having a hard time connecting the dots between the kid who apparently considers dance lessons to be of a high enough priority to draft policy on them and the kid who’s sitting inside, reading hundred year old letters of a long dead monk, some of the only surviving artefacts of his people.

The door to the back porch creaks open. Auntie Alamea steps out. “May I join you out here?” she asks.

Mai shrugs in acquiescence.

Auntie Alamea takes a seat in a rocking chair next to Mai, settling into a rhythmic creak-creak as she gazes out at the fields behind the house. The air isn’t quite cool, but the village must sit at a much higher altitude than the Caldera as it’s more pleasantly warm than swelteringly hot. As early morning gives way to late morning, virtually all of the fog Mai and Aang walked through to get here clears. Above the vivid green of the fields and the mountain peaks in the near distance  – all punctuated by the occasional white fluff of koala sheep – the sky seems impossibly wide and blue.

After a measure, Auntie Alamea says, “He’s both exactly how my grandpa described him, and nothing at all like what I’d imagined.”

Mai hums. She doesn’t really have anything to say to that, but hopefully her non-response doesn’t come off as rude.

“Of course,” Auntie Alamea continues unperturbed, “it wasn’t until this past year I realized it would even be possible to meet him.”

Mai hesitates before saying “I’m not sure anyone really thought the Avatar existed until this past year.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. For at least the past 50 years, the entirety of the military campaign in the South Pole hinged on the possibility that the Avatar would be reborn into the water tribes.”

“I… don’t know very much about that.” Mai admits.

“It’s not exactly something emphasized in the schools. I only know because my entire family has been quietly committing treason against the crown since my great aunts made the decision to save those letters. In my experience, that tends to make one a bit more inclined to pay attention to the politics of war.”

Mai tucks her arms into her sleeves, rubbing at the handles of one of her knives. Even in a situation that summarily doesn’t call for anything vaguely resembling violence, the ever-present weight of her weapons is calming. “Up until a few months ago,” she confesses, acknowledging the elephant tiger in the room, the discomfort that’s been sleeping under her skin since they began talking to this woman, “I had no stake in peace. And when I did decide to… take a stand for something instead of toeing the line, it was for personal reasons, not political ideals.”

“Hmm,” Auntie Alamea intones; the sound isn’t judgmental but nor is it an absolution. “So what brought you to this little island? The personal? Or the political?”

Mai considers this. Is she here because Zuko and Aang asked her to be? Or is it because she believes in something? “I don’t know,” she admits.

Auntie Alamea nods. “That’s fine. While you work on figuring it out – and you’re young, so there’s no rush on that – just remember that the two aren’t as always as separate as you might believe them to be.”

***

Aang comes out not long after, staff in one hand and a knit bag in the other carrying the collection of scrolls. A quick glance at him reveals clear evidence of recent tears and a quiet smile.

He offers Auntie Alamea a bow. “Thank you so much for everything.”

Auntie Alamea smiles and stands up, spreading her arms out in an offering of a hug. Aang accepts. “Thank you,” she tells him.

Stepping back, she looks at Mai. “I’d offer you a hug as well, but I get the sense that’s not your kind of thing.”

Mai gives her a dry smile. “Thanks.”

Turning back to Aang, Auntie Alamea says, “You’re welcome back at any time.” Smiling at both of them, she adds, “With young folks like the both of you guiding the Firelord, I think there’s a brighter future in store for all of us.”

The walk back to Appa is more scenic with the sun higher in the sky. Mai doesn’t take much note of it, still mulling everything over.

The bison lets out a rumbling greeting once they reach him. Aang bounds over and pats the side of Appa’s giant head. “Hope you had a nice time without us.”

Mai glances over at the large patch of grass that bears signs of copious bison consumption. “Seems like it,” she comments.

“Appa’s always liked the grass here,” Aang says. There’s a wistfulness to his gaze as he takes in the field around them, the abutting cliffside, and the view of the ocean beyond. “Seems like the koala sheep must like it too.”

“Can’t say an endorsement from Appa or koala sheep makes me want to try it myself.”

“Yeah, probably best to leave it to them.” He turns back to Mai, and passes over the bag full of scrolls. “I tried to group them so that the ones that would be more helpful to talking to the Education Minister are on top. You can start looking through them on the ride back if you want.”

Mai accepts the bag. In her hands, the century old remainders of a different time become a simple tool for politicking. “Thanks,” she says. It feels inadequate.

Aang nods. He turns back to start climbing onto Appa; Mai follows suit.

“I’m glad we’re friends, Mai,” Aang says easily as they both settle down atop their fluffy flying transportation.

Mai is blindsided enough by this statement – said so casually too – that her eyes widen slightly before she manages to wrestle control over her facial expression once more.

Initial shock subsided, she supposes it makes sense – even with all the grief he carries, she thinks friendship comes as easy as breathing for Aang.

And with people like Aang – people so much more open and trusting and kind than the vast majority of the population of the Caldera – maybe it can start to be something that’s easier for Mai too.

“Me too,” she finally says. Finding that she means it, she allows a small smile to grace her lips.

Aang’s returning smile is bright. Despite the vague discomfort she’s felt all morning, Mai allows herself to feel buoyed by the possibilities of a kinder world he and Zuko are working to make a reality.

***

Dearest Yuli and Merpati,

I hope you are both doing well near the end of summer. It’s been warmer than usual at the temples this year; the bison have certainly found the summer weather to be a good excuse to doze for the better part of the afternoon. I find myself jealous of their carefree nature – I’m sure they more thoroughly master the art of relaxing than even the most whimsical of us monks could ever dream to.

I’m afraid I write to the both of you a bit more worried than I normally find myself. For reasons that will be easier to discuss the next time we see each other in person, I’m afraid Aang and Appa have gone on a bit of an unplanned vacation. While normally I would find reason to celebrate in his adventurous spirit, with the uncertain political tensions we’ve discussed in previous letters, I find myself hoping that I can find him sooner than later. I know he’s long since considered Kuzon to be a dear friend – if during the course of his travels he happens to stop by Kao La Yang Village, you would have my sincerest gratitude if you could send a letter my way to let me know that he’s safe.

I hesitate to write what I’m about to next. But it seems the storm clouds many of us have long since feared are beginning to brew in earnest. Should that make it impossible for me to come see Aang if he happens by your village, I ask that you tell him that I am impossibly proud of the young man he is growing to be – one who recognizes the value of the little pieces of beauty and humor we look for to keep us going even in hard times, one who is unerringly clever and uses his wit to smooth over tensions and create lasting friendships, one who’s kindness and joyfulness overflows and improves the lives of everyone around him.

I hope my next letter to you will not be so overshadowed by my worries for the future. Stay safe, both of you.

- Gyatso

Chapter Text

The tunnels snaking beneath the Caldera are annoyingly hot despite their being completely shaded from any sunlight by virtue of being underground.

“That’s probably because there’s a bunch of underground lava flows,” Aang says cheerily when Mai complains about it.

“I thought the Caldera was built over an inactive volcano,” Mai says.

“I’m no expert in volcanology, but I remember learning as a kid that a volcano that’s gone tens of thousands of years without erupting could still technically erupt again.”

“What a cheery thought.”

They fall back into a companionable silence. Aang confidently leads them, a palm full of flame guiding their path. They take a left, then an immediate right, then left again.

“How do you know these tunnels so well?” Mai asks.

Aang shrugs. “Seemed like a good way to practice my earth sense after Toph and everyone else left. And a fun place to explore.”

It’s not long before they arrive at the connection point between these tunnels and the palace’s secret passages. Mai takes the lead here, tracing out the paths between her old favorite hiding places.

“Is there any chance of someone finding us hiding here?” Aang asks.

“Unless something’s changed in the past few years, probably not.” In all the long afternoon games of hide and seek they’d played as children, Mai doesn’t ever remember any adults ever crossing paths with them.

She’s definitely grown since then. Some of the crawl spaces are much harder to navigate without feeling a bit claustrophobic.

“That’s good,” Aang says, “since someone finding us would kind of prematurely ruin our plan.”

Not as badly as us finding Zuko already dead, Mai catches herself thinking. She pushes away that unhelpful line of thinking.

The hidden space adjacent to the royal quarters is thankfully not terribly cramped. It likely still won’t be very fun to camp out here for however many days it takes for someone to make a move against Zuko.

Mai and Aang ease the panel in the wall open. It slides out slowly.

In retrospect, it’s entirely predictable that the room would be empty.

“I guess he’s still in meetings,” Aang comments.

Mai forces herself to relax her shoulders. Aang is right – it’s barely midafternoon. Zuko’s daily gauntlet of meetings rarely ends before dinnertime.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry. I guess we didn’t need to rush to be back here.”

“That’s okay, I kind of wanted to get back here as soon as possible too. So, should we go try to find him?”

Mai shakes her head. “We never found any secret passages that ran close to any of the rooms at the center of the palace when we were kids. We’ll just have to hope nobody’s bold enough to attack him in the middle of a meeting.”

