some ways less, some ways more

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/35045848.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: F/F
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Katara & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Mai & Ty Lee,
Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Sukka and Zutara are only in
the background
Characters: Mai (Avatar), Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula (Avatar), Katara (Avatar), Suki
(Avatar), Zuko (mentioned), June (Avatar), Original Female Character(s)
Additional Tags: Character Study, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Mild Hurt/Comfort,
Unrequited Love, Toxic Friendships, not anti Azula, Female Friendship,
Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2021-11-10 Words: 5,968 Chapters: 1/1
 some ways less, some ways more
by mimiofthemalfoys

Summary

After the war, Mai's redemption arrives in a shade of bright pink.

Notes

This fic is inspired by a prompt given by my friend, Milena (@maizulas on twt). the title is
from the song hurricanes, by dido, one of my fave songs for mailee.
“We were twelve years old, but we walked along the hot streets of the neighbourhood, amid
the dust and flies that the occasional old trucks stirred up as they passed, like two old ladies
taking the measure of lives of disappointment, clinging tightly to each other. No one
understood us, only we two—I thought—understood one another." - Elena Ferrante, My
Brilliant Friend.

Mai is seven when she finds her rage.

It’s Azula. Isn’t it always, she’ll ask herself, but that’s a question for the Mai of the future, the
Mai whose knives slide like watersilk through the gullets of her victims, the Mai with salty
iron-smelling knuckles and a perpetual ache in her ribs and deep, deep shadows beneath her
eyes.

No, this Mai, the one who stares at a square patch of turquoise fabric singed by blue fire, hot
tears burning her eyes, is too small. Small, pale and impotent.

So that, when Ty Lee begins to sob, clutching to her chest the now-ruined panels of what was
her best kimono, and when Azula (Oh! Again!) begins to trill with perverse glee at her act of
impossible childish cruelty, Mai does nothing. She turns her head, juts out her jaw, musters
up her courage.

But she doesn’t intervene, and she doesn’t take Ty Lee’s hand. Or wipe her tears. That would
be most unladylike.

She doesn’t say, “Azula, that wasn’t funny. Not even in the least.”

You are not to do anything to vex the Princess. Nod if you understand.

Instead, she shrugs her shoulders, shakes off her sobbing friend with a brusque jerk and
marches back to the display of ceremonial katanas, hilts shining in motifs of jade and
carnelian, on the very opposite end of the fair grounds. No point in making a scene at the Fire
Festival, not when her father’s gaze hovers on the horizon, always present, seeing,
disapproving.

Instead, after their governess has put out the lamp, she brings out the kitchen knife she had
smuggled into her sleeve earlier, grits her teeth and wishes herself into the old teak-smelling
chamber that houses all of Azula’s finest robes. Including her favourite, the blood red one
with the collar detail of fireflies in starbursts of gold brocade.

It takes her a minute. Less even.

When she’s done, the violence, the sheer all-consuming passion of it shocks even her.
Then again, that’s how she has always loved.

And so at seven, Mai’s rage begins with Azula, and it ends, gently, like a drifting feather, as
she crawls back into bed, falling asleep, her hand tightly clasping Ty Lee’s.

“You know, Gran-Gran always told me that ginger pellets are good with seasickness.”

“I’m not seasick,” Mai half-lies, because she is not propped up over the starboard vomiting
but she’s also not feeling too rosy gold, timing her breaths while nausea rolls in waves
through the pit of her belly. “And will you please stop barging into my cubby without
permission, I thought thrice was enough.”

“I like talking to you!” Katara, she has discovered to her chagrin, is one of those effortless
conversers who fills up every room she flutters into with her effervescent azure presence; she
has also realised, with still greater horror, that when she is not hunched over her chamber pot
throwing up cod bread or drowning in self pity during music-on-deck sessions, the Water
tribe girl’s warm, feckless amity is actually, regrettably, comforting. “You know, I was telling
Suki that any of these nights we shall sail into southern waters and finally see Nuktuk. Oh,
it’ll be glorious, I’m praying for clear skies.”

