They were two weeks on the road to Omashu when Ty Lee had her brilliant idea.
While they traveled, the tents would be broken down and the wagons loaded early in the morning while rice boiled in large communal pots until it became thick porridge. Chipped wooden bowls would be passed around, and each morning Ty Lee would sprawl out on the ground next to Mai and smilingly add a heaping spoonful of sugar to Mai's breakfast, claiming that Mai needed sweetening. Mai would have preferred the salt that most of the others used for seasoning, but the small ritual seemed to please Ty Lee, so she ate her sweetened porridge with minimal complaint. Ty Lee had a talent for striking when Mai, never inclined to keep early hours, was still bleary-eyed and heavy-limbed and stupid with sleep, so it wasn't like Mai had many options other than to complain.
The camp was never quiet, the air always filled with laughter or music, the roar of the tigers and the quiet day-to-day squabbles that were bound to arise when a group of people spent every waking minute together. It was also rarely clean; costumes would be strewn everywhere and only gathered together when they broke camp, and baths would be taken when people had both the time and the desire to brave whatever freezing cold body of water they had camped by. After a few days of living rough, Mai found herself feeling distinctly grimy.
People drifted around camp haphazardly in the morning until, as if by accident, they were all loaded into their wagons and ready to leave. The routine was completely disorganized to Mai's eyes yet seemed to have its own unique structure, facilitated by Huan's occasional half-desperate, half-commanding pleas to get a move on already, we're wasting daylight, were you all raised by wild beasts—no, no, I didn't mean you, Fong the Lion Tamer—hey, Ty Lee, have you seen my boots?
They would travel through the days, hours spent in the wagons until Mai could feel the stutter of wheels across pitted dirt roads in her bones. At night they would set up camp, colorful tents springing up like flowers out of the ground, fires kindled and pots set out over those fires once again. People would rehearse or gamble or simply gossip until the food was ready, at which point they would gather around the fire, one big, happy, exceedingly strange family, too close and too warm for Mai to enjoy. They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, knees and thighs touching, comfortable with her because she was Ty Lee's friend and therefore nearly one of them, where she could not be comfortable with them even if they were Ty Lee's friends. Someone would invariably bring out a flask of cactus juice or a jar of pungent Earth Kingdom wine and pass it around with the food, and Mai would eat and drink and say almost nothing at all.
Predictably, Iroh did not share her discomfort, and Mai had lost count of the number of times she had found him making friends with one of the animal tamer's massive snakes, or playing pai sho with the withered old woman who told fortunes, or giving comfort and sage romantic advice to a sobbing contortionist.
At night Mai would sleep in a tent too small for two with Ty Lee, letting Ty Lee's drowsy, contended chatter lull her to sleep.
When they finally reached a city or a town, the circus came alive. They would unpack the big tent from where it was kept packed away in one of the wagons and send it hurtling up, impossibly tall but always dwarfed by the walls of whatever town they were camped beside. Immediately they would attract a crowd; entertainment had been scarce in the months after the war, with so much of the Earth Kingdom decimated by the Fire Nation's final conquests. It was bright and stuffy within the tent, and Mai would stand by the sidelines with Iroh and watch Ty Lee perform: the way she would hang suspended in the air for endless moments like some strange but graceful bird before plummeting toward the ground, the way the crowd gasped in reflexive fear and then let that gasped in breath out as relieved sighs or laughter when she landed safely in Huan's arms or caught the edge of a platform dangling from above. Mai would listen to the laugher, see faces marred by years of stress and scarred by fire, and turn away, retreating to her tent as soon as Ty Lee's act was over.
The circus would stay a day or two before moving on, their stocks replenished and their pockets plump.
Mai used the time on the road to get to know Huan—or he used it as an opportunity to get to know Mai, and she allowed him to make the attempt. She didn't have much interest in the rest of Ty Lee's companions, but she had promised that she would like Huan for Ty Lee's sake, and it didn't seem in the spirit of that promise to rebuff his advances even if the most assured way for her to like him would probably be not to speak to him at all.
"Your juggler is a firebender," she said at one point when he came to retrieve some odd or end that had been mixed in with Ty Lee's things and not recovered after Ty Lee's summary ejection of him from her tent in favor of Mai. Mai had yet to decide whether the easy way with which he had allowed himself to be supplanted was a point in his favor or not.
He tensed, but after a moment he forced himself to relax and offered her one of his shy smiles. "We try not to advertise that."
"I imagine it wouldn't make him very popular with the locals."
"No," Huan agreed. He settled back on his heels, his search abandoned for the time being. "Someday it might be more trouble than I want, but I wasn't going to tell Min that he needed to pack his bags the minute peace was declared. He's been with the circus since he was born—his father was one of our performers, and he and I grew up together. He didn't even know what a fire flake was until he was ten. Spent half a day vomiting the first time I convinced him to try them."