Aang’s brows knit together. “Well, knowing that, I feel like there may have been some flaws with our original plan.”

Mai’s feeling similarly. “I’ve gotten a sense that’s a common theme from many of Zuko’s plans.”

“I guess nothing to do now but roll with it.” Aang crosses his arms and rubs idly at his elbows. “There’s always a lot of guards at all of the meetings, and it’s not like Zuko’s incapable of defending himself.”

Mai sighs. “I know.”

The head back to the secret passage, closing the panel behind them.

Mai settles onto the dusty floor of the passageway and is fully prepared to occupy the next few hours stewing in worries, mulling over the shapes of every worst-case scenario.

Sitting across from her, Aang glances at her bag full of scrolls and says, “Maybe while we’re waiting we could start going through Gyatso’s letters and put together a proposal for the Education Minister?”

“Sounds like as good a distraction as any,” Mai acquiesces.

***

Zuko finally does make an appearance a few hours later, knocking politely on the panel to the secret passageway.

“You could have just come in,” Mai notes sardonically as she opens the door for him.

“I didn’t want to startle you guys.”

Mai kisses his cheek. “I’m glad you’re not dead,” she says as she pulls him down to sit on the floor with her and Aang.

“I’m also glad to see you alive, Zuko,” Aang says, chipper.

There’s a chittering sound at the door, closely followed by Momo’s head peeking cautiously into the passageway. Upon catching sight of them, the lemur leaps into the air, gliding over towards them before diving for Aang’s lap. He purrs contentedly as Aang scratches behind his ears.

“It’s good to see you too, Momo,” Aang says with a laugh. “Good job keeping Zuko out of trouble while we were gone.”

Zuko frowns, looking between the two of them. “Were you actually worried I was dead, or…?”

Mai and Aang exchange a glance.

“I mean...” Aang says noncommittally.

“The possibility of your untimely death did occur to me, yes.”

Zuko looks exasperated. “You guys do know that I’m not exactly incapable of defending myself, right? I’ve survived every other time someone’s tried to kill me.”

“For the sake of my sanity, I’m not going to ask how many times someone’s tried to kill you.” Mai says.

“At least two or three.”

“I said I wasn’t asking!”

“Anyways,” Zuko looks at the spread of scrolls she and Aang have spent the last several hours sorting through. Reaching for one, he says, “It looks like your trip might have been pretty successful.”

Aang nods, a faint smile coming across his face. “Kuzon saved a bunch of letters Monk Gyatso wrote to his family. We met his granddaughter.”

Zuko looks at the scroll he’s holding with a bit of a reverent expression on his face. “Monk Gyatso? Aang, that’s incredible.”

Aang nods again. Mai thinks his eyes might take on a bit of a misty sheen before he turns his attention back to petting his lemur. Clearing her throat, she looks at Zuko and says, “I think we should have enough here to convince the Education Minister.”

“No kidding,” Zuko says. “I guess you’ll have something to keep you busy while we wait for whoever’s plotting against me to make their move.”

“Speaking of which – how exactly are we supposed to know if something’s happening anywhere that isn’t your bedroom?” Mai asks, eyebrow raised.

Zuko’s brow furrows pensively.

“Well. Uhm. To be honest, when we came up with this plan, I was imagining assassins coming to kill me in my sleep. So.”

“So you have no plan for any other eventuality,” Mai finishes for him.

“We’ll figure something out?” Zuko suggests sheepishly.

Mai buries her face in her hands. “This is what I get for letting you do the planning.”

“To be fair,” Aang says, conciliatory, “it’s not like we had any better ideas?”

***

Zuko is right about one thing – working through Gyatso’s letters to develop a detailed proposal for the Education Minister does give them plenty to stay busy with while waiting around for something to happen.

“I kind of feel like actually developing the curriculum should be the Education Minister’s job, not ours,” Aang notes as they start drafting sample lesson plans to include with the proposal.

“Do we trust him to do that well, though?”

“Good point.”

Nominal complaints aside, Aang proves to be diligent and eager in their work. Between Gyatso’s letters and Aang’s supplementation, Mai learns more about Air Nomad culture and history in two days than she ever would have imagined would be possible to learn. Vanishingly little of what she learns bears even the slightest resemblance to the propaganda that had been taught at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls.

Zuko seems excited to hear updates on their progress in the evenings. Aang’s face shines with a quiet pride whenever he’s explaining some detail about his people’s way of life, eyes distant with remembering as he chatters away. His enthusiastic teaching contrasts with the quiet reverence that overtakes him whenever they stumble across details in the letters that he’d either forgotten about or never really learned about in the first place.

Mai’s impressed by how easily he’s able to balance his excitement at having found such a veritable treasure trove of information about his people with the solemn reminder they represent of everything that was lost. There’s enough here for Mai to feel vindicated by how thoroughly they’d met the Education Minister’s challenge of finding a reputable primary source and a sense of satisfaction develops in how neatly their proposal is coming together.

But while the collection of knowledge about the Air Nomad’s way of life is far more detailed than they might have hoped before their trip to Kao La Yang, it’s far from complete. Mai feels a bit overwhelmed by the crestfallen pall Aang’s face takes halfway through the second day when they realize the letters contain very few details about the process of tattooing a newly recognized airbending master.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mai says, “How about we take a break?”

Aang nods his agreement. He takes Momo and walks a short way down the secret passageway, presumably for some semblance of privacy.

A first draft of their proposal is basically done; Mai could start polishing it on her own.

Instead, she finds herself digging out Aang’s national dance curriculum proposal from her pack. Glancing over it, she finds herself again struggling to figure out why this would be something that Aang would consider a high enough priority to take the time and effort to work on what Mai has to begrudgingly admit is a solidly drafted policy proposal.

In the time it takes for Aang to come back over to sit with her, Mai still hasn’t elucidated anything from re-reading and contemplating the proposal. She sighs, rolling it back up as Aang settles down across from her, idly scratching Momo’s head.

Fumbling for the right thing to say, Mai tells him, “Sorry we weren’t able to find more information about the, you know, arrow tattoo stuff.”

Aang acknowledges the apology with a slight incline of his head. “Not your fault. I shouldn’t have expected to learn anything about the ceremony and tattooing process from them.” He shrugs. “There’s not really any reason to share that kind of information with someone who’s not an airbender.”

“I guess not,” Mai says for lack of a better response. It’s evident that receiving the arrows upon becoming an airbending master was a big deal – one of the letters had mentioned that Aang had received his and had conveyed no small amount of pride on Gyasto’s part for his pupil’s achievement. But that’s still no reason for Gyatso to have shared extensive details about the ceremony with a couple of friends half an ocean away.

They lapse into a silence interrupted only by Momo’s purring. Mai’s attention falls again to the thin scroll resting in her lap. She deliberates for a moment, then decides it’s not as if her curiosity will be sated if she doesn’t pry.

“Can I ask you a completely unrelated question?”

Aang glances up, bemused. “Uh, sure?”

Mai taps the proposal twice, then hands it over to Aang. “Why did you – what exactly was your goal when you wrote this?”

Aang takes a peek at the scroll. “When I wrote… Oh! This is the proposal for implementing lessons on traditional Fire Nation dances!” Looking at Mai, he says, “I thought you said this wouldn’t be something we could prioritize for a while?”

Mai can’t help but feel a bit guilty for how long it took her to actually take the time to read the proposal, but in her defense it’s not as though she hasn’t been busy with a million other things. “It’s been a few months?”

“So you don’t think it’s a bad idea?” Aang asks, a tentative eagerness in his voice.

“I guess… I want to know why you think it’s a good idea.”

Aang shrugs. “I don’t know. Dancing is fun.”

“That’s it?” Mai asks, eyebrows raised skeptically.

Aang heaves a sigh. After a pensive moment, he says, “I guess Fire Nation dances are one of the things I remember being fun before the war. And it seems like it’s something you guys lost because of the war.”

Unconsciously glancing at Gyatso’s letters, Mai says quietly, “I guess it just seems like there’s more important things that have been lost.”

Aang follows her gaze. With a sad twist to his mouth, he says, “My people, our way of life. That’s something I can remember and something I can grieve, but… there’s no policy proposal or person or anything that can bring it back.”

There’s a resounding hollowness to that depressing truth. Mai ponders this and finds herself perhaps even more unsatisfied. “So this proposal really is just nostalgia for something… fun.”

“Sure, I guess,” Aang says. “Is that… a problem?”

“I just don’t get why this is important to you when there’s a hundred other things to worry about.” Mai says, finally articulating the crux of her puzzlement over this baffling proposal.

 Aang tilts his head. “Why wouldn’t it be important to me?”

“Because… we’re the ones that wiped out your culture? Why would you want to help us with something like this? Something that isn’t important for ensuring peace with the rest of the world and preventing something like that from ever happening again.”

