A childish pout pulled on her lips and her arms crossed tightly over her chest-- he wasn't, he couldn't force her to go tonight. If beating her fists on the ground and screaming like her brother might do is what it would take to get out of going to dinner tonight, then Mai was more than willing to do so, no matter how unlike her it was. It wasn't just dinner, after all. It was dinner with her parents. And Zuko. All together in one place, like they were supposed to be one happy family. Sure, normal girls brought their boyfriends over to family dinners often, but Mai's relationship with her parents wasn't so normal. It wasn't as off as the one Zuko shared with his father, of course, but still, Mai would prefer to have forgotten the two ever existed and simply make a life in the palace. Not in the house right outside of it's walls.
How she managed to even get herself wrapped in this mess was a mystery to her, but she decided it was all Zuko's fault. A venomous glare was cast in his direction, the look she gave worthy for the dirty traitor. He was Fire Lord, after all. Couldn't he just say no? They wouldn't be able to go against him. Her mother would just have to accept it...
They were going to embarrass her or belittle her right in front of him, and she just knew it. Why put herself up for their harsh words? Of course, with Zuko there, nothing would be said explicitly, but their point would still be made. Or they would just try so hard to impress him that it was going to make her cringe. Hundreds of scenarios played in her mind, but none of them ended well. Half of them ended with blood spilled on the floor, or at least someone pinned to a wall. That didn't do so well for ones appetite.
Corridors flew past her, swirls of crimson blurred by blistering tears that spilled carelessly, mindlessly down her alabaster cheeks. Azula's claw marks from but moments ago, which were teamed with a swift grab at her arm, and a haughty insistence she stay by her side still stung her forearm, and yet, the only pain she could truly focus on were the racing thoughts of his haunting shriek hanging lifelessly in her ears. She had never been to an Agni Kai. She deemed them immature, a waste of time, grown men watching sport in order to battle for pointless social status. Nothing, however, could've been as heartbreaking, as sobering, as the flash of crimson flame, the tear of his flesh, the shriek of despair ripping from his chest.
No grown man could have understood the horror which had befallen her.
He had been escorted from the battle field, the stage of corrupted triumph, and without hesitation, she broke into a sprint and trailed after the precession of nurses assisting the wounded prince to his bed chamber. Her mother's calls hadn't slowed her, nor Azula's shrieks, Ty Lee's whimpers, no, no amount of force could have tore her from her path to self destruction.
Swarms of medical personnel flocked from his rooms, flurries of white tinged with crimson, empty eyes, vacant stares. Golden glares of disapproval, white smiles of pristine indifference. She was a child in body, a hardened, weathered adult in mind, though none of the palace's mindless drones could possibly wish to decipher the barrage of agonizing thoughts gripping her very being.
The young girl, a woman of but twelve, peered through the door frame leading into a dimly lit chamber that she had wished to visit time and time again. Of course, under substantially different circumstances. He sat motionless, left hand upon his cheek, ebony hair tumbled in a dishevelled array across his back, breaths short, eyes heavy. A short, sharp, almost painful gasp pierced her lungs, blowing her cover immediately... And somehow, for the first time in her life, she couldn't bring herself to care. A mosaic of blood, burnt flesh, guilt ridden eyes and broken faith painted his face, a face she had become irreversibly enamoured with in a childhood now forgotten. A hoarse, hiccuped cry left her throat, amber eyes darting away from the shame, the anger lacing his stare.
"Zuko..."
The utterance of his name seemed to jolt him from a daze, a thoughtless reverie of times abandoned, and his golden eyes--lain with swelling agony-- met hers through the numbing space left between them. A bandage, white, sprinkled with blood, hung lazily about his head, but he seemed to have pulled it down to get a closer look, a closer touch to the mark brandishing his failure. He wasn't sorrowful, and Agni, she wish he was... No, he was furious. Livid. Enraged. Perhaps not at her, perhaps not at anything or anyone but himself. Though the piercing gloom clouding his eyes were all the more haunting with the simple phrase which dripped like poison from his lips, "Go away."
