And the way she was - the aspects of herself that were concealed utterly - was perhaps the biggest secret she had.
She looked, sounded, and acted like any old depressed girl of noble stock (albeit one formerly under the influence of the most manipulative person apart fro Ozai himself, Princess Azula). But she did not have the body of a girl. And the possibility that Zuko, or anyone for that matter, would find out, was terrifying.
Mai was waiting in the courtyard for Zuko to meet up with her. The jerk had said he'd meet her at noon at the Jasmine Dragon, after he was done with an official meeting concerning the Yu Dao conflict's resolution. Stuffy business did not interest her at all, or Zuko, for that matter. So she practiced shuriken throwing on the peach tree just outside the low stone walls.
After retrieving the last one from a low-hanging bough, she took aim again from the other side of the courtyard. However, her concentration was broken by a voice wafting through the doorway from inside the teahouse.
"Miss Mai, your boyfriend just walked in the door. I suggest you go and greet him."
It was Zuko's uncle Iroh, former General in the Fire Nation Army, Dragon of the West, and current proprietor of the Jasmine Dragon. He had, however, disowned the General title to settle down for a quiet life in Ba Sing Se's upper ring, brewing tea and socialising with all the diplomats, intellectuals, and nobles who came through.
As Mai stuck her black-haired head into the main room, the ornate green doors at the other end of the room opened, and Fire Lord Zuko walked in. He was Fire Lord when he entered the room, but immediately shed the expression of dignity when he saw Mai, and became just her dorky boyfriend again.
There was very little she could do to keep from smiling as Zuko rushed over to her and pulled her into a hug. "How was the meeting?" she asked.
"Shitty," Zuko admitted. "Absolutely shitty. There was some Yu Dao guy trying to get more compensation from the Fire Nation for the conflict, saying, 'Oh, Fire Nation colonials were hurt more by the conflict than the Earth Kingdom ones', and I was calling bullshit on that. And then it escalated, and Aang had to separate my guy and the Yu Dao guy apart, cos they were about to break each other's necks."
Mai knew how these meetings would go. Now wonder Zuko slept 12 hours each night: he was nearly braindead by the end of the day. That was why they never had sex.
Fire Nation moral codes proscribed a specific time for sexual intercourse between couples, that was considered to be the best and most auspicious time to procreate. This was between sundown and an hour after sundown, which Zuko was already asleep by, because of these horrendous meetings. And before the Yu Dao conflict, they weren't willing to take it that far.
But now, something surprising happened.
Zuko said, "I want to fuck you."
Mai was immediately both skeptical and amazed. "Now? That's not exactly in fashion for you."
"Thing is, I'm off for the rest of the day. No more throat-slitting antics for me. I really want to have a good time. With you, that is."
"And we haven't even had sex yet! So now's the best time."
"What's gotten into you? One second you're a virgin, and now you're horny as an ostrich-horse stallion."
"I don't know. Maybe today's the day that my mind has changed about you. Maybe you're just too beautiful to stay away from."
Mai was, admittedly, flattered. She loved when Zuko did that, but now it had a little bit of a lustful undertone, and she was cautious. "And you're quite handsome yourself, when you're not going on about sex in front of your uncle."
Zuko turned his head, red-faced, but Iroh had conveniently gone into the back room. He was always so polite, it astounded the young Fire Lord.
"Whoa, you scared me for a moment there," Zuko whispered. "But seriously, I think we should take it further with our relationship, that is, I want to give you what you want."
Mai was tempted by his offer, but then she remembered that he wouldn't want to, once he knew her intimately.
"Zuko, I think that's a great idea, but... you really shouldn't. I don't think you want to know about... what I know about... myself."
Shit. She had flubbed that. But then again, she really had flubbed it getting into this relationship thing. She couldn't grow too attached to Zuko, for if he knew he'd been dating a transvestite, a pervert, a freak, then he would leave her or become afraid of her. And neither of those were what she wanted.
Zuko frowned, then led her swiftly into the basement of the Jasmine Dragon.
"If you're gonna rape me -"
"Hell no! You'd kill me on sight. But I want to know why we 'can't' have sex, why we 'can't' make love to each other. Because we love each other, right? I do love you! And I know you love me. But why can't we have sex, and actually, like, express that love?"
Mai was highly surprised that Zuko made such a long speech up on the fly. This was out of the norm for him.
She sat down on a crate and looked up at him. "Do you honestly, really want to know?" she asked, hesitantly.
"Of course!" he exclaimed.
"Then sit down, cos you might die of shock."
Zuko tentatively sat down onto a crate opposite her.
"Okay..." Mai took a deep, shaky breath.
"I'm really a boy. Under all this, I've got a boy's body. That's what I thought you might not like."
Zuko didn't process it. "You're kidding, right? You've got to be joking."
Mai's face did not change. "No, really. There's no breasts under this," she gestured to her chest, "and the stuff down there," she gestured toward her lap, "is not what you'd expect from a person who looks like I do." She chuckled cynically.
Zuko still didn't process it. "You mean you're not a girl?"
Hm. She had to think about what to tell him. "No, I've got the body of a guy, but the mind of a girl. I think like a girl. I act like a girl. I talk like a girl."
Zuko was still surprisingly calm, but the reality began to dawn on him. "So you ARE really a guy!"
