Chapter 1
Notes:
firstly, my other maizula fic is going to be updated before march ends. i promise. secondly, you would not believe how much research i did for this fic. on japanese law, figure skating, and japan in general. and so much of that research was just for background info that didn't even come up in my outline. thirdly, here’s the soundtrack for this fic. fourthly, expect this to update semi-frequently since the chapters are going to be fairly long and i’m trying to prioritize the other maizula fic i’m working on. fifthly, i'm unsure about this since i'm much better at writing from azula's perspective, but hopefully, it's fine. finally, this fic deals heavily with the triggers in the tags as well as the ones in the end notes.
our cover here is courtesy of the incredibly talented artist memopmiff!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Once an animal gets mean, Ama liked to say, there's no way to make it good again. You kill what can't be saved. All of her murders began as mercies.”
― K-Ming Chang, Bestiary
Mai's nails bit into her palms as she took down notes for the first class of her university experience. Her mom used to tell her that if she didn't practice her calligraphy, she would never make a good wife. Michi also used to tell Mai that if she didn't eat every grain of rice put before her, she'd never be a wife at all. Mai had given up on being a wife one day at this point, and she did not bother with notes taken in a calligraphy style, nor did she bother to eat every grain of rice put before her.
Michi had given up on Mai becoming a wife too.
“Who would want her?” Mai had heard her mom demand the night the investigation had been called off. “Who would ever marry that—that girl? Who will ever clear our family name of her dishonor?”
Mai didn't blame her. Not really. Not entirely. Not when she really had bled their family's honor dry.
She considered herself lucky that Ochanomizu University had still taken her after the whole affair had been stamped out like the first ember of a forest fire. Of course, there was no official reason they could rescind her admission. Her name had never come forth in reports save for as Tsutomu's owner and rider since she was still a minor. There was only the public's opinion formulated off of the way her dad had taken care of things, and that was a quiet thing, no matter how bitter the whispers got.
The whispers were, for now at least, just that. Cruel and bitten to the bone but whispers nonetheless.
So Mai lived in her dorm, and she went to her classes, and she made no friends. The girls that addressed her called her Nakatomi-san, and she returned their civility as if nothing had ever happened. As if nothing would ever happen again. All she had to do was keep her head down and she could work a respectable career. Even if she never found a man who would make her his wife, Mai could live with that.
Except that she might never feel anything other than this god-awful numbness again.
It took a full month of school for her childhood friend, Ty Lee, to convince Mai to go shopping in Shibuya-ku with her, but, in the end, Mai agreed to go. She almost always did. She knew that something as frivolous as shopping with Ty Lee wouldn't inspire much feeling within her, but neither would hurting Ty Lee by rejecting her invitation.
So Mai stood on the train, hip to hip with Ty Lee, and she listened to the younger girl talk about how her third year of high school was going so far and how two boys had already confessed to her. Vaguely, Mai wondered what it was like for Ty Lee now. If she believed that Mai had had nothing to do with Tsutomu's death. If her life was really still as normal as it seemed when so many people knew that Mai was her best friend.
“I turned him down, of course,” Ty Lee said. “I mean, we're in the same class, but we barely know each other. I don't think he's a reliable guy, anyway. He's always late to class, and he doesn't seem like he'd be very serious about a relationship. His aura's green, too. I can't date a guy like that.”
“That won't do,” Mai said flatly. “Boys should only confess to you if they're willing to die for you and they have bright pink auras.”
Ty Lee giggled, but her eyes lit up at the idea. Privately, Mai thought she would be a dangerous girl to love. She wanted devotion, and she'd take it however you gave it to her.
The train came to a halt, and Mai and Ty Lee exited together. They made their way through the station and to Shibuya Hikarie, Ty Lee's favorite mall. Their first stop, as always, was a boba tea shop where Ty Lee inhaled her drink before Mai had even opened her straw.
Their next stop was a photo booth. Ty Lee ducked into one and pulled Mai in after her by the wrist. Mai sat through each flash unsmilingly as Ty Lee changed poses for each photo, and neither of them commented on the other's condition. It was normal to them after all these years. Mai felt nothing, and Ty Lee felt more than enough for the two of them.
Sometimes, in their shared childhood, Mai had almost hated her for it.
“Oh, we look so cute!” Ty Lee said as she collected their photo strip.
“I'm almost smiling in this one,” Mai joked.
“You have such a pretty not-smile, but hold this, 'cause I've really gotta pee.” Ty Lee thrust the strip into Mai's hands and bolted.
Mai sighed. “She's got to stop drinking so much boba tea.” She took a closer look at the photo strip in her hands. Ty Lee looked happy and full of life in each photo while Mai herself looked as numb as she felt. She had the sudden urge to burn the photos. Tearing her eyes away from them, she felt her breath catch in her throat.
Walking alone through the shopping mall was a girl Mai wished she would never see in the flesh again, but there she was anyway. Unwanted and uninvited.
Mai hadn't seen Minamoto Azula outside of the news or a Gakushūin corridor since she was fifteen, and the sight of the younger girl at the eye of a storm three years later sent her stomach plummeting. She should have run—fast. She should have gotten the hell away from Azula right now, but she couldn't. Her feet wouldn't move, and Azula was smiling that awful smile that always meant something more twisted than it appeared on her pretty face, and there was no way out now that Azula had seen her.
Azula quickly made her way over. “Mai,” she said as though nothing had changed at all. As though she still deserved to wrap her mouth around Mai's given name after all the damage she had done. “It's good to see you.” There was affection in her throat and malice between her sharpened teeth.
“Is it?” Mai said dryly. She was not afraid of Azula. Even when they were children and Azula would push Ty Lee down for doing a cartwheel better than her and set fire to her Kikipop dolls for offending her through their existence, Mai had never really been afraid of Azula. That had been the problem when they still called themselves friends. “Haven't you heard the rumors? I wouldn't be good press for you right now. Especially not with the Olympics next year.”
Golden eyes flashed dangerously for just a moment. “I heard you used a ¥60,000 kitchen knife to put poor old Tsutomu out of his misery, but that can't be right. The Mai I know would never be brave enough to do something so decisive.”
When she was fifteen, Mai had never known if she should kiss or kill Azula. Now, she thought she finally had her answer.
“I take it you're here with Hata?” Azula was eyeing her perfect manicure with disinterest. It looked disturbingly unpracticed.
Even now, Mai knew her well enough to know it was feigned, but she still blinked at the use of Ty Lee's family name. “Yes.” The answer came quickly. Mai had no desire to lose whatever upper hand she might have left with Azula.
“Cute,” Azula said, gesturing to the photo strip. “She always was dragging us into photo booths, I suppose.”
The photo strips that contained Azula, smiling and in the middle of them, were long gone at this point. At the end of their friendship with Azula, Mai had helped Ty Lee dispose of each of them as the tender-hearted girl had sniffled, her cheeks damp and her mascara smudged.
“I guess.” Mai shrugged.
“You used to have a lot more bite.” Azula hummed. “I miss it.”
It was strange to think of Azula missing anything. She had never been the type for sentimentality. Even her bedroom, as Mai remembered it, lacked anything to make it look lived in. To make it look as though Azula was loved or loved anyone. Then again, it was entirely possible Azula loved no one and had never been loved in her life, regardless of how Mai and Ty Lee had felt about her when they had been friends. It wasn't as if Azula's childhood had fostered a notion of love, to begin with. Not the way Ty Lee's and even Mai's had.
“You used to give me a reason to bite,” Mai said finally.
Azula took that, and she smiled for it. It looked beautiful on her; Mai hated it.
“Oh… hey, um—” Ty Lee said awkwardly.
“Hello, Hata.” Azula smiled. It looked pointedly polite.
“Hi, Minamoto.” Ty Lee smiled as naturally as she could. “It's, uh, nice to see you.”
Azula laughed short and sharp. “You don't have to lie. But if you're going to, we should catch up properly sometime since I'm not busy with figure skating right now and Mai's yabusame career is over.”
Mai didn't flinch, but Ty Lee did. Mai had once been a champion of yabusame tournaments, hitting bullseyes from Tsutomu's back with absolute precision. Now she had a dead horse and an untouched archery bow.
“Sounds great.” Mai could feel her shoulders tensing. She kept her voice blunt like a dulled knife. “We'll be sure to call you sometime.”
“Right,” Azula drawled, “well, I've got to go, but I like your whole gyaru thing, Hata. It's cute. Oh, and, Mai? My brother misses you. You should give him a call while you're at it. He's gotten much mopier since you two broke up.” With that final blow, Azula left. She didn't look back, and Mai didn't wish she would.
It was always better to be rid of Azula than it was to be in her presence.
Mai sighed. “That was terrible.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?” Ty Lee said.
Mai shook her head no. Never again would Mai want to give Azula the satisfaction of being discussed by the two of them. Not when she had finally burned out and into oblivion in their minds, as all suns must.
Except that Azula hadn't burned into oblivion. Not really. As long as she could pry emotions out of Mai like pearls from an oyster, Azula would never burn into oblivion in Mai's mind. Mai could never tell Ty Lee that, though. Ty Lee didn't understand what it was like to go through life feeling numb to anything other than boredom and mild amusement, even if she understood how addicting the agonizing lows and manic highs of Azula's attention were.
So Mai kept her mouth clamped shut, and she pretended not to think about Azula's cruelty for the rest of the day.
A week passed, and Mai did not call Azula. Neither did Ty Lee. Azula, for her part, didn't call Mai or Ty Lee either. Whether it was because she refused to give her attention without first getting theirs, or she had only been toying with them when she said they should catch up, Mai couldn't tell. The years of estrangement between them had only made reading Azula all the harder. Mai had no way of knowing if the awful girl was lying to her or what she really wanted anymore.
In her dorm room, Mai stared at her phone, and she wondered if she wanted to see its screen light up with Azula's number. If she would recognize it after all these years, after deleting Azula's contact information with no remorse.
She picked it up, letting the shape of it overtake her palm, and she considered what Azula had said. Zuko missed her. Did she miss him? He had been so angry at the end of their relationship, so jealous and moody. And he had hated that Mai was numb to the world. He had tried to rip forth feelings from her that they both knew only Azula could take from her. They were never going to work. It was a joke from the start to even try.
Still. Mai had loved Zuko once. Not just as a boyfriend but as a friend. It couldn't hurt to call him, and it wasn't like she had had a reason to delete his contact information the way she had with Azula.
Mai hit call, and she waited for three rings before he picked up. A good omen.
“Hello?” Zuko said. “Mai?”
“Hey, Zuko,” she said.
There was a rustling sound on his end of the call. “It's really you?”
“Yeah. I ran into your sister, and she said I should call you, so. Here I am.”
She could practically hear Zuko frown at the mention of his sister. Azula and Zuko hadn't gotten along in at least a decade the last time Mai had been close with the two of them, and she could barely remember them as anything even close to resembling the kind of sibling relationship you saw in pop culture. Azula was wretched at heart, and Zuko had always been too soft-hearted to survive her cruelty unscathed. Especially not when their father who had molded her in his image so encouraged them to be at odds. They had never been a family. Not in the traditional sense.
“Azula told you to call me?” He sounded skeptical. Mai couldn't blame him; Azula never did anything out of the goodness of her heart. Her whole heart had rotted when she was but a child.
“I think she brought it up to upset me. But enough about her. How are you?”
“I'm okay! I'm going to Keio University,” he said brightly. “I really like it there. I made some friends—they're international students, Sokka and Suki. Sokka's Inuit-Canadian, and he's really funny; he's always making everyone laugh, and Suki's Korean, and she's the toughest girl I've ever met.” As a boy, he had always struggled to make his own friends, and he had been encouraged by his mom to hang around Azula's friends as a result. It was nice to think he was coming into his own now that he was in university.
“That's great, Zuko.” Her cheeks pinched from the effort of smiling to make her words sound livelier. “Are you still doing kendō?”
“Yeah! I did pretty well at the All Japan Kendō Championship last year.” There was something off to his voice now. He was straining himself to sound happy still.
Mai knew the weight of her next question, but it slipped forth from her mouth anyway. “Did your father not come to support you?”
Zuko was silent for a long moment before he forced laughter. “Don't be ridiculous, Mai. I was competing at a national level. Of course, he came to support me.” Zuko was never a good liar, and he had never had a good relationship with his father, Ozai. Ozai had been the prime minister since Azula was eight and Zuko was ten, but he had been a horrible father as far back as Mai could remember.
She could say that knew he was lying. She could say that she knew Ozai was more monster than man. She could say that it wasn't his fault his father was so brutal. “I'm happy for you then,” she said instead.
“Thank you.” Zuko sounded stiff as a board.
“So why did you answer?” Mai said to spare his pride. “I mean, it's been three years, and it's not like you wouldn't have heard about what happened with Tsutomu.”
“I answered because I know you, Mai,” he said earnestly. Desperately. “You wouldn't do something awful like that. I don't know who would, but I know it wasn't you.”
Mai's nails bit into her palms, and she counted to three. “That means a lot, Zuko. I have to go. Okaa-san's cooking dinner and she wants me to set the table,” she said. It was a lie. Even if she hadn't been in her dorm, it was only six, and her family always ate at seven.
Zuko knew that, but he didn't say anything other than goodbye.
Mai went to her childhood home for dinner with her family, and she did not know if she should apologize for disturbing her parents and brother or announce her arrival home as she took her shoes off. In the end, she apologized. Michi seemed to approve, at least. Her dad, Ukano, was too distracted to notice Mai had even arrived yet, and her little brother was only five. All he thought was that he was happy to see her again.
“Onee-chan!” He tumbled forward to hug her.
“Hi, Tom-Tom,” she said, returning his embrace. Mai had never been one for physical affection, but she would always make an exception for Tom-Tom. “I've got to help Okaa-san make dinner, but I promise we can color together after we eat.”
“Okay.” But he didn't budge from his hold on her.
“Tom-Tom, let your big sister come help me,” Michi said firmly.
He pouted but relented. “Okay, Kaa-chan.”
Michi didn't speak to Mai as they cooked together. She didn't even look at her daughter, really. Mai wasn't sure if it was worse this way or not. She just wanted dinner to be over so she could spend time with her little brother. He didn't know yet what had happened to Tsutomu, so he still loved her.
She couldn't say the same about either of her parents.
The difference between her dad and mom, however, was that Michi knew she didn't love her daughter. Ukano just blinked in surprise when he sat down to eat and saw her as if nothing had changed other than where Mai lived. “I didn't hear you come in,” he said.
“Otō-san, it's good to see you.”
He nodded, but he didn't comment any further.
“Itadakimasu,” they said together.
Mai ate her chicken cutlet curry quietly, listening to her parents ask her brother about his day. She hadn't expected them to ask her about her life anyway. It wasn't something they would find pleasant to hear about right now. They knew what a disappointment of a daughter she was. Tom-Tom, however, was another story.
“Onee-chan, what about you?” His eyes were wide and gleaming. “Is university exciting? Have you made new friends?”
Michi and Ukano both paled.
Mai's knuckles whitened, but she smiled anyway, and she lied, “Of course, I have, Tom-Tom. Tons of them. University is everything I hoped it'd be, and the girls are all really nice.”
“That's lovely, Mai. I'm glad you're doing so well,” Michi said, her voice strained and her eyes sharpened to a point. She knew her daughter was a liar, and she hated her for it.
Mai wondered if she should care about that, but she had given up on her mother's approval the minute Tom-Tom had been born. He was the son Michi had always wanted, and she was the daughter Michi had always resented. Now, Michi was just free to express that contempt because Mai had finally proven her right: her daughter was a sociopath.
“Yes, that's great.” Ukano nodded along dully. He never could recognize that his wife hated his daughter.
That was fine with Mai. She didn't need him trying to intervene. It would only make things worse.
Mai could remember Azula in childhood, tugging her along to hide behind corners so as to catch every word their parents spoke about them in secrecy. Mai could remember Azula's face the day her mother whispered that there was something wrong with her daughter. Azula had smiled, thin-lipped and awful with glaring teeth, and she had said that her mother was right, but her eyes had been so impossibly bright.
Mai had once thought she would never want to hear her mother say something like that, but she stood behind her parents' bedroom door anyway, waiting and listening. If Michi thought she was a sociopath, Mai wanted to hear her say it. She wondered if this had been how Azula felt, but she didn't dare linger on it as Michi's hushed voice cut through the air.
“It would be easier if she would just… just stop sitting there like nothing is wrong,” Michi hissed.
“I know,” Ukano said, but he didn't.
Michi sighed. “Do you?” she asked her husband. “Because you're just as bad as she is. The two of you act as though everything is fine just because you stopped the investigation before she could be indicted. You put your career at risk—you put us at risk for her.”
“I don't know what you want from me.” It was a concession of defeat.
“I don't want anything from you.” Michi's words were as sharp as Mai's favorite razor blade. “I just wish that Mai would—I wish she would commit seppuku. Something so I know she's not completely heartless.”
There was silence a moment as Mai considered her mother's request. An honor suicide; slicing herself open as Tsutomu had been. That's what Michi wanted from her. Mai almost wanted to laugh, but she couldn't find the humor in her throat as she listened to her parents' stunned silence. She had never expected her mother to admit how much she wished her dead.
“You don't mean that.” Ukano didn't sound very sure of his words. “That's—you love her. You do.”
Mai imagined her mother shaking her head in disagreement. “I meant it,” Michi said. A confession. “The Nakatomi name is ruined now thanks to our daughter slaughtering her horse, and you won't be re-elected governor at this rate. This is the only thing she could do to help restore our honor. I'm sure of it.”
It was the most honest Mai had heard her mother be in months. It was also the bluntest Michi had ever spoken about her daughter.
Mai almost couldn't believe Michi was brave enough to have said it.
She returned to her childhood bedroom, and she wondered why the confession hadn't wrenched anything out of her, why she couldn't feel anything other than numb at the revelation that her mother really did want her dead. Even Azula, the coldest person Mai had ever known, had been hurt by her mother saying she had come out all wrong, but Mai felt nothing as she lay on her shikibuton, and she hated herself for it. Michi was right. She was a sociopath.
She welcomed the weight of the razor stowed in her bag, and she dismantled it in silence.
Mai's phone lit up, a familiar number flashing across the screen. The message underneath Azula's phone number read: I heard Zuzu on the phone earlier. You should come over sometime. Okaa-san is upset I'm not socializing again. You know how hysterical she gets.
Mai stared at it, her mahogany eyes sharpening. She typed out a response. Leave me alone, you psychopath. She deleted it, and she sent nothing back instead.
In the privacy of a bathroom stall, Mai stared at Azula's message once more and ignored the coldness of the toilet bowl against her legs.
She considered what she could say now that it had been a day, and Azula had not messaged her again. She wondered if Azula had kept her number all these years, or if she had stolen it from Zuko like the mochi of their childhoods. She would put neither past the red-lipped girl; Azula was not sentimental, but she held grudges pressed to her ribs for lifetimes.
The bathroom door creaked open, and Mai caught the tail end of a conversation. “Is it true that one of our classmates killed a horse?” one girl said.
“Yeah, the governor's daughter did,” another said.
“Nakatomi-san?”
“Mhm.”
“No way! I have classes with that psychopath.”
Mai laughed. She couldn't help it. It ripped forth from her throat before she could even process what made it funny. In response, the girls both said something apologetic for disturbing whoever was in here, and they shuffled out quickly. Mai's hysterical laughter only increased, blossoming in the confines of the stall. She laid her forehead to the metal door, willing her stomach to stop aching from the effort.
If Azula was a psychopath, Mai was worse than that. Much worse. The people of Japan certainly thought so; Azula was adored by the nation, and Mai disgusted them all now. Azula was a gold medalist, and Mai was a horse killer. It didn't matter if Mai knew how cruel Azula was in private.
Once her laughter had subsided, and she was left alone with her reality, Mai typed out a new message. I could come over Sunday if you aren't busy.
She waited a long nine minutes for Azula's response, but it came. My weekend is open. You could come over whenever.
That was new. While Azula had always breezed through her school work, even at Gakushūin, her figure skating schedule was always a rigorous thing that demanded her full attention. Even during her off-season, Azula wouldn't attend cram school so she could train until she bled. She hadn't even stopped to let herself bleed in peace from what Mai remembered. Azula always pushed herself beyond the breaking point.
Azula was the kind of girl who had sacrificed her childhood on the altar of her prodigy, and Mai couldn't fathom why that would change for her on the precipice of her next winter Olympics.
Why aren't you busy with figure skating? she messaged Azula.
Three dots appeared for a long while before Azula finally sent her response. Otō-san said I was spending too much time training with Zhao. He's not letting me compete next year.
Mai blinked at the message. Of all the things she had expected Azula to say, this was not one of them. Ozai had been the driving force behind Azula's ambition for so much of her life, demanding nothing short of perfection from her the moment she took to the ice, and he had been so pleased with her three years earlier. Mai couldn't imagine him ever denying Azula the right to defend her gold medal.
I'm sorry. Mai wrote back because she didn't know what else she could say.
It's fine. Azula replied, but Mai could imagine her teeth grit tight and her eyes cold as death. I'll see you Sunday.
The week crawled by, and Mai felt knives in her stomach. She wondered if she should just comply with her mom's wishes and rip herself open, but every time the thought crossed her mind, she felt her fists close around nothing and her nails bite into her palms. The pain would have to be enough to get by on.
And it was. Mai survived until Sunday, and she made her way from her dorm to the Kantei for the first time since she stood on the wrong end of an ice skate blade as Azula glared at her with her nostrils flared, her eyes wild, and her teeth glaring. Mai suppressed the memory, and she knocked on the front door.
After a moment, Azula's mother, Ursa, appeared in its opening.
Ursa gasped. “Mai! It's so good to see you.”
“Hello, Minamoto-san.” Mai bowed politely.
Ursa shook her head. “Please, please. You can call me Oba-san.”
The thought of calling Azula's mother by something so familiar and kind made Mai's stomach curl, but she nodded and relented anyway as she had in her childhood. “All right, Oba-san.” It felt horribly plastic in her mouth like licking at Tupperware, and Mai almost grimaced despite herself.
“Are you here to see…?” Ursa trailed off. She was fidgeting with her hands as she ushered Mai inside to remove her shoes.
“Azula.” Mai was testing the weight of the wretched-hearted girl's name in the air. “She didn't tell you?”
“You know how she is. She never tells me anything,” Ursa said, and there was a bitterness to it. As if it were Azula's fault that there was so much distance between them now.
Mai knew Azula was deeply flawed with jagged edges cut to kill, but she had never been able to blame Azula for her fragmented relationship with her mother. Not when Mai had watched in uncomfortable silence as Azula sobbed almost violently about how the woman who birthed her only had love in her heart for her firstborn son.
“I'll go get her.” Ursa and Mai entered the living room. “Ozai, will you keep Mai company in the meanwhile?”
Mai almost flinched openly at the notion, but she steadied herself in time.
“Fine,” Ozai said.
“Thank you, Minamoto-san.” Mai bowed her head.
Ozai nodded at her as Ursa left the room. “How is your father?” he said. “I heard the horrible news about your horse, and I see his popularity is dwindling now.”
“He's as well as can be expected. He'll be all right if he's not re-elected.”
Ozai nodded. “He won't be, so that's good.”
Mai wanted to laugh. She wished Ozai would come outright and tell her she had ruined her father's chances at re-election, but she didn't know why she expected such mercy from him when she had heard him speak to his son, and he had only ever liked her for her family's status and her quiet subservience to her parents.
Instead of laughing, Mai said, calm and dry as ever, “Azula said she won't be competing in the Olympics again.”
For the first time, Ozai looked at Mai. There was something awful in his gaze; it was as if she was something he wanted to strangle. “Is she still whining about that? It's for her own good.”
“It was very stressful for her last time, Minamoto-san.” That was an understatement. Azula had been at her cruelest during her first Olympics. So cruel that she had lost the only friends she had ever known. “You're probably right to not let her compete, but I wonder how people will react.”
“They'll be upset, but they'll get over it. Tokugawa Chan is supposed to compete again next year. The lineup should make up for Azula's absence.”
It was bullshit if you asked Mai. Tokugawa Chan was beloved, sure, maybe even more so than Azula, but she was twice the skater he was, and she had been the youngest, male or female, to ever take home the gold for singles figure skating.
“Hopefully it will,” Mai said obediently.
“I'm fine, Okaa-san; leave me alone, you useless woman,” Azula's familiar voice snarled from the entrance if the room.
Ursa flinched away from fixing her daughter's ponytail, and she smiled reluctantly at Mai and Ozai.
“Hello, Mai.” Mai's name came out in a drawl, and Azula was not quite looking at her.
“Azula,” Ozai said. Somehow, it sounded haughty.
Azula's spine straightened out, and her gaze snapped forward. She looked more like the girl Mai remembered from childhood this way. “Good afternoon, Otō-san. I didn't realize you were here. My apologies.” In most of Mai's childhood memories, Azula called him Tō-san, but that was years ago. Azula was seventeen now, and she probably thought it was too childish to call him without the prefix.
Ozai nodded at her in acknowledgment and went back to his work.
“Come on, Mai. Let's go to my room,” Azula said, practically hissing as she latched onto Mai's wrist to tug her away. Mai would have followed without the physical prompting, but Azula was always one to be sure she'd get her way.
“Is Zuko home?” Mai said.
Azula smiled that plastic red-lipped smile of hers. “Didn't you come to see me?”
“You know I didn't.” Mai made it sound simple in her mouth as they rounded the corner.
“That hurts my feelings.”
Mai half-snorted. “You'll get over it. You always do.”
“We can't close the bedroom door. Otō-san doesn't like for me to hide things.” Azula sat down on her bed.
Her bedroom was still made up in the western style, but it was red-themed now, as Azula had wanted it to the dismay of her mother, and it was still clinically barren. There was little to no sign that Azula enjoyed anything at all other than her figure skating trophies and medals and the bookshelf filled with classical literature and books about politics and war. There was one strange book on the shelf, though. It looked horribly out of place with its English text and childish appearance.
“What's that?” Mai plucked the book off the shelf. The Giving Tree, the title read.
Azula tore it out of Mai's hands. “It's just an American children's book Okaa-san used to read to Zuzu and me when we were too stupid to know better.” She glared sharply. “It's about a foolish tree that gives everything to an ungrateful little boy.”
Mai blinked, and she decided that it wasn't worth prying into further. Anyway, she could vaguely recall Azula mentioning something like that to her when they were children. There was no point in starting a fight over a glimmer of a memory. If anything, it was a good thing that Azula was at least pretending to be something akin to normal by having a keepsake from her childhood.
“Are you excited to be a third-year?” Mai knew it was a stupid question, but she asked it anyway.
