Semblance of Normalcy
This party sucks.
Not that Zuko really has much basis for comparison. The only parties he's ever been to were state galas and official ceremonies.
Before his banishment, such affairs meant enough fire candy to make their tongues burn and eyes water and placate them into sitting through dull parades, or dire threats to stay out of the way while Mother and Father and the ministers and generals and elite courtiers of the city schmoozed and drank and danced in the great ball room. More recently, at his returning 'party', it meant sitting at his father's side at the banquet table, tolerating the awkward flattery and obsequious smiles of officials and lords who had been denouncing him for the last three years, picking at his food with far too little appetite and far too much awareness of his stiff posture and stilted words to enjoy himself.
This is entirely different. It's all people his age, just…standing around. Talking and eating. Joking. Flirting.
It all seems so very trivial. Strange as it sounds even in the privacy of his thoughts, and despite the astronomical difference between the class and culture-the sultry, spicy luxury of a wealthy Fire Nation beach house versus the bland, rice-and-tea, dirt-and-apron squalor of Ba Sing Se-it reminds Zuko more of his date with that Earth Kingdom girl than of any party he's ever been to. Sitting here, feeling like he ought to be doing something and having no idea what—it's that same feeling of blank uncertainty he got when Jin asked what he did for fun.
Having habitual things to do for fun of course implies regular leisure time, which in the last three years, whether in command of his own warship or sweeping tea shop floors, Zuko has never had. But these—these kids (he knows they're the same age as he is, some even probably older, but he can't help but feel so very adult among them)—they have nothing but leisure time.
Zuko can't even begin to imagine what he has in common with them.
None of them have ever been imprisoned, or taken a prisoner themselves—none of them have ever hired an assassin or been the victim of an assassination attempt. They've never been challenged to an Agni Kai, or planned an ambush or a carried out a rescue mission or led soldiers. They don't know what it means to have to work or steal or beg for something to eat to live, or the tight-coiled stomach-clenching rush and desperation of movement before thought in battle, feeling rather than having the time to even know with clarity that being too slow, or taking one wrong step, or leaving one strike unparried could mean permanent maiming, even death. The biggest decisions they ever have to make is what to wear to a social outing, the biggest consequences they face are the wrath of protective parents or the mocking of their friends.
No. He has nothing whatsoever in common with them.
And he doesn't want to be like them. He doesn't want to be here at all. Zuko wants to be doing something—something consequential. The Avatar is still out there, both a solar eclipse and Sozin's Comet are fast approaching. Such a period of great weakness for firebenders, and then one of such strength—it would take an idiot not to realize that the Avatar will try to take advantage of the first, or that his father will take advantage of the second, and Zuko is no idiot. The war is about to change, for better or worse.
Though what is better and what is worse, Zuko isn't sure anymore.
Well—of course he is loyal to the Fire Nation, so of course, obviously victory is the better result. Victory is always the better result. But with Uncle Iroh in prison, the fear of hiding the Avatar's continued survival from his father and memories plaguing him of how the people of the Earth Kingdom reacted to he and his uncle, even when they were helping, just because they were firebenders…the poverty the war had created, and the floods of refugees…not to mention both his father and Azula's ruthless attitude toward anyone who stands in their way and their complete lack of concern for the consequences on innocent bystanders….
Zuko is just not as convinced as he wishes he were, and he's confused, and he needs time to think, time to sort himself out. He wants to know what's going on and what's being planned, and he wants to be involved, or at minimum informed. Almost three years with a clear mission and constant striving after it have ingrained in him the habit of spending every waking moment training and planning and moving onward, wherever onward happened to be at the time, and simply being told to toddle off and have 'fun' doesn't dispel it. He's jittery with the sensation of feeling like there's something crucially important he's forgetting to do, though he has no idea what he would do if he had the freedom, except that it certainly wouldn't be lounging around in a beach house, twiddling his thumbs and being told by some puffed-up punk to 'try to act normal'.
As if this stupid, frivolous waste of time is the standard of normal.
"This is boring," Mai sighs.
"Yeah," he grunts, shifting his arm as she leans into him, sulking.
Mai—yet another uncertainty for him to agonize over. In a way it's comforting to have her here—complaining and commiseration was the first way they managed to relate to each other when their 'courtship' began. Despite how alone and lost he's feeling right now, at least he's not the only person here who's miserable.