"Well, no! It's like I'm a girl, except with a guy's body."
It looked like Mai's boyfriend's brain was about to explode. "Wait, so you really are a girl. Except not."
What a stupid person Zuko was. "Yes, I really am a girl, except not. Wait, I'm getting confused here too."
What the fuck was Mai doing? She was flubbing this too. The most important moment of her relationship with Zuko.
Zuko squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. "I'm gonna go get some rest. I don't want to fuck now."
Well, damn it. Mai was in a bind. Zuko was going to reject her! He was going to say to her, I'm sorry, I can't date a guy/girl/whatever you are. And that was going to kill Mai.
She had gone down to her apartment in the middle ring, and locked the door, so that bastard couldn't get in.
She was sulking in her room, even more depressed than usual, and crying this time, when suddenly she heard a knock on her door.
Ha! That would be Zuko, telling her to take her tranny body elsewhere. Find a guy or girl that didn't mind being perverted and lied to.
It was indeed Zuko.
"You know what? Fuck you!" Mai screamed. She sloppily threw knives from her sleeves toward Zuko, and they hit the wall behind him.
"What?! No!" Zuko threw his hands up, with a pained expression on his face.
"What do you want from me?" Mai flung her knife sheaths and her shuriken holsters at him, and again they missed. She flopped down, fuming.
He walked halfway to her bed, then kneeled. "Look, I love you more than life itself. I can't bear to see you like this."
"Is that what they just told you to say, huh? Just save face and get the hell out of here!"
Mai stood up, ripped off her dress and underclothes with a knife she retrieved from the floor, and presented her naked boy-body to the jerk.
"Is this what you expected from me? Eh? I'm sorry to disappoint you!"
And she snapped.
Mai fell onto the floor, sobbing uncontrollably, muttering incomprehensibly.
Zuko buried his face in his hands. He peeked out from behind them and whispered, "Was this my fault?"
He repeated his question, and she slapped him away. He went to the bathroom and fetched a towel to cover Mai's 'deficient' body up, hoping that would make her feel better. But he felt really confused. Was this the girlfriend he had been dating all these years? Or just a trickster, infiltrating his life? Or just a confused...person, trying to make himself/herself into something he/she was not? Neither of these fit the profile of what he had seen.
If Mai was really a boy, or had a boy's body, and he hadn't been hallucinating, why had she (she?) put herself into the shoes of a girl all these years? It was mystifying.
Zuko lay the towel over her and sat down on the floor beside her. He asked her, "Why did you - "
"- lie to you? No, that isn't it. I presented myself to you as I am, a girl. This - this skin - these parts of me that are a boy, they're not me. You are part of me. This body is lying to you."
Zuko was silent for a while, then asked her again. "What I was going to say was why do you act like a girl and talk like one and think like one and dress like one, if you... I just don't get it."
Mai looked up at him, her hair disheveled and her eyes glistening. "Because I am. I just answered your question. And of course you wouldn't get it. Hah... But I'll try to explain."
"I've always felt like a girl. Being a boy was just WRONG, somehow. Whenever I tried to be a boy, it never fit me. But being a girl, dressing, acting, talking like a girl, fit. I liked it, and it fit me better than being a boy did. But my body gives me away... that's why I never allow you into the bathroom while I bathe."
"That's why I was so antisocial growing up. I didn't want to give away that my body was fucked up - I was so uncomfortable with myself. But then I got into knife throwing as a way to be more confident, and anybody who found out, I could blackmail them using my skill with knives. You actually nearly found out once."
Zuko was astonished. "How? I can't remember any times..."
"When I fell into the fountain, and I had to change clothes afterward. You nearly barged in on me while I was doing so."
"Ohhh. I remember falling in, but nothing really after that except how cute you were."
Mai smirked. "Well, that was the point. You never remembered because I never told you or showed you. But now you know."
Zuko did not even flinch. He laughed out loud. "Now I don't know what to do with you. Should I treat you like I did before, or differently?"
Mai sighed. "Treat me like you always did, you big dork. Now I have to get clothes on, to look presentable."
Zuko left the room.
The Fire Lord felt extremely awkward. His girlfriend was a dude who wanted to be a chick... he could kind of see how it was for her, but empathy was still impossible.
He still felt horny, but now it was the really-really-awkward 12 year old kind of horny. He still wanted to fuck his awesome girlfriend. But now he felt sad for her, kind of like the way he felt after he got his scar: what an utterly SHITTY situation to be in.
But apparently she had dealt with it over the years, and was still in love with him.
Good enough.
"Do you still want to fuck?"
"What?"
"...just what I said."
"...well sure!"
Mai walked calmly over to Zuko, picked him up bodily, and plopped him down on her bed.
She took off his pants with one swipe of a hidden dagger and threw them to the floor. Zuko's erection throbbed horribly, but he loved the look on Mai's face. Especially as she unfastened her own pants and revealed a mirror of Zuko's nether regions. Wow, Mai was big.
"You're going to love this, dearest Fire Lord."
She quickly turned him over and bound his hands with a strip of his own pants; then Zuko heard a liquid-sort of noise and found that Mai was lubricating.
Zuko sighed. "Girls..." he said to himself.
And with that, Mai entered.