OLD SORROW

Zuko's face was halfway hidden by shadows. There was no gargantuan red spot, no uneven, scarred skin, no ruefulness in his face. Just shadow. Aside from that, he looked exactly like on the wanted posters, that Mai had discovered in Omashu. Older than her Zuko, but still the same person. The same incredible, honest, strong person.

.

As he stood there, he began to laugh. Loudly and excitedly and with a voice, that Mai was partly familiar with. He grabbed for her hand and started to run with her around some corner, and the whole time he kept laughing. And to her surprise, she also started laughing. Loudly and excitedly, and so utterly abnormal for herself, that the thought alone made her laugh even more. Zuko beamed at her, still weirdly illuminated, half absorbed in shadow, but happy. She also was! It felt, as if all bad lay far behind her, Azula's mean pranks, the death of Zuko's cousin, the disappearance of his mother, his banishment, Omashu, … All pain and sorrow and humiliation were gone. It was, as if all of it had never even...

.

And then, she woke up. WHY did she have to wake up? It was just unfair!

.

She took a few breaths, breathed in and out, in and out, and reminded herself of where she was.

In an airless, foreign room in a boring, conquered city. She still was in Omashu. Nothing had changed. Zuko wasn't here. Zuko also wouldn't come here. Zuko probably was somewhere on a boring, stupid boat or in some boring, foreign corner of the gigantic Earth Kingdom himself. Disguised as one of them. And in his face, there probably was that enormous, painful scar, that Mai didn't want to see in her dream. And Zuko certainly wasn't laughing, either. Because all of that pain and sorrow and humiliation weren't gone. Maybe he even was crying, just now. Mai was.

.

"If one of the servants would see me right now, I'd have to fire them..", Mai thought, and for an instant, she found that thought somehow funny. Not, that it wasn't true. No one could ever see her like this. She wasn't crying very often, and if she did, then never in company.

"Kind of pathetic, to dream of Zuko, still. Or to cry for him."

But on the other hand, if she didn't mourn him, who would?

.