The Life of the Wife, an avatar: last airbender fanfic

Title: The Life of the Wife
Characters (Pairings): Zuko, Katara, Mai, Toph, mentions of Aang, Sokka, and Haru. Zutara, Maiko, Kataang, Katara/Haru
Warnings: This is told from Mai's point of view, Mai centric. Contains sympathetic, adulterous individuals. Slight spoilers to: Sozin's comet. Implied sexual situations

Disclaimer:These are two phrases that I, myself, had been forced to use to learn English pronunciation properly. One stolen from Family Guy since I really loved the line and it fit into Mai's character. I'm just playing with everything right now. Unbetaed.

The life of the wife is ended by the knife.

Repeat.

The life of the wife is ended by the knife.

Repeat, slower, shorter, smoother.

The life of the wif-

When's she's little Mai's mother pushes her to learn literature, then music, and then proper lady palaver because she's friends with princess Azula.

Mai wanted to learn something useful.

She sells seashells by the seashore.

Repeat, she sells, repeat, seashells, repeat, shore, shore, sea. Repeat.

Mai hated the lessons, and had complied willingly because that's what proper ladies do. She wasn't a child, or a kid, or a little girl, or urchin, she was a lady. Then she'd mess up and let an improper word pass her lips. Then she'd be a mistake defined by rhyming words, and hissing disapprovals.

The life of the-- she hates that particular tongue twister. It's not exceptionally hard, but she tended to cringe when she said "wife". It was morbid, and it was cruel, and it was a constant reminder of why she was always practicing such lines. She was supposed to become a wife someday. She was supposed to become Price Zuko's wife.

She likes him and the phrase a lot more when he lands her in a water fountain. Knifes are interesting objects to her then. It's her first, honest to goodness, love.

Zuko, on the other hand, is adorable and her first crush.

Mai gets revenge for the fountain incident. She gets Prince Zuko. She gets dumped, angry, reconciles with the jerk and is dumped once again this time, not because she lacks passion but because he has too much of it. It's a betrayal.

She gets revenge, she gets locked up, and she is freed by her uncle, and she gets him back with an idle threat and kiss.

She never receives an apology. Three days later, and a missing FirelordZuko, Mai no longer expects it.

It feels like the fountain incident years ago, except now it doesn't bring a smile to her face.

A week after the defeat of the man she feared more than her own father, she sees less and less of Zuko. She's not foolish enough to believe he stopped loving her, but she knows he loves someone else.

His mother land will always come first, then his Uncle, and then his friends, title, his honor. She is jealous, but mostly bored, and mostly it is loneliness. She had not expected landing so low in his list, and she kept sinking lower and lower.

Her father has yet to comeback from Omashu, her mother with him, and Tom-Tom. How sad that her only friends consist of her parents, an infant brother, and a man that is no man, that is her love, that is consumed by matters bigger than he and her.

The life of the wife ends with the knife. She sells, she sells. Then shells she sells, are, surely, so if she, by the shore, shore, by the shore ends with the knife.

She practices tongue twisters and her calligraphy to kill time, and then uses the parchment for targets. The clink-clink-clink of the needles bouncing off the wall doesn't hold its old comfort.

Three weeks after Ozai's defeat and Azula's tender grip on reality breeched, she gets to go with Zuko to Ba sing Se and she is delighted, and relieved to be out of the castle and with Zuko--not Firelord, not exiled Prince, not SiFu, not hero, not traitor Zuko, just Zuko-- once again.

But then, Zuko joins his friends, and she stands by expectant to be molded into the intricacies of the group. She has been taught to wait for an invitation, to be proper and listen to cues and watch for gestures and openings.

He never does.

She's lonely and spends her time with the Lemur feeding it her fruit tarts, and once asks Sokka why he painted her like a man. No response, instead everyone else idly murmurs over her own comment.

She misses Ty Lee and Azula, can feel herself sink lower and lower, and. She sighs.

Mai's struck by how easily Katara teases Zuko.

It's the same way Ty Lee used to tease her.

On the way back home, she tries to do so too, and fails spectacularly. He thinks she's being condescending, she thinks he's an oversensitive idiot.

She's kind of, sort of, heartbroken.

Was the wife that ended her life with the knife heartbroken?

The courtesans' daughters' share gossip with her even though that's the last thing she wants to hear. Zuko is so cute! Lucky you!

"Yes, I am."

She listens lazily, wishing for her weapons. A flick of her wrist and they all would be dead, and quiet and unable to speak of their jealousy.

I heard he had an affair with the earthbender!

"Toph?"

NO! Yes! It wasn't the earthbender. It was the other pretty girl, the waterbender, Karisa, Kara, Kaya?

"Katara."

She's very pretty. Do you ever think maybe there was something, you know? between them?

"No." Yes.

Lucky you, dating the fire lord! I'm jealous.

"Of course."

When she tries to make love to him, he denies her fervently. Proper ladies and firelords must wait until marriage.

She asks him if he is proposing.

He presents her a fruit tart, and stiffly avoids the subject.

Mai eventually notices the rings under his eyes, the lines of a frown placed there too early, and the ones over his eye where he kept furrowing his eyebrow.

And when he smiles, it is forced, twisted, and does not hold its earlier shine.

Did the wife end her life with a knife, because she was despairing for her lost husband?

"The Avatar is here!"

Zuko hugs him. It's strong, brotherly, and affectionate-- she feels cold-- and there is a smile that is very true, and beautiful, and she's jealous of the bald monk. Same happens with "Great Warrior Sokka", and the metalbender.