The breath was torn forcibly from her lungs, a cold hand of vindication that tore at her very skin. Of course he was hurt, of course he was in pain, pain incomparable to any suffering she had undergone in her dozen years of life; but even then, the words pierced her alabaster flesh to the core, leaving her throat bitter, hoarse and dry. "How gracious." She murmured past numbed lips, lips that inexplicably trembled under the pressure of daunting fear, gripping terror that Azula's cheers of triumph may translate into reality. Banishment. Just like his mother--the warm, maternal beacon of security he had coveted so greatly-- was torn from his innocent fingers, so would he, leaving her hopelessly enamoured heart to tear in fruitless retribution. "He really did a number on your face, didn't he?"
"I said go away."
"And I ignored you."
A ragged breath tore from his lungs, a huff of frustration coupled with a sound completely alien to her ears. Pure, nerve crumbling, defeat. Dread began to loom over her and whispered chilling tales of abandoned hope, childhood torn from beneath an innocent man's quivering stance of manhood structured false. Agni, he was a child. Just a child. She found her amber eyes blurring with unfamiliar tears, crying was simply too improper for a woman of her status; but the gaping curves, the agonizing canyons painted in a nauseating mosaic across a face once cherished by all, were far too excruciating to endure with eyes dry.
Zuko stared wide eyed, well, through the side that would permit such an action. None spoke as outwardly to him as she. Only his father, the man who branded him with a permanent reminder of his failure, had held the authority to strike him down, let alone deny his requests. "What do you want, Mai? Just... Leave me alone!" He snarled, a furious burst of flame escaped his clenched fists, tense fingers that mirrored the quivering figure of his trembling jaw, "What do you want?! What do you want from me? To laugh? Remind me that I'm a failure?"
"Yes, I ran all the way down here to laugh at you. Really Zuko, how old do you think I am?" She retorted sharply, each word iced with malicious venom. By no fault of her own, those who consumed the greatest space in her heart received the majority of her scathing remarks. She figured it was to guard her ego, show the bare minimum of weakness permitted as to not drive them away. And somehow her meticulous plan failed. He was gone, golden eyes, sprinkled with blood and exhaustion, were distant. His words hollow. His breath heavy. Her prince, her only true glimmer of hope, was gone, was long dead and forced to live in a breathing shell of what was once a child. "I just wanted to... Tell you something dumb."
He scoffed in derision, the haughty snort of what was once a prince, "And you really think I want to hear anything you have say?" Their eyes met in an electrifying stand off, the shock of loathing, of love beyond either of their explanations. One's greatest love could only stem form their greatest hate. Hate taught by her mother, insisted upon by his sister. Sadly, secretly, she adored his awkward verbal mumblings, black hair that licked over her curious amber eyes in moments of security, pale lips that parted in disorganized chuckles with each poorly formed joke leaving his portly Uncle's mouth. She treasured each detail of him, and, for reason's beyond her control, and as valiantly as she fought, such feelings never truly stirred from her mind. In day, the glimpse of him sent her cheeks to burn scarlet. At night, each dream danced with his voice, his stare, eyes now broken and robbed of what could once be considered innocence. "Go away. I'm leaving soon. To find the Avatar. So you don't have to pretend you pity me anymore."
Leaving? Oh Agni, Azula, for once, had been right. Words boiled in her throat, clambered through her powdered mouth, tore through her clenched teeth, and carved past the pressed line of her lips, "Then I guess you wouldn't care that I love you, would you?" She seethed, frail shoulders rising and falling with exasperated breaths of desperation. Each nerve bowed it's head in shame for permitting the accusation to escape her, and a fraction of her jaded mind agreed, but her heart, raw and exposed, wanted to see him writhe in pain beneath the truth.
