Once she was across the room, Mai turned around for one last look to check if she needed to worry about anyone pursuing her and her brother. No, almost everyone was taken care of – they were safe. Her father was the only one still ambulatory; he had fallen to his knees – whether in shock or as a gesture of surrender, Mai couldn't tell – and looked up at his daughter with an expression, not of rage or sadness or shame, but of complete bewilderment, with a chaser of anger not at her but at himself for misjudging her. She had seen that expression before.

That last desperate plea for her to wait had left her father speechless, but, all the same, Mai heard exactly what he was thinking. His eyes clearly said, I never expected this from you.

How confident he must have been that she would join him! Why else would he have done something so reckless as inviting an outsider right into his secret headquarters and telling her everything about them and their plans? There had been absolutely, utterly no doubt at all in his mind that Mai hated Zuko as much as he did and would be perfectly willing to help them take him down; it had been a definite, indisputable, inarguable fact until one minute ago. He had never bothered to consider even the slightest possibility that she would refuse him; he was incapable of comprehending such a thing. He had just witnessed something that his concept of reality told him was physically impossible. She seemed to have a knack for putting people through such experiences.

Mai waited to see what her father would do next. He knelt there, evidently unable to move or speak again. His eyes begged her, The thing I don't understand is, why? Why would you do it?

Mai let her own eyes answer: I guess you just don't know me as well as you think you do. You miscalculated.

Let him figure out the rest on his own.