It's nothing when the smile becomes shy and tentative, and charmingly crooked as it is turned to the waterbender.

"For how long?" she asks brusquely before Zuko takes a step towards Katara.

"Not long." it is too long already.

"So you and the Avatar?"

"You and Zuko too?"

"Yes!" Katara smiles prettily, claps her hands together and nods fastidiously.

No. Not at all.

Zuko has a spring in his step and she sees him more often. She sees the little bald kid, Katara and her brother, and the blind girl more often too. Honestly, Mai could do without them.

When they think she isn't looking, they move closer and smile more deeply, and they are somehow lighter, and the entire room is nice and warm and welcoming, and this is absolutely irrational, and ridiculous to her.

It isn't welcoming at all.

Then they finally leave-- the Avatar and the waterbender, and the earthbender, and the warrior with no art skills-- and she's alone with Zuko again. Her words keep playing back, tauntingly: I guess I don't know you after all, Zuko.

He retreats into himself, into the role of Firelord, into scowls, and barking orders, and of his hand holding hers back, and of the frown lines that weren't there two days before.

In her bed, she reflects but keeps thinking of the foolish wife and that murderous knife, and of that 'she' selling shells.

She's losing touch.

Mai stays with Zuko for two more years, he proposes, she accepts.

Will she be like the wife that took her life?

The waterbender comes back to visit, Zuko hugs her this time, and Mai, Mai sits back assuming the role of mourning sister. She doesn't even feel Katara's arms around her until it is too late to move away.

"Tom-Tom was a beautiful soul, I'm so sorry Mai."

It was an attempt on the Firelord and they all know it, and that's why the waterbender, Katara, was there. To help the Firelord. She feels obsolete not being able to help her own husband. Did the wife feel like this? Was that the reason for the knife?

Mai makes love to her husband, to remind herself that she's nothing like the wife in the tongue twister.

It's the husband that kills the wife.

When she realizes this, she hugs Zuko's arm closer to her body surprised to find she doesn't cry.

Zuko never sparred with her, never yelled at her, he snapped, growled, sulked, moved away from her, crossed his arms, looked away, and walked away. But never did he lift a hand in a threatening manner. Never.

So when she sees Zuko lashing at the waterbender with a fist of fire, and she with her own wall of water, Mai seethes, but doesn't yell, or snap, she wonders about the stupid crown on top of her elegantly done hair and feels insulted, betrayed, and confused as how its meaning could be dulled so easily.

Over a fist of fire, laughter, taunts, and a wall of crystalline water.

She asks, "How's Aang doing?" and the sparring stops, and Katara looks away guilty, and Zuko dumbfounded. Gossip with courtesans' daughters taught her how to be petty and cruel, and she is glad for the lesson, no matter how stupid and irrelevant at the time.

Behind closed door she slaps him.

The life of the wife is ended by --

Katara is there a month later. Still.

Another month.

Mai is losing her husband more and more, but when did she have him? She thinks of that phrase: she sells sea shells by the seashore.

Thinks of sand, sinking into it, wet and grainy, and warm, and of when Zuko was hers, and hers alone.

She closes her eyes when she hears that the earthbender, Toph, would be dropping by too.

Toph is meaner than she had remembered her. She tells her the truth: "He doesn't love you."

But Mai already knows that.

"Marriage isn't about love."

And the little blind earthbender that could crush her with a slight nudged of her foot, and that has an unhealthy love for her husband, understands too well. She only has another month or two before her parents force an arranged marriage on her.

"Just a warning."

Mai sniffs, turns her head upwards.

And that is that.

The culprit of her brother's death is a lowly old servant whom still believed Ozai was going to rise to his 'rightful' power.

She kills him on the spot. No one gasps, no one reprimands her, no one says anything, and it annoys her to know her revenge is so austere. No theatrics, no yelling, or crying, or sobs. It is her pedigree screaming in her face, and Tom-Tom's grave.

You'll never escape.

It's the wife and the knife--

Katara kisses her husband the day she leaves. On his scarred cheek. His hands hold hers longer than necessary.

Now Mai mourns the death of a little brother, and the dwindling faith of her husband, and smiles that are never meant to be for her, and the guilt the second most powerful man in the world cannot hide.

For a second, she thinks it's funny in a horrible, twisted, cosmic way. But just for a second.

Three years later, she and Zuko have a child and it eases the pain of being alone and with someone. She teaches her infant daughter the tongue twisters drilled into her head.

The life of the wife ends with a knife; She sells seashells by the seashore.

Toph's warning still clear as day in her head.

She reads his correspondence once.

"I miss you."

Mai doesn't dare to look through it ever again.

Katara comes back-- she always comes back-- married. To a man named Haru.

And somehow this means nothing to Mai.

Because on the third night of her stay, Mai sees Katara kissing her husband, sees her husband kiss Katara back, sees them push and shove, and roll, and when he starts undressing Katara in a hurry, she turns away.

She's not jealous anymore, when he joins her in bed, she's just a little more than lonely.

Her daughter loves the intruder.

Her husband loves-

Mai's still in a cage thinking of knives, wives, and a phantom woman walking on a shore, and his hands burn when they brush over her, to say good-night.

"We need to talk."

"Of course, dear."

The life of the wife is ended with a knife (plunged into her back and buried in sand).

How frivolous, she thinks idly counting her needles.

A/N: Reviews, criticisms? Yes please!