I don't want him to win, Azula Who: Mai, Azula What: Mai comes home, talk about what happened in San Fran. When: Late Sunday/Very Early Monday Where: Azula's Condo Ratings/Warnings: R, mainly because of the events being discussed. Triggers for violence and cutting. Status: Complete.
It was the hour of the day most people debated between calling 'very late' or 'early' by the time Mai dragged herself into Azula's condo at Huntington Beach. She'd taken the earliest flight home that she could after her confrontation with Ozai, but it hadn't been early enough.
Her arm ached. Her entire body ached. And she felt old, older than the 20 years she'd lived on this earth. Older than the entire world, empty, used, and completely, utterly broken. Somehow she still managed to walk through the front door with some of her dignity intact.
Something unusual happened, when Mai dragged herself through the front door. Azula was still awake, and she'd looked up from being curled on the couch. She was up like a flash and had her arms wrapped around Mai without saying a word.
It was quite possibly the first hug she'd ever given Mai that hadn't been a polite sort of hello. The exhaustion, and the weariness that radiated off of Mai hit Azula like a physical slap. It only made her hug tighter. She didn't trust herself to say anything, always terrible at reassurances and handling things, like how she'd passed Rarity onto Setsuna for fear of making the situation worse by being inconsiderate.
It was a fear that was still present in the back of her mind with Mai, but unlike Rarity, Mai was used to and understood Azula, and was capable of looking past things to see what she really meant. At least so she hoped.
Betrayal didn't matter. Not in the Avatar's world and not here, in this world, where Mai had confronted Ozai where Azula had been unable to. It had infuriated her and made her feel impotent and betrayed.
Fear had replaced impotence. That she'd never see her friend again., and having barely come to terms with what had happened in her dreams that thought had been unbearable. So she had done the only thing she could think of. This hug.
The hug was completely unexpected, especially from the person it came from.
And so was Mai's response. She'd been steeling herself for this moment the entire day. Busying herself, and her mind, with anything she could to keep herself from actually breaking down. She didn't even want to think about her brother, though she knew at some point she'd have to. Especially now that everything she did was specifically for him.
But being wrapped in Azula's arms - the comfort that came from such an odd place - just bashed through all of that steel like it was rotten wood or a tent made of flimsy canvas. Tears sprang to her eyes, and before she could give Azula any warning, she was wrapping her arms around her friend and soaking the other woman's shoulder with uncontrollable sobs.
Tears were something Azula had never thought she'd become familiar with, but of late she had, both her own and others. She sank to the floor with Mai in her arms, to let her cry herself out like Ty Lee had done for her. Whatever had happened, had really happened, had done irreparable damage to Mai.
The Nation grapevine was buzzing with rumors and it was impossible to separate truth from lies, though Azula had fed her own narrative to the stories to further confuse matters. Let them sort things out. She rubbed Mai's back, making strange sounds to try to soothe her. As her top became soaked, she had an epiphany.
Mai had made God bleed, but God's didn't bleed without their blood sacrifice. What had Mai lost? It couldn't just be the marriage arrangement.
As she cried herself out, Mai was beginning to wonder if making God bleed had been worth the things she'd lost in return. Freedom. A life, a destiny of her own choosing? Those things were so intangible, she'd only had them for such a short time that it felt almost like some dream she'd been having.
Tom Tom on the other hand...
Her family wouldn't forgive her for that, and though she hadn't been planning on associating with them if she could help it, now she knew she couldn't. It was one thing for that choice to be your own, and another thing entirely to have to avoid your family over something you did to hurt them. A hurt she was certain was irreparable.
She didn't even have the right to ask after his welfare. She didn't have the right to visit, to make sure, with her own two eyes, that he'd done anything he said he would.
She was silent for a long time after she was done crying. She didn't even bother to move. Then finally, "I failed."
Azula believed that destiny was just a fancy way of pretending you had control over your life. Ozai had been pulling all their strings for so long, and only Zuko had ever been able to push back. It made her admire and hate him all at once. With Mai in her arms, broken and light, she directed her hate instead at her father and the Fire Nation as a whole. Both versions of them. The Phoenix King and the crime lord.
Throat tighter than she was comfortable with, Azula asked, "What happened?"
"We arranged a mutual trap, but he was more prepared than I was," Mai's voice was a whisper. It was all she could manage. She felt like every last ounce of defiance or strength she could drum up had been spent, and her voice was hoarse from crying.