Azula tilted her head curiously and seemingly made up her mind to play along. “Not particularly. I'm still at the top of my class, and it never seems to get any more challenging.”
Mai disagreed. She had found her third year of high school to be a nightmare, but that had also been when Tsutomu had died, and her mom had started wishing she would commit seppuku, apparently.
“Is anything challenging for you these days?” Mai said.
Azula's golden eyes lit up. “There is one thing. I was working on landing a quad axle before Otō-san pulled me from training.” No one had ever landed a quad axel in all of figure skating history, but Azula was already landing every other kind of quad jump possible, and she had more than perfected the triple axle. If there was anyone who would land the quad axle, it was her. Mai hated to admit it, but it was true. Azula was every bit as good at figure skating as her ego implied.
“Were you close?” Mai thought she must have been, but she wanted to prod a bit.
“Very. Lo and Li were choreographing a routine that would let me unveil it at the Olympics, but…” There was a bitterness to her that was new somehow. It was not something that Azula had directed at her father before, at the very least. Mai almost wanted to hear more of it. “How about you?” Azula said instead of continuing.
“I'm going to Ochanomizu University. I haven't made any friends since everyone thinks I killed my horse, but I'm doing well in my classes. My mom wants me to commit seppuku, and my dad won't be re-elected because I've ruined our family name, but other than that, I'm perfectly fine.” It was a well-rehearsed answer.
Azula didn't give Mai an inch. “Sounds awful,” she said indifferently. “Maybe you shouldn't have killed Tsutomu.”
Mai laughed at that. “Maybe,” she said, and Azula smiled back at her. It was nice for a moment. Only a moment, though. Everything good that came out of Azula came at the cost of your suffering, whether it was imminent or lying in wait, it was sure to come. “Why did you invite me? We haven't spoken in three years, and the last time we did, you threatened to kill me.”
Azula smiled as earnestly as she could. It meant nothing to Mai; she had always dealt in lies and doublespeak. “Is it so wrong to want to catch up with an old friend?”
“... Whatever you say, Azula.” Mai's shoulders were still tense.
“Do you want to see Zuzu now?” Azula was saccharine like that.
Mai sighed. “Yes.”
Azula's smile stretched wider, crueler. “What a shame. He won't be back until dinner, but you're more than welcome to stay.”
Mai grit her teeth, and she obliged; Azula put on an old film on her laptop, and she sat straight-backed and open-palmed on her bed.
Zuko got home in time for dinner as Azula promised; he smiled when he saw Mai, and he forgot himself and hugged her too. Mai still hated hugs, and she barely tolerated them from Ty Lee, but she gave him this much.
“It's good to see you,” she said.
“You too, Mai,” he said breathlessly. “What are you doing here?”
“I invited her over. She always was my friend; not yours, Zuzu.” It was a giddy reminder, no matter how bored it sounded. “It's your turn to set the table, by the way.”
Zuko glared at her. “Azula. Fine. I'll set the table for Kaa-san.”
“I'll help you.” Mai left with him before Azula could protest. She waited until they had the cover of the dining room to speak again. “She never changes.”
Zuko almost snorted. “You have no idea. She's taking out not competing in the Olympics on me.” He finished setting his side of the table. “You're staying for dinner, right?”
She nodded as she finished setting her side of the table, and he smiled for it.
Dinner began with Azula reminding Ozai that Zuko was struggling with his classes, and it would only get worse from there.
“Your sister never struggles in her classes, and she's never had the luxury of cram school or tutors like you have,” Ozai said. “Maybe you should examine how she approaches education. She's always had a better work ethic than you.”
“You're right, Otō-san.” Zuko was gritting teeth. “Azula has always been better than me.”
Ozai chuckled. “Are you talking back to me, Zuko?”
“No, he would never,” Ursa said hurriedly.
Zuko gripped his chopsticks tighter, his knuckles turning a sickly white. “I'm sorry, Otō-san. I didn't mean to disrespect you.” Grains of rice were falling from his chopsticks, and Mai thought of Michi and weddings, and she wondered if boys who didn't finish every grain of rice before them were never going to be husbands as well, or if it was only girls who were cursed.
“It's not only me you've disrespected,” Ozai said, sounding vaguely annoyed. “It's your sister as well. Apologize to her, won't you?” He seemed as amused by Zuko's compliance as he was irritated by Zuko's insolence.
Azula smiled, smug and beautiful, and Mai wanted to hit her for it.
“I'm sorry, Azula,” Zuko mumbled.
“What was that, Zuzu?”
“I said I'm sorry!”
Ozai's eyes sharpened like knives at that. “No yelling at the dinner table, Zuko. You know that.” His demeanor was calm and poised, but his golden eyes were glinting dangerously. It was a reflection of Zuko's own face, but it was so much colder than Mai had ever seen Zuko. “Especially not in front of our guest.”
Mai felt herself shrinking. She didn't want to be witness to this. She didn't want to be part of this. She could sit there and listen to her mom berate her, and she could tolerate her dad watching silently and her brother smiling without knowing, but she could not sit there silently for Ozai's silky cruelties. She could not speak out to condemn them either.
Sit still, be quiet, Michi had told her over and over until it was embedded into Mai's essence. There was no part of her not conditioned for subservience to her superiors, and Ozai was her superior, whether she hated him or not.
“I'm sorry, Otō-san,” Zuko said. “My apologies to you as well, Mai. That was improper of me.” It didn't even sound like Zuko anymore. It sounded like the lines had been drilled into his head, a script to follow whenever he needed discipline.
Ursa took a deep breath. “Ozai, do you want some umeshu with your meal?”
He waved off her offer. “I can't drink tonight. I have a meeting in the morning. You know that, Ursa.”
“Right. It must have slipped my mind. My apologies.” She smiled flimsily.
Azula tsked at the sight. “You're getting more and more pathetic with age, Okaa-san.”
“Do not speak to your mother that way, Azula. It's disgraceful,” Ozai said.
Red lips curled upwards into a wide smile. It looked painful on her face. “I'm sorry,” she said, each word chewed to the bone. Mai got the distinct impression she was not apologizing to Ursa, but Ozai did not demand she amend her apology.
They ate in silence until Azula placed her chopsticks neatly in their holder and folded her hands in her lap. Her meal was not even halfway finished, but she made no move to hold her chopsticks again.
Ursa glanced at her, tentative and unsure. “Are you full?”
“Yes.”
“But you've barely touched your meal…”
“Believe it or not, Okaa-san, my stomach has shrunken from being on a meticulous diet for figure skating since I was four years old, and even though Otō-san decided to end my career at seventeen, that hasn't gone away, so, yes, I am full now.” Azula was harsh as ever, her teeth glaring each time they peeked out from between her lips.
Ursa flinched, and Zuko trembled. Ozai sat there in silence, his expression giving nothing away.
Mai broke their silence quietly. “Will your career really be over just because you don't compete this year?”
Azula smiled, and it was an awful, thin-lipped smile. “It was over the second Otō-san pulled me from training.”
Ozai sighed deeply. “Where do you get off being such a brat, Azula? Did I raise you wrong, or did your mother and I not discipline you well enough? I thought you were more mature than this.”
Azula's smile only tightened at his words. “I'm sorry, Otō-san.”
Really, Mai should never have agreed to have dinner with the Minamoto family as if it could ever go well. It was always going to end badly. She knew that from the start, and she was a fool for pretending not to.
Mai was about to leave when Azula half-embraced her, her hands on Mai's shoulders and the distance between them almost closing completely. She blinked in surprise for a moment; even at their closest, even when they had spent half their lives slow-dancing around intimacy, they had never been the touchy-feely type. Still, Mai returned the gesture, her hands finding Azula's waist.
“Don't be a stranger,” Azula said, and Mai wondered if it was an order or not.
“I'll text you.” She might have been lying. It was hard even for her to know.
Zuko shuffled. “I’'ll call you sometime, Mai. If you want to hang out, at least.”
Mai almost laughed at his insecurity, but Azula cut the moment short. “She'll never want to get back together with you if you can't even admit she killed Tsutomu,” she sing-songed
He laughed awkwardly at that. “You should stop lying, Azula. You're not a kid anymore; it's not funny. Anyway, who said anything about getting back together? I just want to be friends again.”
“Don't say I didn't warn you.”
Mai almost couldn't believe that this was the girl Michi would be so pleased with Mai reacquainting herself with. Especially not after how badly things had ended the last time the two of them were close. She could only imagine what kind of disaster awaited her if she texted Azula after this. Still, Mai went home miserable and told her mom dutifully who she had eaten dinner with.
She didn't know how much she would regret it yet.
Notes:
additional cws: implied/referenced animal cruelty, disordered eating
ok so since i want my hard work to be noticed i'm also gonna add in the kanji and/or kana i'm imagining being used for every character's name as they appear and in order of appearance
- Nakatomi Mai 中臣盟 medium, Omi - hereditary title; orig. one of the two highest such titles, later demoted to sixth-highest of eight / alliance
- Hata Ty Lee 秦対理 Qin dynasty / opposite, reason - Neo-Confucianist underlying principles of the cosmos
- Minamoto Azula 源あずら origin. Note: also read as Genji / meaningless name because it’s hiragana
- Minamoto Zuko 源頭孤 start, alone
- Nakatomi Tom-Tom 中臣東東 east wind tile - mahjong, starting tile
- Nakatomi Michi 中臣道 method
- Nakatomi Ukano 中臣有可脳 bhava - Buddhist concept of becoming, acceptable, brain
- Minamoto Ursa 源植う然 to plant/to grow, verb forming suffix - like that
- Minamoto Ozai 源尾財 tail (of a comet), fortunebonus: Tsutomu 務 worker
Chapter Text
Stay close to Azula this time, Mai. Minamoto-san might be able to help your father out.
Mai watched the message on her screen until it dimmed into blackness. With a sigh, she tapped the screen, letting it come to life again, and replied, I'll try. There was no point in resistance now that Michi knew. Azula alone was hardly a stoppable force; Azula with Michi's approval was going to take everything she wanted and leave Mai with nothing. Mai would let her with a blank face. The one rebellion she could allow herself was not to let Azula see her smile again.
Azula deserved nothing from Mai, and, though Mai could not guard her heart or head against the girl, she could guard this much. Her smiles were for Ty Lee and Tom-Tom and, once more, Zuko. She would accept Azula's presence in her life, but she would do so with her nails biting her palms and her teeth grit to dull the pain.
That didn't abate the curiosity at just what Azula had been doing these past three years. Azula was every bit as magnetic as Mai remembered. A movie and a dinner, unpleasant as could be, and Mai had already found herself wanting more. It was a vile fascination; it was a horrible addiction. She felt like the fifteen-year-old again, the one who had to find herself with a blade to her throat to leave Azula's side.
Cruelty upon cruelty, that was Azula, but her cruelty was overwhelming to Mai's senses. It was hard to remember what it felt like to not be around her, even in her absence, once you'd spent time with Azula. And with Azula's cruelty came the unrelenting reminder that Mai was alive.
Determined now, Mai opened up Instagram to scroll through Azula's. She wanted more of the younger girl. She wanted to know what she had missed in their years of estrangement. She wanted to see Azula. She was hopeless, chasing a memory she didn't even romanticize that had left her bleeding and miserable more times than she could count. It was a high Mai knew would leave her in a shape different from the one it found her in, but was that really so bad when Mai hated the shape of her life?
Azula was almost as beautiful lit up on the screen of Mai's phone as she was with that awful red-lipped wolf's smile in person, but Mai thought that photographs could never capture the light in Azula's eyes quite right. They would never catch anything as honest as Azula's awfulness, even when they caught her looking displeased or annoyed, and Azula would never post anything of the sort for the public to see.
Mostly, her profile showed her at events. There were hardly any people with her that Mai thought she must like at all, and she had very few personal posts. Even those looked scripted to Mai. Maybe it was because she knew Azula. Maybe it was because she didn't. There was no way, though, that Azula liked her brother and mother even a fraction as much as she pretended to on social media. That had always been part of her public façade, but it was even stranger to see after that disastrous dinner than it had been in their childhoods.
The train came to a stop—Mai's. Without looking up from her phone, rude as that was, Mai proceeded to exit, but she bumped into a passenger who stank of cigarettes. She glanced up and caught a glimpse of tan skin and dyed brown hair.
“Sorry,” she said quickly.
“Jjokbari,” he mumbled back, not parting with the cigarette between his lips as a plume of smoke escaped with his words.
Mai blinked in surprise, but she didn't care enough about being insulted to retort.
“Noisy gaijin,” another passenger grumbled as Mai stepped off the train.
Once again, Mai didn't find she cared enough to say anything. Maybe she should, but the moment had passed, and Mai was gone. The train was gone. The Zainichi Korean was gone. The racist passenger was gone.
Mai could remember being a young girl at the beach with her friends and their parents, curiously trying to hold the saltwater in her hands only to watch it slip through the outline of her fingers. Life, she thought, was like water. She could also remember watching Azula labor over sandcastles, molding them meticulously until the waves ate them alive and Azula's eyes sharpened to kill. She almost wondered what that said about Azula, but she didn't linger on it. There was nothing she could decipher about Azula that would mean much of anything, and she had class, anyway.
The memory would wait for her if she really wanted to dredge it back up again. She wouldn't, though. She wasn't that masochistic.
Azula might disagree, but Mai would never give her the opening.
It was after a lecture and around lunchtime that Mai let herself drift to Azula once more like a moth to a flame. It was just a text message. She only wanted the chance to observe Azula. It was crass, maybe, to want to see the other girl behind glass where she couldn't do more than mock Mai and bare her teeth, but the feeling wouldn't yield.
Azula had clearly changed in their years apart. Not for the better, Mai was certain of that. She couldn't imagine Azula ever getting better. Still, she was different, and Mai wanted to see more of her, so she stared at the text bubble, waiting for Azula's response.
Do you want to go to the mall this weekend? Mai had said.
She didn't feel guilty even though it was the kind of thing she'd have to be begged by Ty Lee to do. Being around Azula was nothing like being around Ty Lee. Ty Lee was her friend, and Mai could never remember doubting that. Azula was… they had kissed in the dark of Mai's bedroom for the duration of the cruelest summer break Mai had ever known. Once, they had done worse. Mai remembered Azula's skin like she remembered Azula's cruelty. Whatever she had been with Azula when she was fifteen, it was long over. Sometimes, she wondered if it had ever happened at all. Even then, she had been unsure of each kiss Azula pressed to her lips, not helped by Azula's aversion to discussing anything they did when the lights went out.
She had never told Ty Lee for fear that she had dreamed it all up. She would never tell Ty Lee for fear that Ty Lee and Azula had done the same.
Selfishly, stupidly, Mai wanted to be the only one to remember Azula like that. What good would it do her? What were memories, flickering and fleeting, when they were followed by pain and more pain? The things Mai had done with Azula when she had been broken up with Zuko were a mockery of intimacy, an idiotic mistake that she couldn't even be sure she'd made.
But she knew. She knew that she had kissed Azula like she had never kissed Zuko, even when they'd gotten back together. It was just easier to pretend there was a chance she hadn't.
Her phone buzzed.
Let's go today. When I get out of school. Azula had sent.
For a moment, Mai imagined they were too young and stupid to know how fruitless this endeavor—their friendship—was. She considered inviting Ty Lee. She knew better, though. Ty Lee missed Azula too, but she deserved better than this. Her parents weren't forcing her hand, and she had been strong enough not to reach out to Azula. Mai would not be the cause of relapse back into old habits for Ty Lee.
Sure. Where should we meet up? Mai said.
It took a minute,—Azula must be busy even in her lunch period, studying no doubt—but the reply came. Gakushuinshita Station.
Okay.
Mai spent the rest of the school day wishing desperately to be at the train station until it was time to be there. Then, Mai wished desperately to be anywhere else. The reality of seeing Azula was unpleasant, and Mai knew this. As honest as she could be with Azula, as alive as Azula made her feel, it came with a price. Euphoric highs in exchange for depressive lows. Inebriation in exchange for pounding hangovers. Opening herself up to Azula meant opening herself up to pain.
But pain, too, was a reminder that she was alive, that she was real.
Mai looked for Azula with a grimace on her face and a foolish hope in her heart.
Finally, she caught sight of the girl, already out of her school uniform and smelling of lit cigarettes and jasmine perfume with no regard for the public space they were occupying. Azula coughed as she approached Mai.
“Have you been smoking?” Mai said.
Azula smiled gleefully. "I have," she said. There was a strange delight to her voice that Mai wasn't used to. With Azula, happy was always a strong word. However, here it seemed appropriate. Azula had been smoking, and as unpleasant as her cough had sounded, she was happy about it.
“When did that start?” Mai said conversationally. She wasn't sure how much she cared, but it seemed like the right thing to say.
“Let's see. I bought a fake ID the day Otō-san told me I wouldn't be competing at the next Olympics. That took a week to get. So it's been since then,” Azula said, still smiling.
Mai had an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach now. “But when did he tell you that?” She was starting to feel stupid asking all these pointless questions. Azula hated giving people a straight answer. She loved the thrill of a chase, not the capture.
Azula's smile grew until it threatened to devour her face. “The week after I qualified. He had just stayed to watch me practice for the first time since… ah, since he was first elected,” she said, her voice no longer remotely happy. She still sounded strange to Mai, but Mai couldn't place in what way.
One last question. Mai had to ask it. “Why did he pull you?”
In an instant, Azula's smile vanished entirely. It was replaced by a scowl that usually meant Azula was about to speak of her mother. “It was some bullshit about how figure skating was distracting from my studies. And my time with him, of course.” The words were bitter, but her voice was disinterested, flat, almost as apathetic as Mai's. There was one thing that bothered Mai, though.
“You mean with your family,” she said tentatively.
Azula smiled again, smaller this time. “I really don't, Mai. He couldn't care less if I get along with Zuzu and my mother. He barely even likes either of them these days. Who can blame him? I mean, you've met them.”
“I like your brother.”
“My condolences. I thought that stopped when he started throwing hissy fits.”
“Not like that. He's… my friend.” It felt strange in Mai's mouth, but it wasn't untrue, she supposed. She hadn't contacted him again yet, but she would. Zuko was one of the people who Mai felt unrepentantly close with. Even if there was so much about her he didn't understand, he knew her. Except for the parts he didn't want to know, the parts Mai didn't want him to know.
“Give up on friendship, Mai. There's no point in reconciliation there. You've always been better than Zuko,” Azula said, casual in her cruelty like her tongue didn't bleed from the barbs she covered it in.
“If I'm better than Zuko, I'm definitely better than you,” Mai said. It didn't help to say at all.
Azula laughed, but Mai got the impression she didn't find it that funny. “You sound like my mother. She's always so sure that Zuzu is better than her monster of a daughter.”
They were in dangerous waters, and Azula was bound to make Mai regret bringing them here sooner or later. She never did forgive a slight. She was her father's daughter like that. Still, Mai had wanted to feel something, and she was feeling something, even if it was at Azula's expense. Even if it being at Azula's expense now meant it would be at Mai's expense later. “Maybe your mother is right. You're kind of intolerable.”
“And what are you, Mai?”
That was a question Mai didn't know how to answer. She didn't know if Azula was pleased with her silence or disappointed by it. She didn't want to know either. Knowing Azula was a plague.
When they got to the mall, Mai and Azula poured over clothes they didn't need, not talking to each other.
Silence with Azula could be comfortable in a way Mai wished it wouldn't be, but silence with Azula was nothing like the silence Mai was raised with. Michi and Ukano's silence had always been a threat, even when they loved her. Azula's silence wasn't passive-aggressive like that; Mai didn't know what she was thinking, but she knew it wasn't about her. It was always arrogant to assume Azula thought about you the way you thought about her. Even when her silences simmered under her skin, threatening something so much worse than Mai could imagine, they were hers and hers alone. And with Azula, talking was always so much crueler than silence.
So Mai was content with their silence as they cast judgmental looks upon ugly clothes together. It was weird how natural it felt even after all these years apart, with Mai loathing everything Azula was and Azula holding a grudge in her lungs like oxygen.
“Did you date anyone?” Azula said. “After my pathetic brother?”
Mai squeezed her eyes shut. They were here already, dancing around the past. Azula didn't give a damn about Zuko. She cared about if Mai had gotten over her. “I've been on a few dates. Nothing serious. I've never confessed to anyone or anything like that,” Mai said with forced flatness. She wouldn't give Azula her discomfort to weaponize.
“You're lucky. I don't have time for dating. Well, there was that thing with Tokugawa…” Azula hummed. “He kissed me after an exhibition program.”
Something like jealousy prickled at Mai's flesh. She couldn't help it. Even now, even when she didn't know if Azula even liked boys, even when she had been the one to cut Azula off, part of her hated to think of anyone else knowing Azula as she did. “Did you threaten him with your ice skate too?” she said.
“No. I embarrassed myself differently with Tokugawa,” Azula said as she smiled from across the clothing rack.
Placated, Mai rolled her eyes. “You never change.” It wasn't affectionate; it was an accusation. Azula didn't deserve Mai's affection. She never had. Still, Mai didn't leave.
It was her parents' date night, so Mai found herself back in her childhood home once more, babysitting her younger brother. At the very least, her parents still trusted her not to gut Tom-Tom. Mai didn't suppose it counted for much since Tom-Tom had probably begged for her to babysit him. He was clingier than ever now that Mai wasn't living in the same house. Mai didn't mind. Not really. She loved her brother, even though she had been relatively indifferent to him at first. Now, he was someone who depended on her and loved her unconditionally.
Mai hadn't realized how much she had wanted that until she had it. Even with Ty Lee who loved Mai about as much as anyone could, it was only because of Azula. Tom-Tom loved Mai of his own accord, no matter how little Michi wanted him to.
“Onee-chan, can we have ice cream for dinner?” he said.
“I'd get in trouble if I let you have ice cream for dinner,” she said, “but it'd be interesting, wouldn't it?”
Michi would yell at her, and Ukano would just stand there frowning, but Mai was already talking to Azula again. Her parents cared more about the Minamoto family and how they could repair Ukano's reputation and re-election chances than they cared about punishing Mai for such a minor infraction. She had already done the worst thing they could imagine. It was hard to sink any lower in her parents' eyes.
Tom-Tom disagreed with her. His chubby face sunk into a deep, serious frown. “I don't want you to get in trouble. I hate when Kaa-chan yells at you.”
Mai shrugged indifferently. She could make the dinner Michi had planned for Tom-Tom instead.
It's not like it would've made her feel better to be yelled at anyway. It's not like it would've made her feel much of anything.
Tom-Tom decided to help her cook as much as a five-year-old could help anyone cook. She couldn't let him handle a knife or peel anything or operate the stovetop which left very few options for tasks to relegate to him, but, eventually, she decided he could place the chopped vegetables into the pan. He giggled happily as he did so with Mai's guidance. He was so pleased to feel useful to her. It was sweet, and it warmed Mai's chest in a way almost nothing did these days.
This, she thought, was love. This was the closest she got to happiness anymore, certainly. So long as Michi and Ukano didn't say much more than a thank you to her when they got back, she thought she wouldn't even take a blade to herself tonight.
“Onee-chan, can I ask you something?” Tom-Tom said as Mai picked him up, bringing him to the sink to wash his hands once more.
“What is it, Tom-Tom?”
“Who's Azula?” he said, his face scrunched up.
Mai almost dropped him. “What? Where did you hear that name?”
“Kaa-chan and Tō-san keep saying it,” he said. “They say she's your friend.”
Friend. What a simple word that could never encompass what Azula was to Mai. There weren't words she could use to describe Azula. She'd never want to describe Azula anyway. Not to anyone, and least of all to her brother. She couldn't tell him about the ice skate blade pressed to her throat or how angry she'd been when Azula crumbled under Ty Lee's jabs to her pressure points or the kisses in the dark under the guise of practice or—any of it. There was no part of Azula that she could share with Tom-Tom.
Azula was her secret. Everyone knew, but nobody knew.
“She is a friend. An old friend. We… grew up together,” Mai said, setting Tom-Tom down.
He pouted. “How come I don't remember her then?”
“The last time Azula and I talked was when you were only two,” she said like it was simple. “Azula didn't like kids very much, so she never hung around you.”
“She didn't like me?” Tom-Tom said.
“No,” Mai said.
“What kind of person is she then? I'm adorable! Everyone likes me,” he said.
“She's… interesting, and she's the most frustrating person I've ever known. I hate her sometimes;—” all of the time “—she's complicated like that.”
It didn't matter in the end. Tom-Tom was already done listening.
Ozai was going to the Yasukuni Shrine again in the name of honoring dead war criminals, and Azula had texted asking Mai to come over. She was bored, not lonely. Azula wasn't the kind of girl who got lonely; she enjoyed her own company far more than she enjoyed most people's company. More than she enjoyed Mai's company, probably.
Mai didn't enjoy Azula's company either, but she was bored too, and Ty Lee was busy with homework, so she had agreed. Or maybe she was just too masochistic to pass up the chance to feel miserable at Azula's hand again because she pathetically believed that feeling awful was better than feeling nothing.
It was the latter. She knew it was the latter. That was why she found herself at Azula's front door once more, waiting for the younger girl to open up the house to her.
After a long minute, the door finally opened. “Mai.” Azula smiled in lieu of a greeting.
“Zuko and your mother?” Mai said instead of apologizing for the intrusion.
“Zuzu is out with friends,” Azula said. It was amazing how she could make the word “friends” sound so relentlessly mocking. “My pathetic excuse of a mother is with Otō-san at the shrine.”
“Right. The Yasukuni Shrine.” Mai soured as she entered the Kantei.
Azula's eyebrow quirked upwards, but she didn't say anything.
“What do you think of it?” Mai said. It came out far more pathetic than she intended. “It's such a controversy outside of Japan, and you were always so interested in politics and history. You must have an opinion.”
Azula rolled her sharp eyes as she guided Mai to her bedroom. “That's all?” she said. “I was hoping you'd have something more interesting to ask me. If you must know, I think it's a terrible move in terms of international relations. Even if the West is fairly ignorant on the issue, China, South Korea, and the Philippines all hate us so much already. Why make it worse? Honoring A-class war criminals is pathetic as well. Accept that you lost and lost dishonorably at that. Even Emperor Hirohito knew that. It's why he refused to visit the shrine.”
“And what about the gaijin?” Mai said. She almost winced once she'd said it. She wished she had a better word. “The people who are… hurt by it? Do you care about them?” She knew the answer already. Azula wasn't the kind of person who cared about others. She never had been, and she never would be.
“Is me being opposed to visiting it not enough already?” Azula said.