For several fleeting moments he stared, a wounded animal subject to a spotlight broadcasted from the glare stolen away in her golden eyes. No one loved him, genuinely loved him, and those who did, abandoned him in a world with incurable, immovable sadists and tyrants. She had to be lying. Twisting his fragile, practically shattered psyche for her own personal gain. A cruel chuckle left his lips with a slow shake of his head, and though his newly marked flesh burned with the twisted movement, he allowed his features to contort into the darkest scowl a boy of his age could muster, "Why would I? I don't love you. I have no reason to."
Oh. Her gut twisted and churned, a sensation that translated to her heart, a heart screaming and clawing at her burning ears. Oh. "Yeah? Well... you're lucky a... failure like you is loved by anyone at all. It's obvious I've been wasting my time." She countered immediately with the sharpness of her concealed blades, blades she wished to whirl across the room towards his proud, yet shattered, form. Steal his life, rid his veins of venomous blood, darken the numbing words swirling in form of a treacherous whirlpool within her mind. "You should go back to your father, you obviously didn't learn any respect."
"Go away! Go the fuck away!"
Both held baited breaths, waiting, praying neither would speak. Words could kill, words could maim, words could destroy. False words, words she had never intended to voice, lies driven by anger, by inconsolable heartache that he tore maliciously within his coarse hands. He had never been a failure, he had never been a lost cause in her eyes. Each stumble, each fault, each flaw was adored in silent awe, and within a few impulsive seconds, she shattered whatever foundation that could have supported them, could have supported their love. Love? Could he even comprehend such a concept at this point? Could his clouded, shattered heart muster the strength to love? "So, what, you're just going to wander around for the rest of your life searching for some hundred year old air bender? That sounds productive."
He shot to his feet, bursts of flames shaking between the spaces of his fingers; but the flames in his palms were but sparks from what swelled in his eyes, "Father knows what's best for me. I need to regain my honor, and then I will return to my nation with pride!"
"You know you're not going to find him, right?! You know your father is sending you off to get killed, don't you?" She shrieked in return, advancing but one shaky, quite near collapsable, step toward him. "Why else would he send you to find a man who hasn't been seen in a damn century?"
"Get out of here! Get out!"
"You're going to get killed!"
"Get out! I don't love you, Mai, so stop patronizing me! I hate this place! I hate everyone here! I hate my sister, I hate my family, and I hate you!" Time stood still, as did her heart, her very thoughts swerved to a halt. He... Hated her? No. No that's impossible. He couldn't hate her. Not after everything she had done for him. Not after all the love within her innocent figure. No.
With a broken shriek, the girl whirled a single blade across the room. It buried itself in the pillar but inches from his newly wounded features. If he hated her, she, without choice, must hate him. She must loathe his awkward verbal mumblings, black hair that licked over her curious amber eyes in moments of security, pale lips that parted in disorganized chuckles with each poorly formed joke leaving his portly Uncle's mouth. The prince shifted his eyes to followed the path carved by the dagger, fear, but more so, regret, consuming his features. Mai's chest ached, her head throbbed, her heart burned with loathing, with love left dangling without consideration, "I hate you too! I hope you never come back!"
A sprint pulled her legs forward, and with both hands, she pulled the chamber doors to a close. The trembling slam of mahogany ricocheted throughout the room, as it did within his mind, eyes wide with shock of the recent events. She was gone. Mai, the only girl, hell, the only person who cared for him... Was gone. The scarred prince scrambled to the door, and pressed a flattened palm against the wood. "I hate her." He murmured below his breath, thoughts echoing; Who are you trying to convince? Her or yourself? A feral growl left his throat and he sent a foot driving into an end table, toppling it and spilling it's contents absentmindedly to the floor. "I hate her. I hate everyone! I hate this place!" A glint of silver got the view of his uninjured eye, and through no choice of his known, he crossed the room to remove her discarded weapon from it's dormant state in the marble. He turned it over in his palms, taking note of the scratches, the divots-- marks that defined the blade, yet, no made it no weaker. Flesh ached with a reminiscent burn, scalding disappointment. He was the blade. She was the handler. And now, she was gone. With a groan, he pocketed the weapon, lowering himself to the floor with a choked sob, "I hate myself."