"You knew what they were?"
"Ty Lee didn't tell you? My father was Fire Nation. A lot of our performers are—or were. More than a few of the old guard packed up and left when I started us touring the Earth Kingdom. Before I took over, we stuck to the Fire Nation and the colonies. My father was—very loyal to his homeland. Loyal to the idea of it, at least, even if we spent more time on Earth Kingdom soil than we did in the Fire Nation by the time I was born."
"And your mother?"
"Was his third wife, and remembered a time when her village hadn't been under Fire Nation rule." Huan seemed to realize how sharp his voice had gone only belatedly, and he offered her another one of his smiles in apology. "She loved him, I think." He shrugged. "I hope she did. Ten years is a long time to share a home and a family and a bed with someone you don't love. But she loved him by ignoring where he had come from. I know he loved her – he only sent me to Ba Sing Se University because it had always been a dream of hers – but I don't think he ever really knew who she was. Not all of her. Not her anger."
"Is that what you're doing with Ty Lee?" Mai's voice was bland, because she had concerns about what it would be if she allowed it to be anything else. "Loving her by ignoring where she came from and who she is?"
"Ty Lee isn't my father. She doesn't love places or ideas, she loves people," Huan sounded very sure. "I know what she was. I know what she's done." That surprised Mai a little. She wouldn't have expected Ty Lee to be quite so confessional with her new beau. "I know that she's trying to make a life for herself that takes her as far away from all of that as possible, with a couple of exceptions—like you." She was also surprised to hear that Huan did not sound altogether approving when he spoke of her friendship with Ty Lee, and perversely she found that she liked him better for it. All of that muscle might be concealing a spine after all.
"Maybe she shouldn't be here," he continued. "Maybe Min should have left for the Fire Nation when the soldiers did—maybe I should have. In a few years, maybe I'll decide that the best way to acknowledge what my father's people did is to leave my mother's home behind and start touring the Fire Nation again, rather than bringing what joy I can here, or maybe someone will decide it for me. I don't have the answer to that. But I know that I like Ty Lee. I like the person she lets herself be when she's not trying to please your former princess or do what she thinks she should do as a loyal citizen of the Fire Nation." He closed Ty Lee's trunk with a resounding thunk. "What about you, Lady Mai? Why do you do what you do? People, or places and ideas?"
Mai tilted her head back to consider the roof of the tent. "Must I have reasons for how I live my life? Is it not enough to exist, and try very hard not to be bored to tears?"
He snorted. "I'm trying to like you for Ty Lee's sake," he said, more earnestly than Mai would have managed had she been expressing similar sentiments, "but sometimes you make it very hard."
It was unexpected enough to startle a laugh out of Mai. She stopped immediately and felt a little bit alarmed by her own lack of restraint. In spite of his words, Huan made a point of sitting next to her at the campfire after that, and he spoke to her more easily, most of his early tongue-tied discomfort melted away. Mai thought that she might like him a little bit after all. At the very least, she spent more time watching him with Ty Lee, and knew that she liked the way that he didn't try to dim Ty Lee's bubbling enthusiasm and restless, relentless energy, just provided a warm and steady place for her to land when the day was done.
Mai did not like the life of a circus performer. There was dirt caked beneath her nails and nothing but canvas between her and the nighttime insects and too many people who seemed to feel that they were now close enough companions to touch her. She didn't like it, but sometimes she thought that she might understand why Ty Lee loved it.
They were a day outside Gaoling when Ty Lee had her brilliant idea. She called it that, and said it in such a way that Mai could hear the emphasis.
"No," Mai said.
She repeated the word every time Ty Lee mentioned the brilliant idea for the rest of the day. She provided reasons why the brilliant idea was not really quite so brilliant after all. They were very good reasons, so she was a little baffled when she somehow ended up dressed in a leather at the center of the circus tent, knives in hand, before the attentively watching crowds of Gaoling.
She thought that the leather at least was entirely unnecessary, and had protested fervently when Ty Lee showed her the so-called costume. "You need a gimmick," Ty Lee had said, unmoved and cheerfully unmovable, "and the audience loves me. Therefore, you need to be threatening. And leather is threatening!"
There was a notorious man of wealth and leisure in the Fire Nation who liked his women threatening and dressed in black leather. Maybe there were people in the Earth Kingdom who felt the same, but Mai wasn't particularly interested in finding out.
Her mouth was tight as she walked out into the ring with Ty Lee. She barely heard Huan's introduction, his voice carrying easily across the space and glowing with showmanship that she hadn't expected from him when they had first set out. "Do not change the routine from what we've practiced," she told Ty Lee. "No improvising. If you change the routine, I will hurt you."
Ty Lee shot her a wounded look. "It's not nice to threaten your friends, Mai."