Mai sighed as she watched Azula open her bedroom door. “It's the best I could hope for from you.”
“So this was a morality test then? Do you even care about them? Zuko doesn't either, you know. Well, not really. Certainly not enough to tell Otō-san that he shouldn't visit the shrine,” Azula said.
“He's afraid of your father,” Mai said. “That's different. Zuko cares about people, unlike you. Empathy has never been your strong suit.”
Azula smiled from her bed. It was a vicious thing, all red lips and glaring teeth. Mai couldn't help but think of how Azula's teeth would turn yellow from the cigarettes she had started smoking soon enough. “Do you care about people, Mai?” Her voice had turned saccharine and poisonous.
“Yes,” Mai said. She thought she might be lying. She had no way to really know.
“Do you care about me, then?” Azula said.
“Not in the slightest,” Mai said.
Azula's smile did not slip from her lips. “Too bad. Sit with me. I want to watch a movie.”
Mai complied. It wasn't like she had a real choice.
By the time the second movie had ended and Mai was getting ready to leave, Ursa had arrived home. Ozai remained absent. It was a quiet relief. Mai didn't want to see the man again. She had never liked Azula and Zuko's father, but the older she had grown, the more cognizant of that dislike she became.
Ursa had always been more complicated. Zuko adored her while Azula despised her, and Mai understood where both siblings came from in their feelings. She had always leaned more towards Azula's, though. She had seen too much of Azula's ugliness to not wish the older woman would bestow some of the love she had always given so freely to Zuko to her daughter as well.
Still, Ursa was here, and she wanted to speak with Azula for something other than a reprimanding or an attempt to force a closeness she had not earned.
“Azula, do you want to go to an onsen theme park with me? I was going to wait to ask you, but I think it'd be lovely if we invited Mai as well,” Ursa said.
A sneer contorted Azula's face. “I'd rather eat shit and die than spend unnecessary time with you. I'm sure Mai feels the same way,” she said.
Mai blinked quietly, but she said nothing to contradict Azula's assessment. She had never heard Azula speak to anyone this way. Not even Ursa. No matter how much Azula hated her mother, she had always at least played at civility with the woman.
Ursa's face fell for a moment before she recomposed herself as if she was used to this treatment. “That's all right then,” she said.
“Good,” Azula said viciously. “I'll see you later, Mai.”
“Yeah, uh, bye.”
Mai finally called Zuko again on a Wednesday. He wanted to go for a walk in the park when they were both done with classes for the day, and Mai wanted to know more about his sister. She felt guilty for using him like this when she so fervently swore to Azula that she cared about Zuko, that Zuko was so much better than her, that Zuko was her friend, but she had known Azula first. She had gravitated towards the cruel girl, no matter how much she wished she hadn't.
Even now, there was no escaping Azula's magnetic pull.
She walked side by side with Zuko under the un-blossomed cherry blossom trees, and she wondered how best to ask him when things had gotten so bad between his mother and sister as he rambled on about his friends from school, Sokka and Suki.
“Sokka is the funniest person I've ever met,” he said, smiling freely. “He's really kind, too. It's so easy for him to fit in with everyone. Even when people are shitty to him, he knows exactly how to handle it. I'm kind of jealous of him, honestly. I wish I knew how to talk to people like that.”
“He sounds great,” Mai said. She couldn't force herself to smile back at him or will her eyes to soften.
“He really is,” Zuko sighed. “Him and Suki… I think they like each other.” There was something strained to his voice when he said that. “I mean, they'd be great together. They're both so… they're both amazing. Really. I'm trying to be happy for them, but if they get together…”
“You think you'll be left behind?” Mai said. She hated seeing how alike Zuko and Azula could be.
Zuko deflated. “Yeah. Is that shitty of me?”
“Not at all. Third-wheeling isn't fun.”
He nodded at that. “It's really not.”
“I think that's why Azula hated when we were together so much,” she said. She felt like an idiot for saying it. It was more complicated than that, and Azula would hate her for telling Zuko, and Zuko would hate her for thinking about Azula. There was something seriously wrong with her. Why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut or willed the thoughts of Azula away? Coming here just to talk about her was a mistake.
Zuko gave her a look she hated seeing on his face. The smooth skin of his face was now lined with confusion and contempt, and the shape of his eyes had changed to something sharper than she'd ever seen directed toward anyone but Zuko himself. He looked like his father. It was jarring, and Mai hated herself for bringing it upon herself.
“I'm not like her,” he spat out. “I'm not—”
“I'm sorry.” Mai felt like she was placating a wild horse. “I didn't mean to imply you were.”
He took a minute to try to school his face into something less poisonous. Then, he said, “Okay.”
Silence fell between them. It wasn't a comfortable one like she'd shared with Zuko so many times before. It was suffocating. Mai didn't feel like she could move much at all within the silence.
“Why did you mention her?” he said, his voice hoarse.
“I'm sorry,” Mai repeated. “I was just… when did things get so bad between her and your mom?” She wanted to close her eyes and run away from what she'd just asked. She knew that, in Zuko's eyes, the primary obstacle between himself and happiness was his sister. Mai had always thought it was his father, but Zuko would never agree. He loved his father so much, and all he wanted was for his father to love him back. As long as Ozai loved Azula, there was no room in his heart for his son.
Zuko's shoulders were tense now. “They've always been bad. You know how Azula is. They got worse when you and Ty Lee stopped wanting anything to do with her, though. She's gotten ten times more unreasonable since then. Sometimes, I think it's because she knows you were right to cut her off. She's a—there's not a word for what Azula is, but what she did was fucked up.”
“That makes sense.”
“If I could stop talking to my sister, I would,” Zuko whispered. “Otō-san would kill me for saying that.”
From anyone else, that would sound like an exaggeration. From Zuko, Mai believed it.
“I haven't told Ty that I'm talking to her again. My mom wants me to stay close with her, though, so I'm not sure I can ditch her again. Even if she deserves it,” Mai said.
“She does deserve it.”
Mai's mouth twitched. She didn't know what to say to that.
“I know she's my sister, but even my uncle thinks she's a lost cause at this point. Anyway, if you're hiding it from your best friend, it can't be good for you, can it?”
Zuko was painstakingly right. The rest of their walk was silence upon silence as Mai fought the urge to run away from him. To run away from Azula. From her parents. Her life. All of it.
She had never been a strong runner anyway; how far could she possibly get?
Ignoring Azula was only semi-intentional. It was probably a mistake, and it was definitely making Michi unhappy with each phone call they shared, but Mai couldn't bring herself to talk to Azula. Her alabaster skin was looking more and more like a carving block as the familiar numbness sunk back in. Feelings were temporary. Joy was fleeting. Love was something Mai didn't even deserve. She never did anything to warrant it. She never did anything at all anymore.
Mai's life was slipping through the outline of her locked fingers like saltwater. It had never stopped doing so. She had just stopped noticing because Azula made for a good distraction.
There was nothing Mai could even do about her life passing her by; she had ruined it when she had taken Tsutomu's euthanization into her own hands. Mai had no remorse for what she had done, and she couldn't bring herself to resent what it had done to her life either. She had been miserable before, and she was miserable now. The difference was that her parents were honest with her now. She knew what she had always wondered.
It was better to know than to speculate. It had to be.
It was amazing, though, how quickly monotony had returned to Mai's life once the investigation was closed. How quickly Azula had thrown that monotony to the wolves and how quickly Mai could regain it if she just didn't contact the forest fire of a girl.
She missed Azula, though. It was stupid and probably not even a genuine longing to see Azula again. Most likely, Mai just missed the entertainment Azula always brought with her. The feeling of being alive that Azula held between her ribs. Maybe Mai even missed what they had done in the dark all those years ago.
She felt pathetic. She could just text Azula or call her even if she wanted to see Azula, to hear her voice, to spend time with her. If she missed Azula's skin, she could just kiss Azula again. She might be slapped for it, but she could do it. Maybe that was what Azula had wanted to bring Mai back into her life for anyway.
Mai didn't text Azula. She didn't call her. She didn't talk to the younger girl at all.
Instead, she scrolled through Azula's social media and watched interviews, and she watched videos of Azula figure skating.
Azula was an ethereal sight on ice. She was graceful and regal in a way that translated to how she carried herself off the ice, but it was a hundred times more impressive when it was accented with jumps and twirls. Mai had known this. She had seen Azula skate in the years that they'd been estranged, and she had seen Azula skate more times than she could count before the estrangement. That didn't stop it from stealing her breath again and again.
Even more pathetically, Mai found herself reading the children's book from Azula's bedroom after watching an interview where Azula called it her favorite book—The Giving Tree.
She didn't understand Azula's fascination with the book. It went against filial piety. It contradicted Azula's relationship with her own parents. It was American through and through. Mai didn't know if she understood Azula at all after she read it. It had to be another one of Azula's lies.
Azula was a liar and an enigma. Mai didn't want to understand her. Mai didn't want anything at all, except maybe to drop dead.
On her ninth day of avoiding Azula, Mai was over at her childhood home to see Tom-Tom and be lectured by Michi for not spending time with Azula when the doorbell rang.
“Mai, answer it,” Michi said from the kitchen.
Mai did as she was told and was rewarded with the sight of red lips, sharp eyes, and a high ponytail.
“You've been avoiding me, Mai,” Azula said. “It hurts my feelings.”
It almost made Mai scoff, the idea of Azula's hurt feelings. “No, I haven't. I've just been busy. You're welcome to join us for dinner if you want to catch up,” she lied, stepping aside to let Azula in. Even if Mai didn't want to have Azula over for dinner, Michi would love it. Ukano would be pleased too. Neither of them had ever liked Azula the girl, but they both liked what Azula's proximity to Mai represented.
Azula came in with no fuss and removed her heels.
“Okaa-san, Otō-san, Azula is having dinner with us.” Mai's voice was only just loud enough for her parents to hear her.
Tom-Tom came rushing in from the kitchen. “Hi! I'm Tom-Tom!” he said, smiling brightly even as he was faced with Azula's mild disdain. Mai wondered if he remembered what she had said about Azula not liking children.
“Azula,” the red-lipped girl returned, rude as ever.
Tom-Tom frowned, but he didn't say anything more. He just ran up to hug Mai.
“You let him hug you?” Azula asked, her eyebrow raised.
“He's my brother,” Mai said.
“I don't let my brother hug me.”
“I don't hate my brother.”
“You love me, right?” Tom-Tom looked worried.
“I love you,” Mai said.
“I love you too, Onee-chan!”
The conversation ended there with Azula's pinched face of disgust. Ukano came out soon enough to greet Azula with all the awe that her father's status warranted and all the hidden fear that Azula herself inspired. For her part, Azula hated Mai's parents. She thought Ukano was a fool and Michi was a desperate social climber.
Mai didn't care enough to disagree with Azula's assessment in childhood, and she didn't like her parents enough to disagree with it now that she was nearing adulthood. Anyway, she thought Azula had a point, even if she still did everything her parents asked of her. Her obligation to her parents didn't negate their worst traits.
When dinner was finally set, and they had all said itadakimasu and begun to eat, Mai spoke only when spoken to. Fortunately, Azula's presence meant her parents' attention was set on the younger girl. Unfortunately, Azula's presence meant Azula herself was focused on Mai, especially at the cost of being explicitly rude to Michi and Ukano. Azula seemed to delight in ignoring things they said to her to talk to Mai instead.
She ignored questions about her academic career, about her father, about her brother, and about her figure skating career alike to speak to Mai about Mai's life and Mai's day and Mai's well-being. It was infuriating, and it made Mai's knuckles whiten around her chopsticks. Despite this, it was also... nice. Azula was interested in Mai. Even if Mai knew it was to provoke her, Azula cared. Someone cared.
“You keep ignoring my parents,” Tom-Tom said. “Is that why you said she was frustrating, Onee-chan?”
Everyone stopped eating. Michi looked horrified and angry. Ukano was frowning. Mai knew her face was schooled into its long-earned blankness, but she felt her stomach tighten into knots.
Azula smiled. “You should be more honest, Mai.”
“You're one to talk.” It was an accusation.
Azula's smile only grew, but Michi was quick to glare at Mai, demanding silence.
“Azula, you'll be competing in the Olympics again, right?”
Mai flinched. This was a sensitive subject still.
“Of course,” Azula said.
Azula left as she must, as all people must. A half-hour crept by as Mai listened to Michi lecture her on her ill manners and even Tom-Tom was warned about blurting things out impulsively. Then, Mai went to her childhood bedroom to lie down. It wasn't late enough to sleep, and she had homework she could do, but she didn't feel like doing it yet.
Not in the afterglow of Azula's torment.
Her phone buzzed. She picked it up and smiled when she saw Ty Lee's name on the locked screen. She unlocked it. Wanna go paraparaing with me? (*・ε・*) Ty Lee had asked.
Mai's smile slipped. She was exhausted, and she didn't want anything to chase down the horrible high of spending time with Azula. Can't. I have homework. Maybe next time.
Ty Lee texted back that that was fine. She was always so understanding. It filled Mai with guilt, lining her stomach like rocks. It was her own fault for not telling Ty Lee about Azula.
The afterglow was already slipping away from her. Mai fished the razor from her bag, cold and solid and grounding against her palm. She wanted the guilt to go away, but she wanted it to stay, too. Guilt was a feeling other than numbness, and Azula had gifted it to her.
Mai sighed. She put the blade back.
Drawing blood made her feel alive. Pain was life, after all. If Mai was honest with herself, Azula made her feel more alive and more in pain than anything else ever had.
That didn't make either vice good for her.
Notes:
additional cws: racism from the japanese towards koreans, discussion of the yasukuni shrine, suicide ideation
Chapter 3
Notes:
this is late bc i got covid then it was summer then my acc got suspended for a week lmao. my other atla fic will hopefully be updated semi soon?
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Azula called Mai. Azula never called anyone, least of all Mai. It was so unusual to see her phone lit up with Azula's blank contact photo that Mai almost didn't answer. It had to be some kind of a trap. She wasn't sure how, but Azula was luring her to something awful. Everything she did had an ulterior motive, didn't it?
No, she was being stupid. Azula wasn't some cartoonish supervillain. She was cruel, but she was only a girl.
Mai sighed and, just before the last ring ended, she hit accept. On the other line, Azula said nothing. It wasn't quiet, though. She could hear the steady rhythm of Azula's breath, and there was screaming in the background, crying too.
“Azula?” Mai said, uncertain now that this wasn't some strange prank.
“Mai!” Azula said, sounding oddly surprised for the person who had initiated the call.
Mai's sense of unease grew. She could feel it uncoiling within her, doubling in size and slithering around the pit of her belly. It was horribly offputting, and she internally cursed Azula for causing it. The numbness was almost preferable to this borderline dread. “Are you okay? What's the sound?”
“Hm? Oh, nothing. I'm watching this boring foreign film about domestic violence,” Azula said. Something was off. She sounded off somehow. Mai couldn't place exactly how. Her voice was its usual haughty drawl, but Azula's words were coming out wrong. Forced, maybe. Like Azula was putting some effort into sounding normal, maybe not a lot but enough that Mai felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand ramrod straight.
“If you're bored, can I come over then? I could… entertain you,” Mai said. She felt her face grow hot at how that sounded. It was riddled with unintended innuendo considering their history. Not that it wouldn't have been humiliating even without the way Azula would no doubt interpret it.
Azula took Mai by surprise. Instead of taking the opportunity to poke and prod at Mai's lingering feelings for her, whether they were love or lust, Azula dismissed the idea entirely. “Some other time,” she said. “Now's a bad time. Zuzu said something stupid about international politics. Otō-san is in a bad mood.”
Mai lept to her feet, feeling the blood drain from her face. If Zuko had said something so reckless, she could only imagine what the background noise she was hearing was. Ozai had no love in his heart for his son on a good day. She didn't want to know what he felt for Zuko on a bad day.
“I can stay on the phone, though,” Azula said suddenly, ripping Mai from her fears for a moment.
“Aren't you watching a movie?” Mai said. She was moving to the door of her dorm now, trying not to make too much noise so as not to alert Azula to her thought process.
She heard a sound that might have been Azula clicking her tongue. “Yes, but it's boring. I told you. I want to talk to you, Mai.”
That was another bad sign. There was no way whatever was happening held even an ounce of good in it. Mai was certain now. “You didn't even speak when I answered,” she said.
“I got distracted. You took a while to answer.” It was plausible enough.
“Why don't you pause your movie?”
The slightest inhale on Azula's end.
Mai slipped her foot into a loafer, then the other. She was going to be sick at this rate. This conversation had gone from strange to horrific so quickly. Azula always had a talent for that, even when they were children. Some days, it made Mai want to wrap her hands around Azula's throat. Today, it just made Mai want to shake her until she answered a question honestly for the first time in her life.
There was a loud crash on Azula's end. Was she standing closer now to whatever gruesome scene Mai was sure to find when she arrived too late to save Zuko?
Finally: “I'm sorry about what happened before.”
"What?" Mai said, blinking wildly under the sunlight. Azula never apologized of her own volition. Every apology Mai had ever heard her issue had been coaxed out of her, by Ursa or Ozai, and they had each been plagued with insincerity and resentment. Every apology forced led to yet another transgression inevitably. That was Azula's modus operandi for as long as Mai had known her.
“Don't make me repeat myself,” Azula said. She sounded somewhere between annoyed and contrite. It was the strangest Mai had ever heard her voice. “I'm sorry about how our friendship ended. I shouldn't have threatened you like that.” It was almost a good apology.
It did nothing to ease Mai's dread and sense of impending doom. It only made everything worse.
Mai hated Azula in that moment. More than she had ever hated her before, even when she had stood at the wrong end of an ice skate's blade. “You're full of shit, Azula,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Don't be rude, Mai. I'm apologizing,” Azula said before her line went dead. Somehow, the way she had spat the word “apologizing” and hung up immediately soothed Mai. That was more like the Azula she knew. Maybe she hadn't been lying about the movie. Maybe Zuko was okay. Surely, even Azula would have had more of a reaction than that if he was in danger.
Still, Mai continued on to the Kantei to be sure. When she knocked at the door, a slightly disheveled Ursa answered. Her hair, usually smooth and silky and down, was askew, and her eyes were puffy and heavy-looking. At the sight of the woman, Mai felt a stab of guilt; she hadn't even considered Ursa's well-being. She might not be particularly fond of the woman, but she should have at least hoped vaguely that Ursa was unharmed as well.
“Mai, I'm sorry, but now is not a good time,” Ursa said. Her voice was thin today.
“Pardon my intrusion,” Mai said, bowing, “but are you sure I can't see Zuko?”
Ursa's knuckles whitened ever so slightly against the door. Mai felt her face do the same. She must look gaunt. She certainly felt it. Ursa's refusal to invite her in did not bode well for Zuko. Her conversation with Azula on the phone hadn't either.
“I'm afraid he's busy with homework right now,” Ursa said.
A tall, broad figure emerged from the shadows—Ozai. He looked pristine in his expensive suit, not a thread out of place. He placed his hand on Ursa's shoulder gently, but her every muscle tensed beneath it. The sight made Mai want to vomit. She could taste the awful bile in the back of her mouth and forced herself to swallow it down.
“What does Ukano's daughter need?” Ozai said, his question directed at Ursa, not Mai.
“She just wanted to see Zuko,” Ursa said automatically.
Mai bit back a flinch. Had she imagined it or had Ozai's eyes sharpened at that answer? She stretched her hands out to keep from balling them into fists and running far, far away from this house like the coward she was. “He offered to help me with my homework, and I was going to take him up on that, Minamoto-san, but if he's too busy, I can just call him later.”
“He is. It's best you be off then,” Ozai said. He gave Mai a short nod. She didn't catch it, her eyes glued to the sight of his borderline despondent wife. Her stomach had fallen out from its place in her torso entirely.
She had no proof Zuko was all right, but she couldn't bear to stand here a second longer. “Of course. Thank you, Minamoto-san, Oba-san. Have a nice evening.”
“You too,” Ozai said.
Ursa's mouth moved as though she wanted to speak, but no words came out.
Mai left. She made it three blocks before she ducked into a shop to be sick in their bathroom.
The feeling that something horrible had happened to Zuko persisted for hours as he failed to answer her messages and calls. It had taken root in her, and she could not cut it out so long as his radio silence continued.
In a desperate bid to take her mind off of it, she invited Ty Lee out. Ty Lee, who had clearly missed Mai's company since their last excursion together, accepted immediately. With rising guilt, Mai let Ty Lee pick their activity once more. There was nothing she particularly wanted to do, anyway. Ty Lee, being Ty Lee, immediately suggested something Mai found kind of awful. There was no point in fighting it, though. She had made this bed, and she would lie in it.
So Mai found herself literally wearing someone else's shoes at a bowling alley, watching as Ty Lee's brow furrowed in concentration, her fingers dug into a bright pink bowling ball Mai wasn't entirely sure was the right size for her. It wasn't as unpleasant as she had initially feared. Certainly, it was nice to see Ty Lee. Mai had forgotten what it was like to enjoy a pleasant buzz of mild elation at the sight of an old friend who could be trusted. The thought made Mai's heart sink beneath her brittle ribs.
Ty Lee could be trusted, and Azula could not, but what about Mai herself? She was hiding things from her best friend. She was using her worst enemy. She was as two-faced as they came, but she spent an awful lot of time looking down on Azula for her deceptions as if Azula wasn't open with Mai about her terribleness.
Mai's mouth dropped into a frown as Ty Lee rolled a gutter ball.
“Darn it,” Ty Lee said, hanging her head in exaggerated shame. She didn't mind how atrocious she was at this game. She never did. It was one of the things about her that Mai admired; she could have fun even if she was losing.
Would she be having fun if she knew the truth?
“It's your turn, Nakamai!” Ty Lee was smiling so brightly it made Mai's heart hurt. She couldn't keep lying to her best friend like this. She couldn't even be bothered by that ridiculous nickname. She had to come clean.
Mai opened her mouth. She couldn't move from her seat. She didn't know how to say this in a way that would keep Ty Lee close to her. She didn't want to lose the younger girl. She couldn't. She surely would if she kept hiding this from her. “Ty… you remember how Azula told me to call Zuko?”
The use of Azula's given name wasn't lost on Ty Lee whose smile died on her glossy lips. “I remember, yeah.”
“Well, I called him. We've been talking again.” She swallowed. She could do this. She could tell, confirming the suspicions darkening on Ty Lee's face by the second. “I had dinner with his family. So… I've been talking to Azula too.”
Ty Lee's face twisted into several expressions before it settled on forced optimism. Her smile looked pinched now, her eyes horribly bright. Mai wasn't sure if she imagined the tight clench of Ty Lee's teeth or not. She hoped she did.
“I'm sorry,” she said. It shouldn't have been an afterthought. It should have been the preface. There should have been nothing to apologize for at all.
“Don't be sorry! I just—” Ty Lee stopped herself forcefully. “I hope Minamoto is doing well. Zuko-kun, too.”
A guilt Mai didn't know had ebbed away returned then with a violence. She had forgotten about the horrible phone call in her anxiety. “About that…” she said. She didn't want to subject Ty Lee to more of this than she had to.
Ty Lee's face softened, though. “Is it their dad?” she said, voice lowered as if someone in this bowling alley might be eavesdropping.
“I don't know,” Mai said helplessly. “Azula… she called me earlier today. She didn't say anything at first. But there was… this noise in the background. She said she was watching a movie about—” Mai's eyes darted around, her own paranoia setting in “—domestic violence.”
There was something depressingly resigned about Ty Lee's smile at those words. Mai had almost forgotten that Ty Lee had seen as much of the Minamoto family as she had in childhood, if not more with the way she used to pull grief out of Azula like thread. “Ah. I see. Are Zuko-kun and Oba-san all right?”
“O—Ursa,” Mai said, “seemed okay when I went over to check. She was weird about Zuko, though. Then Minamoto-san showed up, and she went rigid. He couldn't get rid of me fast enough when he heard who I was there to see. Azula was so strange on the phone call too. She apologized, Ty.”
Ty Lee's mouth opened like a fish. “Is she okay?” she said, her voice small.
Mai felt her blood run cold. In all her concern for Zuko, she'd never considered that Azula could've been hurt after she hung up. “She's fine,” she said sharply, mostly to assuage her own mind. “She's Azula.”
That was the problem.
Ty Lee hardened her face once more, then nodded harshly. The sight of her worked up like this was foreign to Mai at this point. She hadn't gotten this upset in years. Azula could always drag that reaction out of her.
“Mai,” she said slowly; her voice was serious now, “you haven't forgotten what she got like at the end, have you?”
“No.”
“Okay. That's good. Right, right.” Ty Lee bit her lip for a moment. “Well, if Minamoto is okay, and you don't know about Zuko-kun, maybe you should just ask him directly if everything is okay at home.”
Mai almost rolled her eyes. “You can't be serious. You know how defensive he gets about that kind of thing. Even when we were together, he would blow up if I said anything negative about Minamoto-san. Even if he was answering his phone, he'd just cut me off for asking.”
Pink lips curled into a frown again. “Maybe… maybe A—Minamoto will tell you. She gets morbid like that.” She shook her head, looking frustrated, with herself or Azula, it was hard to tell. “Just be careful, Mai. All right? I don't want you getting hurt. You're my best friend.”
Mai smiled. Ty Lee was still in her corner. It was relieving to get such clear confirmation of that. “You're my best friend, too,” Mai admitted. It was close to sappy for her, and Ty Lee's eyes crinkled in delight. She jumped forward to give Mai a hug that Mai didn't even pretend to dislike this time. For once, it was nice to be held. It was reassuring, soothing even. She felt her anxieties quell. After they pulled apart, Mai felt good enough to say something almost kind about Azula. “She's not as… cruel and aggressive now, actually. Since she's not constantly training anymore.”
It was a mistake to voice that. Ty Lee looked wistful. Her eyes were full of melancholy and unshed tears. She missed Azula no matter how much she didn't want to. If Mai could understand anything, it was that.
“Seriously, don't worry about me, Ty Lee. I'm good at drawing the line with her. I'll do it when she inevitably goes crazy again.”
Ty Lee nodded, but Mai's guilt lingered even as she finally picked up a black bowling ball. She had ruined their nice night out by dragging Ty Lee back into the black hole that was Azula. But when Mai got home, she checked her phone to find Zuko had replied while she was out. He was safe. He was alive. He was even okay enough to send her a selfie of his overly serious face twisted in a smile to assure her of that.
Azula didn't contact Mai for a week following that. Mai supposed she was busy with school or scaring people or anything other than figure skating, apparently, and so she didn't contact Azula either. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to speak with Azula right now. Not following that horrible, confusing phone call.
