He finds her staring at the vending machine after class. He slips beside her, linking their hands and breaking her trance for a moment; she's only clear for a moment before her eyes are dead again and her free hand lifts to touch the glass.
"I know how many calories are in each of these, you know?"
Zuko sighs, nodding with a frown. "I know, but you won't eat any of them."
"There's so many calories. Fat. Everything you shouldn't have."
He shakes his head, pulling her away. He always finds Mai like this. Transfixed on food, knowing more than most people know about, but excusing some reason she can't eat it. He knows her well enough by now that she barely tries with him. Just soft objections on how she's already eaten or an allergy she doesn't actually have.
"You can eat it, Mai. It's not going to hurt you." He's worried, scared really. At first, it seemed to be a phase. Her mother died; grief kept her from eating. He thought she'd get better, but he only watched as she got sicker and sicker. He sees it now, the way her bones show through her skin. She's always so tired, more withdrawn than ever before.
She doesn't reply, so he walks her to his car. He's hesitant to leave her alone. Chances are, she's eaten nothing today. He wanted to be careful and let her heal, but she's terrifying him now, so he pulls in to a small diner and hands her a menu.
"Eat."
She shifts in the booth, placing the menu down without a glance. "My dad's got a business dinner tonight and I—"
"Bullshit, Mai."
He feels guilty when she flinches, but it's enough to convince her to order a salad. It's something, he thinks, and something is better than nothing, although he prefer she have more.
It takes her an hour to finish it despite the small size. Zuko wraps his arm around her, coaxing her forward as she tries to cope with the anxiety of those around her. Only he's watching, but she feels everyone's eyes staring, making judgments. She feels like she's lost control. Only Zuko is keeping her grounded. It takes him all his self-control to keep calm with her. Understanding is difficult. Whatever her reasons are for refusing food, for hurting herself are beyond him.
He takes her home and goes inside. He thinks about telling her dad, about shaking him until he sees what his daughter has become. She's a ghost of herself, a shell of the girl she used to be. He knows he can't save her.
But he also knows she'd be angry, she would cry, she wouldn't speak to him again. Those he could stand, but still, he knows as well her father doesn't care. Mai is being quiet, and that's how her father wants it to be. Her mother was at least more well-intentioned.
Mai just wants to be good for them. She wants to please her mother even more now that she can't apologize for anything, now that it's too late to ensure she was proud of her.
Mai slips into her bed, laying silent in the sheets while Zuko lays beside her.
"You can't keep doing this to yourself," he murmurs.
"I know what I'm doing," she replies.
''And what's that?"
"It's just a diet," Mai argues, trying to hide within the covers. She knows she's fallen in too deep, but admitting it is accepting she's lost control, and that's all she wants.
"You're making yourself sick. You're too skinny, you're scaring me," he insists, pulling on her slightly so that she has no choice but to face him and his words. A whimper escapes her throat. In moments, she's crying, sobbing into his chest. Mourning her mother, mourning the girl she once was.
He holds her well into the night, far enough away from her father's ears to avoid being caught. He holds her until her sobs quiet back into whimpers, until she falls asleep in his lap. He stays until morning, almost hoping she's better in the sunlight, but it only makes her sunken features easier to see.
She stretches and curls back up against him with a heavy sigh, relishing in the peaceful Saturday morning until Zuko breaks it.
"I think you need help, Mai," he whispers, wrapping his arms around her.
She's silent for a while, trying to keep her thoughts in measure. Part of her wants to strike back in anger, but she knows there isn't a point in denying her problems to Zuko anymore. He sees them, she sees them. But she doesn't want help; there's no way for him to understand.
"Just leave me alone. It's my life, I can do what I want," she finally replies, pulling away from his grasp. Embarrassment fuels her anger, as well as the fear that she'll have to change. Facing her problems is too much. The world feels like a threat around her, one she tries to control and cope with. One she hides from now by slipping back under the covers.
She covers her ears while he yells at her, shutting her eyes tight and trying to put herself someplace else. Her silence keeps him going, until the point he actually leaves her there, drowning in her own refusal to accept help.
They don't speak the rest of the weekend, leaving Mai to drag herself out of bed and to school. It almost feels normal until she's called into the office and told to sit. A small lady sits across from her with a warm smile and an array of pamphlets she passes over that causes panic to rise within Mai. Titles vary, but the theme is there: Anorexia nervosa.