Mai turns her head from the deceptive port-hole and looks at Katara’s betrothal necklace
instead. “Run that by me again, only in a tongue I speak?”

“Haha, you’re funny.” When she sees her audience is well and truly stumped, a disappointed
Katara clarifies, “He is visible in the early winter in the Southern skies. Sokka was born
under Nuktuk’s stars. Spirits, they teach them nothing in the Fire Nation!”

“Oh, right. Your polar-bear dog constellation. So are we having a viewing party on deck or
what?”

“Suki says we should, because he is special to waterbenders. When Avatar Yura forged the
Southern spirit portal, Nuktuk, her animal companion helped her battle against malevolent
phantasms in the frigid wastes. Yura was such a sword-wielding, sharp eyed warrior princess.
Reminds me of you, a bit, though more cheerful.”

“I’m sunshine incarnate, what are you saying. Besides, I didn’t know the Southern
waterbenders were so reverent of some centuries’ old Avatar who tooted off at the tender age
of thirty three, forget her canine companion.”

“Firstly, Avatar Yura didn’t toot; she died in a spirit attack defending her village, secondly,
you sounded very idiotically racist just now and thirdly, are you planning to steal my
necklace because I’ve caught you staring at it, for like, what, eight minutes now?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right. In our academy, Avatar Studies was something of an
esoteric branch unless it was a Fire Nation Avatar. Still, no excuse for my comment, sorry,
I’m working on myself.”
“No matter that! Zuko is the same, worse even, I had to waterbend a tank upon him to make
him stop saying peasant derogatorily. Or village, which is just as good because if he danced
into Bato’s hut sneering about provincial villagers, he would take a harpoon to his behi-oh, I
beg your pardon!”

A laugh rises out of Mai, a bizarre, ringing, full sound she has never heard before. It leaves
her feeling like she crushed a sugar cube between her teeth and washed it down with honeyed
fruit. “I like that image.”

“Of course you do. So did Toph, when I told her. Do you know what she says? Humble him,
Katara. A man cannot be too cocky. If you are going to love him, give him some tough love.
Would you ever?”

“So, do you?”

In the glow of the setting sun blazing defiantly through the glass, the pendant around Katara’s
neck - pigeon blood ruby engraved with twin gold and cobalt dragons - glows a startling,
beautiful red. “I suppose I do. It’s difficult staying angry at that boy.”

“Wait till he leaves you with a poorly written letter under your pillow.”

“Oh, he is different now. He listens when I’m talking and he puts me first. He brings me
fruits from the Ember Island orchards, the big persimmons- which I so like, and dried
nectarines from summer markets. He’s learning our script. He even lets me braid his hair-
well, so does Azula, I am a good braider, I suppose- but, you know."

Does she? Mai looks around her cabin, at the jute bags full of dried mushrooms and bell
peppers to be distributed at the food bank on the docks, at her painted geta sandals, sturdy
and dependable even after five years of roughing it out on the harsh terrain of the Northern
borderlands, at the meagre sum of her belongings, ruthlessly minimised by Suki for easier
ferrying: a few changes of dress, travelling pants, swimming outfit, some painted umbrellas
and lacy fans from Crescent Island for Suki’s girls. And she thinks back, against herself, to
the time Zuko had turned the bolt on her and made haste while she had remained behind, a
howling wilderness growing out of her throat and dying on her tongue, counting cobweb
spirals on the walls of her cell at the Boiling Rock while a prison riot raged on.

(Later that day, she had also stood on the pier and told Azula her love for Zuko outweighed
her fear. Oh well. These things happen.)