When Azula finally broke her silence to invite her to go ice skating, Mai made up her mind: she would see Azula. She would feel that whirlwind of awful, tangible emotions again.
Mai was almost enjoying herself, getting dressed for the affair, when she realized Michi would want to hear about this. Her good mood soured, and she called her mother to deliver the news. Michi always preferred phone calls to text messages. Mai kind of hated them, especially after her last phone call.
“Good morning, Okaa-san,” Mai greeted when Michi answered.
“Mai,” Michi said coldly.
Mai's good mood was further and further away from her by the second. “I wanted to let you know Azula invited me out ice skating. I finished my homework already, so I accepted.”
Michi's change in mood was instant. Her voice was more open, her words kinder. “Oh, Mai! That's wonderful! Be sure to be nice to her, okay? I don't want you being rude like at dinner again.” Even a happy mother was still a mother, Mai supposed. It was in her nature to pick at Mai's every flaw and replay all her worst moments like a television program Michi particularly enjoyed.
The thought was giving Mai a headache. Sometimes, she hated her mother. “I will,” she said. “Later.” She hung up before Michi could do any more damage. She would suffer for that later unless ice skating with Azula went particularly well which, since it was with Azula, it wouldn't. Mai barely cared. She was already awful in her mother's eyes. There was little point in trying to be anything else. Even Azula's influence wasn't great enough to make Michi see Mai any other way at this point.
With a sigh, Mai left her dorm to meet Azula at—she checked her message thread with Azula again—Meiji Jingu Ice Skating Rink. Of course. The rink Azula used to train at. This would be even worse than Mai thought after that phone call.
She couldn't remember now why she had been looking forward to this at first.
As soon as they had touched skates to the ice, Azula wasted no time in launching into a monologue. It was very jarring when Mai compared it to their last audible conversation. It was even more jarring when Mai considered the topic of today's monologue: Zuko and Ursa's feelings about Ozai.
All Mai had done to trigger this speech was make an attempt to casually ask about the phone call last week. She was trying to fish out some information, nothing too much. She was sure she had failed miserably when Azula's red lips had stretched into the biggest, toothiest smile Mai had seen on her since they were children too young to know better than to be happy. Then, Azula's teeth had parted and her smug voice had started up.
“That movie I was watching was boring, but, you know, it almost reminded me of Zuzu and that horrid woman,” she had said, and everything following it had been downhill from there.
Mai felt sick as she listened to Azula detail how, according to her, while Ursa was no battered woman and Zuko had never suffered anything particularly hard in his life, they both feared Ozai like the battered family in the film Azula had watched. That had been what had bored her. It was so trivially familiar. Like watching her childhood on a small laptop screen, only with a lot more blood and bruising. She had rolled her eyes at Mai's raised brow.
“Don't be stupid. Of course, Otō-san would never hit a woman or someone as pathetic as Zuzu. How could you suspect such a thing from our prime minister?” Azula had said, silky and dismissive.
Mai vaguely recognized that Azula thought his political position was more relevant to that argument than his status as her father, but she didn't know what to make of that. Azula wasn't actually all that nationalistic from what Mai could gather based on the political opinions she had heard Azula share over the years, but she was deeply loyal to her father and loved her country—or at least loved to represent it.
Azula barreled on, not giving Mai room to interrupt her. “Then again, Zuzu is afraid of his own shadow, and Okaa-san has always been a pathetic shell, so is it really that surprising that—” Azula cut herself off, lips flatlining and eyes sharpening. She looked vicious. She smelled like cigarettes and jasmine. For some absurd reason, Mai wanted to kiss her in that moment.
Instead, she followed Azula's gaze to where Zhao, her former (Mai was unsure, really) figure skating coach, was making his way over to them on the ice. Azula had never liked to discuss the man much, and Mai had only spoken to him a handful of times, but, if Azula's anger was anything to go by, she didn't think highly of him at all.
“Zhao,” she said curtly.
“Azula, it's lovely to see you. Mai, you as well,” he said. “What a shame Zuko didn't come with you.”
Something burned inside Mai at that. If Azula seemed to dislike Zhao, Zuko despised him. The feeling, Mai had gathered, was mutual. He had attempted to coach Zuko in the art of figure skating when Zuko had been small, but he had believed Zuko to be talentless and discarded him as a trainee after four years when Azula had made it clear she was a prodigy. Something about the fallout had been terrible, though Mai didn't know that many of the details. Zuko got red in the face if you tried to speak with him about it.
“He hates the cold,” Azula said. Mai was sure this was a lie and Azula had simply not invited him. It's not like he would ever have agreed to come ice skate with her. “Did you want something?”
“I was just checking up on my favorite former student,” Zhao said. He was smiling so smugly it put Azula's best sneer to shame. Mai had the urge to take her ice skate and stab it off his face. She was frighteningly close to understanding Azula. “It's a shame your father is so… paranoid. You were great, yes, but you could have cemented yourself in all of history. Truly, if anyone could have landed the quad axle, it would have been you. Alas…”
Azula's eyes were murderous now. “Yes,” she spat, “it's a shame he thought you were unfit to teach me any further. If that's all, you'll have to excuse us.” She grabbed Mai by the wrist and skated the pair of them as far away from Zhao as she could. Mai wasn't incompetent on ice skates, but she was nowhere near as graceful as Azula.
They were silent for a moment, Azula's manicure still digging into the pallid flesh of Mai's wrist. It looked nice, blood red creating shadows against white. It stung rather pleasantly, too. Mai could almost remember Azula's nails scraping her scalp. That was dangerous territory, though, and Mai's face was too hot for comfort.
To break the tension Zhao's presence had caused, Mai said, “You know, if your dad is the only thing stopping you from competing, we could just kill him.” She was only half-joking. “Then Zuko and your mom wouldn't have to be afraid of him. It's a win-win.”
Azula laughed, but her grip fluttered on Mai's wrist before she released it entirely.
Mai wasn't entirely sure Azula wasn't contemplating it. The thought didn't unsettle her as much as it ought to.
Tsutomu was dead as was Mai's yabusame career, but Azula asked to watch Mai practice at her family's private archery range regardless. It wasn't like Mai hadn't started with kyūdō anyway, so she obliged.
At first, the only sound was that of the drawstring being released and the arrows whizzing into their respective bullseyes. Then, Azula began to pace before the targets. The sight made Mai drop her bow and arrow, pointing to the floor instead of to the target.
Azula rolled her eyes at this. “Don't stop on my account, Mai,” she said. “Look, I'll even fetch your arrows so you can keep going.”
Warily, Mai resumed her practice, careful not to hit Azula as she paced. When she was out of arrows, Azula kept her promise. She plucked them all from the dead center of each target and walked them back to Mai. It was as Mai stowed the majority back in their quiver that Azula grabbed Mai by the chin to level her downward to make eye contact with Azula.
“What?” Mai asked, willing her cheeks not to flush with the proof of her wanting.
“You said you'd kill him for me,” she said.
That was not what Mai had said. She told Azula as much.
Azula rolled her eyes once more. Vaguely, Mai recalled Michi telling her once that your eyes could get stuck like that. It wasn't true, of course, but maybe if it were to happen, Azula would drop this.
Ozai was not a good man, a good father, or a good politician. That didn't give Mai the right to kill him. Least of all so Azula could participate in the Olympics again. Azula, this awful girl who would ask Mai to do something so big for nothing in return. Azula, this horrid girl who would make Mai take the fall for her own desire. Azula, this wretched girl who would expect Mai to sacrifice everything for her.
Azula didn't understand Mai at all.
In warning, Mai maneuvered the arrow she had had in hand when Azula had taken hold of her and set it neatly into the bow, drew back, aimed briefly, and fired directly into the bullseye in the middle of the floor.
For some reason, Azula smiled intently at this action. She released Mai and resumed her pacing. “My point is, you suggested someone kill him. You suggested yourself, even. It's perfect. You killed Tsutomu, you can kill him, too. Just… do it less messily. I saw the pictures. They were ugly. Crude. You did an imperfect job, but you can get it right this time.”
Mai's temper flared once more. She fired another shot at the same target, and the arrow glided into the previous one. A Robin Hood. She almost felt proud.
Azula didn't even spare it a glance as she continued her restless pacing. She spoke once more. “You could save Zuzu and Okaa-san, or whatever delusion you have. You could save me.” Azula turned her face to Mai so the older girl could see she found this idea quite absurd.
“You don't need saving. You're not the princess; you're the dragon,” Mai said evenly, gripping a third arrow tightly in her hand.
At that, Azula stopped dead center. She stood before the raised target, eyebrow cocked as if in challenge. As if she wasn't the one who thought the idea was so utterly outside the realm of possibility. As if Mai didn't know she was right to think that. As if she hadn't been Ozai's favorite child from the moment he had seen the extent of her prodigy.
The sight made Mai angrier than she had ever been. She loaded the bow once more, lined up her shot, and released the drawstring, feeling heat in every muscle of her body. The arrow clipped the top of Azula's ponytail, mussing the sleek thing, but Azula did not flinch. She did not so much as blink as they listened to the arrow whizz into the end of Mai's Robin Hood.
Mai blinked. She was a near-perfect shot, but she had never even attempted a Maid Marian before. Azula didn't turn around to acknowledge Mai's handiwork, but she smiled beautifully.
The sight made some of Mai's white-hot fury ebb away, tamed by the memory of how good it could feel to know Azula, to hold her, to kiss her, and then it doubled as she remembered what Azula had done to anger her in the first place. “Fuck you,” she spat in English.
Azula's smile twitched wider. “I should get home now. Otō-san will be worried. We'll continue this discussion later.”
“That's unlikely.”
She hated Azula. She hated Azula more than she had ever hated anyone else. More than she could ever hate anyone else. She was sure of it. This always happened with Azula. She always wanted Mai to sacrifice more of herself than she was willing to for Azula's benefit. It was what she was wont to do, and Mai had known that, and she had still not seen this coming. Maybe because it had never been quite this unthinkable before.
Azula wanted to commit patricide. Or, rather, Azula wanted to avoid having to commit patricide by having Mai do it for her.
It was deplorable. It went against her upbringing entirely. It was… it was what Ozai deserved, but not because he wouldn't let Azula continue to figure skate. Azula was truly sick in the head for this one.
Mai rolled over her bed restlessly. She kicked at her blanket, slapped the lines of her palm to her own mouth to muffle the closest thing to a scream she could produce. She sat up all at once to seek out her copy of The Giving Tree, the one she'd bought to understand Azula. She hadn't understood Azula's fascination with the book at first, but she thought she understood it now.
Azula was a horribly selfish girl who wanted to take everything Mai had to give.
That was all she had ever wanted, even as a wide-eyed child, bleeding sunlight and promises of forever. The promises were of Mai and Ty Lee being hers forever. They weren't of eternal friendship or undying love. Azula wouldn't know how to conceptualize such things. Mai should have known. She was a fool for not knowing.
She wanted her razor, but she had stowed it in her bathroom after she last took it to her body.
Mai grabbed her phone instead. She didn't know what she was doing with it until she saw the contact name spelled out before her eyes. Iroh. Azula and Zuko's uncle. He had always favored Zuko, and Azula had never liked him, but he had certainly seen more of Azula than Mai had in the last three years.
Maybe he understood her better than Mai did. It was a hopeless thought; Mai knew Iroh well enough to know of his bias against Azula, but she still found herself pressing the call icon anyway. It wasn't like Iroh would be unwilling to help her. She knew that even if he had heard what happened to Tsutomu, he was the kind of man who would forgive her.
It rang four times before Iroh answered. “Mai?” he asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Oji-san,” she said breathlessly. He had always told Mai and Ty Lee to call him like he were their uncle. He had whispered conspiratorily once that it was because Ozai was too concerned with image to extend the invitation for them to do so as Ursa had. Ty Lee had giggled, and even Mai had cracked a smile. She understood why Azula didn't like the man, and she had never liked to see his distance from his own niece, but Mai had always been fond of Iroh.
“That's too formal now!” he laughed.
“Oji-chan,” Mai said, a smile forming against her better judgment.
“It's good to hear from you. It has been too long. Though, Zuko tells me the two of you have been talking again.” There was a misplaced hope in his voice.
Mai hated to crush it, so she dodged it instead. “I've been talking to Azula again, too.”
Silence stretched between them, and Mai cursed herself for not having segued into it better.
“I was actually… I was wondering if you had any advice about… her,” she said, feeling rather clumsy.
Iroh sighed. Mai felt the weight of it through the phone. “You should come over for tea, Mai,” he said sadly. “I fear my niece is too complex to discuss between pleasantries over the phone.”
“When would you have me?” Mai said. She felt her heart in her throat at the prospect. She missed Iroh and the comfort he provided. She also wanted desperately to vent her frustrations about Azula as much as she could without giving Azula's hatred of her father away.
Iroh chuckled lightly. “You could come over now if you wanted. An old man gets lonely, you know.”
Mai did know. Iroh's only son had died in a car accident only three years after his wife had died of breast cancer. These tragedies had occurred when Mai was nine and six respectively, leading to his retirement from politics and opening the way for Ozai to be elected prime minister. He lived alone, and he tried to make light of it so as not to ruin everyone else's moods, even stocking up on those “I Heart Boobies” Breast Cancer Awareness novelty items. That was something Mai thought she could understand. She often found herself hiding the extent of the emptiness she carried within her like an unlit torch for the comfort of others. She couldn't say she succeeded nearly as well at it as Iroh did, though.
“I'll be on my way.”
“I'll be eagerly awaiting your arrival. Do you need the address?”
“No, I remember it.”
She pulled on a jacket to fight the chill of the nighttime air, and she left, thinking only of Azula and her beautiful smile.
She arrived to find that Iroh had made her favorite tea. He had started brewing it before she even arrived. She found herself touched that he still remembered it, but a twinge of sadness took her heart too. Of course, he had remembered. He had nothing to do but remember since she had cut off all contact with Azula and Zuko, one after the other.
He poured them both a cup of tea as she seated herself on the zabuton. “What is it you would like my help with, Mai?” he said with his mouth in the shape of a smile but his eyes dull and tired.
“How has your brother been?” she said.
If possible, Iroh's shoulders sunk even further. “Ozai has been… well enough, I suppose. My brother does not speak with me anymore. I am merely an old fool he does not wish to entertain further, I am afraid. If you need information about him, I cannot tell you it.”
“And Azula…” Mai trailed off.
“I did not invite you here under false pretenses, Mai. I regret that I have always found my niece to be… difficult, especially in recent years, but I do wish to help you with whatever problems she has caused you,” he said.
Mai felt anger twitch in her belly. She soothed it with a long sip of her tea, not even blowing on it beforehand. It burned her tongue and scorched her throat on its way down. The pain was greatly welcomed. It helped her to resent his outlook on Azula less.
She felt stupid for being angry with him for it, really. It was only an hour before that she had been lying in bed, tossing and turning over how much she hated Azula. Still, she wished Azula had had someone, anyone in her life but her father to love her—if Ozai was even capable of that.
“Have you ever—do you think you would ever consider… just trying to be there for her?” Mai said. She felt foolish. She knew the answer before she asked the question, and she knew even if he could answer differently, it would not help Azula now. It was too late to nurture her into something kind.
Iroh smiled once more. It did not reach his eyes; she wished he would stop doing that. She almost wanted him to yell at her or tell her she had disappointed him the way her mother would have. Instead, he said, “Even if I knew how to be there for Azula in a way she would accept, I do not think it would make a difference. I don't know if you believe that either. Now, what is it about her that is troubling you?” Iroh blew gently on his tea to cool it, then took a long sip.
“It's just… something she said. About—well, she asked me to do something I couldn't do. She won't believe me that I can't do it either.”
He set his cup down gently. “What is it my niece asked of you?” He sounded tentative.
Mai shook her head. “She asked me to sacrifice something for her. She's always been like that, I think. Always taking, never giving.”
“Unfortunately, I think you might be right. My brother never asked Azula to give anything to anyone as a child, so she never learned to do so. To her, it is as foreign as the Hebrew language. I do not blame her for it, but I do wish… ah. I sound so foolish, don't I? Let me tell you a secret: There is no use in wishing, Mai. You cannot rewrite the past,” Iroh said with a sigh.
Mai drank the rest of her tea in silence. Iroh didn't seem to mind it. He only smiled when she finished, this time letting it reach his eyes with only a touch of melancholy, and asked if she had had enough of him.
She had admitted she ought to return to her dorm, and he had seen her out, bidding her farewell.
The second the door had closed behind her, Mai's phone rang. It was Azula calling. Twice in one month. That was some kind of record. Mai worked herself back up into a proper state of anger when she answered. There was no point in declining. Azula would just call again and again until Mai answered or blocked her, and blocking her number would result in Michi's wrath.
“What do you want?” Mai said. She was foregoing manners. She saw no point to them when Azula was so impossibly rude.
Azula inhaled slightly, but it was sharp. She cleared her throat, then, in a terrifyingly calm, almost bored tone, she said, “Otō-san burned half of Zuko's face off for attacking his personal honor and questioning his politics. We're at the hospital if you'd like to come.”
Mai paled. Her feet felt rooted to the pavement beneath them. This couldn't be real. Azula couldn't be serious. But, surely, this was too much for even Azula to spin lies about. She would sound amused if she was lying. Azula would poke and prod and reenact the whole event as she alleged it over the phone if she only wanted Mai to be sick.
There was no other option: Azula was telling the truth, and she was telling it with such detachment that it made Mai's head feel like it might split open.
“Don't be such a monster,” she hissed. An afterthought, “I'll be right there.” It was too late though; Azula had already hung up.
Mai was in a state of complete and utter disarray when she made it to the hospital. All she could hear was Azula's voice delivering the news over the phone. All she could feel was the burn in her legs from running as fast as she could. All she could taste was the salt of the sweat that had bled into her mouth from the exertion. She had never been so scared in her life. She had never hated Ozai more.
Azula was the one to greet Mai in the lobby, bringing her to the restroom to make her look presentable first. Mai's lungs burned too much to tell Azula her appearance didn't matter; Zuko mattered.
In the restroom, Azula shooed a crying woman before turning on Mai. She moved to fix Mai's hair, but the taller girl grabbed her wrist, squeezing it tightly with the intent to harm.
In any other setting, Mai was sure the pressure would have made Azula smile. The acknowledgment that she could rip forth such intense feelings from Mai would have been a victory to laugh at Mai over. In this setting, it only made Azula sigh. Now that they were this close, Mai could see the bags under Azula's eyes, painted into something less blatant by concealer. She could see the wrinkles in Azula's normally perfectly smooth outfit. She could see the flyaways in her ponytail, less sleek than normal, almost like Mai's arrow had whizzed through it again.
Mai dropped Azula's wrist. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. What was there to say?
Azula straightened out Mai's hair in silence for a long moment. She moved onto the collar of Mai's shirt, tugging at it a touch too roughly. Then, she clicked her tongue. “Zuko offered unwanted and unasked-for criticism of his international policies once more. Last time, it was reparations and how we owe them to every country we've wronged. This time, it was the Yasukuni Shrine. Zuko is an idiot like that.” Her voice was controlled and flat, and her expression stayed vacant and bored as if she were being taught a subject she had already mastered.
“You criticized the shrine visits too,” Mai said. She wasn't sure what compelled her to say it. Maybe she wanted to defend the already brutalized Zuko. Maybe she wanted to remind Azula she wasn't that different from her brother.
“Not to his face,” Azula hissed. It was a reminder that Mai should watch her tongue.
Mai tried a different approach. “You said Zuko was spineless for not saying it to Mi—Ozai's face,” she said.
Azula's face darkened and her mouth opened and closed silently. “Don't call him that,” she said finally. She was quiet a moment, and Mai waited for what she'd say next. Azula's lips, red as sin, formed a flimsy smile. “Anyway, I was spineless too, and if the golden child is spineless, that ought to tip the scapegoat child off that he shouldn't develop a spine overnight.”
They were both very still for a long moment as Azula processed what she had just said to Mai and Mai struggled to think through the implications with her upper-echelon-educated brain. Azula's hands resumed their movement as she brushed lint, real or imaginary, off of Mai's clothes.
“Does that mean following your lead would've spared him the pain?”
Azula laughed, her head lolling back a touch. It was mirthless and hollow for once, not a monster of a thing bigger than everything else in the room. It exposed something dark and blooming beneath the color of her shirt that Mai took a second to register as bruises, and not the kind Zuko likely bore.
“I thought you scared off the last boy who liked you,” Mai said without thinking.
Azula blinked without registering what Mai was referring to for a moment. It dawned on her. “Some boys like that I'm scary,” she said. It sounded simple when she phrased it like that. Mai supposed that, unlike so much else about Azula, it was simple. “Anyway, aren't you still worried about Zuzu?”
“I am,” Mai said, and it wasn't a lie at all, “but there's nothing my worry can do for him right now. I can only wait until you tell me how he's doing.”
A more sincere-looking smile blossomed across Azula's mouth. “He'll live, but he's not allowed visitors yet. We could be waiting all night. Come on. You look presentable now.”
Some hours later, Mai found herself by the vending machine, looking to get something caffeinated to keep from falling asleep. She was pondering over her options with heavy eyelids when footsteps approached her.
“Thank you for coming,” Ursa said from behind her. It was the first time Mai had heard her speak all night. She sounded weak and tired. Mai felt a flare of anger toward the woman. If she had left her husband, if she had stood up for her son, Zuko wouldn't be lying in the hospital right now with half his face melted off. The doctor had informed them an hour ago that he would lose the function of his left eye completely and they were uncertain if he could hear out of that ear. In a way, it was Ursa's fault as much as it was Ozai's.
Mai knew that was unfair to think. She had seen how terrified Ursa was of Ozai firsthand. She knew that if he did this to his son, she didn't want to know how he hurt his wife.
“It's no problem,” Mai said, selecting a canned espresso to try to end this interaction.
Ursa stopped her from reaching into her wallet. Instead, Ursa paid for Mai's drink.
“I don't know what Azula told you, but you know how she can be so… imaginative. I wish I'd been there to protect Zuko,—truly, I do—but this was a kitchen accident. It wasn't—if Azula said it was intentional, she was lying,” Ursa said. The words sounded rehearsed to Mai's ears, and Ursa herself sounded as if she were in pain even saying them.
Still, another flare of anger formed between Mai's ribs. She tried desperately to tame it, knowing that arguing with Ursa about the cause of her son's burn would be futile. “Azula always lies, right?” Mai said. “That's what Zuko used to say?” She was offering Ursa a lifeline she didn't think the woman deserved.
Ursa nodded slowly. Her face twisted up in pain as she did it.
“I know what she's like,” Mai said, opening the can to drink it. No one else was waiting to use the vending machine or even in the vicinity. She wasn't obstructing anything if she drank her espresso here. She took a long gulp from it, but Ursa didn't move. “It wasn't your fault,” she said. “You couldn't have protected him. Accidents happen.” The words tasted foul in her mouth. Mai normally didn't care if she lied, but this was like pulling teeth.
“He'll never forgive me,” Ursa whispered.
Mai's eyes fluttered shut and she took another sip. She didn't want to console this woman. She didn't want to play along with this charade. Still, Zuko would hate her if she didn't, and Azula hadn't told her so she could cause a scene about the truth. “Even if he is mad when he wakes up, even if you could have protected him, he'll forgive you. He could never hold anything against you. You know that.” It felt like an accusation once it was said, but Mai wouldn't take it back. It was the truth, after all.
“He shouldn't forgive me.”
There was a long silence. Mai hated that she had opened the can here and couldn't walk away without it being rude. She didn't know what to say next. She wished Iroh were here. He always knew what to say. It hit her then: Iroh. He wasn't here. No one had called him yet. Azula had only called Mai, and Ozai likely didn't want more people than necessary to find out until he had spun a proper lie about the burn, until he had terrified Ursa into being at all convincing.
“You should call Iroh,” Mai said. “Zuko will want to see him when he's allowed visitors.”
Ursa's jaw slackened, then she whispered a curse. “I'm so stupid,” she muttered. “How could I forget?” She walked off, Mai assumed, to find her husband and ask if they could contact Iroh yet.
When Zuko finally was fit for visitors, Ozai went in first. Alone. Then Ursa who Azula refused to go in with. Then Azula herself. She took exactly three minutes, then she came out and said, “Mai should get to speak with him. She waited all this time with us. She's practically family.” Her mouth curled around the word “family” like a curse.
Ozai leveled a glare at her, but they walked off to the side to argue in private. Mai heard snippets, but she didn't dare try to listen too closely. She was under the impression that if Ozai could abuse his own flesh and blood, he would have no problems battering her too should he believe her to be too nosy.
Still, she caught Azula's voice, carrying too far, saying something about how Zuko wouldn't say anything to embarrass the family. Ozai was not fully convinced by her from what Mai could hear of his more muffled voice. Mai glanced up in time to see Azula leaning up to her father's ear, whispering something too low to be heard at all from where Mai was standing. She looked to Ursa to see if this registered as at all strange to her. Ursa's brow was furrowed, but she only shook her head, muttering something Mai didn't want to make out clearly.
“Fine,” Ozai said. He turned to Mai. “You can go in. Don't be too long.”
The corner of Azula's mouth curled down in disgust as Mai entered the room. Mai couldn't fathom why considering she had argued for Mai to do exactly this. She didn't linger on it, though. Instead, she focused all her energy on Zuko.
“Hi,” she said quietly.
He shifted to look at her. Half his face was bandaged and a lot of his hair was sheared off, what remained was shorter than Mai had ever seen it. She couldn't see anything of his burns, but she couldn't imagine it looked good. Still, he attempted a smile when he saw her.
“Azula said you were here. I thought she was lying,” he said. His voice sounded rough. She wondered briefly if he had cried. It was a horrible thought she didn't want to entertain, so she crushed it into dust in her mind.
“She wasn't,” Mai said. Azula had told the truth an unnerving amount of times over the last forty-something hours. It was uncharacteristic of her, but Mai wasn't here to talk about Azula. She was here for Zuko. He was all that mattered right now. She sat down next to him and hesitated before reaching for the hand nearest her.
He surprised her by taking her hand in his to anchor her to him. It was entirely unlike when they had held hands as a couple. This was making her whole heart ache for him.
“I'm glad she wasn't for once,” Zuko said. He let a moment pass before he tried to laugh. It didn't quite catch in his throat, and he gave up quickly. “Can you believe my luck? Otō-san always said I was clumsy, Kaa-san too, but I never thought I'd fall face-first into the electric stove. That's what I get for trying to cook, though. I should've stopped being stubborn and let the chef do it for me.”
