a/n: This isn't fluffy, per se, but it's close enough. It was written for meandcartoon22.
word count: 1093
characters: Mai/Zuko, Ty Lee, Azula
title: gravid.
disclaimer: I wish I was Bryke, but I ain't.
gravid.
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gravid: (adj) carrying unborn offspring inside the body, pregnant, in the process of reproduction.
(see also, Mai's worst nightmare.)
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When the doctors claim there is only one explanation for the sickness and the mood swings and the cravings and the overall un-pleasantries of her critical condition, Mai says, "You've got to be kidding me."
And Zuko's eyes light up like a bonfire.
.
"Think about it, Mai. It's a happy occasion! You'll have an heir, so people will stop bothering you about it, and—and Zuko's positively glowing with excitement! And you have plenty of excuses not to do stuff! Just say your hormones are making you crazy and your feet hurt, and you can do whatever you want!"
Ty Lee grins.
Mai grimaces.
.
For the first few weeks, Mai hates everything she can see and most things she can't. By this point, everyone knows. She is showing. Life is full of pregnant pauses.
Mai tells them not to touch her stomach. They do anyway.
"It's for good luck," they inform her. Mai resists the urge to slash them with a Shuriken knife. She hates it when people—well, people except for Zuko, obviously—touch her, even with permission. She can imagine all the grime and grovel coating her ghostly-white skin. It makes her shudder. And it doesn't help that she finds all human beings to be entrancingly annoying in their own damned way.
Zuko takes away her knives though, claiming that violence will be bad for the developing child—and why does she even need them, again?
Mai grunts something about assassins coming in to kill them both in their sleep.
Zuko happily ignores her, stowing the sharp metals of various shapes, sizes, and degrees of deadliness in a trunk and hiding the key where she won't ever find it. She guesses Azula's old room.
Not even the servants will go in there anymore.
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She prays that stretch marks won't start to appear.
They do.
People in Ba Sing Se can hear her complaints loud and clear, and that is not an exaggeration.
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"So the Zuko's betraying wench of a wife is pregnant, eh?" Azula says with an unctuous smile. "When I assume the throne, I'll need an heir myself—and it certainly won't be Zuzu's persnickety progeny. No, I will have a powerful offspring to take after myself! But who would make a proper donor to this endeavor…?"
She has manipulation in her eyes. She looks wild. Her hair is everywhere. She reeks of dirt and less-than-satisfactory cooking.
"Hello," Azula winks suggestively to a nearby guard.
He scoots away nervously, despite being separated by fire-proof trappings.
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Mai groans as she became rounder, leaning over the side of a couch in their grand bedroom. Zuko rubs her feet with his noble hands.
It's funny. Mai doubts any other Fire Lord had ever done the same for his wife. She is skeptical that any of them even liked their wives. The Ladies are merely fertile grounds to stick a couple of globs of chromosomes and watch puff out like a balloon or an inflated animal stomach.
Zuko loves her. Or something.
They say that if someone is ugly on the inside, then it shows easily on the outside. People say that is Zuko, that the scar projects his inner evils. But it isn't true, Mai thinks. Zuko reflects the inner evils passed down from father to son. A son rejected those evils—they disband into the morning sun like smoke.
His scar is very nearly beautiful.
He rests a hand on her belly.
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As she grows, she feels as though everything around her engorged exponentially. She sucks the life out of poor people. Betrothed, Married, and Impregnated—there is no smile on her face, no glow in her complexion. She feels fat and disgusting and unworthy.
She complains to Zuko.
He exclaims that she is beautiful, a genuine smile dancing on his face like rays around an eclipse. He is like looking into the sun. Painful. Glorious. Bright.
She thanks him; the corners of her lips pull tight. He wonders if it is a smile. He vows to try harder next time, to be more positive of her moods, and when all else fails, to draw a doll-like grin across her face himself.
.
A Fire Nation fetus is still a child enchained in a sack of water, engulfed in flames or floating in silence.
When Zuko muses on this, he thinks of Katara and her children. He prays that his child will be accepting of other cultures, a lesson Zuko didn't learn until he had suffered too many hardships and seen too many departed souls. He pledges to fill the newborn's mind with the pros and none of the cons.
Mai argues that the kid will be so sheltered, (s)he won't be able to see straight.
Zuko says, "Oh yeah," and instead, pledges to be wonderfully normal as a parent.
He can hear Mai laugh, whether the sound is real of not.
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Zuko has never heard his wife scream genuinely before in his life. This is, of course, before she goes into a particularly long and fitful labor. After that experience, he is absolutely, unquestionably assured he'll never be able to get the unpleasant sound out of his head.
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They say a woman becomes a mother when she first shows to the world. And Mai is a reluctant mother, but a mother all the same. What she doesn't show on her face is clear in her heart. She loves her child, despite the crying and the sleepless nights and the overall unpleasant experience of bringing him into the world.
In addition, they say a man doesn't become a father until his child takes its first breath. And that is exactly true for Zuko. When he sees his son's unreal face emerge and struggle to fill infinitesimal lungs with the will to live, Zuko almost passes out from joy and the force of reality smacking him in the face. This child made of parts of him and parts of Mai, he is irrevocably theirs.
There is no describing this. Words failed, and so the two are silent, sharing mysterious smiles from across the room. They breathe each other in, and they taste air for the first time in their lives. Mai cradles the child to her breast, still sweating and sore from the act of childbirth, Zuko is on the verge of happy panic attack.
They just know.
"Ikoh."
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end
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