Without hesitation, Aang says, “Sozin wiped out my people, and his war hurt the whole world, including his own people. Now that the war is over, it’s my job as the Avatar to help everyone heal from the war. Right now, helping Zuko is the best way that I can do that.” He leans back, idly scratching the underside of Momo’s chin. “And even if it’s not a popular opinion, I think that dancing and fun and things like that are an important part of how you heal.”

Mai nods slowly, though she’s still not entirely sure she understands completely.

A bit later, after they go back to their work, Mai happens upon a brief aside while sorting through some of Gyasto’s less informative letters. In one, Gyatso stridently details some concerns about Aang’s training being overly strenuous, concluding with a declaration that, “Air is the element of freedom, good humor, and fun; how can his teachers expect him to improve if they don’t understand that?”

Mai puts the letter aside; while not a detail she knows how to work into their proposal, it’s nonetheless illuminating in other ways.

***

A long afternoon of work is punctuated by a loud grumble from Momo’s stomach.

“Someone’s hungry,” Aang notes with a laugh, scratching the lemur behind the ears.

Mai slides the door connecting the hidden passageway to Zuko’s chambers open a few inches. The vermilion upholstery is dappled in the golden light of the setting sun. It’s later than Mai had realized.

“Zuko’s usually back by now,” she observes, shoulders tensing.

“His meetings with the Finance Council tend to run long,” Aang suggests, but he gets to his feet to come join Mai at the door. “They were supposed to finish approving the budget for the next year today, right?”

They were. Mai had spent a good part of the evening prior reviewing the final documents with Zuko. A few relatively minor arithmetic errors aside, everything had seemed to be in order.

Mai tries to relax a bit. Zuko running late after a meeting with the Finance Minister isn’t unusual. Hopefully he’ll be done soon. Mai will get to celebrate a reprieve from staring at spending spreadsheets – assuming the budget is indeed finally approved.

Muffled conversation heralds a sudden bang as the doors to the Fire Lord’s chambers burst open. Mai and Aang only just barely get their hidden door slid closed in time, leaving just a hint of a crack for them to watch as a group of eight or nine people filter into the room.

From their angle, Mai can make out one of the men stepping forward and starting to rifle through the papers on Zuko’s desk.

Aang looks up at Mai. “Is that…?” he mouths.

Mai nods stiffly. It’s the Undersecretary to the Finance Minister. She peers through the crack harder, trying to see if she can make out the faces of anyone else in the small crowd filling the front of the room. Sharp angles of light cast around the room as the sun sets. Unfortunately, with Zuko’s bed between their hiding spot and the entryway, her view is effectively obscured.

A few moments of tense listening pass, punctuated by the sounds of shuffling papers and feet.

The Undersecretary swears. “There’s nothing here,” he announces. “Just a bunch of agricultural reports.”

There’s a flutter of motion towards the front of the room. “Where are they?” a strident voice demands – the Finance Minister, Mai thinks.

“Where’s what?” Zuko’s voice asks guilelessly. Mai’s gut uncoils temporarily, though her relief that he’s alive is quickly eclipsed by exasperation over whatever this mess he’s gotten himself into is.

“The papers you said we’d want to see!” the Finance Minister all but yells.

“Oh,” Zuko says, “Those papers. I made them up.”

The Finance Minister growls in frustration. “This nonsense has only delayed the inevitable. As long as I hold this office, I will not allow you to drive our country into the ground, bleeding our coffers dry and weakening our empire. You will sign the revised budget and you will tell the Avatar he is no longer welcome in this palace once he returns.”

Mai and Aang glance at each other, and in silent agreement begin easing the panel to the secret hallway open. Mai lets a knife slip into the hand not occupied with this task.

“Minister Tanaka, I have no intention of being your puppet.”

“You’re not in a position to decide that. This ploy to gain time has gained you nothing.”

“Not time,” Zuko says. If Mai were any less tense, she’d be tempted to roll her eyes at his insufferable tone. “It’s just that, in my not inconsiderable experience, a fight that’s eight against one takes longer to resolve than one that’s eight against three.”

“What are you–”

The door finally opened wide enough, Mai and Aang leap out into the room.

The Undersecretary, still standing by Zuko’s desk, reacts first, sending a blast of flame in their direction. Aang steps forward, parting the oncoming fire with ease.

This gives Mai a moment to take in the scene she couldn’t make out from her hiding place. Without a second thought, she launches a volley of knives. The aide that had been standing behind Zuko – one hand on his shoulder, the other leveling a short sword at his back – goes flying backward, his weapon falling to the ground with a clatter as he is pinned to the wall.

The man that had been threatening him taken care of, Zuko spares Mai a split second of a grateful smile. It transforms into a tigerdillo’s threatening snarl as he side-steps a hasty and panicked attack from the Finance Minister, then drops to kick out a circle of flame, sending the rest of the members of the Finance Council stumbling backwards.

Mai pins the Undersecretary to Zuko’s desk, his long sleeves an easy target. As she and Aang round the four-poster bed and close in on Zuko’s position, she pins two other members of the council in quick succession. They struggle to free themselves, but a moment’s glance confirms them securely pinned to the walls.

Zuko seems to be holding his own well enough against another two members of the council, exchanging volleys with them. Two of the aides not yet engaging in this fight appear to have been considering an angle of attack on Zuko that won’t land their allies in the line of fire, but on seeing Aang and Mai’s approach, they startle and move to intercept them.

Aang smoothly steps in, sweeping a leg around to trip one of them, and – with help from a tidy bit of airbending – sending the stumbling man careening into the other. The two men land in a heap, groaning faintly. Nodding towards Mai, Aang pulls off to make sure they stay down.

The Finance Minister himself seems to have disengaged from the center of the fighting; Mai notes his eyes darting towards the open door, perhaps hoping to make a hasty escape.

Before she can act on this observation, one of the men engaged with Zuko manages to sidle behind his guard. Mai surges forward as the man takes aim at Zuko’s back. She grabs him by the back of his collar, kicks him in the back of the knee, and produces a three-pronged blade to pin him to the ground.

Still dodging and weaving attacks from the other man, Zuko shouts, “Don’t let Minister Tanaka get away!”

Mai looks up. Sure enough, over Zuko’s shoulder she can make out the retreating back of the Finance Minister as he starts down the long corridor outside to Zuko’s rooms.

Mai doubts he’ll be able to get that far, this hasty exit likely a product of panic at his plans crumbling to pieces, and not a well thought out escape. Still, she dodges out of the radius of Zuko’s fighting, still locked in combat with the one remaining aide who appears to be desperately trying to regain control over the situation even as his boss flees.

Mai makes to sprint after the Minister, but Aang is faster. Out of the corner of her eye, Mai catches him spinning in a move that conveys both grace and power. There’s a faint rumbling – and then a horrible screeching sound as the pipes in the walls break open from the inside out with the force of the water Aang pulls out of them. A deluge of water crashes out of the wall just behind Zuko’s desk. The Undersecretary – still pinned to the desk – flinches and lets out a startled yell.

Mai panics for a half second – she’d spent so long on those agricultural reports – then realizes neither the desk nor any of the papers spread out on it were actually caught up in the sudden rush of water.

A handful more moves in that same graceful style, and Aang sends tendrils of water chasing after the Finance Minister. One catches the man’s wrist, yanking him backwards. As Minister Tanaka yells out in surprise, Aang sends forth another rush of water and, taking a deep breath in and out, freezes him in place.

A heartbeat later, and Zuko moves to finish his fight with the last standing member of the Finance Council. As the man stumbles backwards from a blast of fire he only managed to half block, Mai darts in to grab his wrist and pin him to the floor as well.

Straightening, Zuko takes in the scene around him. The carpeting on the north side of the room will likely need to be completely replaced; water still drips out onto it from the mangled pipes in the wall. Glancing at Aang, he says, “That might have been just a bit of overkill.”

“Think of it as me giving you an excuse to redecorate?” Aang offers sheepishly.

Mai laughs.

***

In the aftermath of the Finance Council’s conspiracy against Zuko, the palace gossip seems less focused on the potential threat to their ruler and more focused on Mai’s apparent vacation in the Firelord’s bed chambers in the days leading up to the attack. Unless it’s to make a comment on the damage to the palace’s indoor plumbing, Aang is typically absent from the snippets of overwrought whispering Mai regretfully overhears. Mai finds herself more irritable about the failure to give Aang his due than the attempts to make a scandal out of her and Zuko’s not exactly subtle relationship.

She’s also upset that they almost certainly didn’t catch everyone who had been involved in the conspiracy. While the members of the Finance Council do seem to be the originators of the plot based on the sparse amount of begrudging testimony provided by a few of the aides to Minister Tanaka, no sufficiently solid evidence has emerged that would be enough to remove anyone else from court. Mai’s not sure if she should be relieved or bitter that this means that her father is among those who won’t be held accountable for their probable role in the conspiracy.

