notes: i haaaaate lok and the comics, so please god, no one expect consistency
Their daughter is born in the rabbit month, on a hot, balmy day, as quiet and thin as her mother. The room reeks of blood and sweat that incense can't quite cover up.
"Are you disappointed?" Mai asks flatly once he comes in, paler than he's ever seen her, hair plastered to her shiny forehead.
"What? No, why would I be?" he sputters, reaching over to stroke a tiny cheek. She looks so fragile, wrapped in a turtleduck-patterned blanket; both of them do. "She's healthy— she's perfect."
"She's a girl." Mai plays with the sheets, twisting them around her finger, and refuses to meet his eyes. "Your firstborn. Most men wouldn't exactly be thrilled about her taking the throne."
He thinks about his sister Azula, trampling everything in the way of path to greatness, how far she fell before she could reach it. He thinks about his mother, long dead and gone, how being a perfectly obedient wife did not save her. He thinks about Mai herself, stifled and shut up and sold to his house for a profit, how her parents almost forgot her name after her brother came along.
Spring. New awakening, new beginnings.
"Fire Lord Izumi," he says, liking the feel of the words in his mouth. "She'll make history."
He kisses Mai's forehead as she starts to cry.