Rapture

He kisses her with affection as they fall onto his bed. They land with a soft poof into the silken sheets, his back against the sheets and her body resting on his torso. She trails her mouth from his lips to his jawline and below his neck. Her black hair splays out across his shirt, and his eyes soften as she snuggles her face into the place where his neck meets his shoulders.

"Mm," she mumbles happily, and he can feel her nose breathing in his scent, the tip of it just barely grazing his skin. Just a few hours ago it was a knife and not a nose that he'd felt—they'd been sparring. And then Mai got bored and wanted to do something else.

"Mai," he says as she leans up ever so slightly, tugging back the tatters of his shirt to run her fingers experimentally along his shoulders. She silences his insistences with another kiss, perhaps a little more forceful than he'd like, but at least she's showing some emotion. These past few weeks, she's gotten a little better at expressing herself, and he's so very attracted to her in those rare times when she reveals how strong of a woman she is. He surrenders and responds to her aggression with a gentle acceptance.

She bites his lip, hard—his mouth starts to bleed—and she pulls away.

"Zuko," she intones with just a little inflection in her voice—he can tell she's perturbed by the way her voice is about half a pitch higher. "Zuko, what is this?"

She runs her fingers across the scar on his chest—he's finally taken off the bandages, and she hasn't seen his bare chest since before he left her the first time. She gives it a little poke, and he hisses in pain.

"Another scar? You told me Azula hurt you, but you never told me she shot lightning through your heart!"

Zuko cringes. He hadn't told Mai because he didn't want her to worry, and because he wanted to put that Agni Kai behind him. What had happened there was only for him and Azula—and Katara, of course Katara, she had saved him. It had been surreal, but so very violent and angry. Exhilarating and terrifying, like redirecting lightning. That feeling isn't something he wants to share with anyone, because it is such a wrong, unnatural state of being.

And he had nearly died. Mai doesn't need to know that either.

But now she does (…monkeyfeathers).

He rests his hand on top of hers. He'd never told her because she'd never be able to understand. "It's in the past," he comforts. "It doesn't matter."

"You'd die from something like that," Mai murmurs. She takes her hand out from underneath his, stares into his eyes with something like disappointment and fury and concern and suspicion all rolled into one. "What really happened to you, Zuko?"

He casts his eyes down, his hands falling on either side of his torso so that his scarred chest is exposed to the world. He hates to tell her this because she'd never understand just how necessary it was for him to take that lightning bolt.

"Zuko—"

He tells her anyway, because she demands the truth, and he can't lie to someone he loves.

"Azula tried to shoot Katara with lightning, and I blocked the bolt. I almost died. Katara healed me, and I was able to live." He doesn't even realize it until now, but he's gentling touching the scar over his heart once again, feeling the electricity pounding through him and then the cooling touch of Katara's healing. He misses the feel of the water on his skin, the experience of coming back to life even though he was almost gone.

"What?" Mai shouts, and as soon as it's out of her mouth she seems shocked by the force behind it. "You tried to sacrifice yourself to—to save that—"

He knew she wouldn't understand.

"Do you know what the world would be without you?" her shouts continue, and she is one huge emotional mess. "Do you know what I would be without you? It already happened once and I—and I—"

"Mai." He cups her face in one hand. His other remains steadfastly on his scarred heart.

She shoves his hand away.

"I love you, Zuko, and yet you'd kill yourself anyway for some filthy peasant!"

He propels his body forward in anger, planting his feet on the ground so he can stand. His movement forces Mai off of him, and she nearly collapses on the floor.

"Don't you ever call Katara that," he growls.

"Why not?" she spits back, throwing her arms up in the air. It seems that all her emotion is finally tumbling out of her in one fell swoop. "Why can't I say what I like about her? She is a peasant! Maybe it's because—maybe you don't—you'd never give your life for me, and you never tell me anything!"

"Mai," he says. Her words cut into him like a second lightning bolt. And then he smiles. Something's so very ridiculously amusing about this whole situation. "I don't tell you anything? Maybe you just never listen. You just want to sit around and do nothing."

She gives him a death glare. "You know what I want? I want to know why you spend the whole night by this Water Tribe peasant's bedside when we were in Ba Sing Se, why you insist upon dancing with her for the evening while the whole Fire Nation watches, why you keep sending letters to her even though you just saw her three weeks ago, and why you'd sacrifice your life to save her and then not even tell me you almost died!"

This impassioned speech rushes out of her like a waterfall of emotion, and by the end she is screaming. As she finishes her last word, silence reigns in the room. The air is uncomfortably hot. As Zuko stands towering over his livid girlfriend, he can hear the faint chirps of the cicada-flies echoing into the oncoming night. He closes his eyes, cherishing the peaceful chirps that reverberate in his ears.

"I didn't tell you about it because I knew you wouldn't understand. I'm sorry, Mai, but it's in the past. I'm alive, aren't I?"

She grits her teeth, her fists clenching and unclenching. He watches with faint amusement and mild attraction as the corners of her eyes twitch. She's so very passionate when she's angry.

"Zuko," she whispers, and she shocks him with her sudden change in volume, "Please just tell me the truth"—her eyes turn to stare straight into his and he does not dare to look away—"Do you love someone else?"

"What?" he sputters. "What are you even talking about?"

She closes her eyes and tears snake out of the corners of her eyelids. She seems to come to a decision, and then her eyes snap open again, and before he knows what happens, Mai smacks him straight across the face. His cheek stings and his lip starts to bleed again as she runs out of his room. He falls to his knees, confused and heartbroken. He wipes the blood on the back of his hand, wincing as the sour coppery taste overtakes his mouth.

He thinks that he probably should've expected Mai's anger. It's just another mistake to add on to his lifetime's culmination of wrongs, after all.