“This homecoming will be so good,” Katara is saying, while Mai unravels between her this
was and this will be, “Wait till you see how Gran-Gran fawns over him; it’s always Zuko put
on your coat this instance, young man! Or Zuko, finish your plate of moon-cakes, I will not
take no for an answer! She loves him something insane, I think. Oh, and you have a reunion
too, your little circus friend, that should be fun- say when was the last time you two even-”

“Yes, it’s been a while,” Mai agrees and retches into her pot.
It was summer, and the sweat on her lashes made her consider taking up a pair of scissors
and lopping off the sleek dark bangs falling in half moons over her face; her mother’s
preferred hairstyle for Fire Nation nobility was the kind of neat schoolmistressy-fifty pins
deal that Mai wouldn’t be found dead in, so she cut her own hair and lined her eyes with red
sugared wings flourishing beyond the natural length of the lids, like the flame-tipped cranes
that sometimes flew over the summer ponds at their family estate.

It was summer and that meant swimming in Azula’s water gardens, resurfacing only to drink
chilled pomegranate and admire the gloss of Ty Lee’s bare shoulders, the swish of her long,
cedar-coloured hair in the sun. Ty Lee in the light, in shades of pink and gold, her bracelets
falling to her elbows as she stretched in the grove. Ty Lee in the heat, sunning her crystals, a
strawberry coloured psychic in crumpled cotton pants, eyes crinkled in laughter as she
foretold Azula dying an old beldam after siring twelve children.

It was summer and Mai sat under her tree, reading the histories of dragon-slayers and
thinking of kissing her best friend, feeling like she was committing some fatally erroneous
action but also like she had split a rock open to find it veined with gold.

She was named after a great aunt who had kept house on Ember Island and married a
warlord who dined with twelve concubines. There was a portrait of the now deceased lady
mounted on a frame outside her father’s study- face painted white as that of a kabuki actor’s,
solemn and funereal in silvery-white. This is how I should look some day, Mai would think,
and every day she would walk back to her chamber and crush red enamel for her lips and
wear her darkest oxblood robes and pray never, never, never.

She lived her life as if in a play herself, repeating her lines from rote memory and retreating
into the curtains when her father asked her to. She felt in several places at once, wings,
stage, audience- viewing her own life through a pinhole of these are your musts and these
your oughts. When she felt like screaming, which was often-and with a bone-deep intensity
that scared her, she tore out sections of her quilts with a knife, lining her room in scraps of
rainbow rage. Maybe that is why Mai had no language for longing, for wanting to kiss Ty
Lee, for wanting to name the pink that would smear across her lovely face. Maybe. Or maybe
it was a defect, some quirk of birth that she had to piece out asides what she was doing with
Azula and Zuko and her life and just what exactly she was meant to be running towards.

Or perhaps, just this:

It was summer, Mai was sixteen and she had fallen in love with the person who would finally
set her free.

On her twenty-first birthday, June presents Mai with her first sword. It’s made in the style of
the Eastern districts, tiger lilies looped around a black hilt, and feels impossibly light in her
hands.

The inscription reads: live the sum of your days for none but yourself.

“A bit selfish, isn’t it?” Mai asks her. They are at the first of several taverns they frequent on
this circuit, and June’s eyes are already blurry.
“If you’re going to be a nun about it you can give it back. I know a merchant in Ba Sing Se
who would pay two hundred yuans for the scrollwork.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

June laughs, and Mai thinks of how she loves her laugh and how much she likes the way the
older bounty hunter looks, her painted eyelids and darkly glossed lips and the fourteen tattoos
for each warlord she has conned over the years and what Mai would give to look like that.
“I’m just saying. Ozai lived for himself.”

“Don’t be moronic. There is a line between omnicide and getting married to a man you have
never met to bear a line of perfect imperialist offspring. And then, oh I don’t know, spend the
rest of your days sipping tea in an over perfumed salon.”

“I just feel,” Mai spreads her hands in a futile gesture, “I just feel so empty, like I’m a
marionette with its strings cut off. Sorry to not make any sense.”