Perhaps in part because of her mixed feelings over her father’s good luck, Mai finds herself seething with anger as she peruses her mother’s most recent letter. Without directly saying anything, it manages to very cuttingly insinuate that Mai’s judgement in matters concerning the current Firelord is questionable at best and marred by lovestruck naivety at worst. A part of her is starting to seriously consider the merits of giving up and completely cutting ties with her family – but the fact that Tom Tom would be potentially devoid of anything vaguely resembling a positive influence stops her from following that train of thought too far.

Regardless, she really ought to just toss the letter and get to work. A temporary budget is in place, but in order to ensure the continued acquiescence of the rest of the court, they’ll need to identify at least half a dozen people with ideally both loyalty to Zuko and sway amongst the rest of the nobility – unfortunately a still fairly uncommon combination. It would also be nice if those chosen for positions in the new Finance Council were also capable of checking their own work for glaring mathematical errors, though Mai admittedly suspects that the prior council’s frequent mistakes owed less to their capacity for simple arithmetic and more to their plans to discard Zuko’s version of the budget as soon as their conspiracy came to fruition.

About a half an hour into forcing herself to start sorting through the possible candidates for the new council, Mai is excessively grateful to be interrupted by a knock on her door.

“Come in,” she calls, expecting either an aide or Zuko and Aang out of a meeting early. She’s surprised to instead see the Education Minister. “Minister Keo,” she greets.

“Lady Mai,” he returns. Instead of coming towards her desk, he instead crosses past it to stand in front of the office’s single, relatively small window. Mai’s never thought there was a particularly interesting view from it, but for a few moments he seems to have no other intentions than to peer outside thoughtfully, his hands clasped behind his back.

Mai doesn’t know what to make of any of this – this is the first time since Zuko’s reign began that any of the Minister’s have deigned to visit her tiny office. She catches herself unconsciously adjusting her posture into something more proper.

“Is there something I can help you with, Minister Keo?”

The Education Minister clears his throat and turns away from the window to look at her. “Yes, yes, I believe there is. If anything, this is probably a long overdue visit.”

Mai raises a questioning eyebrow.

He waves a hand carelessly. “Oh, my dear, it’s clear you’ve been instrumental to those two boys’ efforts over the past few months – it’s well past time I gained some insight into your perspective on everything, beyond what I can glean from your contributions to the variety of proposals that have crossed my desk lately.”

Mai carefully does not allow any of the tension she feels to show in her expression or posture. “I’d be happy to answer any questions you may have, though I’d guess that the Firelord and the Avatar might be a better source for information on any specific plans moving forward.”

The Education Minister shakes his head dismissively, finally settling into the seat across from Mai. “Oh no, I already feel I have a pretty good feeling about their opinions on everything. And while it’s now obvious that you’re loyal to them, it remains less clear how strongly you might agree with some of their more… ambitious goals.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Minister Keo sighs. “Why don’t you pull out the most recent proposal for education reform from your files?”

“I’m fairly certain you have the most recent version –“

“Yes, yes, just pull out the version most similar to the final draft. You’re clearly a well-organized girl with a good sense of discipline, I have no doubt that you’ve held on to a copy of it.”

Cautious to not completely turn her back on him, Mai reaches into the filing cabinet – a long needed addition to her office space, procured from the presently abandoned offices of the Finance Council with no small amount of help from Aang – and pulls out the requested scroll.

The Education Minister reaches into his robes and the tension in Mai’s shoulders ratchets up – but he only pulls out a pair of reading glasses. Taking the proffered scroll he scans it for a few moments.

“Ah, here it is,” he says, tapping the page. “In the concluding section here you wrote, ‘While the Fire Nation has a long and proud history, we cannot allow our sense of national pride to overshadow our ability to admit to our shortcomings and grow from them. The role of this country in the destruction of the Air Nomad’s people and culture represents more than a mere shortcoming, but a morally reprehensible failure on the part of our country’s leadership and the people who were taught to unquestioningly follow it.’” He removes his glasses and looks expectantly at Mai.

“It’s not just my writing. This proposal was a group effort,” Mai says, “The Firelord and the Avatar played a very active role in pulling it all together.” It had gone through so many drafts, Mai honestly isn’t sure those sentences were originally any one person’s phrasing or something that emerged only through their collaboration.

“Well, it’s certainly your calligraphy – the Avatar has a very distinctive style and the Firelord’s brushwork tends to be a bit more heavy handed than someone with years of education in one of our country’s finest schools.” Mai must not successfully prevent all of her bewilderment from showing on her face, because he adds, “I was a teacher before I worked in government. Keeping track of different handwriting styles was perhaps more useful for sounding out cheating students than unscrupulous bureaucrats, but old habits die hard.”

Smoothing her expression back into something more appropriately neutral, Mai says, “I’m afraid I don’t know what your question is, Minister.”

“In your original proposal for education reform in this country, the recommendation to adjust our curriculum on Firelord Sozin’s campaign against the Air Temples was neatly nestled away in the middle of a long list of proposed changes. Had I or my aides been less attentive, it undoubtedly would have been approved alongside the less… potentially disruptive suggestions. I suspect this subtlety likely represented your hand in the matter; Firelord Zuko’s inner circle is presently small and you struck me as the only one with enough sense to not be so forthright in such things.

“I admit, while your influence was evident, your motivations were harder for me to pin down. I couldn’t tell if the Firelord was merely smitten enough with you to allow your interference in his frankly brash vision for the future or if your hand was simply guiding him through the perils of navigating a court that is far from inclined to trust him. Only in observing how you responded to Sonisay’s warning was I able to confidently say that the latter represented the truth of the situation.”

Of all the people Mai thought might come up in this conversation, the clumsy aide to the Foreign Relations Minister wasn’t one of them. She can’t stop herself from asking, “What does Sonisay have to do with this?”

“She’s my granddaughter," Minister Keo admits, “and I doubt she realized how closely I was watching your interactions with her. Once it became, well, evident that she knew there was a plot against the Firelord, I suspected that she might reach out to you. She credits you with allowing her to keep her job in the government after all, and she’s rather too timid to approach the Firelord or the Avatar directly.”

“Finding a way to warn the Firelord about any impending danger to his person would of course be the honorable thing for any citizen of the Fire Nation to do,” Mai comments pointedly.

“Of course,” Minister Keo agrees readily, “though I suspect that if any of his ministers outside of the Finance Council had heard whisperings of a conspiracy, they might have been balancing out the odds that they might be much more likely to keep their jobs under a different regent, and thus chose to play their hand accordingly.”

Mai’s certain she’s not going to be any more successful at getting him to admit to being party to the conspiracy than she was with her father, so she drops the matter. “What does any of this have to do with the Firelord’s newest proposal for your office?”

“The Firelord personally delivered it to me the morning after Minister Tanaka’s heavy handed attempt at a coup; it doesn’t take a genius to realize that this was what the three of you dedicated your time to while waiting out any fool that might attempt to make a move during the apparent absence of the Avatar from the capital – under the ruse, mind you, of looking for verifiable evidence of the curriculum that you seek my office to help you implement. And while not utterly graceless in its presentation, it certainly is much more forthright in its intentions than the original proposal.”

“Is there a problem with our proposal?” Mai asks, long since tired of the circuitous lecturing.

He heaves a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No. The proposal is impeccable and my aides have verified that the letters you provided us with are as improbably real as a 112 year old boy Avatar. My office’s only recourse to move against this would be to burn the evidence you provided.”

Mai cannot hide all of her panic at that possibility – while they had only provided the Minister with a handful of letters as a show of good faith, the possibility of losing any hard-won piece of what little remains of Aang’s people is horrifying.

“We’re not going to do that,” the Education Minister hastens to assure her, “if for no other reason than I fear the Firelord’s retribution should we do such a thing. He hides it better than his father did, but he certainly inherited no small part of Ozai’s temper.”

Mai prays he never says anything to that effect in front of Zuko. “If I’m hearing you correctly, it sounds like you’re agreeing to implement our proposal.”

Minister Keo smiles wryly. “I suppose I am. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it. Perhaps because I’m worried our nation cannot survive all of these radical changes. Though I suspect I’m also just bitter that after over two decades of working in this position with exceptionally limited oversight from the Firelord, I now find my office subject to a massive overhaul under the direction of two children who also happen to be among the most powerful people in the world.”

Mai’s a bit surprised by his honesty but chooses not to comment on it. She wonders if the old man sitting across from her is here in an attempt to convince himself that he’s not making a mistake in backing Zuko. “The Fire Nation will survive this. Firelord Zuko and the Avatar are only making these changes with the intention of restoring the things that were lost in the war.”

Minister Keo laughs bitterly. “You’ll have to forgive me if I can’t find it in myself to fully believe that.”

Mai considers for a moment, then turns back to her filing cabinet, fishing for another scroll. She still hasn’t gotten around to making any changes to it, but Aang’s original version is solid enough.

“What’s this?”