It was the most convincing lie Mai had ever heard him tell. The realization made bile rise in her throat. She squeezed his hand tenderly and swallowed it down quickly. “Be more careful next time,” she said instead of calling him on his lie.
“I'll try,” he said. She thought it was meant to sound reassuring or maybe even playful. It didn't.
She didn't want to linger on it, so she said, “Do your friends know yet? Sokka and Suki I think you said their names were?”
He shook his head then flinched for it. The sight made her cringe in sympathy. She couldn't imagine the kind of pain he must have been experiencing, even if he was on painkillers. “They'll worry too much when they find out. Can you hand me my phone? If I don't tell them myself, they'll never believe I'm okay.”
Mai handed him the phone on the table next to him, but she couldn't help it. It fell out of her mouth before she could stop it. It was his use of the phrase “I'm okay” when he looked so wounded to her, but it didn't make it acceptable for her to ask out loud: “Is it as bad as it looks under the bandages?”
Zuko paused, his hand going still around his phone. There was a moment where Mai thought he'd scream at her, and she'd deserve it for being so insensitive. The moment passed. Instead of screaming, Zuko said, the smallest she'd ever heard his voice, “I don't know. They said it would scar pretty badly.” His visible eye was wet. She imagined the one she couldn't see was too. She wondered if it hurt.
The anger flared in her chest again. She hated Ozai for what he'd done to his son.
“I'm sorry,” she said helplessly.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Zuko said. The tears had started running down his cheeks. “I'm the idiot here. It's my fault.”
Against her better judgment, Mai hugged him. “It's going to be okay,” she said. She was determined to not be lying.
When Mai left the hospital room, she found Azula alone.
“Where are your parents?” she said cautiously, her own cheeks and the skin of her neck still damp with tears. She hadn't bothered drying herself off before leaving. There was no point pretending she hadn't cried.
Azula smiled briefly. It was a flicker of her lips so quick that Mai almost missed it. “Calling Oji-san,” she said simply. She didn't ask any questions about Zuko or Mai or any of it. She didn't have to. Mai was certain Azula knew exactly what she was feeling in that moment.
“I've reconsidered your idea,” she said. There was no point beating around the bush. “But I'll only do it if we do it on my terms, not yours.”
Mai was watching Azula's mouth this time, but Azula didn't smile. Her expression gave nothing of her heart away. “You know I don't play well with others. Otherwise, I'd have played a team sport.”
Mai narrowed her eyes. Azula's expression stayed flat.
“Fine. For this, I'll try.”
She had to know. She had to ask. “Is it for you or for him?”
Azula's cherry bomb mouth finally curled upward. “You know me too well to ask that question.” She wasn't wrong. Mai wished she was, though.
Notes:
additional cws: emetophobia, hospitals
- Minamoto Iroh 源隘路 narrow path
Chapter 4
Notes:
wow maizula nation rise im feeding you guys so well lately? let's go over halfway mark!
fanart this chapter from the excruciatingly talented but deactivated war-pine
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“We could poison him,” Azula said. She was sprawled out rather comfortably on Mai's western-style bed and, last Mai had seen, tossing an autographed baseball up and down. Mai hadn't bothered asking, but she was sure Azula had stolen it from Zuko the same way she had barged in to discuss their plan without asking.
Mai half-hoped Azula would miss one of her catches and end up with a black eye; she didn't have time for this conversation right now, but Azula had set herself to prattling off half a dozen possible murder methods.
“You know I think he had Ursa poison his father. It always bothered me how Ojii-san died so suddenly. It worked out so well in Otō-san's favor too. Without Ojii-san to push my kooky uncle to run for prime minister, he had no interest in the position, and Otō-san used his inheritance to fund his campaign. Very suspicious, don't you think? My grandfather dies without warning, and my father gets everything he's ever wanted.”
Mai turned the page in her notebook but didn't look up. “You hated your grandfather. And poisoning, really? That kind of thing only works in movies, Azula.”
Azula clicked her tongue. The sound was vaguely angering, and it drew Mai's attention away from her schoolwork and toward Azula. Azula was sitting up now with her knees tucked in. She smiled coldly at Mai and continued to toss the baseball in one hand.
“What we're doing will be investigated as a serious political assassination. I told you already that we'll need airtight alibies and a perfect method to get away with it,” Mai said. She couldn't believe how unseriously Azula was treating this when it had been her own idea.
“What do you suggest then, Mai, since you're such an expert at slicing things open?” Azula was smiling.
Despite herself, Mai grimaced. She had to remind herself Azula was talking about the knife taken to Tsutomu and not the razor taken to Mai's own skin. Even then, it was hard to steel herself after that remark. Azula really was unpleasant, even now.
Azula rolled her eyes. “Come on, we both know you're not so squeamish you can't take a joke.”
She wasn't wrong, but that knowledge didn't make Mai feel any better. It was probably worse that she was far less distraught by Azula cavalierly making off-color remarks about her killing her most prized horse than she would be by Azula making off-color remarks about her self-harm.
“Whatever.” Mai sighed. “I don't know why I let you bother me so much today. I already figured out how we're going to do it anyway.”
Azula's wrist stilled. “And you didn't tell me. Why?” Her mouth snarled around the last word. She looked beautiful and terrible for it, but Mai was loath to admit as much even to herself.
She shrugged with practiced disinterest. “I guess you just kept talking. Maybe I like your voice.”
With a murmured expletive, Azula dropped the baseball onto the floor beneath her and fished something out of her pocket: a lighter and a pack of cigarettes.
The sight made Mai groan. “Not in my dorm. It'll stain the walls and make my bed stink.” Mai would also get in trouble if she was caught with a smoker in her room, but she doubted Azula cared about that at all.
Blood-red lips twisted into a smirk as a cigarette was placed between them. The lighter was flicked on, and Azula exhaled a plume of white smoke.
Mai made a rude hand gesture but did nothing to stop Azula. There was no point trying. Instead, she returned to her schoolwork.
“So what's the plan?” Azula gestured impatiently with the hand holding her cigarette. Dangerously, an ember fell to the floor. Azula stomped it out with her slipper-clad foot.
“Just pin it all on someone believable for the media. Convince them to do it then betray them so they go down for it.”
Azula blinked at her. A moment passed by. Then another. Finally, she spoke, “That's it? You made it sound like some ingenious plan.”
Mai shrugged. “You didn't think of it.” She might as well have slapped Azula.
Tempestuous as ever, Azula took her half-smoked cigarette and stubbed it against the brown wood of Mai's bedpost. It would definitely leave a mark, but maybe Mai could get it out if she scrubbed it hard enough. Then again, maybe she would never be clean of Azula. The girl was like a wine stain clinging to the fabric of Mai’s once monotonous life. She looked like an open wound against the black and white backdrop. “So, we frame a political extremist type? Is that your grand idea, Mai?”
“Pretty much. You know how Zuko's new friends are all… foreign?” She was trying to have some tact about how she phrased this. “Gaijin” felt too strong as a noun to be appropriate here.
“Yes, I do keep tabs on my own brother.” Azula's nostrils flared with her words. Her temper was clearly still running short. She never did forgive a slight.
“Right, well. That's the kind of person the media will want to believe did this.”
Azula smiled.
“One last thing: I don't want to send a good person to prison over this.” Mai's words were met with an eye roll.
“Of course. I forgot you were such an upstanding citizen.”
Mai scowled.
With a wave, her sour mood was dismissed. “Anyway, we're in luck. I know someone.”
Waiting was dull. The Kantei was even creepier without its second-worst inhabitant around. Azula's room was especially boring to be stuck in. She didn't see why Azula hadn't let her come along to fetch the so-called perfect man to take the heat for Ozai's murder, and she didn't see why she couldn't have simply stayed at her dorm while Azula took care of this, but Azula had insisted that Mai come to the Kantei, had said that it was much closer to where “the mark” as she'd taken to calling him was.
It was weird to be here alone. It was even weirder that Azula had lured her here for this. It made Mai uneasy like she was about to fall victim to some awful monster in the house. Maybe she had watched too many horror films as of late.
Maybe her paranoia was earned. The Kantei did have an awfully creepy atmosphere to it, and the blankness of Azula's room was going to drive her crazy. She felt like that woman in that American short story about the wallpaper that she'd read some years ago, but Azula's room was lined with red not yellow.
Still, a part of Mai wanted to tear down the walls and uncover the underneath.
She sighed and got up from the desk chair. She was going to be very rude in Azula's absence. It wasn't as if Azula didn't deserve it. She was far ruder than Mai had ever been. It was almost equilibrium for Mai to return the courtesy as she opened Azula's desk drawers. There was nothing of interest.
How boring. All Azula kept in there were neatly organized school supplies. Mai wasn't going to thumb through them either, even if she knew Azula well enough to know she probably kept something awful hidden amongst them. It probably wasn't worth the effort.
It was probably something Mai would want to unsee. Azula was downright morbid at times. It was hard to imagine how macabre she got when she was alone. And anyway, it was probably something Azula wanted Mai to see. There had to be a reason she had dragged Mai here, after all. A smile split Mai's face at the knowledge that she was likely disobeying Azula's whims.
That didn't stop her from opening up various books on Azula's bookshelf. One was carved out to hide a tin of mints, a lighter like the one Mai had seen Azula pull out earlier, and a pack of cigarettes. There was a sticky note tucked into the last page of The Giving Tree. It looked like Azula's handwriting. “The tree was an idiot, and the boy was indescribably selfish,” it read. It certainly sounded like Azula.
Mai put the book back where she'd found it, sticky note and all. She didn't want to let up to Azula that she'd given in to her boredom and gone digging around. Even if Azula couldn't really complain, even if she was ten times more invasive, Mai would never hear the end of that. Especially not if Azula had wanted this outcome.
She examined the floor beneath her and decided that if she was admiring the wood, then she really was done searching this room.
Maybe Ozai's room had something Azula wanted Mai to see. If they were going to be killing Ozai, then Mai ought to familiarize herself further with the man.
Knowing it was far stupider than going through Azula's things, Mai slid open the door to what she knew to be Ozai's bedroom and slipped in. It was bigger than Azula's room was, that was certain. There was a large, western-style bed in the middle of it. Mai couldn't help but wonder if Ozai and Ursa shared that bed. Her own parents didn't share a bed, and while she wouldn't call them the spitting image of marital bliss, she thought they'd be more likely to than Azula's parents.
She walked around the bed and to the nightstand to its right. There were a few things sitting on it: a leather glasses case, a charging cable, a pocket-sized copy of The Art of War left open, and, beneath that, an antique inro. It was golden with an ornate scene involving a dragon on its lacquered side. Curiously, Mai picked it up. She'd never seen one in such good condition before, and Ozai didn't have any diseases that she knew of that required medication. Did he just keep over-the-counter painkillers in it?
Before she could open it, she heard Ursa's voice announcing her return home in the distance.
Mai set the inro back down beneath the red book and slipped back out of Ozai's bedroom. She slid the door shut quietly behind her after sparing a glance to make sure everything was as she'd found it. Then, she headed over to the main entrance to greet Ursa and explain away her presence.
“Good afternoon, Oba-san,” she said.
“Mai! You startled me,” Ursa said. She looked pale and thin. Worse than she had before the hospital but not as bad as she had at the hospital. “Good afternoon. Did Azula invite you?”
“Yes, but she had to run an errand. She told me to wait for her,” Mai said.
“Oh, that's fine,” Ursa said.
“Thank you for having me,” Mai said.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment.
Mai hated speaking with Ursa and even more so now in the aftermath of Zuko's burning. Perhaps she should feel some semblance of guilt for the fact that she was plotting to help Ursa's daughter kill her father, Ursa's husband. Mai didn't feel guilty for that at all, though.
“I'll go back to her room then,” Mai said.
“Wait,” Ursa said. It wasn't a command, but it was a plea.
Reluctantly, Mai waited.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Ursa continued, “for being there for my children. Both of them.”
Mai wondered if Ursa would still thank her if she knew the truth about Mai's relationships with the Minamoto siblings. Maybe Ursa was so afraid of her husband that she would. Mai didn't think she would ever admit that fear, though.
“But… please don't let Azula cause you any trouble. I know Michi is thrilled you two have reconciled, but if she asks you for too much, please feel free to refuse her,” Ursa said. Her eyes looked earnest and pleading. She really thought she was doing Mai a favor by saying this. Like if she gave Mai permission to refuse Azula, Mai would do it with ease.
The woman really didn't know her daughter at all. Azula never asked Mai for things; she demanded them. And who was Mai to refuse her?
She had been the girl on the wrong end of an ice skate, and now she was the girl who had killed her horse.
“I'll do my best,” Mai said. There was no point denying Azula's nature to her own mother. Ursa may not have known her daughter, but that didn't stop her from fearing the girl.
Mai's phone buzzed in her pocket, effectively putting the conversation out of its misery. It was Azula.
“Excuse me, please,” Mai said as she stepped off to the side to take the call. “Hello, Azula.”
“Don't sound so pleased,” Azula said. “Change of plans. I'm not coming back after all. Meet me at the shopping mall parking lot. I have someone I'd like you to meet.”
The dial tone indicating the call had ended went off. Mai sighed and locked her phone. If she knew about this, Ty Lee would be jealous of how easily Mai went to that damn mall for Azula. If she knew about this, Ty Lee would scream at Mai to get the fuck away from Azula before she was the one going down for homicide.
It was a good thing Ty Lee didn't know.
The car they were sitting in was a banged-up little thing. From the outside, it looked as though it might fall apart. From the inside, it only faired slightly better. The vehicle in question belonged to a brown-haired boy with a cigarette permanently between his lips, even when he spoke. Azula said his name was Jet, and he hadn't disagreed.
Mai thought he seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place him.
“Jet and my dear brother used to date,” Azula said. “In secret, of course. Otō-san would never approve of such… depravity.”
Mai didn't think Azula had a right to call anyone else depraved, least of all for being gay. She didn't say that, though. She didn't comment on her and Zuko's apparent shared interest in the same sex either. It wasn't as surprising as it maybe should have been. Maybe nothing surprised her after realizing she was into girls. After realizing she was into Azula.
It had certainly been unsettling to discover.
Or maybe Zuko just had a vibe. Did she have a vibe? That could be a problem.
“However, Otō-san found out they were friendly, and he banned Zuzu from ever seeing Jet again,” she said. She recited the information the way she recited everything about Zuko: as if it were a waste of her time and energy to even know such a thing.
“And that makes him a good candidate because…?” Mai wasn't following.
Azula rolled her eyes. “He's zainichi and a political extremist, so he hates my father. And he has a criminal record, so he'd be willing to do it.”
“You still haven't told me what it is exactly,” Jet said. “Which is stupid for a girl paying me so much money to even listen to this shit.”
“Don't worry about my money. I have plenty of it.”
That irritated Jet, but he didn't leave.
“It's worth your time, I swear,” Mai said anyway.
Azula kicked her feet up over Mai's lap and stretched like a cat. “Now, Mai, should I pitch it to him or would you do the honors?”
Mai didn't bother pushing Azula's legs off of her lap when she spoke. “I'll do it. Jet, how would you feel about recalling our prime minister?”
“I'd like that, but what do you have in mind exactly?”
“I mean—”
Azula cut Mai off by pantomiming shooting her point-blank.
“Bang,” Mai said dryly. She almost smiled.
Jet looked interested now, leaning closer to them from the front seat of the car. He even plucked his cigarette out from his mouth. “Why would I do that? What would I even get out of that?”
Mai and Azula exchanged a glance.
“It's the noble thing to do,” Azula said with disdain. She was mocking Mai now, and Mai didn't appreciate it. “It doesn't hurt that he won't let me compete in the Winter Olympics.”
“Poor little rich girl.” Jet scoffed, leaning back now. They were losing him. Azula's plights were not particularly sympathetic, especially not to someone of a lower socioeconomic background like Jet clearly was.
“Ozai is abu—”
The sharp heel of Azula's shoe dug into Mai's thigh and twisted. Azula's eyes were sharp and cold.
Mai took the hint. She changed tactics accordingly. “Azula will pay you. A lot.”
“In cash.” Azula tightened her lips into a sneer.
Jet took a long drag from his cigarette. It was down to the last centimeter or so of white. He was almost to the filter when he blew out a plume of smoke in their faces. “I'll think about it. Now get out of my car.”
They did what any set of teenage girls would do. They got out of his car, and they went into the shopping mall.
It was over two smoothies that Azula finally said what they had both been thinking: “We have to blackmail him to make sure he can't back out on us. He won't snitch, but I want insurance.”
“I thought you'd never ask,” Mai said.
“You can go through Zuko's things then.”
Mai sighed. She supposed she could add Zuko to the list of Minamotos whose privacy she had violated.
Zuko was still hospitalized, so, after the mall, Azula was more than happy to take Mai to his bedroom. Azula was also more than happy to start digging through his drawers and closet.
Mai rolled her eyes but saw no use in telling Azula to stop. It's not like Azula ever listened to anyone but Ozai, and she wanted him to choke on his own blood and die. Mai didn't really feel like being Azula's next victim. It sounded unpleasant, to say the least. She sat down at Zuko's desk and opened his laptop to go through his messages with Jet.
None of them were from the last three months, and a lot of them were far more personal than Mai felt comfortable more than skimming over.
One word caught her eye though. She paused her scrolling. I wish your father would just die.
“I found something that goes for intent,” Mai said.
“And motive?”
When Mai glanced up, Azula was playing with an engraved, antique knife Iroh had bought Zuko.
“Working on it.” Mai didn't look away from where Azula was stabbing and slicing through the air for a long while, though. She wondered if Azula had it in her to slice someone open. When Azula wiped imaginary blood off of the flat sides of the blade and bowed, she thought she might have her answer.
Mai went back to work. A few minutes later, another set of messages caught her eye: Ozai is such an asshole to you. And he's such a bigot too. He should fuck off forever.
“Jet called him Ozai.” Mai supposed she was doing that now too.
“Oh?” Azula must have walked over to Mai at some point because she was leaning over Mai's shoulder now. “Look at that. We found our motive.”
Mai glanced back; Azula was smiling. It wasn't cold or cruel either. She was genuinely pleased. There was no Azula like a happy Azula, and Mai couldn't be sure when she'd have Azula in quite such a good mood again. She made up her mind to ask her the question that had been bothering her for a few hours now.
“Azula?”
“Hm?”
“Why does your father still use an inro? And why does he… hide it?”
Azula's jaw tensed slightly. Mai wouldn't have caught it if she hadn't been staring at Azula so intently.
“You went through his things then?” Azula said. She sounded impressed.
“Yeah. Is that a problem?” Mai raised an eyebrow.
“Not at all.” Azula tilted her head playfully. “Anyway, I don't know why he'd hide it, but Otō-san’s always had it. He’s so traditional. I imagine he’s probably using it currently for his prescription painkillers. He hurt his hip a few weeks ago.”
Mai nodded, but it didn't quite make sense to her. Ozai wasn't particularly old, and he was in good health as far as she knew. “How'd he hurt it?”
Azula's head lolled back as her laughter filled the air around them like static. It was annoying, and her throat was on display. If Mai was holding Zuko's knife, she could slit it. The thought left her head as soon as Azula spoke, though. “I think it was a sex injury, Mai.”
A scowl ruined Mai's stoic features. “That's disgusting. Do your parents even do that anymore?”
Azula shrugged. “Probably not.”
“So how would it be a sex injury?” Mai was lost again.
“He could have a mistress. Like how emperors used to have concubines.” Azula tapped her chin. It felt mocking. Most things she did felt mocking.
“That's even more disgusting. How can you think of your father like that?”
Azula just smiled. It was worse than if she'd said something in response.
Zuko was out of the hospital. He had been for a few days now, but this was the first time Mai would be seeing him since he'd gotten out. Still imprinted in her memory was the sight of him wrapped in gauze and lying to her about why. If Mai was honest, she didn't want to see him now. She wasn't ready. She couldn't shake the awful feeling in her chest every time she thought about Zuko in the aftermath. There were two hims in her mind; the Zuko of before and the Zuko there was now. Selfishly, she wanted the Zuko of before back.
She couldn't have him, though. She could only move forward.
And move forward she would.
She didn't know, truthfully, if Zuko would be happy once his father was dead. She couldn't know if he'd mourn or not. She hoped that if he did, he would mourn only the father he could have had and not the one he did, but Zuko's heart had been an open wound as far back as she could stretch her memory.
She sat on the park bench, waiting and not knowing. Waiting and not wanting to.
Mai had arrived early, of course. She had been anxious and unable to shake the feeling that she needed to go or she would never face the Zuko there was now.
After a half hour had passed, Zuko arrived.
He looked around nervously. He was fidgeting. Mai tried not to look too much at his scar. It wasn't fully settled yet, but the tissue was raised and red. It looked angry. It swallowed almost half his face. Ozai had done this to his son, and then he had made Zuko lie about it.
If Azula hadn't told her the truth, would she have accepted the lie?
“Hi, Mai.”
“Hi, Zuko. You… you're here.”
He smiled slightly, but it looked almost like a grimace. Mai tried to focus on his mouth. “It's okay. I know it looks bad.”
“It's not that bad.” She wanted to be telling the truth. She didn't think she sounded that believable, not to her own ears, at least.
“I look like a monster.” Zuko's voice was raw. Mai could tell he'd been thinking this a lot lately. It made her heart ache for him. Zuko was anything but a monster; Ozai was the monster.
Mai shook her head firmly. “No, you don't. You're a good person, Zuko, and you have a handsome face.” She meant that much. Even scarred, Zuko's features were sharp and strong. He still looked good. He just didn't look like the boy she'd grown up with.
Zuko ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I'm not so sure about that.”
“I'm serious. Anyway, girls like scars.” She hesitated on the word 'girls,' but she didn't see a reason to let him know Azula had outed him to her.
He made a face. “Um… about that. I'm not so sure… I like girls.”
Mai nodded and felt stupid for it. “Boys like scars too. You liked my scars.”
“Hey, you're not still doing that, are you?” Zuko looked so serious and concerned now.
“I haven't felt a need to.” It wasn't a lie. With Azula around, it was hard to feel numb enough to want to take a blade to her skin. Azula had always dragged Mai's heart out of her chest like that. She didn't tell Zuko that, though. She didn't think he'd want to know.
Azula texted Mai on Sunday. It was short and vague. All she said was that they were on for their plans. Mai inferred the rest.
Mai was less than thrilled. That wasn't new at all, though. Neither was the identity of the person causing her mood to sour. Azula was bothering her again. She had a paper that demanded her attention, but Azula had called, and like a well-trained dog, Mai had answered. There was little point in ignoring Azula's calls. There was little benefit in ignoring Azula's calls.
With their plan to murder Ozai and everything that entailed, Mai knew she had to answer.
“Ursa asked if I might change my mind about the onsen theme park,” Azula said. She was tapping her nails or something in the background. Mai could hear it loudly.
She also couldn't believe this seemed to be a phone call just to rant to Mai about her life problems. Mai didn't think she particularly cared right now if Azula was troubled by Ursa's attempts to force a closeness she hadn't earned. She had more important matters to deal with.
“How is that my problem, Azula?”
“She wants to take Zuzu now too. Once he's healed enough to be cleared for that sort of thing,” Azula said. “I don't want to be alone with the two of them.” It was amazing how Azula could make such a harmless word sound like a curse.
Mai sighed. “So you want me to put my life on hold to go with you?”
Azula made an impatient sound. “Yes, Mai, I would like that very much. I'm sure you would too if you thought about it for even a minute.”
It clicked into place. Azula wanted Mai to go with them so everyone would be out of the Kantei but Ozai, and Mai would have a solid alibi. She couldn't be off killing Ozai if she was with Azula, Ursa, and Zuko at an onsen theme park in another city.
“Whatever. I'll go with you if your mom is okay with it.”
“Perfect.” Azula hung up without so much as a goodbye.
Before they left for the onsen theme park, they met with Jet one last time. Mai and Azula were seated in the backseat of his beat-up car once more, inhaling the acrid plumes of smoke he nonchalantly exhaled. Mai hated the smell and the way the smoke made her eyes sting, but Azula was unblinking. She had on her Cheshire cat's smile.
“I'll leave a door unlocked when we go. No one will notice, so stop making that face. You won't rely on the virtual tour, Jet. You've been to the Kantei, so think about what you saw there. I suppose if you think you'll need help, I can sketch the blueprints for you. I know the layout like the periodic table or the shogunate, after all,” Azula said.
Jet blinked. Mai could tell that meant nothing to him. “How well is that?” His lips moved but his teeth firmly stayed entrapping his cigarette. Smoke poured out of the spaces between his teeth. He looked like a dragon.
“She can recite them perfectly.” Mai wasn't lying. Azula had a freakish memory for those sorts of things. “It's kind of annoying, really. She thinks it's a party trick.”
“It is.”
Mai cracked a half smile before smoothing her face. She didn't want Azula to make her smile, and she didn't want Jet to see that part of herself. It was private. It was hers and hers alone; Azula would never conquer it again if she could help it.
“So when are you going again? And why should I use some spa day as a chance to kill your father?” Jet said.
Azula rolled her eyes. “I told you already. We're staying over the weekend. Everyone but him will be out of the house, so he'll loosen up security,—don't worry, I'll tell you their set up too—and Mai and I will have solid alibis if anyone asks. It's the perfect opportunity.”
“And my alibi?” Jet exhaled a plume of acrid smoke.
“Do I look like I care about that?” Azula scoffed. “Figure it out yourself.”
Jet's expression soured even further. Mai hadn't thought it possible given how much he seemed to despise Azula already. She thought she better remedy this quickly before he tried to back out. Actually blackmailing him would be such a hassle.
“Go clubbing or something beforehand. You can disappear and pretend you were there with your friends the whole time. It's not like they'd implicate you in an assassination,” Mai said.
Jet nodded slightly. “All right, that's fine, but what am I supposed to kill him with?”
“Bring a generic kitchen knife from home, butcher him with it, and take it with you when you leave. I'd suggest a Takeshi Saji gyuto, but I doubt you could afford the ¥60,000 price tag.”
Mai's heart thudded in her chest. “Or you could carve his heart out with an ice skate blade. Symbolism for Azula and her figure skating career or whatever. I don't know.”
Jet's throat constricted, and his hands curled into fists. He plucked his cigarette out from between his lips. The filter looked crushed. He eyed it for a moment, lowered the window, and tossed it, still orange at its tip. “You've got a scary girlfriend, Minamoto.”
Azula didn't correct him. She just looked at Mai and smiled. Mai looked back, stone-faced.
She supposed there was something almost romantic about planning a homicide with another girl, even if she was doing it for Zuko. Maybe girlfriend wasn't such an inaccurate word.