“Stopped to think if it’s because you have never lived a day for yourself?” June cocks an
eyebrow, downing her spirit cider in one neat gulp. “Finding yourself is not easy, little sister.
You have been tethered to your post so long you forgot to crawl on your own feet. Can you
even imagine a future without your illustrious father at the prow?”

“I suppose not.”

“Look, they get us by making things palatable enough, so we do everything they say in
exchange for our subservience. What do you want? Where are you headed? Who would you
like to have and hold? Maybe that’s what you need to worry about, and not your father’s
fucked-up power trip, or oh, the feelings of people who don’t give as good as they take.”

“Sounds scary,” Mai responds, but she tightens her grip around the pattered hilt all the same.
“I’ll do my best.”

The week after she leaves Zuko, Ty Lee comes to visit at the flower-shop.

She has grown more muscular in her time at Kyoshi, arms tanned a warm brown, hair worn
in a loose knot that’s coming apart just so. She wears a patterned, light green Earth Kingdom
robe, a plain gold stud in her nose and woven sandals on her feet. When she hugs her, there’s
the familiar lemon tree-herbal spice scent to her, after all these years. Mai has never wanted
to kiss someone so badly before.

“I came as soon as I heard. How are you doing, dear?”

Good because you are here. Terrifying because nothing makes sense anymore. “Um,” Mai
says, trying not to look at the tender spot where Ty Lee’s shoulder meets her slim neck and
imagining how it would be to come home to her, “Mostly a little tired. I wish he doesn’t hate
me.”
“But how can he hate you? You’re silly to talk so! Both of you knew things were drawing to
a bleak finish, you just did the better thing and ripped off the scab. Or nipped the flower in
the bud, whatever saying sounds better.”

“Still. Everybody was expecting me to-don’t know, do something else.”

“And I know people who betted on the Avatar taking Ozai’s life, but the same folk danced
and scattered puffed rice on the streets when he took his bending away. Mai, do you ever
think of your own self?”

“Mother will hate me. I never asked before taking this step.” And it felt thrilling, to do
something like this, thrilling like when she cut her own bangs in childhood or raced Azula
across the forbidden catacomb grounds. But she won’t say it to herself.

“Surely Michi didn’t expect you to love her either, pawning away your future to the Royal
Family when you were seven. Stop feeling all sensitive about her feelings, like yours ever
mattered to her.”

“What I hope is that I don’t come out of it looking like a bad person. This is certainly
humiliating for Zuko.”

“And getting locked in the Boiling Rock wasn’t for you? Listen to yourself bending
backwards to be held culpable! Zuko will do just fine. Sure, he will let off steam for awhile,
but he will come around, he always does.”

“And he has Katara.”

“And he has Katara, who is going to hold him if he falls and whip him into shape. Don’t
mind my being so frank, Mai, but you looked so- I mean, dear, these past months, the burden
of doing your duty bent you into a shape I couldn’t quite grasp, it was like you were a
shadow of the Mai I knew. And I thought, I just thought, just because Zuko and you are good
people doesn’t mean you are good for each other. I mean, there are friends, and then there are
friends who you want to kiss, who you want to guard like a prayer, and I suppose you’ve
never had that with Zuko.”

“Maybe I’m loveless,” Mai suggests, and her voice comes out so broken, she worries there is
a sob stuck somewhere, maybe deep in her stomach, that just won’t give. “Maybe you were
right that day, on Ember Island, that my aura is grey; maybe it’s too much work loving
someone like that.”

“Look, don’t be an idiot. I was speaking from rage, I didn’t mean a word. Here,” and Ty Lee
crosses that impossible inch and her hands are holding Mai’s and her touch is impossibly soft
and Mai is thinking oh spirits. “I’ll be true this time. Your aura is not pink. You’re more of a
dark red. Like a cherry, or a vial of tinted wine. You look formidable and unapproachable to
the stranger, but why, that’s only a shell, you’re silk-soft once one gets to know you, and
there is so much love spilling out of your heart. Yes, you’re red, I think.”