A peace offering, Mai thinks. “Another proposal we’re working on for your office; it’s not fully polished yet, but this first draft covers the main points.”

The Education Minister grimaces none too subtly, but he pulls out his reading glasses again. As he unfurls the scroll and starts reading it, one of his salt and pepper eyebrows quirks up in apparent surprise.

He takes more time to contemplate it than it should take him to read it. He finally removes his glasses and returns the thin scroll to Mai. Stroking his chin thoughtfully, he says, “It’s an… interesting concept. Certainly not what I was expecting.” Exhaling heavily, he adds, “I doubt this will be any easier to implement than anything else you have suggested, but I suppose I’ll look forward to seeing more specific recommendations for how we might go about it.”

Mai smiles thinly. “Of course, Minister Keo. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

“No, no. That will be all.”

***

Mai unpins her hair and shakes it out. She stretches out her back and thinks she’s much too young for all of the pops in her vertebrae that action prompts.

She’s very ready for bed – the days feel like they’re only getting longer with all of the work that evidently is needed to run the nation. Leaving for Ba Sing Se tomorrow afternoon will likely feel like a long overdue reprieve from everything, but the frantic nature of all the preparations leading up to that have definitely left her feeling more than a bit worn down by the end of the day.

There’s a quiet knock at her door. Mai sighs, and wearily makes her way over to answer it, not really caring that whoever’s here at this hour will be greeted by her in her bed clothes.

Sadly, it seems that filtered through all of the inane gossip, more members of the government than just the Education Minister have put together that her opinion is apparently worth something to the new Firelord and, as a result, more and more people have been stopping by her office or her rooms to essentially ask her to vet their work. This would be the latest hour that anyone has ever stopped by to date, but Mai’s learning to roll with the punches and praying that everything calms down a bit after the peace treaty is finally signed.

It’s a very pleasant surprise to instead find Zuko on the other side of her door – for all of about five seconds before Mai realizes his presence might represent some variety of last-minute emergency before they leave.

“What are you doing here so late?”

“Not happy to see me?”

“Not if it’s to ask me to work through the night on something for our trip tomorrow.”

“It’s not,” he assures her. “Can I come in?”

Mai sighs, but steps aside to let him through the door. He presses a quick kiss to her cheek on his way in. “Please make it quick, I think the last time I felt this tired was when I was at your coronation.”

“So, uh, actually,” Zuko says hesitantly, “I was actually going to ask if you would mind if I’d spend the night?”

“Are you sleeping in that?” Mai asks, incredulous, gesturing to the frankly overly complex robes that he's expected to wear as the Firelord.

“I brought pajamas!” Zuko says, producing them from a hiding spot down the front of his robes. No doubt he picked that trick up from Aang.

Mai presses a couple of fingers to her forehead, fighting back a smile. “You’re such a dork.”

“You don’t have to say yes,” Zuko hastens to assure her, “I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about other people maybe noticing. But it’s been weird sleeping in my old bedroom – honestly, sometimes it’s still just weird even being in the palace.”

Mai gives up on hiding her besotted smile. She pulls Zuko’s pajamas out of his hands and places them on her bed. Then she pulls him into a hug.

“You can stay the night,” she tells him. “The palace gossip mill has been working overtime for at least the last week, we might as well as enjoy the fruits of our apparent notoriety.”

“People have been gossiping about us?”

Mai rolls her eyes at his obliviousness. “Yes. Now go change. I wanted to be in bed five minutes ago.”

***

“Why do you get to sit out the ordeal that is clothes shopping?” Mai asks.

“I’m a simple monk,” Aang protests, “I already have plenty of outfits. And I’m participating even if I’m not getting anything for myself!”

The Ba Sing Se qipao and changpao boutique they’re at is currently stuffed full of basically all of Aang’s friends plus a large retinue of Kyoshi warriors. Mai’s not completely sure who came up with the idea for a shopping trip, but she suspects either Ty Lee or Sokka somehow instigated it.

She’s mostly just bitter that Zuko managed to weasel his way out of this trip because he has the excuse of his uncle already having appropriate Earth Kingdom style attire for him. And he also got roped into some of the last-minute preparations for the treaty signing tomorrow, but still.

Aang is quickly distracted from Mai’s grumbling by Katara, who calls him over to help her decide between a pink or a yellow flower for her hair. So Mai turns her attentions to Toph, who has also joined this shopping trip for the apparent fun of watching everyone suffer without any intention of getting anything for herself.

“And why do you get to avoid trying on approximately ten million different outfits?”

“I already have enough fancy-schmancy high society clothes to last me for a lifetime,” Toph says dismissively. “I don’t exactly need any more.”

“You’ve demonstrated a talent for speeding up political meetings,” Mai points out, “Maybe you can use that ability to help us out here?”

“Yeah, no. Sokka’s capacity for stretching out a shopping trip well beyond how long it should take any reasonable person is something even I can’t effectively counter. And that’s not taking into account Ty Lee.”

Ty Lee chooses that moment to suddenly pop into Mai’s field of vision. “What about this one? It has less green than the other ones, so you might like it better.”

If Mai says she doesn’t like it, Ty Lee will insist they can’t know for sure it won’t work until she tries it on, so Mai accepts her fate and heads towards the store’s back room where an attendant helps her into what has to be at least her fifth qipao of the day. She had tried to insist that the first outfit she’d tried on had been fine, but Ty Lee seems convinced she needs to work her way through half of the shop’s inventory so they can be absolutely sure that she got the best one possible.

An equally long suffering Kameyo waves from where she is also being fitted into what also must be at least her fifth or sixth qipao. “She has you trying on another one too?”

Mai sighs. “I think our mistake was not being sufficiently exuberant about the proceedings.”

“I think you’re right,” Kameyo agrees. “The real question is whether Ty Lee will finish with us before Sokka’s made a decision about his outfit.”

Mai arches an eyebrow. “He still hasn’t made up his mind?”

Kameyo laughs. “Last I overheard, he was debating between the merits of the fern green versus the cucumber green.”

Mai shakes her head disbelievingly. It’s all green in the end; how Sokka and Ty Lee have the energy to endlessly deliberate over the different clothing options is beyond her.

To be fair to Ty Lee, she knows Mai well enough to know that she would indeed like a qipao that incorporates enough ivory to offset all of the, well, green.

Ty Lee chooses that moment to come in and inspect her handiwork. “Oh, Kameyo, that looks so gorgeous on you! The orange and pink embroidery make it look like a field of flowers covered in even more flowers! We’re so lucky the shop was able to get their hands on some Fire Nation dyes to work with. I can’t imagine anything prettier for you!”

Kameyo blushes a bit and rolls her eyes at her girlfriend’s effusive praise.

“So does that mean we’re finally done here?” Mai cuts in dryly.

“Hmm,” Ty Lee ponders consideringly, her hand resting pensively on her chin as she looks back and forth between Kameyo and the other previously tried on qipaos spread about the room.

Kameyo looks beseechingly at Mai.

“Uh, for what it’s worth, I also think that one is definitely the one. It’s very… great. In every way.” Mai quickly tacks on.

Ty Lee nods slowly. “It is pretty great in every way. Do you like it, Kameyo?”

“I love it. So, so much,” Kameyo says, fervently nodding her head.

“Then we have to get it!” Ty Lee declares.

Thank you, Kameyo mouths in Mai’s direction.

Now help me out, Mai signals desperately with her eyes.

“Also,” Kameyo announces, “the last one you picked out for Mai is also, uh, super great!”

“I love how not green it is,” Mai intones.

The seamstress who’s been helping them in and out of the endless parade of qipao’s scowls at Mai’s indirect disparagement of the Earth Kingdom’s proud mastery of green dyes.

Ty Lee fixes her focus on Mai now, contemplating this qipao from every possible angle.

“It does look really nice on you,” she finally says, “and the bit of yellow detailing looks absolutely incredible with your mauve aura.”

Mai breathes out a sigh of relief that is hopefully not overly obvious.

***

Endless shopping trips aside, Mai definitely finds herself enjoying a long overdue vacation. The peace treaty signing occurs the morning of the next day and the whole ceremony somehow manages to go off without any major hiccups. The seamlessness of it all almost makes the whole thing rather anticlimactic.

Mai supposes she owes Ty Lee another thank you for helping her to pick out a qipao for the event – she would have stuck out like a sore thumb in the sea of green attire at the event otherwise.

Toph deserves an even bigger thank you – somehow she’s managed to convince the Earth Kingdom dignitaries to spread out all of the official events around the signing over the course of almost a full week, both giving everyone an excuse to stay in Ba Sing Se for a while with only a minimum of official responsibilities for everyone to attend to on a daily basis.

“It’s been ages since we’ve all gotten to hang out! Of course I was going to make sure we actually got to do that without being stuck at stuffy formal events all day, every day.”

“Toph, you’re a lifesaver,” Zuko tells her.

“I am pretty much the best,” Toph agrees. “How about you thank me by brewing some tea for everyone?”

