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The Residency	By : gaijinsakka Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > General Views: 9869 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. I make no money from the writing/publication of this.

Chapter List
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Chapter 2: The Regent
Mai tried not to show her boredom with the Earth Kingdom delegation’s latest demands on the colonies. “I’ll take it under advisement, but no decision will be made until Firelord Zuko returns. Is that all?”
The ambassadors mouthed the usual formulas and bowed themselves out. The door had barely closed when an innocent pillar was cruelly slain by three knives, each exactly two inches below the previous. “Aw, what did that poor pillar ever do to you?” asked her bodyguard, clad in the green and gold of a Kyoshi warrior.
“Shouldn’t you be doing cartwheels somewhere?” the regent asked, slumping into the uncomfortable throne.
“Cheer up, Mai, it can’t be all bad getting to be a queen,” Ty Lee said, bouncing on her toes.
“Yeah. Listening to a bunch of old fat blowhards complaining for eight hours a day. Fun.” Mai blew her bangs away from her face. “Bad enough that the Council of State wouldn’t let Zuko and I get married for a year to trick the other Houses and nations into thinking they have a chance at a marriage alliance, he chooses now to go off on some altruistic quest and leaves me with all the work.”
“Your boyfriend always has been rather impulsive.” Ty Lee then gave her infamous cat smile, made even more surreal by the white face paint. “You told me that you liked his impulsive side. Like that time in the royal gardens with the servants just on the other side of the hedge. How many times did you see clouds and rain? Two, three?”
Mai blushed but smiled back at the recollection. “Three. Now never speak of it again.”
“Hey, I’m the soul of discretion! I never told the Avatar how you borrowed Appa so the two of you could see the other side of the clouds.”
Mai snorted, then put back on her face which said that she would denied ever having done just that. “None of that makes up for his abandoning his country, and me.”
“He’s just trying to do the right thing,” Ty Lee said gently.
Mai sighed. “I know. He’s just really bad at that.” The acrobat giggled. “And I miss him…”
As expected, and not as unwelcome as at other times, Mai found herself wrapped in a hug. “He’ll be back soon, you’ll see.”
The regent straightened herself. “Who’s next?”
***
Zuko stirred, and instinctively bent to kiss the sleeping girl. With his lips barely an inch away from hers, both of their eyes suddenly shot wide open and they stared at each other for 10 seconds. In a flash they were on opposite sides of the tent, getting dressed and babbling loudly at one another.
“Feeling any better this morning?”
“A bit. Thanks. I don’t know if I said that last night.”
“You’re welcome, Song.”
“So how long to Lyushun?” the girl asked, rolling up the bedclothes.
“Two, three days without delays,” Zuko said. With a flick of the wrist, he restarted the campfire and began cooking breakfast.
One week later…
“Well, we finally reached the river,” Zuko groused as they stood on the western bank. The falls of the Su Oku roared in the distance.
“Yeah. I can’t believe we had to fight off that swarm of opossum-hornets.”
Zuko shuddered. “Those are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. At least your staff fighting has gotten better.”
“Hmph. Don’t blame me, just because you’re a lousy teacher.”
“Let’s just get across the river, please?”
“Fine. Uh, how? It’s way too fast to ford here.”
The Firelord sat down on the bank. “We could head upstream, but there’s no bridge for 20 miles. Or we could head downstream, the bridge should be only 3 miles.”
“Seems pretty obvious, so what are you sitting there thinking for?”
“The bridge is at the colonial resort.”
Song’s eyes lit up. “Resort? Let’s go!”
“Hold on. I’ll probably be recognized there. It could cause a major scandal, even if you can keep quiet about your opinions of the Fire Nation. Still, I might be able to get a messenger hawk home…Hey, wait!” he called as Song swung her ostrich horse downstream. “Please, try and be discrete.”
Much to his surprise, she did not walk up to the first person they saw to demand rooms for the Firelord and his concubine. However, she did avail herself of his letters-of-credit to hit up the fancy boutiques. Including a lingerie shop, where she made a few pointed remarks about entertaining royalty. Hopefully the shop girls thought she was being facetious. Or crazy. Well, she is, but…In an effort at damage control, he quickly scribbled a message to Mai. With a sinking feeling in his chest, he noticed a flurry of birds that day, most of them heading west.
***
The regent crumpled the message in her fist. “I’m going to kill him. I’ll be a self-made widow before we even exchange vows.”
Ty Lee walked over to her friend on her hands, and plucked the message from Mai’s grasp with her toes. “What does it say?”
Dear Mai,
Please don’t put any faith in rumors. I am traveling with someone who wants to come to Kaikyo, but that is all. I’ll explain more when I get back. We are not far from Lyushun and will take the first ship that arrives.
Love,
Zuko
“Well, it was…concise, at least. And he did put ‘love’.”
“What he didn’t say speaks louder. It confirms that he’s traveling with someone; no name given plus the word from the resort makes that person out to be a girl. And he’s bringing her here.”
“You can’t think Zuko’s cheating on you, Mai!”
“No, I don’t think he is. I think he’s just being Zuko. Again. And that makes all the stories swirling around that much more believable. Have you heard the latest one?”
The Kyoshi warrior nodded, not an easy accomplishment with her feet on top of her head. “That she’s the impoverished daughter of an Earth Kingdom noble who grew up in a mountain village of peasant resistance fighters that he met on his travels, and on a stormy night they made love in a burning temple before he rode off to slay a giant rhino-leopard, leaving her pregnant with twins who can bend both Fire and Earth!”
“Yes, Ty Lee! Thank you for that!” Mai’s deadpan façade was dangerously close to slipping.
“Sorry. It’s just that it’s such a romantic story!...although I guess I wouldn’t think so if it involved my boyfriend, either.”
“He had better have a damn good explanation when he gets home.” Had Zuko been able to see the impatient foot-tapping, he might have gone out to slay that rhino-leopard after all, considering it the much safer option.
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The Residency