“Well that’s very flattering and absolutely doesn’t sound like me.”
Ty Lee sighs. “I wish you would see yourself the way I do. It’s depressing, how you don’t
believe me. I want so much for you to just...rest. Be happy.”

“I believe you,” Mai says, her mouth twisting. And then she is finally crying, the weight of
nineteen long years falling off her shoulders, even as she knows the safe glass dome of her
childhood is a thing of the past and that she must forage for her own answers now- and then
she feels strong arms around her, Ty Lee going why you silly girl and kissing her at the corner
of the mouth, the spot between friends and friends you guard like a prayer, and here, here
with Ty Lee and the setting sun and the flowers in their little painted pots, she finally realises
her one greatest fear.

“I don’t want to die being someone’s second-place silver, Ty Lee. I want to be free, but I
don’t want to be lonely! I want to love, I want to be wanted, I want to be held.” When you did
what you did, were you thinking of saving Azula’s soul or sparing my life?

Ty Lee doesn’t let her go. Her arm remains stubbornly curved around her friend's waist and
her heart beats, in its steady flutter, under Mai’s cheek. “Well I’m holding you now,” she says
firmly, this small green robed girl who has undone Mai’s life, “and you are in luck, because I
have a tenacious grip.”

When Nuktuk finally makes his presence known, clouds clearing from a cobalt sky to reveal
the looping bands of stars (“There’s his head!” cries Katara, “and that long curve there is his
back!”) everyone on deck cheers and downs cups of sweet rice wine with a feast meal of
honeyed meat and flatbreads. Mai finally feels well enough to stroll the dock and feel the first
pleasant sting of cold turn her nose a bright pink, while the ocean turns progressively bluer
once they’ve crossed the busier port towns and near the Southern borders.

Suki joins her after dinner, swathed in the tie-dyed tunic of a Kyoshi Islander, hair mussed in
the sea breeze. “You look rather charming,” Mai comments. “Like a friendly pirate.”

“And you look like a quaint philosopher, what with that brooding posture. Nervous?”

“A little. The last time we met I clung to her, and snot was involved.”

“I could do without the details, spirits. Anyway, it’s not like you are heading over for a public
presentation about nation-building and border negotiations. You’re going to give out food at
the bank and catch up with your childhood friend. Loosen up, have a drink.”

If it was said by anyone else, Katara, or her strangely academic brother or even sweet-
tempered, sunny-smiling Aang, Mai would have grumbled something to the effect of leaving
her the fuck alone and minding their own business. But it was Suki who had forgiven her
silently the night after the battle, striding forward and calmly concluding our pasts cannot
define us, it was Suki who had acquainted her with June and encouraged her to pursue the
strange trajectory of a bounty hunting life these past three years, and it was Suki who had
invited her for the reunion at the South Pole, en route Kyoshi Island for a bit of humanitarian
dabbling which would inevitably involve team-building activities led by Katara and a
demonstration of knife-throwing skills for the green girls at Suki’s martial arts class. “I don’t
know if I have accomplished nearly as much as her.”
“You commissioned the building of a school for refugee children from your own nest’s egg,
free of familial investments. You paid for your brother’s admission into the Soma Temple
Academy. Once again, free of investments. You have had twelve hits and twenty-one
bounties in your time as June’s apprentice. Shall I go on?”

“Ty Lee has literally drawn up a peace treaty between the Southern Earth Kingdom and Fire
Nation cantonments. She has travelled around the world helping Aang with the restructuring
of the Air Temples. She was nominated as the peace ambassador for Sokka’s council. She has
been distinguishing herself, finding a place in the world. She is loved by everyone- and I
don’t blame them.”

“Mai,” Suki says rather sternly. “You’re doing it again. Beating yourself down, I mean.”