Notes:
additional cws: prejudice against people with burn scars (jic)
Chapter 5
Notes:
this is a shorter chapter but we're almost over the hill.
also be warned, i will probably be slow on updates (for this fic, exile, utterpok, and designated safe space) for a little while this month bc of my midterms
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The trip was going better than Mai had anticipated, but it was doing so in a way Mai wished it wouldn't. There was nothing worse to bear witness to than Azula's public persona in regard to her family. It made Mai's skin crawl to see how easily Azula could peel her own skin back and replace it; her very essence was shed when she took to the public with her family in exchange for something kinder and prettier.
At least the travel portion was over for the time being. They had finally arrived at the hotel they would be staying at, and Ursa was checking them in now. Zuko and Ursa would both have their own neighboring rooms, but Azula had insisted on sharing one with Mai, saying that she should keep her guest company.
Mai's toes had curled at the thought of sharing a room with Azula. Even if they would be near Azula's mother, the thought was exhilarating in a way Mai wished it wasn't. She knew, though, what it was like to have Azula, and she could not will herself to forget. Especially not when Azula had not seen fit to correct Jet's assumption about them. When Mai herself had been unable to find a reason to deny it.
“Here you go.” Ursa handed Zuko and Azula both their own key cards. “We should all relax a little before we get dinner, okay?”
“Of course, Okaa-san.” For once, Azula's words did not sound disdainful or mocking in her mouth.
Ursa smiled. It trembled on her face.
When they reached their rooms, Mai followed Azula into theirs and hoped no one saw the way her blunt nails dug into her palms or how she bit down on the pink of her cheek. Azula smiled at her once the door was closed but made no move to kiss Mai or anything of the sort. Instead, she said, “Do you regret our plan yet, Mai?”
Mai was left feeling stupid and embarrassed. Azula wasn't interested in anything other than killing Ozai these days. Mai should have seen that coming.
“Why would I regret it?” Mai could think of a few reasons, all of which involved Azula betraying her. She was still curious.
“Because you disapprove of my motive.” Azula mimicked a guilty expression.
That was the least of Mai's problems. “I don't care about your motive. I'm doing this for the right reason.”
Azula's smile grew. It threatened to devour her face. “You didn't use to be so self-righteous, you know.”
Mai shrugged. Azula was right, but there was no point in admitting that. She had prioritized the thrill of feeling anything at all other than boredom once, but that had been years ago. Mai didn't want to do the wrong thing anymore. Feelings of guilt no longer appealed to her even if feelings of pain still did.
“If you care so much about the right thing, why did you kill Tsutomu?” Azula took a step closer. This was clearly something that had been burning at the tip of her tongue for some time now, ready to be weaponized as soon as Mai gave an opening.
Mai should have seen it coming. “He broke his leg. He was going to keep rebreaking it for the rest of his life, but my mom wouldn't put him down. She wasn’t strong enough, so I took matters into my own hands to spare him the pain,” she said simply. It had been far simpler than she wished it would have been. She had loved Tsutomu and had him for years, but killing him had been one of the easiest decisions Mai had ever made.
The act hadn't been so simple, though. She had been messy and imprecise, and so Tsutomu had suffered far more than she wanted him to before she had finally put him out of his misery.
“That's far kinder than I expected.” Azula was still smiling somehow, but her eyes looked less cold now. They weren't warm, though. She tilted her head and examined Mai like she was a particularly interesting painting in a museum. She took another step closer, and another, and another. Until there were only centimeters keeping them apart. Until Mai could see the dilation of Azula's pupils. Until Mai could see the faintest scar on Azula's forehead from the first time she attempted a triple axle jump.
Mai felt her face mantle. She wished it would stop giving away her heart. She didn't want to hand that to Azula on a silver platter. She didn't want Azula to have it at all. Even now, she was reluctant to give away something so vulnerable to the other girl.
“If it would put me out of my misery,” Azula said, leaning closer and only stopping once she was a hair away from Mai's lips, “would you kiss me?”
“No.” It was as instinctual as answering what two plus two was. It still came with the phantom of Azula's kiss, brushed against her lips.
Azula's smile fell, and she took an almost violent step back. “You didn't use to have a problem kissing me.” It was an accusation. There was anger there and hatred too. Real feelings plucked forth from Azula against her will. For once, Mai had the upper hand.
She took great pride in it and felt great pleasure knowing she could do to Azula what Azula could do to her.
“I didn't use to be so self-righteous either,” she said. It felt like kissing Azula. It felt like slapping her too.
At dinner, Azula was unnervingly kind once more.
Mai was prepared, though, and she accepted every positive interaction Azula exchanged with her mother and brother with a stone face. Knowing it was fake was unsettling, but knowing she had made Azula so desperate to feel powerful again that she had felt compelled to sit at her mother's side and smile that awful smile was thrilling.
Azula's public persona did not need to take that extra step. Mai knew her well enough that she was aware that this was only Azula taking delight in how her mother hated these tastes of what their relationship could have been if she had ever taken the time to get to know her daughter.
Mai couldn't entirely blame Ursa here; Azula was worse than opium. Mai knew that better than she would like to.
Still, their first full day at the onsen theme park was worse than the traveling and worse than the dinner alike.
Zuko looked positively disturbed by how unwaveringly kind Azula was being. Somehow, the complete lack of bite to her every word was crueler than the sneer that punctuated her usual demeanor. The knowledge that Azula could treat him with the respect and love ordered by his status as her older brother must have made his chest ache. It was the false promise of the sister he could have.
Every utterance of the word “Onii-san,” every move to accommodate him, every saccharine smile—it all amounted to something Azula was not, but something that she could have been if Ozai had not molded her mind.
Mai felt sick by the time her fingers were pruned. She said nothing, though. None of them did. There was no point in calling Azula on her bullshit. It would only be met with pearl blandishments strung in the pink of her mouth.
The skin that Azula had peeled back would be replaced soon enough, and her awful heart would beat the same as it always did. Angering her now was nothing but a way to be burned later.
They were changed into their night clothes and lying in two neighboring beds when Mai spoke. Her mind was buzzing with static. The dim light that was cast through the window served only to numb her senses even further. That must have been what possessed her to say something so horribly stupid.
“Why do you do it?” Mai had craned her neck to look at Azula.
“Hm?” Azula hummed curiously. She did not look back.
Mai should have clamped her jaw shut, but there was no unsaying it now. She might as well barge forward. “Why are you kind to them for PR?”
“You just answered your own question, Mai.” Azula's nostrils flared, but nothing else of her profile gave away anything she might feel. Mai could guess, though.
“But what's the point if I'm here? Aren't I tarnishing your reputation?”
“If I left you, you'd be investigated in the murder.”
“Since when do you care about other people? Azula, I'm serious. Why am I here?” Mai was more than pushing her luck. She was neck-deep in dangerous waters at least. Azula might really kill her for this.
Azula's eyes sharpened. They looked almost bloody. “That much should be obvious.”
Mai couldn't understand, and Azula wasn't going to give her a chance to push any further.
As punishing as ever, Azula changed the subject. “Do you think your parents named you with the kanji for 'alliance' to make you subservient to them?” If they'd been outside or in Mai's dorm or anywhere else that would never risk getting back to Ozai even as he neared his last hours alive, she would have punctuated it with a cigarette in hand.
“It's my duty, isn't it? As their daughter, I owe them respect and obedience.” It was the proper answer.
Azula laughed, ugly and wounded. “Are you giving me a lesson in the five cardinal relationships now of all times?”
“I don't know. Why do you think your mother didn't name you with any kanji? Did she not love you enough to give you any meaning? Were you just born loveless?” In a way, it felt good to speak her mind so cruelly. It felt good to hurt Azula when Azula did nothing but hurt her.
Maybe Mai wanted the pain, but that didn't mean she didn't want to give it back to its source too.
Azula was finally looking at Mai. That felt good too. A smile stretched over her face. Her lips were still red, but Mai didn't think she was wearing lipstick. She wondered if it was Azula's own blood smearing her lips or only a trick of the light.
Either way, she didn't feel good anymore.
“I wouldn't put it past Okaa-san. The woman couldn't even give birth to me without hating me,” Azula said, her voice full of bitterness and scorn.
Mai didn't want to push any further. She only wished she could close the gaping hole in Azula's heart, the one she had ripped the stitches out of. She thought Azula would rather bleed out, though.
“Are you and my sister… are you together?” Zuko was not nearly quiet enough for the public space.
They were in a wine-themed onsen, and Mai had never wished someone had asked something less.
She didn't know how to answer him. Any response she could give felt like a lie. “Together” was a bold way to describe her relationship with Azula, somehow far too intimate and not revealing enough all at once. She couldn't say that it had felt wrong when Jet had called her Azula's girlfriend, but she couldn't say Azula would agree that they were together either.
Together meant something linear and closed off to others. Together implied hands held and kisses sneaked and sweet nothings whispered. Together carried a softness Azula hadn't had in years. Together said something of a future Mai had not and would not consider.
No matter how Mai came to life for Azula, no matter how Azula trusted Mai, they had not so much as discussed the possibility of being together. They had only discussed homicide, but Mai would be a liar if she said it hadn't felt the same as a confession.
Denying it felt like lying, and so did confirming it. Not to mention that Azula would skin her alive if she said yes.
“What makes you think that?” Mai said instead of answering him.
He frowned. “Azula said… you were involved, weren't you? Before we got together?”
Damn her for telling him.
“I've seen the way you two are together. I'm not blind, Mai. Not all the way.” The joke was worsened by a grimace. It was too soon for him to make fun of.
“In junior high, I made a lot of mistakes. Kissing the wrong person was one of them.” Mai tried to believe herself. She knew Azula was the wrong person, but she couldn't feel remorse for what they'd done. She knew that if she was stupid enough to love Azula, Azula would never be able to love her back. Not fully. Not in the right way.
It wasn't her fault; no one had ever taught Azula how to love someone else.
Zuko smiled in relief.
Mai felt guiltier than if she'd lied.
“Hey, how are things with your parents?” It was a touch inappropriate for the setting, all things considered, but that had always been part of Zuko's charm.
It was part of Azula's allure too.
Anyway, they would be alone once the American couple finished getting out.
“They've been worse since Tsutomu died, but living in a dorm has helped. I visit a lot to see Tom-Tom, though. Actually, I overheard something I wasn't supposed to at home. My mom said that she hoped I'd commit seppuku,” Mai said too honestly. She felt raw all over as they sat in the wine bath.
She felt free.
This was the type of honesty she usually only shared with Azula. This was a side of her no one else ever wanted to exist.
Zuko's face looked horrified. She supposed he didn't want this inconvenient part of Mai to be real either.
“I'm sorry. I don't… How could a mother say that?”
Something inside Mai burned at that. “Ursa called Azula a monster once.” She didn't care for manners here. They were alone now. She could be honest. It would hurt Azula if she found out, rub her raw and aching, but Mai would not let Zuko pretend not to know about the cruelty of mothers.
“Did Azula tell you that?”
“Yes.”
Zuko was scowling now. “She's always lying. I don't get her. Kaa-san would never say that.”
“Not to you. But mothers are capable of horrible things even when they love their sons.”
He had never looked angrier with her than at that moment.
Mai didn't care at all, though.
Their trip ended with Zuko and Mai hardly on speaking terms. They were parting at the train station when Mai realized it would be a lasting change to their relationship. Azula hugged her goodbye, but Zuko only shoved his hands into his pockets and wished her a safe train ride back to her dorm. She had chosen one sibling over the other, and it had not been the one she expected herself to keep, the one she wanted to kill to protect.
So why was she so at peace with it?
Ursa, Azula, and Zuko would be discovering Ozai's corpse any minute now. Jet had certainly taken his sweet time waiting so long to kill Ozai, but it was fine. He would keep his end of the deal. He wanted the man dead just as badly as Azula did, and it wasn't as if Azula had paid him a small sum for his troubles.
Mai waited an hour after she'd arrived at her dorm, spending it writing her paper to pass the time tick by tick of her clock. Then, at long last, she pulled open a browser window to search for news of Ozai's death.
She found nothing. Not even news of an attempt on the prime minister's life. She changed her search browser. Still nothing.
She checked her phone. She had not so much as a text from either Azula or Jet.
Mai pulled Azula's contact information up, and she called. She went to voicemail. Again. Voicemail again. A third try.
Azula answered on the second ring. “What do you want?”
“What happened?”
“Jet is a filthy coward, Mai. I have to go. Otō-san is expecting me.”
The dial tone cut in before Mai could ask what Ozai wanted or what their next course of action was if Jet was a bust. Mai closed her eyes and exhaled tightly. She had to think. She had to fix this. Even if Zuko wanted nothing to do with her anymore, she wouldn't let Ozai continue to hurt him.
She had come too far to turn back.
Azula wasn't responding to Mai's texts or calls. Three days had gone by without so much as a sign of life from Azula. Mai wanted to crush her worry into dust; she knew Azula was alive because there had been no news to the contrary, but she still felt the grip of dread, cold and slimy in her stomach.
Ozai had burned Zuko. Azula might have been the golden child, but even gold could melt at the right temperature.
Mai's head was full to a dizzying point with images of Azula, hands around her throat. Azula, blood dripping from her mouth. Azula, face-first on a stove.
She was going to be sick if she kept envisioning it.
She was even seeing Jet now.
Mai pressed her eyes shut, her eyelids heavy. When she opened them, there were dark spots in her vision, but Jet was still walking down the sidewalk in the same direction as her.
Before she knew it, she was running to catch up with him. She grabbed his shoulder, not caring if there were people to bear witness to her rudeness. “Jet, can we talk? Somewhere private?”
“Nakatomi… hey. Uh, right now? I'm kind of running errands.”
“They can wait, can't they?”
With great reluctance, Jet followed Mai to a secluded park.
“You backed out with no warning.” There was no need for pleasantries. Not when she could still see Azula's battered form in her mind's eye. Not when Zuko would never be the same again.
“Look… I'll give Azula back her money, but the kids I look out for need me around more than Ozai needs to bite it. He'd only be replaced by another extremist scumbag anyway. It wouldn't change anything. Not really, Nakatomi.”
It ripped out of Mai's throat before she could control herself. “It would change Zuko's life. Ozai burned half his face off, you asshole. That’s what the reports about the Minamoto family being at the hospital were about.”
Jet's face darkened, and his hands curled into fists. The damage was done. Mai had to learn to shut the hell up again.
“I'm sorry. I didn't know Ozai was that much of a monster, but those kids need me. I can't abandon them. I'm almost twenty, and I'm zainichi; they wouldn't go easy on me at all in the legal system. Tell Zuko I'm here if he needs me, okay?”
“Whatever.”
She just wanted everything to be over already.
It was four days that Mai spent ignoring everyone even Ty Lee before Azula finally contacted her.
Mai stared down at her phone screen. For her week of silence, all Azula had said was: Come over. Okaa-san and Zuzu are at Oji-san's. Each character seemed to sneer back up at Mai, reminding her that she was at Azula's beck and call.
She wasn't as put off by that as she should be, and so she found herself on the train, not knowing what awaited her at the Kantei.
It wasn't as bad as her brain had convinced her. There were no piles of corpses to greet her; there was only Azula, stained with the stink of cigarettes despite the sleekness of her appearance.
Before Mai could apologize for intruding, a mechanical response, or ask what the hell this was all about, a truer one, Azula's mouth was pressed to Mai's. She tasted like ash and felt like a pilgrimage against Mai. It had been too long. It had been far too long since they had done this, and the response that took over Mai's, the movement of her mouth, was almost primal. It was as if kissing Azula was all that she was put on this earth to do and there was no greater pleasure to be found.
Distantly, Mai recognized that with Azula, that only meant there would be no greater pain. She didn't care. She only wanted to keep kissing Azula as long as the younger girl would have her.
Before she knew it, Azula was pulling away, her nails still digging into Mai's hips and her eyes lidded and burning.
Mai didn't have time to demand to know why Azula had done that, to feel the anger seep into her chest that she had let Azula, because Azula was already speaking again. “I need you to put a hickey on my throat,” she was saying as if it was more normal a command than she had ever given Mai.
“What?” Mai said blankly. “I mean, why?”
Azula made an impatient sound. “It'll anger him. Enough that we can say it was self-defense,” she said.
If kissing Azula was primal, Mai didn't want to know what to call her desire to kill Ozai. She had to. Even if this plan was idiotic and half-formed and could out them both if it worked.
She let Azula lead her to the kitchen where she leaned forward and sucked at the pale skin of Azula's throat, hard and bruising like she had to. It felt good to do this. It felt powerful even when she was only doing it because Azula asked. It felt powerful that Azula had asked at all.
There was the sound of a door opening and then the sound Ozai's voice announcing his arrival home.
Mai pulled back, a trail of spit breaking as she did. Azula's throat looked angry from where she'd been attached to it. It was odd to see her skin marred. Mai didn't know if she liked it.
She shook her head, though. She didn't have time for this as she grabbed a knife from the block and hid behind the counter, on the side opposite from where Azula was standing.
Her heart was pounding in her throat. She was equal parts aroused from kissing Azula and numb from the prospect of killing again.
“I'm in the kitchen, Otō-san,” Azula said.
Mai could hear his every footstep. She watched her breath fog up the knife as she listened to him make his way to Azula. She was going to have to act quickly if he hurt her like she thought he would. Azula had to be injured enough that self-defense was a believable claim, but Mai didn't want her ending up with half her face burned off too.
“What's this?” Ozai said. He sounded like he was trying to swallow his anger.
“It's just a bruise. Mai hit me for saying something about her horse,” Azula said.
“Don't lie to your father.”
“Is that what you are?” There was something to her voice that Mai had never heard. She didn't know if she wanted to hear it.
There was a loud thud. Ozai must have slammed his fist into the counter because there was no sound of pain from Azula. “You're a stupid slut. Whoever you're sleeping with? You'll just make him miserable. If I was you, I would end it. No, if I was you, I never would have been awful enough to start it.”
“Why would I end it? No one's ever fucked me like they do.” Mai could hear something like glee underlining Azula's words. She was goading Ozai into hitting her. She wanted to be beaten. She wanted the excuse for Mai to murder her father.
Mai had known this, but she hadn't expected Azula to go about it in this way. It was vulgar and awful.
There was a step taken forward,—Ozai, she supposed—and Azula let out a little gasp, but before Mai could act, she could hear Ozai retreating.
“You're worse than Zuko,” he said coldly. And then he was gone.
Had he seen the missing knife from the block? Had he caught sight of Mai, crouched with it and ready to strike?
It didn't matter as Mai straightened her knees.
Azula looked furious and wild. There was something electric to her. Her hair was coming loose, and her eyes were the brightest they'd ever been. Somehow, the sight soothed Mai. Azula was human after all. “Why the fuck didn't you kill him?”
Mai returned the knife to its block in silence. She didn't want to talk to Azula when she was like this. She didn't care that it was partially her fault for agreeing to this awful plan. She felt petulant and wanted to punish Azula.
“Answer me!”
She sighed. “He wasn't physically harming you. It wouldn't have been self-defense. Anyway, he knows now, doesn't he? Shouldn't we be worried? He could call the cops. They work for him, after all.”
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Azula snarled.
Mai listened.
Ty Lee was good company. Ty Lee was a good person too. Mai should be happy she was sitting with her best friend in the latter's house, watching some terrible movie that they could mock. She wasn't happy, though. Not at all.
As if picking up on the micro-movements of Mai's face, Ty Lee paused the movie. “What's wrong? Your aura's all dingy.”
Mai's mouth curled ever so slightly up at that.
Ty Lee nudged her shoulder playfully. “You can tell me. Even if it's about Minamoto.”
“… I let Minamoto kiss me again,” she said, careful not to specify which sibling in case one of Ty Lee's sisters was eavesdropping.
“Well, that was a mistake—I'm sorry, I just… we both know you shouldn't have done that.”
Mai shrugged. She knew Ty Lee was right, but it had felt so good until Azula had pulled away and broken her trance.
Ty Lee deflated slightly. “Mai, seriously. You and Minamoto… it's just asking for trouble.”
“I know. I shouldn't let it happen again.” Mai ran a hand through her bangs. “I don't think we'll be talking again, though. Minamoto didn't seem to want anything to do with me afterward.”
Ty Lee perked up. “That's a good thing, isn't it?”
“I don't know, Ty.” It was more honest than Mai should have been. For all Ty Lee's posturing, this was hard for her. Talking about Azula was painful in a way other people didn't understand, but Mai did.
Ty Lee sighed this time, and she slouched until her face was in her hands. “When she wasn't being scary, she really was our friend, wasn't she?”
It wasn't a question that either of them wanted to answer.
When Mai returned to her dorm, the memories of her day resurfaced. The things she had heard Ozai say to his daughter that she had only registered as fucked up at the moment felt worse now. Uglier. The way Azula had spoken to her father felt worse still.
You're a stupid slut. Whoever you're sleeping with? You'll just make him miserable. Mai could never fathom her father speaking to her that way, could barely fathom that Azula's father had spoken to her that way. She had never heard him speak to anyone like that. Even Zuko seemed to warrant more respect than that from Ozai.
No one's ever fucked me like they do. Why had that angered Ozai so greatly? Was it hearing that his daughter was having sex at all? The disrespect with which she told him?
Her head was swimming painfully, and she needed some form of release. She had to channel that pain into something easier to control.
Mai picked up her razor blade. She had it kissing her pallid arm when she remembered something awful: the inro. The things Azula had said about the painkillers hidden away in it…
Had she been covering for her father's addiction?
His actions today had been erratic and volatile in a way she had never seen Ozai behave in public and could never imagine him behaving around Azula, his favored child, but they were not out of character for someone who might be abusing painkillers.
She texted Azula, and she waited, and waited, and waited, and—she fell asleep.
When she woke, there was still no response. Azula was done with her.
Notes:
additional cw: attempt of self-harm, allusions to sexual abuse and incest, more detailed animal cruelty
Chapter 6
Notes:
this is where the implied/referenced incest and rape tags come into play if you were wondering about those. nothing graphic is said, but the implications and references are not ignorable.
in other news, we're almost over the hill. woo!
Chapter Text
Azula stopped calling, and Mai's life began a retreat into normalcy. She could feel the proof of Azula washing off her with every day that passed. The feelings that Azula had unsurfaced and the wounds that she had reopened were ebbing away and beginning to close. It was the worst thing she could imagine. It was the least amount of pain she'd been in since Azula had come back into her life in that shopping mall, her eyes bright and horrible as ever and her teeth glinting out from behind red.
Mai hated that she missed Azula. She should be glad to be clean of that cruel-hearted girl. She had gotten out like Ty Lee had advised her to, and she hadn't even been scathed in Azula's departure from her life.
That was a lie, though. Azula had left, but she had not left Mai in the shape she'd found her in. Mai didn't know that she would ever return to the before again.
This wasn't like the last time they had parted on bad terms; there was something about this time that Mai didn't trust herself to let go of. It was easier to attribute that to the murder plot they'd hatched, but she knew it was something worse. It ran deeper than bloodshed. It was in her veins. It might never come out. Not fully.
Azula was gone, but she was everywhere. Mai was clean of her, but she was stained with smoke and scarlet-mouthed girls. They had gone their separate ways, but Mai still felt that she saw Azula in every face.
It was impossible. The sharp features of Azula's face belonged to her and her mother and no one else, but Mai saw them in every rounded cheek and soft eye socket. She thought that this was love. She thought that this was hate. There weren't words good enough to explain it, though. There wasn't anything that could pin Azula down.
Mai stubbed her cigarette, killing the barely there embers. She shouldn't be smoking. It was a foul habit, and she hated the taste it left in her mouth like ash and death. She had thought it might taste like kissing Azula had, but she couldn't have been more wrong. There was nothing of the cinnamon mouthwash Azula used to it, and it couldn't burn her the way Azula could. In the end, she only felt pathetic for having tried.
Anyway, she would have to explain the stink of it to Ty Lee. They were meeting to get some work done together, and Ty Lee hadn't known Azula was smoking now, but she would still question why her best friend had suddenly picked up such a foul vice. It wasn't like Mai had perfume to help cover the stench either. It was rude to wear perfume in public spaces like the train, and Mai had been raised a well-mannered girl.
It was rude to smell like cigarettes too, though. Maybe Michi would be horribly disappointed by her. As if smoking was worse than killing Tsutomu had been. As if Mai could fall any lower in her mother's eyes. It was absurdity stacked upon absurdity to wish that her mother might hate her more. She didn't know what end it served. She only knew that some part of her wanted something vicious like the seppuku wish all over again, only this time meant for her to hear, to know, to die by.
Mai sighed. She wished she had stubbed the cigarette out on her wrist instead of against the bones of the bench. It was too late now to change her mind. The cigarette was dead. Mai might as well have been too.
“Sorry I'm late!” Ty Lee called out.
“It's fine,” Mai said. “I'm glad to see you.” The words felt like stones in her throat even though seeing Ty Lee did brighten her day even a fraction. Mai wasn't glad about anything anymore. Everything was returning to grayscale as if Azula had, by removing her shades of red from the world, stolen every other color too.
“You smell bad,” Ty Lee said. She was frowning. “Have you been smoking?”
Mai shrugged apologetically even though she wasn't sorry. “I just wanted to try it. I don't like it very much.”
“Good. It's really bad for your health! We can't have you getting cancer. We're supposed to grow old together and be neighbors 'til we die!” Ty Lee said.
It was true. That was their life plan, and it had been since they were small. Azula had always found it childish and thought herself above it. Mai didn't know that she had ever disagreed, but it made Ty Lee happy, and it was reassuring to think that some part of her life wasn't planned out by her parents. Even if Mai hadn't been the one to conceive of this future, her parents hadn't either.
“I know, Ty,” Mai said. “Let's head to the library now.”
“I dunno, you kinda smell. Maybe we should stop in a manga cafe first or something, so you can shower.” Ty Lee was teasing at least somewhat, but Mai couldn't find it funny. It was too soon for her to find anything funny.
For a terrifying moment, she thought she hated Ty Lee.
The moment passed.
They reached the library. Mai didn't study. She was applying for a job. Something part-time like what she worked in high school. It was a big commitment, especially as a university student, but she needed something other than the mindless buzz of information from her classes in her head, and it was getting pathetic how much of her free time was spent obsessing over a girl who wanted nothing to do with her. She couldn't stay meandering through her life forever. Michi had made that much clear when she had lectured Mai over the phone over the weekend.
So Mai filled out the forms for job applications, and she thought across her wardrobe to decide on an outfit to wear for any interviews she landed.
She wasn't sure she would get any interviews, not when she had the reputation she did, but she was willing to try. She was not innocent, but no one had ever formally indicted her or convicted her of what she had done. That had to count for something.