Zuko sheepishly protests, “I’m pretty sure anything Uncle makes would taste better…”

Iroh smiles beatifically. “Your friend has informed me that your skills for brewing improved greatly during your travels. While you work on that in the kitchen, I can dust off the Tsungi horn.”

Mai suspects Toph probably also deserves no small amount of credit for convincing the Earth King to allow Iroh to keep his tea shop in the heart of Ba Sing Se. It’s clear that opinions on the Dragon of the West’s residence in the city are polarizing among its officials, but it seems that even those most suspicious of Iroh’s motives were evidently willing to concede that if he remains in the Earth Kingdom under close watch his influence in the Fire Nation and potential for rousing up trouble remains minimal.

It’s a pity that this means Zuko will only be able to visit his uncle on the occasions when his position brings him to Ba Sing Se, Mai thinks. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him look so at peace as he does in his Uncle’s home.

If Mai had thought it might be awkward to spend time with all of Zuko and Aang’s friends, she needn’t have worried. After Ty Lee and Kameyo leave in the late afternoon to visit some distant cousin of Kameyo’s, who purportedly owns a bakery in the middle ring – the two promise to bring back a bounty of egg custard tarts to share with everyone when they return later that evening – Suki ropes Mai into playing Pai Sho with her.

“I forgot I’d promised you a game,” Mai admits.

“Which is why I reminded you,” Suki tells her with a grin. “I hope you’re ready to lose to me.”

“We’ll see,” Mai returns with a sharp smile of her own.

Without setting out to do so, Mai enjoys herself even with Zuko busy with tea making, Ty Lee elsewhere in the city, and Aang occupied with keeping Momo out of trouble. Iroh’s talent on the Tsungi horn is decidedly more remarkable than Sokka’s artistic capabilities, but there’s admittedly fun to be had in everyone’s teasing complaints about his rendition of their evening together, even if Mai thinks his depiction of her looks decidedly unfeminine and grumpy.

“It looks like your game has reached a stalemate,” Iroh comments not long after Suki and Mai return to their game.

“Yeah,” Suki admits after a considering moment. “I guess we’ll have to play again another night so that I can properly beat you.”

Mai rolls her eyes at the ribbing as Suki wanders off to heckle her boyfriend’s continued attempts at an artistic masterpiece. This seems to quickly devolve into instead recommending increasingly ridiculous ‘exciting’ details to his already less than true to life painting.

“Mind if we reset the board?” Iroh asks Mai.

“Of course, General Iroh,” she tells him, inclining her head at the now unoccupied seat across from her.

Taking his seat, he tells her, “Oh, just Iroh is fine.” With a twinkle in his eyes, he adds, “Though I suppose the way things are going, you might be calling me Uncle one day soon.”

Fighting down a blush, Mai murmurs, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Iroh opens with a White Lotus tile, a strategy Mai hasn’t seen before. After a moment's consideration she lays down a Rhododendron piece.

Iroh hums consideringly before laying down a Chrysanthemum piece. “From what Zuko and his friends have told me, you deserve congratulations for your part in the successful realization of the peace treaty.”

Still not recognizing Iroh’s strategy, Mai takes a moment before carefully playing a White Jade piece. “Aang and Zuko did most of the heavy lifting. A lot of work just to sign a fancy piece of paper.”

Iroh laughs genially, placing down another Chrysanthemum tile to flank the other side of his White Lotus. “I’ve always found politicking to be thankless work for small rewards. Though what you all have achieved in a handful of months is far more than I ever achieved in all of the years after I returned home.”

Mai remembers her mother once commenting under her breath that Iroh was a better General than a politician; Mai was too young and uninvolved when Iroh returned to court after his campaign against Ba Sing Se to be able to form her own impression of his capabilities.

“I guess it helps to have the Avatar backing you,” Mai comments lightly. “And even then, politics remains an exceptionally tiring affair.”

“Perhaps,” Iroh allows, “though both Zuko and Aang’s letters have left me under the impression that you have a subtle touch that has enabled them to overcome a great deal of the challenges created by Zuko’s councilors.”

Mai considers her next move for a few moments more before finally deciding on a Rose tile. “They probably give me more credit than I deserve; when all of this started I was mostly just trying to keep Zuko from getting himself… in trouble with the wrong people.”

Iroh adds a Jasmine piece to the board. With a sage nod, he says, “Keeping Zuko out of trouble is likely an even more challenging task than politicking. And so far, it seems you’ve done a remarkable job at that as well. It sounds like there have been at least two occasions since this summer when you’ve put yourself into harm's way to help keep him safe. I must offer you my sincerest gratitude for that.”

It turns out that being thanked for even the good deeds she’d fully intended is no less uncomfortable than being thanked for their unintended consequences. “The way Zuko tells it, it sounds like you had your hands full keeping him out of trouble long before I did,” she says, trying to redirect the flow of the conversation.

Iroh chuckles. “He certainly kept me busy, and there are more times than I can count where I did not succeed in keeping him safe.”

Mai thinks she’s starting to see the shape of Iroh’s strategy and cautiously plays a Knotweed tile. Iroh rapidly counters with another Jasmine piece, leaving Mai the choice of either sacrificing her Chrysanthemum or moving it out of harm's way but giving Iroh an opening to take her White Jade.

“Somehow I get the feeling I’m not going to win this game,” she observes before deciding to move her Chrysanthemum out of danger.

Iroh does indeed immediately take the opening she left to corner the White Jade piece. “Don’t sell yourself too short; it’s clear you have a fair amount of experience with the game.”

That doesn’t stop him from winning within the next ten minutes. In retrospect, Mai’s able to piece together some of the cleverness of his strategy, but she’s not sure she’d be able to recreate it.

“I guess I know who to write to if I want advice on Pai Sho strategy,” she says.

“You’re more than welcome to write me any time,” he tells her seriously. “I’m told I give decent advice on more than just Pai Sho, but I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

Mai’s not sure she knows Iroh well enough to feel entirely comfortable doing that even with his invitation, though she suspects it would be helpful to have someone trustworthy, experienced, and fully supportive of Zuko to pass ideas by. “Zuko is definitely very grateful for all the advice you’ve given him over the past few months.”

Iroh gives a small smile. “I’m very proud of everything he has achieved so far. And while I’m sorry that the current state of international politics means I can’t be at his side to help him, I’m very glad that he has friends like you and the young Avatar to support him in my absence.”

Mai is saved from having to formulate an appropriate response by Ty Lee and Kameyo’s return. As Kameyo spreads out a mooselion’s share of egg custard tarts, Ty Lee makes a beeline for Zuko.

Hands on her hips, she stands over him with a disappointed look while he sits with a cup of tea in hand and Momo purring on his lap.

“Uhh…” Zuko says.

“Why didn’t you tell us Aang and Katara were dating?” Ty Lee demands, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Katara and Aang are what?”

“Finally,” Toph grouses from her position lounging on the ground, “I was wondering how long it would take someone to notice them making out on the front porch.”

***

Mai begrudgingly watches the sun rise on their second to last day in Ba Sing Se, courtesy of Zuko’s proclivity for early rising. The pale yellows and pinks streaking the sky are admittedly beautiful and she should probably be doing her best to enjoy the early morning chill before they return to consistently hot and humid Fire Nation weather. But in this particular moment Mai is most appreciative of the warm tea she’s slowly nursing to help her become a bit more coherent as she struggles to fully wake up.

“You’re up early,” Ty Lee comments, wandering onto the front porch with her own steaming cup of tea.

“I blame Zuko entirely.”

Ty Lee hoists herself up onto the short wall to sit next to Mai. For a few moments they sip their tea and quietly watch the sunrise together.

“I’m going to miss you when we both go home,” Ty Lee tells her, setting her now empty teacup down next to her.

“This whole week has gone by too fast,” Mai says by way of agreement.

Ty Lee levels a stern look in her direction. “You have to promise to keep writing me. I don’t care if all of your letters are about how boring politics are; I’ll still appreciate every one of them.”

Mai smiles into her cup, still half full. “I had no intentions of stopping.”

“Good,” Ty Lee says decisively. “Even if you think it’s boring, I think it’s so interesting how much it sounds like things have changed in practically no time at all.”

“I’m obviously not doing a good job explaining it all if you think things are changing quickly. I feel like everything we’ve tried to get done has taken weeks of finagling and cajoling with Zuko’s ministers.”

“Oh no, it’s very clear that it’s taken a lot of hard, painstaking work for you guys to do what you’ve done so far,” Ty Lee assures her. “Although,” she says with a teasing smile, “You were certainly able to overturn the laws about same sex relationships easily enough.”

“That was the one easy thing after months of unnecessarily difficult things. And only because we got lucky with how those laws were implemented in the first place.” Mai takes a sip of her tea, watching the stray leaves swirling around in her cup for a moment before adding, “And even then, I think it will be a while before people’s opinions about that kind of thing really change.”