Over and over, she sees it. She pushes them away quickly, standing and heading for the door. Escape will bring comfort, escape will stop the twist in her stomach and harsh beating in her chest. She needs to breathe, she needs to get out of the room, but a hand grabs her own to halt her retreat.
"Mai, we need to talk," the lady says, her voice calm in an attempt to sooth Mai. But the walls are still closing in on her.
Everything's falling apart, and she knows Zuko is to blame.
Mai doesn't speak for a full hour while they sit inside the office. She learns the woman's name is Jen, the school counselor. That there's been a concern for her wellbeing and they wish to offer support. Mai only makes a sound when she realizes something.
"Did you call my father?" she whispers, wide eyes staring at the floor.
"We had to, Mai. Your mental and physical help are at risk."
This time, she makes it out the door. And she runs.
Her feet carry her home, but the panic hasn't stopped and every thought is scattered. Her brain is fuzzy, blanking out on her while she fights the weakness setting in. All Mai wants is a solution, something to stop what's hurting her. The moment brings her fingers around a bottle of pain pills, to her lips, and lets her swallow until she hits the floor.
It's dark for hours, and then it's too bright. There's a soft buzz in the room around her, as well as someone's cries. It takes a moment to focus, but she finds Zuko there, red eyes instilling guilt deep within her as the memories of her actions slide back in.
"I…I'm sorry, Mai, I was trying to help you."
She hates herself more. Nothing she can do is right, she fails everyone. Her efforts to be perfect have only dragged her down, and brought him down with her. The one person who truly loved her. Mai isn't sure she can forgive herself for letting him down.
He can't fully understand what she says, her voice still groggy and mumbled, but she spills out apologies of her own. Eventually, she asks where her father is; Zuko hates that he has to break it to her that he left shortly after she arrived. He hates it even more to tell her he didn't come after the doctors informed him Mai had finally woken up.
The doctors send her in for evaluations. Most of the questions are answered with a shrug or a blank response on a sheet, so they take her in. Two weeks of in-patient treatment, they tell her. Two weeks.
They're the hardest two weeks, only rivaled by the days following her mother's death. She cries every night, curled up on the bed without Zuko to comfort her. They slam her with the negative consequences of what she's doing to her body, but she doesn't care. She yells at them, fights them on everything for the first week. Every moment is exhausting, but the force her through it, until she almost feels broken from stepping on scales and finishing plates of food. It's only when there's been a fair amount of food on her stomach that she begins to realize what she's done to herself in actuality. The mirror image finally seems clear; the constant haze is gone. It's not fully there, but the tinges of life have come back into feeling.
She tells her therapist this, and she thinks she might actually want to get better now. To see if it's possible to feel alive again. She isn't allowed to speak to Zuko; they fear she'll connect her recovery too closely to him. She paints pictures on her skin of flowers, rolling her eyes the entire time on how stupid it is all while smiling to herself over how beautiful it makes her feel. She speaks up about losing her mother and how she wants her father to love her. She's taught to think better, to try and understand how twisted her thoughts had become. They warn her it won't be so easy once she leaves, that she'll have to fight even harder to keep her good work up. But there's enough of a spark to make her think she might deserve that.
They don't end up releasing her after two weeks, but four. Zuko picks her up with a wide grin and a bundle of flowers he picked on his way there, causing her to roll her eyes but take them with a blushing grin. He kisses her cheek and tells her how proud he is, and he is, seeing a bit of roundness in her cheeks again finally.
"I'm feeling better," she tells him, setting the flowers in her lap after crawling into his car. "I have to come twice a week still, plus a few meetings with a nutritionist every month." The process is threatening, but she wants to do it, to prove she can. And maybe, because she deserves the end results.
He nods, driving towards her house and promising he'll be there every step of the way. She knows she can do it without him, but he's there, and he believes in her. It's enough of a push to get her through the emptiness that returns once she's home and her father is ignoring her again.
It takes months of back and forth, of ups and downs, of breaking and mending before they let her cut back on therapy. She makes friends in the support groups, she starts to write. She's healing, she's happy.
Zuko kisses her softly, always proud. She thinks, she's not the girl she used to be anymore. She's more than that.