Mai wondered nowadays if anything counted at all. She had killed something, and she didn't feel changed for it, and nothing bad had really happened to her for it. She had planned to kill again, and still nothing had changed. Was life so meaningless? Did anything she did matter at all?
If everything was mapped out for her, if her life had been determined when she had been nothing more than an idea her parents had, Mai didn't see how anything mattered at all.
How depressing. How liberating.
Mai couldn't bring herself to throw the pack of cigarettes out. It didn't matter what she'd told Ty Lee. Somehow, these were the last thread tying her to Azula. She couldn't part with them.
Ukano had phoned her to remind her she was supposed to babysit Tom-Tom tonight. It felt pointless whether she watched her little brother or not, but she had taken the train to her childhood home, and she had hugged Tom-Tom when she'd entered. She'd listened to her mother lecture her about all the things she was meant to do and all the things Tom-Tom wasn't meant to do.
Mai's arm itched where she'd cut it open earlier. She wondered if she should change the gauze yet; there had been enough time for it to bleed through.
“Okay, Okaa-san,” Mai said, “I'll take good care of him.”
“She will!” Tom-Tom said, clinging to Mai's legs.
“You had better,” Michi said. There was something cruel to her tongue. It almost made Mai feel seen again. It almost made her feel like anything she did mattered at all, but it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough anymore.
“We'll see you when we get home,” Ukano said. He hesitated, then gave Mai an awkward, one-armed hug of sorts. “Be good, Tom-Tom.”
“Promise!” Tom-Tom stuck his pinky out as if making a yakuza-style pinky promise.
Mai tried to smile. She couldn't until the door was closed, and her parents were gone. Even then, it was only the shape of a smile splintering her cheeks. She thought she must look pained, so she stopped.
“Onee-chan, can we watch something?”
“Of course.” She was desperate for anything that could distract Tom-Tom from how utterly numb to his presence she was. She didn't want him to see how empty she was becoming without Azula.
Not that he knew she was without Azula. She hadn't even told her parents yet that she was clean of Azula now, or as clean of Azula as she could be. She was sure she was still bleeding somewhere Azula's most jagged edges had cut her. Self-inflicted as they were, she wasn't sure she could say Azula had no hand in the new wounds that littered her body.
She would have to tell her parents eventually, though. Michi would want to know what a failure her daughter was. She always did. Mai was half-surprised she hadn't sensed it already.
Tom-Tom had put on some children's anime Mai thought he must love. There were spies in it. Little kids seemed to love things like that that made the world seem more important and vivid than Mai had ever seen it to be. Even in Azula's presence, the world never felt like that.
Mai had to stop thinking about her. She was too hung up on ghosts. They were all over her.
Yet she'd barely thought of Zuko at all. It felt cruel that he was so much easier to forget when she had had him in a way that other people could understand. Why should Azula be remembered? Mai could speak of her with no one, could never compel them to understand the space that Azula filled or the emptiness she consumed in Mai.
Tom-Tom was laughing.
Mai wished she could be like him. She loved her brother, and she hoped that he never changed or grew up at all. What she would give to preserve him in this moment or to live in it herself.
Mai's life was an empty corridor. No one was home. She was only haunting this space, occupying it for a moment at a time. She would never live there.
Today marked a month since she'd spoken to Azula. It was not a clean feeling; it was an empty one. Like Mai had lost a limb. She hated herself for having it. She had a job now, and she had her classes, and she had Ty Lee and Tom-Tom. That should have been enough, but it wasn't even close.
Mai was taking notes in class again. She was trying to keep her kanji from bleeding into her hiragana. She might not write in calligraphy any longer, but there was no reason her handwriting shouldn't be nice. She was trying now, harder than she had been before. She wanted to be normal. She wanted to feel things the way other people did, and she wanted to have purpose.
If she passed this class and the next one and the next one all the way up until graduation, maybe she would have it. Maybe she would feel anything other than the gaping wound that was Azula's absence.
It was all a big joke; Mai knew that. She didn't care, though. She would work until she felt something. She would return to normalcy in full. Or maybe it wasn't a homecoming she sought out. Perhaps it was a new life that she had never known that Mai wanted. If she could just move past killing Tsutomu, she could have that life.
So she transcribed her notes, taking down every piece of information her professor spewed, and she forced her eyes open even as the lecture grew more and more sluggish to listen to. This was the beginning of the rest of her life, whether it was what her heart wanted or not. It would have to do. It would have to be enough to live without Azula.
What the hell made Azula so special anyway? Mai hated her half the time. More than that, really. And the other half, did she even like Azula then, or was it just that she was so miserable in Azula's company that she didn't know how to be anything else? Stockholm syndrome, this kind of thing was called.
Azula offered nothing but a type of pain Mai was addicted to. That was it.
She was trying to force Azula out of her mind and cling to her professor's voice when she felt her phone vibrate from within her pocket. She couldn't imagine who would try to contact her in the middle of the school day. Ty Lee had more diligence than that despite outward appearances, and her parents were both in the office at this hour. Very few other people ever messaged her.
It must have been some stupid app notifying her of a sale or an email or a social media interaction.
Mai didn't dig into her pocket to check. She continued taking notes.
Her phone vibrated again. Mai ignored it.
Again. Ignored.
And again. Ignored.
The buzzing was wearing thin on her patience. This class was almost over, and then she could see what was so urgent that it couldn't wait until she was out of her lecture. It had better be important.
It was.
Or it wasn't, but the sender was.
Azula's name was lit up on Mai's phone screen a few times over and followed by messages requesting Mai's presence at the Kantei repeatedly. There was a manic air to each message despite the casualness of Azula's wording. Mai knew that something had to be wrong. It was just like Azula to pretend that everything was fine and their falling out had never happened, but Azula was clearly desperate if she was contacting Mai after all this time.
Ozai had done something. Mai was sure of it.
In the end, it wasn't a choice to agree to come over, but she couldn't even be angry about it. All she knew was that she had to see Azula, alive and intact.
The rush of emotion that had hit when she'd read Azula's name again was painfully overwhelming after her month of numbness. The train ride to the Kantei did nothing to soothe the pain either. Her stomach was so knotted at the idea of what she might find when Azula opened the door to her that she could not even derive satisfaction from the feelings roaring to life within her.
She hated this part. There was no room for doubt.
She cared about Azula for some goddamn reason she couldn't begin to understand. In moments like this, that much was clear. It was a horrible feeling to care about Azula. It was worse to not care, though. If Mai didn't care, then she was like Iroh or Ursa: a useless adult who couldn't see the pain laid out in front of them.
The pain was more obvious than usual when Azula opened the door to let Mai in. She looked as if she were held together by but a thread. Her clothing was as expensive and crisp as ever, but she was pale and red-eyed with darkness blooming beneath her sockets. She was gaunt for being so impeccably dressed. The worst part, though, was the bruising around her throat.
“Azula, what did he do?” she said.
Azula just smiled horribly at her as if nothing had ever been wrong. “Don't be rude, Mai.”
“I'm serious. Do we have to go through with the plan after all?”
Azula's eyes darted around harshly. Her smile stretched thin and redder. It looked like a dam had burst. Mai's heart hurt just looking at her. “Why would we have to do anything to my father? He's a good man.”
A snort ripped through Mai's mouth and nostrils.
“Everything is fine.”
“When why'd you message me?” She was grabbing Azula's shoulders now, desperate for something less human than this to come out of the younger girl.
“Can't I miss you?” Azula said. “Please, Mai, come in.” She stepped aside, untangling herself from Mai's grasp.
Reluctantly, Mai entered. “Where is Ozai?”
Azula's mouth curled into a snarl, but it was so fast Mai thought she might have imagined it. “Otō-san just stepped out to the office. Okaa-san is running errands, and Zuko is in class if you were wondering.” Azula closed the door.
Mai didn't care about either of them right now, but she felt awful saying that when Zuko was one of Ozai's victims.
“Tell me, Mai,” Azula said, slow and sounding more and more like herself, “do you want to raid Otō-san's drug stash? His inro is unattended.”
Azula was un-fucking-stable, but she looked oddly fragile too. If Mai left now, she would break, and if Mai said no, Azula would never let her stay.
“Okay.”
Azula's smile wobbled.
“Shouldn't we worry about Ozai, though? Won't he notice if we get high with his painkillers?”
“He doesn't count them. We can slip a few. And, no, he won't come home. He hates being around me when I'm like this.” Azula sounded dreamy and distant.
Mai couldn't recall ever being more afraid for her.
Azula's palm was held out and dotted with two types of pills. Both were oblong, but one was white while the other was green.
Mai eyed them warily. “Which one is the painkiller?”
Azula pointed to a white pill. “This is Vicodin.”
Mai shouldn't ask. She knew that much. It was a trainwreck waiting to happen, but she couldn't not know either. “Then what's the green one?”
Red lips curled upward into a horrible smile that was more like a sneer. Azula plucked a green pill up and rolled it between her fingers. She was looking at it with something between disdain and reverence.
Mai was dreading her answer, but she couldn't unask the question now.
“Are you sure you want to know?” Azula was giving Mai an out. She never did that.
“Stop screwing around.”
Azula gave a shrug. “Suit yourself. It's Rohypnol.”
Mai felt something cold and wet squirm in the pit of her stomach. “Why the hell does Ozai have Rohypnol?” There was pressure low in her stomach. She felt like she might vomit everything she had ever eaten. Azula had to be joking. There was no way this conversation was serious or grounded in reality at all. Ozai was an awful man, but he couldn't be a rapist too.
“I think it's to keep Okaa-san compliant, but I'm not sure.”
“That's disgusting. You're despicable for even saying that.” She couldn't remember why she'd wanted to see Azula so badly now. She couldn't remember her concern for the other girl at all. She only knew that something was wrong with Azula, however much she was hurting.
Azula laughed. “What else could it be for? He's not exactly sedating patients, is he?”
She wasn't wrong.
“Unless… you don't think it's for Okaa-san? But who else is there? I suppose I speculated about a mistress, but I imagine that as consensual.”
Mai felt sicker now.
She could remember too many horrible things—the possessiveness Zhao had commented on, the insistence on spending more time with him, the bruises Azula had at the hospital, the inappropriate comments Azula made, the things Mai had overheard in the kitchen. It couldn't be that, though. That was a boundary that could not be crossed, not even by a man as cruel as Ozai. There had to be something sacred left in this house.
Mai wouldn't entertain the idea. She wouldn't. No matter how much sense it might make, it was too grim, too fucked up, too much even for Azula's life. Even for Ozai to do.
“Why did he strangle you?” she said instead.
Azula made a foul expression. “You've always been boring.” She sighed. “Fine, well, I threw a tantrum about the Olympics.”
“That's it?” Mai couldn't believe it.
There had to be more. Something Azula had done that would make Ozai take hands to his favored child. She felt awful thinking that, as though Ozai's abuse could ever be warranted. But she couldn't believe he would strangle Azula over the Olympics. There was something more to the story that Azula was withholding.
“I said some… inappropriate things. I made a few threats about exposing how he treats his family to the media.” Azula waved her hand dismissively then. “It was idiotic.”
“Was it the first time?”
“Hm? No, he strangles Zuzu all the time.”
Mai flinched, but she pressed on. “No, I mean was it the first time he strangled you, Azula?”
Azula's eyes were bright, and her smile was thinning. Her hair was coming down messily around her face. She looked like a mad woman. “I'm the golden child, Mai.”
It wasn't confirmation, but it wasn't denial either.
Mai didn't know what to do, so she kissed Azula, warm and needy. She wanted to give Azula something she had never had. She wanted to transfer the comfort neither of them had ever known.
Azula kissed back, but it wasn't like the domineering, burning kisses she'd given Mai before. This was slow and soft. It was horribly agreeable to how Mai wanted to kiss Azula.
Kissing Azula like this felt surreal. Mai didn't want this anymore. She pulled back, and Azula let her.
“Let's… let's watch something instead,” Mai said.
Azula tilted her head. “I thought you wanted to do Vicodin with me.”
“… Okay. We can do that instead.”
Mai was high when Zuko and Ursa both returned to the Kantei. She had never been high before, but her head was light and dizzy. She felt good. She couldn't remember the discomfort of before.
She didn't even remember why she should be panicked when Azula's lips found hers as she went to leave the Kantei, right before Ursa and Zuko's very eyes. She only kissed back, firm and unmoving and hopelessly happy.
“We'll continue our conversation later,” Azula said.
“Okay.” Mai forgot not to smile so openly.
There was something off about the faces Ursa and Zuko had been making since they'd arrived home, but Mai couldn't think what it was. She could only think that she had to navigate the train home now.
After a day of restlessness, Mai asked Ty Lee if they could study together. Ty Lee said she would be open for that this weekend, and, reluctantly, Mai agreed to wait until then. She didn't know who else to ask about the question that had been bothering her ever since she had come down from her high.
She couldn't ask it right off the bat. She had to bide her time, going over more complex mathematical equations with Ty Lee and frowning at her own flashcards. Mai had to make small talk first too, pretending that Ty Lee's love life still interested her and that she had anything to share from her new job other than the incompetence of one of her coworkers that she could barely feel bothered by when her senses were still overridden by Azula and the Kantei.
Mai lasted all of twenty-seven minutes before she finally asked it: “Do you remember Ozai being creepy with young girls ever?”
Ty Lee blinked up at her, big doe eyes looking stupidly doll-like. “What?”
“Azula's father,” Mai said as if that could have been the confusion, “was he ever weird with young girls when we were growing up? Like… like girls our age?”
Ty Lee laughed, but it was off-kilter. “Where's this coming from, Mai? I thought you were done with Minamoto.”
“I am. I just…”
Could she tell Ty Lee the horrible images that she saw every time she closed her eyes? Azula might kill her, regardless of if it was true at all. Mai had no doubt that even if Azula could come to terms with Mai thinking this, she would never allow Mai to tell anyone else.
“She said something before. It's been bothering me. Some off-color joke about him and concubines. You know what she's like.”
Ty Lee's pretty face scrunched up. “Yeah, that's just like her.” It wasn't as disdainful as it should've been. “I mean, I don't remember him ever saying anything to me. Did he say anything to you?”
Mai shook her head no.
“Good. I don't think he's like that, honestly. I mean, his relationship with Azula was always weird, but that's just 'cause we know he's so mean to poor Zuko-kun, y'know? Like it was weird that in comparison, he never had anything bad to say to her.” Ty Lee She looked thoughtful now, but she didn't know a goddamn thing.
“Right.” Mai didn't feeling better at all.
Mai was having dinner with her family tonight. They were going out for it even. Mai didn't know what to expect. Her parents didn't like to do this kind of thing when they could avoid it, but it was Ukano's birthday, so she supposed that warranted a family outing. She hated the way she looked in this dress, but she didn't want to pick out a new one. She would hate the way she looked in that dress too. She would never like herself in anything, really.
Mai smeared a nude lipstick across her mouth before she left. The color couldn't be further from scarlet, but she couldn't help but be reminded of Azula's lips painted so starkly red that it looked like blood.
Since they were twelve and eleven respectively, Mai could hardly remember a time she'd seen Azula's mouth clean. Sometimes, she'd caught herself suspecting that Azula's lips were stained red permanently.
It must be strange to wear lipstick as armor, but it suited Azula just fine. Mai hated the feeling of it sitting on her mouth. She hated the feeling of a lot of things, including her mother's gaze on her.
Michi was staring at Mai like she might burst into flames if Michi looked long and hard enough.
“I got a ninety-two on my paper,” Mai said, hoping to steer Michi's gaze away.
“That's good,” Ukano said.
“You could have done better,” Michi said.
Mai's chest tightened. She knew she could have done better. Of course she knew that. That was why it was a ninety-two out of a hundred. There was room for improvement. Mai would improve with her next paper. She had gotten good feedback on this one. She wasn't stupid, no matter what her mother seemed to think.
Mai said nothing, though. She only nodded lightly. She was a coward like that. She could tell Zuko his mother was a cruel woman, and she could plan to drive a kitchen knife through the meat of Azula's father, but she couldn't even conceive of speaking back to her mother.
No wonder her life had to be planned out by others for her. No wonder she was so deeply unhappy.
She wondered how Azula felt then, suspecting what Mai suspected of Ozai, and knowing what Mai knew of Ursa. What would it feel like to have parents like that? To be at your breaking point and unable to snap?
Mai couldn't imagine Azula's feelings at all. She could barely feel her own.
It was a Saturday night when Azula invited Mai to sleep over and Mai was stupid enough to accept the invitation. She knew she was an idiot too, but there was no way to bury her guilt and refuse. When Azula beckoned, Mai came like a well-trained dog. There was nothing to be done about it other than to try and deny it in a pathetic attempt to save her dignity, and Mai was beyond dignity when it came to Azula.
The thing, though, was that Zuko was out with his friends, and Ursa was off taking care of her father after he had had surgery. Mai knew this, and she still came to the Kantei where it would be only her, Azula, and Ozai.
It was far worse than a recipe for disaster. It was like handling an open flame and liquor at once. She might as well ignite herself now.
“Azula,” Mai said.
Azula only smiled and let her in, guiding Mai up to her room. Finally, she said, “You wanted to watch a movie last time. Let's do that.”
“You want to watch a movie.” Mai blinked. She felt stupid doing repeating Azula's words, but she couldn't be sure she'd heard right.
“Yes.” Azula was still smiling.
That couldn't be it. There was no way that Azula had invited Mai over when everyone else would be out just to watch a movie.
“I'll make tea. You still like jasmine, right?” Azula hated making tea or doing any form of cooking for herself. Mai hadn't seen her do as much as light a stove in years.
“I do,” Mai said anyway. She didn't want to argue with Azula when she suspected how the girl might be hurting, her exterior raw and peeled back for Mai to see all the ways she bled.
So Azula made them a pot of jasmine tea while Mai sat in her bedroom, staring uncomfortably at her copy of The Giving Tree and wishing the ground might open up to swallow her whole.
Mai could hear Ozai's footsteps haunting the Kantei. She didn't know where he was on the grounds, and she didn't want to have the answer, but she could hear him clearly. Maybe it was her imagination. She only knew she could feel his every footstep vibrating in her very bones.
Azula returned, at last, carrying a tray with the tea balanced neatly.
Azula set it down for them on the desk. “So what do you want to watch?”
Mai blinked. Even when they watched movies together, Azula always picked in the end. Mai could have input, and Azula listened to her more than she listened to most people, but Mai never had the sole decision. Surely, she was misunderstanding Azula's question. “What do you feel like?”
“Whatever you want.” It was bizarrely considerate.
“Okay…” Mai felt slow all over. “how do you feel about an American film?” She knew Azula had very little patience for American films and found them to be pretentious at their best and downright insulting at their worst.
“If that's what you're in the mood for.”
Azula didn't relent, not even when Mai put on the first Audrey Hepburn film she could think of. They sat, and they watched the film, and their tea grew cold. Azula sipped at hers, but Mai didn't so much as touch her teacup.
She had a horrible feeling in her stomach. Even if she had trusted Azula fully, she couldn't have drunk a drop of it.
It was when the little girl finally told Audrey Hepburn that the man she had been trusting so naively was one of the men threatening her from the phone booth that it finally clicked into place why Mai couldn't trust Azula tonight.
She hadn't seen the tea be made, and Ozai had an inro full of Rohypnol.
“Azula, did you roofie my tea?” Mai said quietly.
At that moment, Azula took a long sip of her own tea. “You figured it out then?”
Mai blinked at her. Her eyes were starting to burn. She didn't want to cry, though. “Why? Why the hell would you do that?”
Azula sighed and set down her teacup with a clank. “You know why, Mai. Ask better questions. You're a smart girl.”
It was like being drowned. No, it was worse. It was not water that filled her lungs but the horrible, oppressive truth that she knew lurked behind her next question. The one she had no choice but to ask. The one Azula had all but answered already.
Mai took a deep breath. She tried to steady herself against the floor. She tried to feel brave.
She found she couldn't.
“Is he molesting you?” Mai said. Her voice trembled with the force of the question.
Azula had the audacity to laugh, long and hard. It was an ugly sound. Mai wanted to gouge her eyes out for it, but she wanted to wrap herself around Azula and hold her until eternity consumed them too.
She didn't do either. She sat there, still save for the rise and fall of her chest, and she waited for Azula to be done.
At long last, Azula composed herself. Without a smile, with cold eyes, Azula said, “No, not anymore. He moved on from molestation to rape when I turned eleven.”
Mai got up and ran. When she reached the toilet, she vomited. Her mouth and throat burned with the foul taste of bile and salt from the sweat that bled into her mouth. Her chest heaved painfully with the labor of her sickness.
She hated this house. She hated Ozai. She wasn't sure if she hated Azula too for burdening her with this secret. She wanted to hate Azula. It would be easier than whatever the hell she did feel.
Footsteps followed after her trail, and she felt Azula take her place in the doorway.
“Are you all right?” Azula sounded somewhere between concerned and mocking.
Mai was sick all over again.
“Relax, Mai. I was only joking.” It was all too convincing. It was all too plausible. Azula's sense of humor had always been depraved.
“The Rohypnol,” Mai prompted.
“I bought it from some loser. It's not Otō-san's. I thought it would be funny.” Azula examined her manicure.
It was plausible, wasn't it? Azula could have been joking. Mai wanted her to have been joking.
“You're not funny.” Mai's bangs were clinging to her forehead, but she could see Azula shrugging.
“I know, but you're self-righteous now, remember?”
“So what?”
Azula sighed as if Mai were a petulant child throwing a tantrum, and Mai wanted to hit her between her midnight eyes. “So I know you, Mai.” It was an accusation. “You can't live with yourself if there's even a chance I was serious.”
Mai could feel her pulse in her temple. It hurt. She spat out the last of the bile she could still taste on her tongue.
“Are you going to drink the damn tea and let me frame you for murdering him or not?” She sounded impatient as Mai pulled herself away from the toilet, flushing it.
Now that she was standing, Mai could see that Azula had carried the teacup with her.
“I hate you,” Mai said.
“I know.” Azula she walked away like it was simple. “You can pretend none of this ever happened if you'd like. You can run away.”
As she rinsed her mouth out in the sink, Mai knew that she should pretend none of this had ever happened. She should leave the Kantei now and pretend she had never gotten close to Azula all over again or heard jokes that might not have been jokes at all.
Mai did not leave the Kantei. She slid Azula's bedroom door open in a hurry, and she needed to know. “Why should I drink the tea?”
Azula's mouth stretched into the shape of a smile. It didn't meet her eyes. It wasn't even mocking. Mai didn't know what she could do with the sight other than memorize it.
“Because it would make me happy,” Azula said, almost earnestly. “Because it would free Zuko and Ursa. Because maybe someone more progressive will be elected to replace him. Because it’s objectively the right thing to do.”
Mai blinked furiously at her. “Why don't you drink it then? Nobody else knows I came over tonight.”
Azula's smile vanished. “I still want to go to the Olympics, Mai. Some of us have futures.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Mai said, but she still grabbed the teacup from Azula's hands to down it. Before it hit her, the least she could do was kiss Azula one last time, tasting of roofies and jasmine tea and rinsed-out vomit.
She hoped it was awful. She hoped Azula would never forget it.
Chapter 7: epilogue
Notes:
art for this chapter courtesy of the incredibly talented, unfortunately deactivated war-pine, but the link will take you to a reblogged version of their art
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Azula was wet. She was splattered with her father's blood, almost bathed in it. He had bled far more than she thought he might. The big, rubber kitchen gloves she'd pulled over her hands and forearms were stained now. So was the fabric of her sweater from what she could see. It was more disgusting to her than the sight of her father's lifeless form had been, his eyes bright and cold for eternity and the stink of shit and death staining the air.
When she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the bloodied knife, she thought that the scarlet matched her lipstick perfectly, and she laughed. She'd seen blood before, of course, but never had it been so all-encompassing for her. She looked a mess, but it was the cleanest she'd felt in years.
Just like that, Azula was free.
Ozai had been surprised at first, of course, and then angry, but she had won. A few well-placed stabs were enough to incapacitate him beyond near-futile attempts to strangle her, and then she'd had her way with him. She'd taken it slow and painful and mercilessly as she sliced through him like he was little more than a fish to be deboned. It had felt good.
All she had to do now was smear Mai's fingerprints over the handle of the knife and rub some of the blood onto her skin.
She slid her bedroom door open. Mai was sprawled out on her bed, eyes shut but chest heaving with every breath she took. She wasn't dead. Azula hadn't overshot the dosage. That was good. It was hard to frame a dead girl.
Azula inhaled, and she rubbed her gloved hands over Mai, smearing Ozai's blood all over her arms and hands and face. She took a second to hold Mai's face between her hands, thumb stroking her cheek. Tenderness, as Azula had known it, was a prelude to violence, not an act that followed it. She was being sentimental. That was a worthless trait, and she needed to stamp it out in her chest until her ribs cracked and her lungs bled.
Azula released her hold on Mai's face. She watched it roll back limply. Mai offered no resistance like this.
She was not the girl Azula knew. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.
Azula looked down at the white of her sweater, and she cursed herself for having worn white tonight. She was an idiot. She would have to swap her sweater for Mai's. She was thinner than Mai, all sharp edges and right angles, but the sweater was big. Mai could fit into it. Azula would see to it that her… sacrifice was not wasted.
With great composure, she pressed the handle of the knife into Mai's right palm, enclosing Mai's fingers on it to leave a clear print, and then she discarded the knife onto her bedroom floor. It was useless to her now that it had served its purpose. Just like Mai was. Azula had plucked the fruit from her garden, and she would leave it half-eaten and unwantable.
It was for her own future. A noble cause, really. And Mai had agreed in the end. She was too self-righteous not to.
It was better this way. For both of them. Azula knew that Mai had not been happy. Mai had not been anything without Azula there to paint her in shades of red. Now she would not have to worry about following the path her parents laid out for her or marrying the man they wanted her to marry or making Ty Lee happy. Now Mai had finally done something she had wanted to do. Or at least something she thought she wanted to do.
There was no difference.
Azula straightened her spine out, and she took a step away to observe what she'd done. Somehow, the sight of a sleeping Mai covered in someone else's blood was so much crueler looking than the sight of her slain father. She almost felt bad as she walked away to rinse her own skin of blood before swapping their sweaters.
Mai let out a snore.
Azula stopped cold in her tracks. She turned back to stare at Mai.
Mai snored again.
Azula blinked. She'd forgotten that Mai snored. The hotel room they'd shared felt like it had been years ago. The sleepovers of their childhoods had been centuries ago when they had lived different lives entirely.
It was horribly human of Mai to pick now to start snoring.