“Yeah, you mentioned some of the… unsavory gossip about Zuko that you overheard after he implemented those changes.” Idly kicking her feet, Ty Lee continues, “Just goes to show you how silly and self-involved all of the courtiers are. Any one able to see anything past their own navel should be able to see how smitten he is with you. Frankly, even people who can’t see have noticed; I overheard Toph teasing him about it the other day.”

“You’re making me blush,” Mai tells her, straight faced. Because turnabout is fair play, she says, “And Kameyo also seems pretty far gone on you. Even with her loud protestations that she has no need for any more pretty things, she’s still let you drag her into shopping trips no less than three times since we’ve been here.”

Ty Lee does blush, but hotly declares, “I’ve told her a million times, it’s not about being pretty, it’s about the fun of dressing up! It’s not my fault she could make literally anything look good on her!”

Mai rolls her eyes. “My point is, she does it to spend time with you, even though she says she hates it. It’s disgustingly sweet.”

“Oh, as if you aren’t the same way with Zuko.” At Mai’s questioning look, Ty Lee clarifies, “Playing politics even though you hate it, just because you care about him. And because you’re good at it too, I guess, but mostly because of him.”

Defensively, Mai says, “I’m learning to appreciate the moments when it actually helps us to achieve something meaningful!” Looking into her teacup, she mutters, “I guessed I have mixed feelings about it all.”

Perching her chin atop her fist, Ty Lee looks her in the eye and says, “Talk to me about it.”

“Ugh, of course you’re going to make me talk about my feelings.”

“Yep!” Ty Lee says cheerily.

“Fine.” Taking a moment to organize her thoughts, she finally says, “I just think Zuko and I are good at different things when it comes to politics. Zuko has his convictions, but even as I’m starting to share in those with him, my usefulness hinges on my ability to be subtle about it.” She takes a slow sip of her tea. “I’m just realizing this now that I’m talking about it, but maybe a part of me thought I’d be able to, I don’t know, be more forthright about my feelings after finally standing up to Azula. But Zuko’s court is full of people who aren’t half as good at manipulation as she was, but still trying their best nonetheless. And I guess I still think the best way to deal with that is to… not be open about my feelings.”

Managing to articulate all of this is both strangely clarifying and relieving. Not that she intends to admit that maybe there actually is something about the whole sharing your feelings thing.

Ty Lee hums consideringly. “Maybe pushing your emotions down and being strategic about who you show your feelings to is something you started doing to survive your parent’s expectations and Azula’s… Azula-iness. But now it’s something you’re good at that you can decide to use or not use whenever you need to.” Nudging Mai gently with her shoulder, she says, “For what it’s worth, I think you’ve already gotten a lot better at being open with the people you care about – I barely had to give you any encouragement at all to talk to me about it.”

Mai affects a full body shudder. “Well, now that you point it out, I’m utterly horrified,” she deadpans, “What am I becoming?”

“You’re ruining what could have been a perfectly heartwarming moment,” Ty Lee tells her. Her attempt at a stern expression quickly gives way to a fond smile. “Anyways, hurry up and finish your tea so we can go eat breakfast with everyone. I’m pretty sure I smell cassava cake – if we don’t hurry there won’t be any left for us!”

***

Mai settles in next to Zuko at the breakfast table. He absently adjusts so that there’s space for her, one of his hands coming to rest idly on her knee.

His friends are apparently already in the midst of a boisterous discussion.

“Oh! Oh!” Sokka gesticulates broadly; Suki mindlessly ducks to avoid his flailing hands. “Aang, you can finally teach me that dance you were telling me about!”

Aang, tucked in next to Katara, looks unimpressed. “You’re the one who said you didn’t want to dance when we –”

“I was providing needed adult supervision! It would have broken our cover!”

“Literally no one there was expecting adult supervision, Sokka,” Katara ribs. “And even if they were, the moustache was not nearly as convincing as you think it was.”

Mai looks at Zuko. “Do you ever find yourself having no idea what your friends are talking about?” she asks, sotto voice.

“Only all of the time,” Zuko says, sounding very beleaguered.

“Zuko,” Aang says, turning his attention to him, “your Uncle mentioned you’re not bad on the Tsungi horn. Maybe you could –”

“Uncle, why would you tell him that?”

Iroh looks entirely unrepentant.

“You wouldn’t have to play the whole time –” Aang continues.

“What is everyone talking about?” Ty Lee stage whispers to Kameyo.

“Uh, somehow we decided on having a little dance party tonight before everyone leaves tomorrow,” Kameyo replies, rubbing the back of her head. “I’ve been volunteered to play the shime-daiko and Mamiko’s going to be on the tonkori.”

“The rest of the Kyoshi warriors are coming tonight?” Ty Lee asks. At Kameyo’s confirming nod, Ty Lee gasps. “I’m so excited! This is going to be so fun!”

“Oh, Katara, speaking of instruments, I packed a qelutviaq,” Sokka tells his sister.

“Where did you even find the room for all the stuff you packed?”

As everyone continues to chatter around them, Mai murmurs to Zuko, “Somehow I don’t think you’re going to get out of playing the Tsungi horn.”

Zuko groans in dismay.

***

Zuko does indeed get roped into playing the Tsungi horn for a good part of the night. For all his grumbling, Mai thinks that Iroh wasn’t wrong to talk up his aptitude for the instrument. Somehow, the combination of Fire Nation, Southern Water Tribe, and Kyoshi Island instruments manages to sound quite nice together, too.

Mai takes a thoughtful sip of her tea, seated at one of the tables pushed to the side of the room so as to make room for a makeshift dance floor at the center of the tea shop. Momo purrs idly in her lap as she takes a moment to reflect on how surprisingly good Iroh’s tea is. She anticipated that as this vacation came towards its inevitable end she would mourn the abundance of time for relaxing and enjoying her friends' company. She’s realizing that she’s also going to dearly miss the broad variety of perfectly brewed teas available at all hours.

As the current song – something fast paced and vaguely reminiscent of festival music – transitions into something more sedate, Mai is joined by a breathless Katara. She all but collapses into the chair next to Mai, downing half a cup of water in one go.

Setting her cup down with a decisive clink, Katara turns to Mai, still breathing a bit hard, and says, “Aang sent me over here to convince you to stop sitting in the corner and go have some fun with everyone.”

“I’m having fun,” Mai protests. “The music is great, the tea is delicious. And,” gesturing at Momo, half asleep in her lap, “I’m busy watching the lemur. Which seems like a much less sweaty pastime than dancing.”

As if to prove her point, Katara pauses midway through wiping the perspiration from her forehead. With a laugh, Katara says, “The tea is pretty good. I’ll definitely miss it once we’re back home. And I’m surprised Sokka’s doing so well on the qelutviaq, he only just started practicing on it a few months ago.”

Mai looks across the room at Sokka in surprise. “I’d have thought he’d been playing for a lot longer than that – I’d kind of forgotten about it until now, but I think Zuko started learning the Tsungi horn as a kid.”

Katara shrugs with a smile. “Our tribe has been trying to bring back some of the traditions that we had started to lose, especially now that all of the men in the tribe who left to help with the war effort have returned.”

“Aang’s… mentioned that you guys have been busy with rebuilding efforts since the war ended,” Mai offers tentatively.

Katara nods. “It’s been a lot of hard work.” Looking out towards the dance floor at Aang, who’s demonstrating a bit of complex foot work for some of the Kyoshi warriors and giving corrections when they try it themselves, she says, “I love my family and my tribe, but it’s also been hard to be away from all the friends we’ve made in the past year for so long. And it’s hard watching some things get better but knowing that other things will never go back to the way they were before the war.” Idly playing with some of the condensation on her cup, she goes on, “It’s been great having help from some of the people from the Northern Water Tribe, but for as much as we think of each other as sister tribes, our cultures are very different.”

Mai thinks of Auntie Alamea telling her about the logic behind Azulon’s 50-year long campaign against the Southern Water Tribe. Of Sonisay asking in honest confusion whether the water tribes were centrally governed. She watches Aang show Ty Lee a modified version of a classic Air Nomad dance – from what she can overhear of his eager instructions, it has to be modified because the original version necessitates a mastery of basic airbending.

Scratching Momo’s head meditatively, Mai says, “It’s sad to think that no matter how hard we work, some of the scars created by my nation’s war are just… irreparable.”

“That’s not a reason to stop trying,” Katara comments sharply.

“No, it’s not,” Mai agrees. Before she talks herself out of it, she says, “At the peace talks, your dad mentioned that it might be okay for me to visit the Southern Water Tribe.”

“He didn’t mention that,” Katara says, raising a vaguely skeptical eyebrow. She hastens to add, “Not that I don’t believe you – but with how fresh everything is, I’m inclined to think it might be better to wait a bit longer before having any Fire Nation ships visiting.”

“That’s… fair,” Mai allows. With just a hint of a teasing tone she says, “Though, I could always come down with Aang on Appa.”

