Prompt #9: First

The Watcher

They shared so many firsts; neither Mai nor Zuko had given their hearts to another. Neither had so much as considered it. They had eyes only for each other, forever and always. So, he was her first true friend and she was his. When he reached for her hand with his own shaking one, neither had held hands with another before. Mai's silken cheek was never touched by lips other than Zuko's. When they first made love, it was a new experience for both, a shared wonder that sent each of them reeling from its intensity.

But Mai saw Zuko first, before he even knew she existed. In fact, she watched him from a hiding place in the palace garden, too shy to show herself as the boy practiced his bending or walked along the garden paths with his beloved mother.


It was only the third time that Mai had been to the palace. Azula recruited her and Ty Lee as friends, selecting them from among all the girls at the Royal Fire Academy. There was no choice involved. When Azula said, 'Come over and play,' you did. The princess wasn't in a hurry to introduce the girls to her brother, preferring instead to make fun of him in his absence.

"Watch my firebending," she would order them both. "See how good I am? Now watch this." She would perform a deliberately weak move and then begin to laugh. "That's how ZuZu firebends."

Ty Lee giggled too but Mai remained quiet and thoughtful. She wanted to see this brother, the prince.

"Where is he?" she asked softly, not really expecting an answer.

"He's at the turtleduck pond with my mother, probably. He doesn't have any friends."

"Oh," Mai replied as if it didn't really matter anyway.

As Azula continued to demonstrate what she saw as Zuko's weaknesses, Mai slipped away and walked along the garden path, looking ahead and behind her, not wanting to be spotted by anyone. In the distance, she could see the pond and two figures, one a woman sitting on the grass and one a young boy, standing up and tossing chunks of bread into the water. He laughed merrily as the turtleducks gobbled up the food. As Mai drew closer and hid beneath a sprawling and slightly scratchy bush, she couldn't help but smile herself. The prince's laugh was so much different from Azula's. It was light and pure and genuinely happy. She wanted to get closer but didn't dare so Mai contented herself with watching from a safe distance. She could hear snatches of the conversation between mother and son and then felt guilty, her cheeks growing hot.

He was handsome, the prince; Mai, even at a young age, was trained to recognize beauty and intelligence and good breeding. Her mother and father had beaten that into her head for as long as she could remember.

'Look, Mai; the Ikari boy has such fine features. His nose is straight and long but not too long. His eyes are shaped evenly and his….'

By the time her mother got to that stage, Mai usually tuned her out; but she absorbed the information anyway. Zuko fit the ideal of noble good looks and his good breeding went without question. Mai figured he must be intelligent because he knew enough to stay away from Azula.

And he loved his mother very much. That would be obvious to a complete idiot. For some reason, that made Mai like him even more. She wondered if she was silly for hiding under a bush and spying on the Prince of the Fire Nation. She wondered if she was silly for liking someone she had never met. Then Mai decided that she didn't care. Her first glimpse of Zuko was one that would stay with her forever. The idea of actually meeting him scared her a bit, but she would swallow that fear when the time came; and it would.


"Where did you go, Mai?" Azula called loudly. She was getting closer and closer to Mai's newfound secret spot. "We need you for the game."

The princess's voice was already rich with authority and confidence. It was difficult to ignore. Mai crept out from under the cover of the creeping bush, brushed off her knees and followed the sound of the princess's cries.

"There you are!" Azula declared. "I never said you could leave."

"I, I, was bored," Mai said in her defense.

"You're always bored."

"Not always," the little ebony haired girl said under her breath and smiled.

"Come on, we're playing war. I'm the Fire Nation, Ty Lee is the Earth Kingdom and you're the Water Tribe."

Mai sighed and pulled on one of the ribbons that dangled from her hair. She was always the Water Tribe. And she always ended up wet.