“I’m sorry, it’s a reflex.” And Mai cannot help herself but wonder how Ty Lee has always
done this with such tactful grace, being helpful and kind even against the ever-rising wave of
ugliness their destinies twine around. When the war ended, Azula was sent to a hospital, and
Mai’s defining achievement was to be seen beside Zuko at the public balcony of his palace.
Ty Lee joined the Kyoshi Warriors, left the Fire Nation and every year, increased her list of
egalitarian accomplishments without claiming credit. Goodness, Mai muses, is a trait
internalised by her friend, as easy as breathing and dreaming.

“Stop apologizing and listen to me. Greatness doesn’t happen overnight okay, and if you’re
going to contradict me, I’ll have Aang preach you a little sermon right here. You want to be
good, and you’re trying to be good, and I don’t know what else could possibly count. No one
here hates you, you know. You don’t have to grovel in penance to any of us.”

“I wonder sometimes whether it was too easy. Katara told me Zuko had to work hard to earn
his forgiveness. I don’t know what I did and how I ended up with all of you. How do you put
everything that happened behind you, with Azula, with what happened in Ba Sing Se and-”

“That again- oh gods, Mai, don’t pick apart everything that has happened, and frustrate
yourself with it. What good does that do? How does any of this sulking and regressive
introspection help? You are here now. You are coming along to help, end of.”

“Not sulking. I just feel less worthy, because my goodness feels less earned.” My one act of
helping you was done of pure spite, based off a love that wasn’t even mine.

As if she read her mind, Suki says, not unkindly, “Your goodness helped me more than
anyone. No more rotting in a prison cell, I had counted the tiles on my walls some hundred
times. Mai, do you realise we would be roasted on a spit if you hadn’t intervened when you
did, all those years ago!? Your decisions counted, you helped end this war! Stop crying about
has-beens, it gives you bad skin.”

“I wish Zuko did get roasted,” but she smiles, she cannot help herself; Suki has that effect on
people. “Thank you, you’re a good friend.”

“Idiot, cheer up, when we go to Kyoshi I’ll take you for a ride on the elephant koi. I’ll stick
on to you perpetually until you’re forced into happiness. Like your personal elbow leech.”
“Ew. You sound like Ty Lee; she was always trying to soften my aura, whatever that meant.”
Oh she. Mai looks towards the ocean. “Spirits, I miss her so.”

Suki places a hand on her shoulder. “And you’ll see her soon. When you do, I hope you’ll
find it in you to be kinder to yourself.”

Mai turns around, smiles at her friend. “I don’t need to, not when I’m with her. She has
enough love for the both of us.”

A memory:

Fireworks in starbursts of colour, the din of hundreds on the street, turquoise and scarlet
dragons slithering through the delighted oohs and ahs of bystanders. Darkness illuminated by
sudden sporadic waves of light and sound.

Fire glinting off the gold in Mai’s eyes. Giggling, whispers in the night.

Remember, I’m doing this as a favour. Because Zuko won’t do it.

Hurry up, then. Her heart beats so loud it’s painful. Get on with it.

Ty Lee covers her mouth with a hand to stifle a laugh. Her hair is worn in a long, loose braid,
woven with camellias and irises. The fragrance of flowers mixes with the musk of the storage
room, its teak-and-mothballs smell.

Close your eyes. Lean forward.

One.

Two.

Three.

Soft. That’s how it feels. Soft, and sacred.

Well?

She cannot look Ty Lee in the face anymore. If she does, this hunger will eat her alive.

It was fine.

Just fine?

Outside, the rush of festival fire. Inside, the hammering realisation of how much she wants.
I don’t know. Let’s try again.

A letter:

My dearest Mai,

I cannot contain my excitement. You’re really coming to see me! I’ll finally have you, all to
myself, after all these days! Really, I cannot thank Suki enough.

