31_days | [SEPT 20] [AVATAR] FOUR BRIGHT GIRLS

Title: Four Bright Girls
Day/Theme: September 20 : ‘almost gold, almost amber, almost light’
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Character/Pairing: Mai/girl!Zuko
Rating/Warnings: T
A/N: an attempt at genderswap.

The princess yanks her hair back in front of the mirror, fingers sticking in its soft snarls. She has been sparring with her sister, in the tight, angry hours after the war meeting; it came undone.

“Well?” she asks, “aren’t you going to help me out here?”

Mai, leaning beside the window, sighs. Smiles a little, fondly, as if alone.

“You must be used to it by now,” she says. “Calm down. You went to the meeting, after all.”

Zuko lets her hair fall back, its touch against her ears still a small surprise.

“I don’t care about losing to Azula,” she says. She barks a laugh. “Like you say. It’s not that.”

She breathes out slowly, the sick centre she has carried since the war meeting, through the fight, flickering down, a lantern light at the pit of her stomach.

She trails her fingertips over Mai’s hairbrush, her long pins, the curves of the carvings on her dark wood comb. It is so wonderful, to sit and comb Mai’s hair. She had done it at Ember Island, when it was salty and warm from the beach, before she had been such a fool with those boys.

Such a fool, things would have been arranged for her in any case, it is not as if she needed to practice, to prove anything. Cut off your nose to spite your face, Azula would say. And Mai had been so angry, even though Ty Lee wasn’t at all with Azula, not that you could see.

Mai had been angry so often, after she got back. Or impatient, that was a better word. Waiting for her to catch up.

Like the Avatar, in a different kind of way.

But before that, before now, for a little time, it had been so easy to think things were back the way they should be but better, even, in some ways. A different kind of way. Four bright girls on the beach, taking whatever they wanted.

Of course, that doesn’t matter now. The important thing is that Azula was bright and vicious in the war meeting, in the fight, because she is still sure that Zuko is trying to be the perfect princess. She had been, earlier today. It seems so long ago, further back than the beach.
Azula had laughed, when she won, this afternoon; usually she would only smile and bow.

Zuko ducks her head, looks sideways through her falling hair, her bad eye. Mai is a tall dark stroke against the wall, her arms folded.

“I should go,” Zuko says.

She should not even have come. The eclipse is tomorrow, and she has made her decision.

She stares across at the mirror, hand wet and hot round the comb.

Mai lays her hand on hers. She moves like that, suddenly where she needs to be.

“Talk to me, Zuko,” she says.

She lifts Zuko’s hand, has it move the comb through her hair, clipping her ear, a little clumsy.

“Ow,” says Zuko. She turns to give the comb properly to Mai, and finds her lips, pale and precise and sure. Always where she needs to be, her mouth a private account of green tea, fire flakes, solid and usual things made secret and delicious.

Mai moves back, keeps a hand on Zuko’s shoulder as she tugs the comb through her hair. Even after more than a decade of friendship with Ty Lee she is still a little rough.

“Ok, ok,” says Zuko. She gives her head a shake.

Mai tosses the comb away, puts a finger to the curve of Zuko’s jaw. Her breath is on Zuko’s face. But Zuko, this time, does not look up.

She knows what is available for Mai. There is a certain amount of status. A traditional costume. There is a set of apartments, too, under the rooms for widows in the southern wing.

Mai knows all these things, as well.

Zuko has tried again and again to think what else she can offer.

Outside the window, the clouds roll in and over, nothing changing under them but the light.

She wonders if her presence, perhaps, might do. Mai has so often surprised her before, it almost does not seem too much to hope for. Just to stay, to close the door behind them and the screens around the bed. To learn properly the way Mai fastens her knives, sharp on her thighs, the knots and toggles of her spine, her half-grey eyes half open to the little flame, golden in the dark.

But of course Azula had laughed in the war meeting. And Uncle had brushed her hair in Ba Sing Se.

She had dreamt, when she was sick, of it growing out over the city, as long as her mother’s, a dry crackling sheet.

She had planned to leave Mai a letter. But perhaps an explanation is a better offering.

She squares her shoulders and begins to talk.

She explains about the villagers in the Earth Kingdom, spitting and throwing stones, about the recruitment levies in the colonies and her dead crew under the sea at the North Pole and, even though Mai has heard this part before, about angry little Jet. About Uncle and the balance and how she has got it so terribly, horribly wrong, about her father this morning walking out across the map, driving his shadow before him. About what it was like serving tea.

She feels, on the whole, she was quite eloquent.

“Have you finished?” Mai asks, her face entirely still. Zuko nods, looks carefully across. She is lighter than Mai, she knows. If it comes to it she could reach the window first, perhaps make for the roof. After that she’d have to see. She had wanted to tell her father some things, before she left.

Mai pauses, her hands in her sleeves.

“I know perfectly well about the Earth Kingdom,” she says. “I can’t recall our travels through it giving any very compelling reason to preserve it in its current state.”

“Our?” Zuko says, before she can stop herself. She flushes, shuts her mouth up. She takes a deep breath, settles into her stance, her eyes on Mai’s shoulders; the movement will come from there first. She marshals her arguments. Love and peace.

“From what you say, that Waterbender girl will be wanting to kill you,” says Mai.

“What?” says Zuko. She frowns. “Of course she has a right to be angry! But I’m going to explain. I’m going to apologise. I’m going to tell them things don’t have to be like this any more!”

She raises her lopsided eyes, hot and yellow in the afternoon light, to Mai’s face.

“They shouldn’t be this way!”

Mai looks back, her gaze level.

“You’re going to need someone to watch your back,” she says.

She does not show her hands.