Her legs moved before she could think through what she was doing, and suddenly Azula was curled up on her bed, her chest flush against Mai's form. She wrapped Mai's arms around her body and pressed her face into the dip in Mai's neck where her throat met her shoulder blades.
Mai smelled of laundry detergent and blood. Azula wanted to cremate herself in the scent of it.
Her eyes were burning. She didn't want them to. She would not cry. She had come too far to be weak enough to cry at the loss of her father or at the loss of a girl who she could not begin to describe her relationship with.
And so Azula didn't cry as she clung to Mai. She blinked rapidly until her eyes no longer hurt, and she dug her fingers into the exposed spaces of the back of Mai's neck, and she pretended that Mai could hold her back. She pretended that it wasn't over yet, that there was a world where Mai could wake up and go anywhere but jail.
She would have to thumb the traces of her lipstick off of Mai's mouth later to erase the proof that they had been anything other than two girls at a sleepover gone awry. She would have to reapply it over her own lips too. For now, though, she could live in this bubble where her life hadn't changed irreversibly. Where she didn't have to give Mai up to get what she wanted.
Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.
She didn't release her hold on Mai, though.
Something was poking her leg. She slipped a hand into Mai's pocket and retrieved a pack of cigarettes, slightly crushed and still half-covered in its plastic wrapping. It wasn't the brand that Azula smoked.
Still, she would keep it, and with it, she would keep part of Mai for herself.
When the police arrived, Azula forced herself to cry. She wasn't used to that. It had been a long time since she'd cried about anything, and this was hardly something worth crying about it. Still, it was integral that she produce tears and puffy eyes and hiccuped sobs. She had to be horrified that her closest friend could do such a thing, that she had tripped over her father's corpse, that their country had suffered such an awful loss.
Azula wasn't horrified at all. She didn't have painful, wretched moments in her life she could think back to to bring tears to her eyes. She didn't have miserable feelings to draw upon. But she was a natural-born liar. She could thank Ursa for that since the awful woman had pursued an acting career before settling into the role of housewife. Lying must have been genetic like that because Azula cried more convincingly than she had ever cried before in her life.
She tasted salt and blood in her mouth, and she wished it was jasmine tea and roofies and washed-out vomit. It made it easier to cry harder. She was pathetic in the end, just like Zuko. Ozai had been right.
There was nothing to be sad about. There was nothing to say goodbye to. She had lost nothing and gained everything.
This was victory. Even as she cried so violently that some detective tried to soothe her, telling her they had called her mother who had called her brother and uncle, and she would not be alone soon.
Azula liked being alone. She had killed Ozai to be left alone to her own devices, allowed to pursue her every whim.
The mourning period was undeserved. The nation's grief was pointless. They should celebrate with white-hot sake down their throats and cries of joy in the streets.
Mai was a hero to Azula in that sense. She had not been the one to kill Ozai, but she had let herself take the blame the way Jet had always been too much of a coward to. She needed no motive or record or any of it. Her name had not technically been released to the public as she was only eighteen, but to those who knew, she was a porcelain girl who had snapped—first with Tsutomu, then with Ozai. Too much pressure. Not enough discipline. It was a national tragedy that people were open to speculating upon.
Did Mai have secret ties to radical leftwing groups? Was she simply mentally ill? Had she been in love with Azula and sick to her stomach about Ozai's refusal to legitimize homosexuals with marriage?
It didn't matter. It was everywhere, and all Azula wanted to do was smile freely about it, but she had to grieve first. She played her part well at the funeral and at the wake and during the kotsuage. She rubbed her eyes red and puffy, and she held her head low and mournful. She exchanged lies about what a wonderful man her father had been and found herself half-believing them. She passed his bones with diligence and a trembling to her shoulders.
She closed her eyes and thought back to the sight of him splayed out as dead as could be, and she felt calm like seawater after a storm had passed. Like nothing could disrupt her but her own currents and tides.
It wasn't until she found out her uncle would be staying with them while they grieved too that she remembered the ocean did not go undisturbed by man.
Her eyes flashed, and her teeth were exposed where her lips curled into a sneer at the sight of him, sitting in her home, pretending he had the right to be there. As if it was not bad enough that he was who Ozai had appointed to succeed him in case of his death. The move had been nothing more than a taunt about Iroh's failures when Ozai had willed it, but now it was reality.
In some ways, Azula was glad of that; her father was succeeded by his brother who he had nothing but hatred for. His spirit would not rest peacefully for what she had done to him.
She hated Iroh too, though. She hated him more than she could ever hate her father.
Ozai had given her everything even if he had taken it too. His love had been stringed up with conditions and clauses, but Azula had met every condition asked of her. She had been the obedient daughter up until he had taken the Olympics from her, and he had been the father he had promised to be in return.
Twisted as it was, Azula didn't know how to hate her father the way she could hate her uncle. She never would have killed Iroh, but that was only because there would be no point. It would be bloodshed for bloodshed's sake.
“Azula, you're home,” Iroh said. “I didn't hear you come in.”
“There's no one to announce my arrival to anymore,” she said. She kept her expression even. She would not give him her hatred. She would not give him grief either.
Iroh's face grew dark. “I know losing your father has been hard, but you still have your mother, your brother, and me.”
Azula had never had any of them. She had only had Mai and herself. Now, she only had herself. “Of course, Oji-san. After all, the three of you have always loved me so,” she said coldly.
“You are my niece,” he said, and Azula thought it must pain him greatly. He hated the blood that tied them as he had hated the blood that tied him to Ozai as he loved the blood that tied him to Zuko. “Whatever differences we have had, you will always be my niece.”
“How unfortunate for you,” Azula said. She walked away, tuning out whatever proverb he said next and turning down whatever olive branch he thought he could offer if he pitied her enough.
Azula called Mai's number. It hadn't been disconnected yet. It was a rush of anger every time, hearing Mai's flat intonation of how she couldn't come to the phone and how the caller should leave a message if it was important. It didn't sound like Azula's Mai at all; it was the Nakatomis' Mai entirely. Still, it was Mai's voice.
It was pointless to call. Mai would not answer from her jail cell. No one would answer. Her phone had been bagged as evidence, covered in blood as it was. It was dead now, likely from Azula's calls, and she never even left a voicemail as Mai requested.
There was nothing she had left to say to Mai. She had taken what she had wanted, and Mai was going to live the rest of her life in a prison, one way or another.
She didn't stop calling. She was addicted to it.
“This is Nakatomi Mai. I can't come to the phone right now. Sorry. Please leave a message, and I'll get back to you when I can. Thank you,” the Nakatomis' Mai said, her voice diluted over the speaker.
A beep was intoned, and Azula hung up. She set her phone down to stare at it as though Mai might just call her back somehow. It did not vibrate or light up or do anything at all. It sat there, flat and unmoving.
Alone, Azula smiled, cold and hard.
Zuko was trying to be a brother to her now.
It was so like him to pick a cowardly time when she was supposed to be weak and vulnerable to attempt to mend things between them. It was so like him to think things between them could be mended when he hated her so and when she had never once relented in her cruelty.
Azula sat on the couch as far from him as she could. They were not siblings, not really. Blood was not enough to account for the distance between them even as they lived together.
Zuko did not move to shift closer to her, but he had been glancing at her frequently in abrupt, jerky movements.
“Do you want something?” she said when he did not stop at her lack of reaction.
The sooner Zuko pulled whatever atrocity he needed reminding lurked beneath Azula's surface out, the sooner he would drop this act of concern. The food trays left outside her bedroom door would stop. The time spent occupying the same spaces would be over. All he had to do was ask the question she knew was waiting for her behind the door she wanted closed again.
“No,” he said too quickly.
Azula's exhale caught in her throat. A flicker of irritation, nothing more. “I'm fine if that's what you're getting at.”
“You don't have to be,” Zuko said. Azula could tell he'd heard this from Iroh and was parroting it back to her now. The thought made her stomach churn. The slowness of his voice made her teeth gnash like matches. She hated him. “Our father was murdered. By someone we knew and trusted. By… someone you cared about. It's okay to not be okay.”
She couldn't help it; she scoffed openly. “You do a horrible impression of Oji-san.”
“I'm not—I just mean, you were close with him. Closer than I was, and I know I'm… not okay. And you found him too. That must have been awful, Azula.” Zuko sounded so rehearsed. So unlike her brother, the one who hated her and screamed at her and wished she would have died instead.
“He disfigured you. Shouldn't you be happy?” Azula tilted her head curiously. She hadn't expected all this whining from Zuko when she killed Ozai. She never expected him to celebrate as he ought to, but she thought that at least privately he would be glad.
“Don't say that.” It was razor-sharp. Like it might slice through her skin.
She smiled, thin and red. “What? Wouldn't Oji-san say you were allowed to be happy? Don't you have permission, Zuzu?”
Zuko looked pale and sickly. “I don't want permission. I just want my father back.”
“He wouldn't have said the same if it had been you,” Azula said quietly. There was not enough cruelty to her voice. It was too honest. Too thoughtful.
Zuko didn't notice as he fled the room. He had never been very observant.
Azula clicked her tongue and changed the channel on the television.
Azula dreamed of blood. Azula dreamed of girls who did not hold her. Azula never dreamed of fathers.
They were on the thirtieth day of the grieving period, and Azula's patience for her mother was growing thinner with each passing day. Ursa had no right to pretend she had not abandoned Azula years ago when she had labeled Azula a monster.
They were alone in the Kantei for all Azula cared. Zuko was at some doctor's appointment, and Iroh was in the Kōtei. The staff was here, listening like rats, but they were hardly human to Azula for all the good they'd done her over the years. Idiots, every single one of them. She hated how goddamn nosy they were too.
But all Azula could do today was stare at her mother, her mouth a hard line pressed into her face like a cut and her lips red like the blood that bubbled to the surface.
“What did you say?” Azula. kept her voice slow and deliberate.
Ursa looked like stone. “I said I love you, Azula.” She sounded as if she might believe it. Maybe she'd hit her head, or maybe she was as good a liar as her daughter. It didn't matter. It only angered Azula further to conceive of.
“No, you don't.” Azula's mouth barely moved with the force of the words, but her eyes were bright and dangerous, she knew.
“Of course I do. You're my daughter.”
“Daughter, niece, sister—kind of you all to throw those words around like they mean anything to you,” Azula said. “Tell me, Okaa-san—no, Ursa, why are you lying to me? Because Mai killed Otō-san? I'm not some fragile fucking child. Do not lie to me.” Her layer of calm was being peeled back, exposing her anger. It was ugly and raw. It was the biggest thing in the house. She felt monstrous. She hoped Ursa thought so too.
“I'm not lying, Azula. I love you. I do.” Her conviction only made Azula want to flinch away.
“You—no! You think I'm a monster! Just like him! You hate me! You've always hated me, you and Zuko both! Iroh and Lu Ten too! It was always all of you against me, and all I had was him.” Her eyes narrowed to slits, her nostrils flared, and her mouth curled with venom.
Ursa had the audacity to come closer, entrapping Azula in her arms like a petulant child. “I love you,” she repeated. “Zuko and Iroh love you too, and so did your cousin.”
Azula thrashed in Ursa's arms, clawing at the woman. Ursa did not release her grip.
“Then why did you name me Azula!?” It came out unstable and out of her control. It felt raw in her throat. All she could think about was Mai in the hotel room, looking at her with eyes darker than even coal and something so painfully alive to them.
Ursa went slack, and Azula pulled herself free.
“What?”
“Why did you name me Azula?” she said, every word cut to the marrow.
“I don't know what you mean.”
Azula laughed hollowly. “Yes, you do, you awful woman. You named Zuko with so much care—picked the kanji yourself, and you gave me nothing. You hated me the moment I was born.”
Ursa flinched away from her. “I love you, Azula,” she said uselessly. Like it was all that she knew how to say. Like it fixed anything she had done to Azula. It made Azula hate her even more. “I love you.”
“Then why doesn't my name mean anything?”
“I—your father…”
“Loved me more than you ever cared to.”
Ursa was silent then.
Azula took her silence, and she burned. She wished that Ursa would burn too.
At the end of the grieving period, Azula returned to training with Zhao. She hated the man, and she hated her body for its weakness, but she pushed through each session. After all, it hadn't been announced yet, but she would be going to the Olympics again. She had to steal back what her father had stripped her of. That had been the point of each stab and slash to the man. That had been the point of all of this.
So she pushed her body to its breaking point and beyond that. She trained with something roaring in her chest, worked every muscle in her body, tested her own limits, and attempted so many quad axles that she felt she might die. She trained night and day, she skipped lessons and sent in perfect essays and worksheets to excuse them. She laughed in Zuko and Ursa's faces when they asked if she would like to attend Mai's trial with them for anything other than her testimony. She bled every day, and she brought herself to tears.
And then, one day, she landed a quad axle. Sloppily, yes, but she had landed it nonetheless. This had been the point.
She would never forgive her father for the weeks and weeks that could have been spent training, but she had more than repaid him. If she could only land the quad-axle again and again and again, she could take it to his grave to laugh at him.
He was dead, and she was here. She would take home the gold for herself, not for him.
“Your father would have been proud,” Zhao said. He was smiling awfully at her. He loved to dig his fingers in wounds that weren't his. “Your mother and brother will be when you perfect it, certainly. How are they, anyway? With your father's passing and the trial? I can't imagine Zuko is taking it well. He never was very strong.”
Azula wanted to gouge his eyes out. Instead, she gripped her skates tightly, suffocating them and imagining they were Zhao. “They'll recover.”
“It's a shame, isn't it? A girl like that just… snapping. You seemed close.”
“We were once,” she said. She felt very far away.
Mai was being sentenced today. Azula hadn't watched the trial, but she was curious. She was not curious about what they would do with Mai but about how Mai would look now that she was a real criminal and not just a rumored one. How she might feel. If she hated Azula now.
Zuko had been almost relieved when she had said she was going with him to watch. Ursa had been quiet, but she didn't seem opposed to the idea.
After all, Ozai had been her father, and Mai had been something to her too.
It thrilled Azula to know that Ursa must be wildly uncomfortable with the idea of what Mai and Azula had done together all alone that night. She had yet to broach the subject, and Azula suspected she never would after Zuko's disastrous attempt to insinuate that Azula had been involved with Mai.
Azula barely registered the words the judge said about the severity of Mai's crime and the leniency she was legally owed as a minor. With Mai in front of her, that was of little importance.
Mai looked as good as she could look for having been found guilty. She was dressed in a black dress as if she might be attending a funeral. Azula supposed she might as well be. The thing that really stood out, though, was that Mai was wearing vivid red lipstick, and she was looking straight at Azula, unsmiling as ever.
It sent a shiver down Azula's spine. Her skin prickled.
Mai kept looking at Azula even as she was taken away. Her eyes were electric. Before she stepped completely out of Azula's line of sight, her lips curved into a smile.
“Are you okay?” Zuko sounded disturbed.
Ursa was still sitting, staring straight ahead and gripping her knees.
Azula blinked at them both. Neither of them understood a goddamn thing. She let out a short laugh before composing herself. “I'm fine, Zuzu. You don't have to play at being my big brother. There are no reporters around to document this.” Her voice was perfectly even in its disdain.
Ursa looked up now, her face pinched. “Don't say that, Azula.”
“It's horrible, I know,” Azula said mockingly.
“I'm not playing at anything.” He looked stubborn as ever. It suited his scar, or his scar suited it.
Azula's lips curled into a smile. “Then you really don't know me at all. But we knew that.”
No matter what arguments she tuned out, it was true in the courtroom. It was true on the sidewalk. It was true the whole way home. It was truer still as Azula gripped the pack of cigarettes she had stolen from Mai like a lifeline.
Azula was smoking in a shopping mall parking lot. It was the very same one she had run into Mai at all those months ago, and the very same one they had met with Jet in his car at what felt like lifetimes ago.
She shouldn't smoke in public. It was bad for her image, and she had what she wanted back again anyway. There was no point rebelling. Maybe she liked the taste of ash in her mouth, though. It felt good to burn. It reminded her of sitting in Mai's dorm and burning bedframes. It reminded her of Mai drinking the roofied cup of jasmine tea and kissing her goodbye.
Call her nostalgic.
She exhaled a plume of white. The action soothed her even as the smoke burned her eyes. Smoking was pain, but it was pleasure too. She wondered sometimes if that was how Mai had felt about her.
“Minamoto?”
Azula looked up. Ty Lee stood before her, blinking.
“Good afternoon, Hata.”
“Hi… I'm sorry about your dad.” She was fidgeting with her sleeve.
“Isn't everyone?” Azula's cigarette was burning dangerously low. It felt white-hot in her hand. She could stub it out on Ty Lee and watch the other girl cry in a way Mai never would have. She brought it back up to her lips anyway to punctuate her question with a cloud of smoke.
Ty Lee shifted. “Are you… do you know why she did it?”
“Mai?”
There was a slight wince. “Yes… I mean, why would she think she had to do that, Minamoto?”
Azula smiled now. “I never said anything to her about Otō-san, if that's what you're asking.”
“I know. I just mean, do you think it was about your brother?” She looked hopelessly lost in the sea of cars. Her eyes were starting to tear up, but Azula couldn't tell if it was from the cigarette smoke or what Mai had done.
Azula shrugged. The reason didn't matter this much, did it? “It must have been. Mai loves Zuko, after all.”
Ty Lee went very still all of a sudden. Her eyes were still red-rimmed, but aside from the quiver of her mouth, her form gave nothing of the contents of her heart away. She had always been good at that: keeping her deck close to her chest and out of Azula's sight. “I hate you,” she said quietly. “I don't know what you did, but I hate you for doing it. And I never want to talk to you again, Azula.”
“What did I do wrong, Ty?” She blinked, wide-eyed and innocent looking.
Ty Lee took a sharp step backward, and she never did answer Azula's question. She was too busy running the hell away from Azula as if she'd done something awful.
Azula kissed her cigarette to her wrist and imagined it was Mai's. She didn't think she'd done anything wrong at all, really.
It was official. The public finally knew that Azula would be competing at the upcoming Winter Olympics. To celebrate, the Japanese figure skating team was having a party. Azula was sipping on an American rum as she talked to a drunk Miyoshi Ryūji, who was nicknamed Ruon-Jian and one of the male singles figure skaters.
He was quite dull to talk to even intoxicated, but he was pretty to look at, and Azula was curious. She had kissed very few people in her life, and only one of them had ever had any real appeal to her. She thought Ruon-Jian wouldn't be so bad to kiss at least, and so she leaned forward, cutting him off with her lips pressed to his.
She felt absolutely nothing.
He didn't seem to feel the same as he chased after her mouth when she pulled back.
She frowned at him. “That was terrible.”
“What?” He looked hurt.
“Mai was a much better kisser than you,” she said.
He blinked. “Who's that?”
Chan picked then to intervene, tugging Ruon-Jian away from Azula. Ruon-Jian's drunken body was loose and complied with the tug quite well. “Hey, Ruon-Jian, Minamoto-san is scary, so you should leave her alone. Let's find you a nice girl.”
Azula sighed. Her rum didn't seem very appealing anymore. The burning in her belly was an empty feeling just like kissing Ruon-Jian had been. It wasn't as if she had any friends at this party or on this team either, and what she had seen of them was pathetic. She shoved her half-drunk cup into the chest of one of the female figure skaters.
This party wasn't worth her time. Nothing was these days.
She didn't even take the train home. Instead, Azula opted to walk the whole way there in her heels under the static of the night.
When Azula had been but a child, she had had a horse. Osamu, she'd named him. He'd been put down when Azula was thirteen and Mai was fourteen after being diagnosed with bone cancer, but before that, she had ridden him alongside Mai and Tsutomu. They used to ride along the trail, racing back and forth.
It was the one thing Azula had been able to stomach losing at. It had been far more insulting when Mai had let her win than it had been to lose with honor. It still made her sick, but she had never pushed Mai off Tsutomu or anything of the sort in retaliation.
They had only ever been girls back then. Playing and laughing like little kids. They had been little kids, really.
Azula stared at the old picture of herself and Mai riding their horses together that she'd folded away for years now, and she wondered when Mai had stopped being a girl. Had it been when Azula had held an ice skate's blade poised to kill or when Mai had killed Tsutomu? Or maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe Azula would never be able to pinpoint the moment Mai's girlhood had ended.
Maybe it had been the moment she had drunk the jasmine tea in Azula's bedroom.
The thought made Azula feel cold. Her father was dead, and she was going to the Winter Olympics, and she was all but guaranteed admission to Tohoku University the next school year, but she wasn't happy at all.
She folded the photograph up and pocketed it, regretting nothing she had done at all. That didn't stop her from sending a message to her mother requesting to have the Nakatomis over for dinner
It was quite possibly the worst dinner Azula had ever attended, and she had sat through family dinners her entire life. Despite all the people present, no one had said anything beyond formalities for the half hour that the Nakatomis had been seated. They all just looked at each other, miserably wanting answers only Azula and Mai had.
Azula pushed her bowl away, and she sighed.
“Are you all right, Azula?” Ursa sounded nervous. It wasn't as if she'd been getting along with Azula lately, after all.
“No. You're all pretending like Mai never existed.” She glared at Michi directly. Ukano was an idiot, and he always had been, but Michi was cruel in the way only a mother knew how to be. “It's cowardly, and I despise it.”
Collectively, their movements froze. Zuko's knuckles went white. Ursa looked down at her plate, ashamed. Iroh stared at Azula, his eyes wide but with something unreadable in them. Ukano's chopsticks were frozen midair. Michi sucked in a breath. Tom-Tom, though, continued eating quietly.
“What my daughter did was inexcusable. She deserves to be shunned for it.” Michi was stiff and stuffy as ever.
“Yes… it's unfortunate, but Mai did something unforgivable when she killed your father,” Ukano said.
Azula sneered at them. “Don't talk about her like she's scum. She's still your daughter.”
“Azula.” Ursa was giving her a warning. Like she'd be put in time-out if she continued misbehaving.
“She killed Otō-san. How can you sit there and defend her?” Zuko was half-standing now, his nostrils flared and his hand slamming into the table. He was the spitting image of their father at his worst.
She had to blink until she could see Ozai's last gift to Zuko stretched across his face again. Until his face was clean-shaven and still retaining a slight veil of baby fat again. Then, she spoke simply, “Mai is not a bad person.” It wasn't simple, though. It was the farthest thing from simple. She had made sure of that when she had drugged the tea.
Iroh closed his eyes like he was in pain.
Azula hated him for it.
“What does it mean to you, Azula, to take a life?” Iroh said.
“I don't want your riddles, old man.” Her lips were curled in a red snarl. “I want you all to understand that Mai is not evil. She's just a girl who doesn't… feel all the things she's supposed to. All she ever did was the best that she could with what she was given.”
“How could killing someone be what was best!?” Azula thought that Michi's frustration betrayed her. She wanted to understand as much as everyone else did, it seemed.
“Look at Zuko's face,” Azula said.
His chopsticks splintered in his hold.
“Kaa-chan, don't you still love Onee-chan?” Tom-Tom said. He sounded small and unsure. Azula felt something hot and angry in the pit of her stomach at the sound. Why did he deserve innocence? What had he ever done but be a boy?
“Tom-Tom, we will discuss this later,” Michi said urgently.
Azula laughed hollowly. She hated this woman like she hated her own mother.
“Michi, isn't that harsh?” Ursa looked taken aback. “No matter what mistakes she made, Mai is your daughter. Of course, you love her.”
Michi didn't speak.
Azula wished she'd killed her too.
“Azula, did Mai… did she write to you?” Ukano said.
A smile clicked into place on her lips. “No, she didn't. Mai hasn't contacted me at all since that night. She didn't have to convince me to defend her to the likes of you at all, Ukano,” Azula said, not caring for manners.
Michi stood up suddenly, pulling Tom-Tom by the elbow up with her. “We'll be going now. Thank you for having us, Ursa and Iroh-kun.”
It truly was the worst dinner Azula had ever attended. Even the burning of her brother had been more pleasant. She could do nothing but laugh at the thought even as Ursa glared at her through watery eyes.
“I hope you got what you wanted,” Zuko said sharply.
“I did.”
Azula always lied.
It was the day before the Winter Olympics began that the letter came.
“Dear Azula,” it read, “if you're reading this, I hope you know that I think I hate you. I think I love you too, though. Isn't that awful? I think I love you, and that's why I did it. I think I hate you, and that's why you haunt my every dream. There is always jasmine tea and vomit and the sound of you laughing. I hate your laugh most of all. There is always red lipstick on my mouth. I ask you why you put it there, and you open your mouth, but all that comes out is Tsutomu's neighs from the night I killed him. Screaming for me to stop. Telling me how bad it hurts. It's a horrible dream. I can't stop having it. Like all things in life, I blame you.
“That's not why I'm writing this letter, though. I'm writing to tell you that I don't understand The Giving Tree. I don't know why the tree gives the little boy everything he wants to take from her, and I don't know why the little boy doesn't love the tree enough to stop taking so goddamn much from her. But I understand now that you were only ever going to take from me until there was nothing left to take. I hope you took what you wanted, and I hope you somehow appreciate all that I let you take from me.
“There's one last thing, Azula. I want you to tell me if you're happy now. I want you to tell me if it was enough.”
Azula folded the letter up, and she slipped it into her copy of The Giving Tree.
Notes:
additional cws: body image, some homophobia
it's been a long time coming… i can't believe how delighted i am to have completed this finally? i know i wrote the last few chapters rather quickly, especially considering the drop in activity i had in the midst of writing this, but it's the first multi-chapter fic i've completed. it's meant the world to me. i loved writing this. i adored every second of it, even when it hurt. i hope it's been as good of an experience reading it for you as writing it has been for me, and i hope you liked this last chapter.
thank you for reading.
here are some unsung background facts abt this fic for your time:
- katara is azula's main international figure skating rival. she will be competing in the olympics too. last time she took silver while azula took gold
- azula has done a martial arts-themed exhibition program
- the big things people throw when she's done are chrysanthemums and dragon plushies
- lo and li are her choreographers. i don't think that got a direct mention, but i could be wrong
- she does in fact play mind games w her opponents by showing off how good she is at official practices
- to celebrate her big win, azula did a backflip at the exhibition program during a special love amongst the dragons themed program dedicated to her mother
- her next winter olympics program is dedicated to her father. fuck you ozai
- ty lee did not get to drop out of school like she wanted before high school, but she does work weird part-time jobs frequently
- azula did not consider a hitman because she's stupid and weird
- the shade of red lipstick both mai and azula wear is meant to be dior 999 velvetbonus: Osamu 治 reign
also, here's a post breaking down my favorite lines of this fic if you're interested
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