There is so much I want to talk to you about, so much I want to show you. Did you know the
elephant koi of Kyoshi Island reach the height of six komodo rhinos stacked on top of each
other? Isn’t that insane? I can’t wait for you to meet them, and the unagi too, but don’t you
worry, she is not as horrifying as she was made out to be; I feed her some mornings and
really, she is a gentle giant. Also we have the rainbow hydrangeas, quite unlike the ones at
home, the same plant bears flowers of seven different shades, I have potted some in my room.

Home. It sounds so strange, doesn’t it? I wonder now, with all that behind us, if the Fire
Nation truly was my home. I’d never felt so free there as I do here, in my cotton tunic and old
sandals, with the sea and the sand and my bamboo fan. Kyoshi does that to people. I think
you’ll see what I mean when you’re here.

There. I won’t spoil anything else, the rest shall be surprises for you to discover upon your
arrival (I can’t wait!) Hoping and praying for the sunniest smoothest weather for your
journey.

Love from your best friend, Ty Lee.

A reply:

Dear Ty Lee,

That pathetic adage “dear”, hah. Makes me sound like one of your sentimental play-girls.
The ones we watched for five yuans at the Ember Island house.

God, I wish I was there with you.

Suki is indeed a friend in a million. She managed to get us a really comfortable barge, and
now we are packed together on a cruise to your place, and I’ve never been surrounded with
more gaiety than this group. Seriously, how are they this happy always? Aang says it’s the
power of bonding. Bullshit. I hate it here. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. You know how
it is.

(Well except maybe for your company. Don’t call me a sod, it’s been years. I will even let you
look at my tea leaves for a reading when we meet.)

Happy to report that we have calm waters until now. Sending this message via Sokka’s
messenger hawk; if it’s damaged when it reaches you, let me know, I made a bet with him.

Yours, Mai
Another:

My darling Mai,

I couldn’t stop smiling when I read your note. How does it feel to be swamped by love and
belonging? That’s what you deserve, always.

I forgot to mention in my last note-curse my memory! But there is someone I want you to
meet. Her name is Ju. She is not a warrior; I met her with Aang on one of our journeys to the
temples, and she came back with us, to teach the way of the Air Acolytes to any interested folk
on our island. (So far she is having a pretty good run of it; wars can cause a serious crisis of
faith, you know, people need to believe in something so desperately.) She is about our age,
but wise beyond her years- you should see her, shaved head and yellow robes and prayer
necklace- all that. Of course, she is more than sermons and prayer meetings, you should see
her sail on the koi like they were her personal boat!- and she has the strangest and funniest
jokes up her sleeve. But more importantly, when she talks, I can’t help but listen. It’s like
hypnosis, only it brings me- such peace, Mai, I can’t even begin to describe. She sees me,
makes me feel understood.

Dearest, who would have thought your circus girl would have ended up infatuated with an air
nomad? I am so stupid in love; I’m embarrassed to even write of it. When she kisses me, I
feel quite weak, but also- so profoundly happy, like splitting open the sun. I can only wish you
experience this happiness too! I wish so much for you to meet her!

Forgive your silly friend for the rhapsodies. When we meet I’ll hug you so tight you’ll be blue
in the face with my love. – Your silly girl, Ty Lee

A letter unsent:

Ty Lee,

I love you, you idiot.

The day before she leaves, Mai makes one last visit.

“So you’re here,” Azula drawls from her bed, without opening her eyes. “Finally
remembered your duties I suppose.”

She is lying with her head in Katara’s lap, the Waterbender pressing against her skull with
glowing blue palms. Every time Katara drums with her fingers, she lets out a low purr of
contentment. Maybe Mai should take her advice and try some of this massage healing for
herself.

“Zirin stopped by?” There’s a basket of ripe red-and-gold mangoes at the foot of the
Princess’s bed, which means her freckled combustion-bender girlfriend must have made a
house call sometime earlier.

“Yes. Wish she didn’t though, I look such a fright.”

