Thoughts

Mai sighed in relief as Ty Lee's chatter was cut off by sleep. The slightly younger girl had been talking and talking and talking and talking since Azula had had them imprisoned in one of the deepest, most highly-guarded cells in the Boiling Rock. Mai was already sweating feverishly from the heat.

She lay down on the hard, rocky ground of their cell to try and follow the chi-blocker's example. They didn't even have the same moth-eaten mattresses the other prisoners had, though she had no doubt her uncle would find some way to make them more comfortable.

Mai couldn't sleep, however, not because she missed her comfortable bed back in the Fire Nation. No, she was fine with sleeping on the earthen floor. But thoughts of two certain firebending siblings kept poking at her mind.

She could've lied. Could've told Azula that she wanted to save her uncle. That would've been believable. Azula wouldn't have understood, of course, since she despised her own uncle with all of her being, but Mai and Ty Lee probably wouldn't have been in this mess if she had.

But Mai had known long ago that Azula wasn't really her friend. She hadn't been sure Ty Lee was either, to be honest, until she had chi-blocked Azula to save Mai, and in the process given up her chance at freedom.

Even so, Mai had a lot to thank Azula for. Without Azula, Mai probably would've grown up bored, her life uneventful. She never would've met Ty Lee. Or Zuko.

Zuko

Even after he had betrayed her, locked her up in that cell with the guard, she couldn't stop worrying about him. Why couldn't she get him out of her mind? His handsome face, marred by that scar, but he still had that fire in his eyes. The one she had thought she had seen go out forever.

Mai remembered the day that Zuko got burnt. She had gone to see him in the palace infirmary. Iroh had been there. But no one else. Not Azula, or even his father. He had told her that he had disgraced himself, and to regain his honor, his father said that he must capture the Avatar. She had blurted out that it was impossible. He had thought so too. And his eyes. Or, the eye that she saw that day.

When they were younger, Zuko's eyes had danced and twinkled with light. They had been so beautiful, almost glowing with the fire that only a firebender's eyes held. She had seen it in Azula's eyes, but Zuko's fire was so much warmer, more inviting. But that day, in the infirmary, with one eye closed off from the world, the fire behind his eyes had finally burnt out.

When she had found his letter, many things had shot through her mind faster than one of her knives. The first had been no. The last was heartbreaker. But still, she saved him. Why?

She wondered if she would've made the same choices had it not been Zuko. She wondered if she would've left her uncle, that Kyoshi girl and the Water Tribe boy burn if Zuko hadn't been there.

She thought of the look that had been exchanged between them before Zuko had ran off to go find his companions. She had seen that fire behind his eyes again. The Avatar and his friends had helped to rekindle it. She hoped that she had played a part as well.

Zuko would never be her knight in shining armour, she decided. He would never be her fairy-tale prince. But Mai didn't want a big strong man to come and save her from danger. And Zuko knew it. Zuko understood her. Zuko wasn't perfect. But he was enough.

And with that answer to her question of why, she finally made it to sleep on the rocky ground. At least, until Ty Lee started to talk in her sleep.