And yet…may it be because of him, in part, that she's miserable right now? Maybe this is the sort of thing she wants—for a guy to go out of his way to flirt and impress her. Maybe she's miserable because she'd rather be getting chatted up by Thatch-head over there.
From childhood Zuko knew his marriage would be arranged, his betrothal to a suitable aristocrat's daughter announced at his fifteenth birthday. The continuance of the royal line is too important to leave to the vagaries of adolescent affection. Mai's father was (and is) one of the wealthiest men in the Fire Nation, and so when he first began making advance queries to the Firelord, those queries were favorably met. Their supervised 'dates' were just another expectation and responsibility of their high class.
He's painfully aware that her father would never have request they be introduced if it wouldn't benefit the man. Back then, obviously, having his daughter as the most likely betrothal candidate to the crown prince was probably one of the biggest bragging points to be gotten by the nobles of the Fire Nation. Now, though…. Everyone is doing an about-face in their public attitude toward Zuko so fast that their heads are clearly still spinning. From deepest shame to highest honor in the space of a day—it makes for a tentative political situation, to say the least. How can anyone know if some other small offense won't have Ozai sending him off again?
Unsure of whether he feels bad for thinking it or bitterly believes it to be plausible, Zuko wonders what errand his father might send him on next, if he somehow does manage to offend him again. (If, hah. All it would take would be for Ozai to discover the Avatar's continued existence. He suppresses a shudder.) Bringing back magic diamond berries from the moon, no doubt, or fire from the center of the earth. Certainly nothing so attainable as finding the Avatar.
Never mind his father, what about Azula? She's acting civil, but if he knows anything about his sister it's that she loves power and hates anything that gets in the way of her having it. She's tried to kill him before, and he's not sure what game she's playing with him now but if Azula is serious about lounging back and handing back the title of crown heir without so much as a scowl….
Yeah, right. Again, Zuko is no idiot.
In any case, even if he does manage to survive whatever sly conspiracy Azula will eventually cook up to depose him, maybe Mai's parents won't want her associated with someone with such a mottled past, crown or not, and maybe any friendship or affection that has developed between them isn't enough for Mai to try to convince them otherwise.
She certainly doesn't seem to care one way or the other.
And that hurts more than Zuko would like to admit, because duty and responsibility aside, Mai is probably the closest thing to a companion that he has, and his feelings for her go rather above and beyond the dictates of princely duty. He was under the impression she felt the same way, but she never really comes out and says things like that, so…maybe this is just an obligation to her. Their betrothal never was officially announced (since he was chasing phantoms, at the time) and despite the politics involved, Zuko doubts Mai's parents would actually force her to marry him if she indicated preference for some other rich young man with a suitable bloodline, an advantageous position at court, and a less checkered past. He wouldn't want them to.
What it all comes down to is that he and she have—everything has—slotted back together like nothing ever changed, but everything has changed, or should be changing—surely things can't stay like this, suspended in this awful uncertainty that Zuko has been struggling through lately over his father and his nation and his uncle and the Avatar and the war—and sooner or later the cracks are going to show and there's going to be a fallout, and it's all like fire ants under his skin and he doesn't know if he wants to burn this whole stupid party to the ground or just stomp out, back to his bed in the old-lady-stench hut they've been consigned to and hide under the covers until his brain no longer feels like it's overstuffed with tangled knotthorn vines.
"You should go talk to him! Maybe he'll ask you to dance!" a high, excited whisper pierces through his thoughts from several feet away. A cluster of girls with impractical hairstyles and too much makeup (in Zuko's opinion) are huddled by a pillar, one of them blushing scarlet and following a young man on the other side of the room with her eyes.
"No, I can't, he doesn't know I exist," she agonizes dramatically.
"Well, he will if you go talk to him!"
"But what if he doesn't think I'm pretty?" Her fingers knot uncertainly as her friends egg her on. With a drawn-out, disgusted sigh, Mai sinks lower into the crook of his arm.
"Is that what you want? To go dance?" Zuko says in a low voice, not even sure if it's an accusation or an invitation or a plea. Not that he particularly wants to dance, or likes to, but if that's what she wants….
Which, by the look she's giving him, is probably not.
Screw it. Zuko doesn't even know what he wants or thinks about anything, how the hell can Mai expect him to know what she wants from him?
"Forget it."
"I will," she mutters, and sighs again. "This party sucks."