“You look well.” She does, actually. Despite the purplish scars underneath her eyes (from the
bad days) and the shock of blue-black hair lopped rudely short, Azula looks at peace, with
her fruit and her friend and her newfound year of rest. “Like you’ve slept well.”

“And you look terrible. Where are you headed? The Boiling Rock? Cheer up, you gloomy
girl.”

“I came to see you.”

After Katara wisely makes herself scarce, Mai says, “I’m happy you’re getting along.”

“She’s a good masseur,” Azula rolls her eyes. “I like her prattling, so what.”

“I’m glad of it.”

“Stop patronising me, you goose. I’m happy, I’m glad, I’m fine. You don’t look any of those
things.”

Mai reaches for her friend’s hands. “I’m going to see Ty Lee.”

“Ah. Hence the scowl. You’re worried I’m going to hate you for it.”

“Will you?”

“I mean, people are allowed to move on. In case you haven’t noticed, none of us are the way
we used to be. I don’t expect her to love me and she doesn’t expect me to come wait on her.”

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“Never said she did. But the absence of negative doesn’t mean love fills its place.”

“Azula,” Mai sighs, “I won’t gossip about you with her. We won’t secretly converse about
our tragic pasts.”

“You should try it. Look at me and Katara. Nothing binds us more than our shared contempt
of Zuko.”

“I wish we could be friends again.”

“You cannot forgive me if you cannot forgive yourself.”

She suspects she has always known this, but hearing it still helps. In her head, she sees the
three of them, Mai and Azula and Ty Lee, only older, with wrinkles around their eyes and
toothless smiles and snow-white hair, laughing and reminiscing, remember when. How little
it must matter then, this thing that bleeds out spaces between them.

“And anyway,” Azula muses as Mai is half-way out the door, “you two were always closer.”

To be honest, it doesn’t sting like she thought it would.

I love Zuko, she’d said, the words spilling over without a tremble. More than I fear you.

What she’d meant was- I am a person. I exist beyond my fear.

Taking Zuko’s name had somehow complicated it, because it had somehow tied her courage
to him, had made her strength an offshoot of his absent love, and in the coming days, Mai
would come to resent that false feeling; of gleaning love from a place of apathy.

But then, later, Ty Lee had done something unthinkable. She’d weighed her options, had
looked death in the eye.

When the time arrived, she had chosen Mai.

And just like that, Mai had been set free.

My dear friend,

Ju sounds wonderful. I am happy for you, and excited to meet you both. Hope she knows how
lucky she is to find the company of the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.

Cheerily, Mai.

Maybe she’s gotten it all wrong. Maybe love doesn’t hold you down like an animal on the
prowl, maybe it lets you loose.

Maybe it doesn’t always announce its arrival with triumphant fanfare, letting itself wash over
you gently until you realise you’ve birthed it, watched it grow, fed it like a child all your life.

Mai has loved Ty Lee all her life. And Ty Lee has given back. Not in the way she wants to,
not in the way she feels, perhaps.

But.

She had stood on a pier and changed the course of a war for Mai. She had crossed oceans so
she could hold her girl and wipe her tears. She had kissed her bruised knuckles when the two
of them of were thrown into a cell, and whispered, with fierce devotion, I’ll never regret this.

Never.

What is that if not love?

She sees Ty Lee before Ty Lee sees her. As lovely as a mermaid, as a dawn, as a songbird,
clad in green, hair done up in gold pins set with small coloured stones.
Unchanged smile, unchanged eyes, unchanged flutter of Mai’s heart.

She’s here she’s here she’s really here.

They fly into each other’s arms even before they’ve even said a word.

“Spirits I missed you so,” whispers Ty Lee, clinging to her like a prayer.

I missed me too, Mai thinks, and then she thinks, holding her girl, how wonderful it is to have
a friend.

After the war, Mai’s redemption arrives in a shade of bright pink.

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!