Katara blushes obviously despite her darker complexion. “I guess that wouldn’t be an awful idea…”

“Anyways. I guess I wouldn’t technically have to visit for what I’m thinking about suggesting.”

“And that is?”

“Aang was able to teach me – and Zuko – a lot about his culture, and we tried to work a lot of that into the new, less, well, propaganda-laden curriculum for the schools.”

Katara’s eyes widen with understanding. “You’re hoping to add stuff about the Southern Water Tribe to that too.”

“I think… it’s important for future generations to understand how much was damaged or destroyed because of the war – and to appreciate that the world is so much bigger than just the Fire Nation.”

Katara considers this for a moment. “I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” she finally says. “Though I think it might be frustrating to write it all down and realize just how much – how much is just gone forever.” Staring off into the middle distance, she says absently, “During our travels, we came across a spirit library. Sokka and I have talked about how we wish we’d looked for more stuff about our tribe while we were there…”

“Spirit library?”

“Yeah, his name was Wan Shi Tong and he was some sort of… owl thing? He had fox spirits that would go all around the world to collect up pieces of knowledge for him. Anyways, Sokka – well all of us, but mostly Sokka – made him mad, so he buried his library and tried to kill us.”

Mai processes this for a moment. “I should really just stop assuming I’m ever going to stop being surprised by all the things Zuko and Aang got up to during the war, shouldn’t I?”

Katara laughs. “You know,” she says slyly after a moment, “if you really wanted to learn about the Southern Water Tribe, I could teach always you one of our dances…”

“I walked right into that, didn’t I?” Mai sighs. “Fine. But I take no responsibility if Momo is not happy about this turn of events.”

Momo could care less as Mai transfers him from her lap to an empty chair. Mai chooses not to feel deeply betrayed by his utter indifference.

Katara whispers something to her brother, who turns and gives instructions to the rest of the musicians. Then she pulls Mai out into the center of the dance floor.

“I’m still learning a lot of the dances myself,” Katara admits, “And traditionally this would just be done with drums and singing, but I can still teach you some of the basics.”

Mai’s pretty sure she doesn’t match the grace of the arm movements that Katara shows her. Aang – who is visibly pleased that Mai has finally joined them but thankfully doesn’t say anything – seems to pick up on whatever the secret is to making all of the pieces of the dance flow together nicely without any problems.

“I feel like I’m butchering this,” Mai tells Katara dourly.

“Honestly, that’s how I feel whenever I compare myself to the members of the tribe who have been doing these dances for longer than I’ve been alive,” Katara admits.

“Oh,” Aang says, “I know a really easy dance we can all do together!”

“We don’t have to –” Mai starts, feeling the opportunity to go back to sitting and enjoying the music in peace slip away.

“No, it’ll be fun!” Aang calls over his shoulder, already halfway across the floor, giving instructions for something upbeat with steady percussion and organizing everyone not occupied with an instrument into a big circle around the periphery of the room.

Mai finds herself holding hands with Ty Lee and Suki, both of whom take entirely too much amusement in Mai’s sour expression. Aang starts to lead everyone through what is admittedly a straightforward dance that mostly just involves hand swinging and kicking to the beat of the music as the whole group slowly spins around the room.

Aang slowly ups the complexity of the movements, but never to the point where Mai feels like she can’t keep up.

Her heart beats faster, the whole group whirling around the room faster and faster in time with the music. On one of the passes around the room, Mai makes eye contact with Zuko, still providing accompaniment on the Tsungi horn. After a few moments of struggling in vain to keep any of her mirth off her face, she bursts out laughing.

“Yeah, the utterly smitten look is extra ridiculous with his cheeks all puffed out like a chipmunk meerkat,” Ty Lee says with a giggle of her own.

Suki must overhear, because she starts laughing too. None of this helps at all in getting Mai’s laughter to subside.

“We have to stop,” she tells them breathlessly, feeling giddy as they continue to rotate around the room, moving in time with Kameyo’s steady beat on the shime-daiko. “I can’t give Aang the satisfaction of knowing I’m actually having fun.”

“Oh, honey,” Suki says, “I think that ship has already sailed.”

Mai glances across the dance circle, and sure enough Aang is giving her a smile bright enough to rival the midday sun.

“He’s going to be insufferable,” she tells Ty Lee and Suki. “Do you know how long it took me to even get around to reading his proposal for a dance curriculum in the first place?”

“Stop complaining about paperwork and just enjoy yourself for once, Mai!” Ty Lee scolds.

Suki starts laughing again at this. Mai holds out for as long as she can, but the joy is unfairly infectious. She lets herself be pulled along in its wake, her friends carrying her along as she helplessly tumbles head over heels into it.

***

Mai’s pretty sure having fun dancing one time shouldn’t make her qualified to help Aang travel around the Fire Nation to start implementing his vision for dance lessons in every school across the country, but here she is.

Admittedly, her role in this has almost nothing to do with that and everything to do with her ability to translate Aang’s enthusiasm into something that sounds practical enough for traditionalist administrators to accept.

They’re on the eighth of these such trips. Zuko’s scuffle with the Finance Council luckily seems to have deterred any who might think Aang leaving the capital could provide an opportunity for a regime change. Well, that, and the diminutive earthbender who had accompanied them back to the Caldera after the treaty signing, declaring that she was sick of Earth Kingdom politics and thought it was long since past time that she kicked some sense into Zuko’s government. Mai’s not sure how successful Toph will be in the long term, but she can't help but be hopeful after seeing how aptly she was able to maneuver the various politicians of the Earth Kingdom into actually being helpful.

As she and Aang slide off of Appa, having just landed before the entrance to the courtyard surrounding the school that will next have the pleasure of hosting the Avatar, Mai takes a moment to brace herself.

“Ready for this?” she asks Aang wryly.

“I have a good feeling about this one,” Aang tells her with a bright smile as he pats Appa goodbye.

At all of the schools they’ve been to so far, the softly spoken but excited chatter of uniformed school children has been a near ubiquitous feature of every trip. It would seem Aang – clad in the traditional yellows and oranges of Air Nomad regalia and head immaculately shaved to proudly display his arrows – is something of a novelty amidst the otherwise dry routine of history lessons and mathematics review. Mai finds it tiresome, and to her great dismay, this school proves to be no exception to the pattern.

Mai is so inured to it at this point, that she doesn’t think anything of it until they’re halfway across the courtyard and she happens to catch a few snippets of fraught whispering.

“Is that… Kuzon –?”

“No, that’s crazy.”

Mai’s initially not sure she’s actually heard correctly, but the refrain – is that Kuzon? – repeats. Mai squints suspiciously at Aang.

Before she can say anything, Aang has already turned around and is waving sheepishly at a gaggle of school children.

“Hey, Shoji. Hey, Onji. Sorry, I don’t remember anyone else’s name. It’s been a busy couple of months. So, uh, my name’s actually Aang.”

“No way!” One of the kids in the crowd whisper-shouts, and then twenty kids are talking all at once, Aang awkwardly trying to field their barrage of questions.

Mai watches the scene unfolding in front of her utterly bemused, in something that starts to approach horror the longer it goes on. Not that any of it shows on her face.

“I’m so sorry we had to leave in such a rush! We had a ton of fun dancing with you guys, though! Oh geez, how much trouble were you in with the headmaster?”

Details from a half-forgotten conversation from several months earlier slowly filter up to the forefront of Mai’s mind. Something about secret dance parties… stolen school uniforms…

“Oh, the tattoos aren’t new. Yeah, I usually shave my head, but when I had hair the belt was really great for hiding my arrows! You know, to stay undercover.”

Oh, no.

“So, it’s kind of complicated. This is my friend, Mai,” Aang gestures vaguely in her direction, “She can probably do a better job of explaining it than I can!”

Mai is saved from being so blatantly thrown under this stampeding komodo rhino of a conversational turn by a passing teacher – a stern looking, middle aged woman. She efficiently shoos the crowd of children away, quelling their grumbles with a sharp look, before addressing Mai and Aang.

“The headmaster has been expecting both of you,” she says shortly, bowing to each of them in turn, “Lady Mai. Avatar Aang.”

She whisks them away from the school yard, leading them inside the building. As they cross the threshold, Mai can just make out a bamboozled, “Wait, did she just say Avatar –” cut off by another kid saying, “Spirits, have you not been paying any attention to the news coming from the capital in the last four months?”

“Aang,” she says in a measured, carefully quiet voice as they make their way to the headmaster’s office. “Would you consider possibly explaining what… all of that was out there?”

Aang chuckles, rubbing the back of his head as he glances sideways at her. “I mean, I did try to tell you when I asked you to look over the first version of my proposal…”

“That was months ago.” Mai wishes her glares seemed to have any sort of impact on him. His face affects innocence too well. “You,” Mai intones, “are the worst.”

Aang’s answering grin is entirely too wide.

“Well, Mai,” he says airily, “you did say you didn’t want to know.”