"He had them tied up. I should have expected that. He had them do something to ..." she took a deep breath, and let it out, "Tom Tom is in the hospital. It looked like they cut his spine. He'll need care forever."
She leaned back a bit, pulling away from Azula and looking down at her hands so that the other woman didn't have to see the self loathing in her eyes, "Care our father will provide. As long as I do what I was born to do."
"Tom Tom? Little Tom Tom?" Azula was horrified, and outraged. He was just a child and her father had crippled him. Probably without a moment's thought as to what that would mean for the boy. A cold ruthless part of her thought that death would have been better. Prove the point, but with some measure of mercy.
Azula filed that part of her back to the place where the crazed power hungry maniac liked to hide.
"I want to say I wish I believed he wasn't capable of that." Azula shook her head, her anger causing the room to heat up, "What do you mean born to do? Marry Zuko?"
Yes, she'd wanted to see that. In part because it would have helped her, but also because she genuinely cared about Mai and thought it might make her happy, "I never wanted to see it like this."
Azula swallowed, afraid that in order to win she was going to have to become the person she'd been in that other world.
"My birth wasn't an accident, and my parents raised me for one specific purpose," Mai let out a long sigh, and started to pick herself up off the floor, "I'm to marry Zuko and then be Ozai's assassin. No one will suspect the dainty bauble on his son's arm is also capable of murder."
She shrugged a shoulder, "I don't want him to win, Azula. But he has, for now. And whatever I do will never be enough, if he decides he wants something more. He'll play the card he has as many times as he needs to. He knows I'll have to obey."
"Naturally," Azula replied sardonically, her hands balling up into fists. She stormed to her feet and took Mai's arm. Then hesitated and inspected it. Sighing, she pulled her into the bathroom to get a better look at the bruises as she snarled, "That won't last for much longer. I've already spoken to Uncle. He agrees we have to get rid of my father."
Her voice broke on the last word, and she took a breath to steady herself, her anger and her anguish over that, and over Mai and over Tom Tom. Sure, he'd been a little brat, but he was Mai's little brat.
"What did you do to piss him off so effectively?"
The bruise was hand-sized, with a small trace of one further up her arm where it had been twisted the furthest. The hand-sized one was clearly around her wrist, and Mai wondered how much cover-up it would take to hide it.
She pulled her arm away and tugged her sleeve down, "Disabled his guards and pinned his open-wide welcoming arms to the wall behind him. I wasn't careful, and hit skin. He didn't seem that perturbed, so I decided to point a knife at his eyeball."
Mai sighed, "I was trying to get him to see me as a more useful tool for other things. Assassinations, whatever fighting it is the Fire Nation gets up to. But he already knew what was going to happen. He had it all planned out. When he showed me my family on the monitor, I couldn't flinch. I asked if he was going to kill them slowly, because I had nothing to snack on while I watched."
She did flinch, then, at her own words, "So he hurt Tom Tom. And I took his eye."
Her last stop before heading home had been to one of the scientists working for the Fire Nation. Ozai's eye was in a decorative jar in her carry on luggage. The TSA had been kind enough not to ask any untoward questions.
That anger welled up inside Azula again as she examined the hand mark. Not to mention all the slicing marks, which she'd known about but hadn't been expecting. They'd mostly healed, though they were still obvious and made her stomach convulse. She knew they would have to keep an eye on Mai so she didn't start this up again.
She stared at Mai, respect dawning in her eyes.
Azula knew then, that it hadn't been just Mai's love for Zuko that turned her from her friend. But also a pair of brass balls.
She was glad Ty Lee had stayed with Jubilee last night.
"We'll take more than his eye, Mai."
"But I'd like to take his eye. I want a matched set to put on my dresser."
It wasn't a joke. Mai's tone was deadly serious.
"That's fair," Azula replied darkly. "As long as I get the rest of him."
Mai nodded in response. She was tired, and there was a lot to do to get ready for this state function she'd have to appear at next week.
She made her way out of the bathroom, but paused as she got to the doorway, and gave Azula a look. It was a vulnerable one, one few people in her life ever got to see. It was a look that conveyed how badly these events had hurt her. How despondent she was. How hollow she felt. Things that she couldn't really quite put words to.
But she whispered, "I'll just have to hold on until then," before she exited the room.