"It's not a threat," Mai said, words pitched soft and edged with the barest hint of exasperation. Her neck felt uncomfortably tight, and the rocky stretch of ground where Ty Lee had pitched their tent was only partially to blame. "You know what my knives can do. You saw what they did to Azula. I didn't love maiming a friend so much that I want to repeat the experience."
Mai froze, and saw Ty Lee go equally still beside her. She didn't know why she had said it, when she and Ty Lee had so successfully danced around the subject for weeks now and when they both had other things that they needed to focus on.
Ty Lee looked wide-eyed at her, for once stunned into silence. Mai stared back, her own eyes narrowed; perhaps if she pretended that she had said nothing exceptional then Ty Lee would be forced to allow the moment to pass without remark. She didn't hold out much hope. She grunted when, overcome and uncaring of the onlookers, Ty Lee threw her arms around Mai, ignoring the way that Mai immediately stiffened up and tried to squirm away. "I would have chosen you," she murmured, low and secret in Mai's ear. "If I had needed to choose, I would have chosen you. Not Azula."
Mai stopped struggling. She knew what Azula had meant to Ty Lee, so it was—not a lie, because this wasn't something Ty Lee would lie about, but perhaps the truth rewritten into something kinder because Mai was the only one left for her to choose. Mai didn't doubt Ty Lee's affection at least, so she sighed and forced herself to lean into the hug, willing to tolerate having the life squeezed out of her as fair trade for—for knowing that Ty Lee meant the words now, even if they'd never have to test them, even if they wouldn't have been true then. "What about my gimmick? No one's going to think I'm very threatening if you're clinging to me."
Ty Lee finally released her. She was grinning. "Oh well. We'll do better next time." She kissed Mai on the cheek, leaving a pink-tinted smudge, and flounced away before Mai could protest that there wasn't going to be a next time.
Mai followed after her more slowly. Ty Lee was all fluttering silk and big, sweeping movements meant to catch the attention of a fickle crowd. Mai had little ability and even less desire to pander to an audience, so she was surprised when she swept a glance over the stands and found most of those watching eyes firmly fixed on her. Earlier they had been swept up in Ty Lee's bright, boisterous energy as they watched her perform her acrobatic tricks, but now a tangible pall filled the stuffy air of the tent, as if it was Mai's mood that was catching. Silence was impossible, but enthusiastic chatter and laughter were slowly replaced by quiet murmurs and the even quieter hiss of speculative whispering.
The shake of the wrist that released four of Mai's knives into her waiting hands hadn't pleased Ty Lee. She pouted over the Mai's lack of flare the whole time they had practiced, but Mae had stolidly refused to embellish. Her spine prickled with sweat. It wasn't nerves. Mai didn't sweat under pressure. Even she wasn't impervious to the heat of the tent, however. She wondered how many other performers had dripped moisture into the leather of this costume and repressed a shudder of disgust. At least the thin gloves were her own, the stitches and leather much finer than anything that the circus could provide. She wouldn't have to boil her knives when this was done. She already wasn't looking forward to the things she would have to do to make her skin feel clean again.
Ty Lee was already in place, her back against a hastily constructed target made of spare wooden boards and the extra rope that always seemed to be lurking in every unattended corner of the camp, waiting to trip up unsuspecting bystanders. This close Mai could see the evidence of how quickly the circus carpenter had needed to work to accommodate Ty Lee's brilliant idea, but it had been painted white and eye-scorching green and probably looked well enough to the audience. Huan crossed the ring and began to secure Ty Lee's hands to the edge of the target. Mai knew from observation and experience that he wasn't the tying the ropes nearly tight enough to keep Ty Lee from escaping, but that wasn't really the point and, like the target, it would look good from a distance. Ty Lee's lips were moving, and Mai couldn't hear the words but from the way that Huan's cheeks lit up with a now-familiar blush, she could guess. She rolled her eyes and allowed her attention to wander while she waited for them to finish.
Iroh was standing in his customary place near the edge of the ring. Mai reminded herself that envy was an ugly emotion. He smiled at her widely enough that she could count his teeth even at this distance and offered her an encouraging thumbs up. Mai ignored him.
Huan stepped away from Ty Lee, and the last of the crowd's noise died off, outside of the occasional cough and the discontented grumbling of a child kept up late and grown bored with the spectacle. Mai tuned out even that distraction, until all she could hear was the steady rhythm of her own breath. Her hand flicked out and the first of the knives left her hand.
It sank into the wood next to Ty Lee's hip, close enough that Mai knew she'd be hearing about it the next day if she'd frayed the fabric of Ty Lee's pants. She frowned a little. Unacceptable imprecision; clearly practice hadn't done nearly as much to keep her skills sharp as chasing Azula while she chased the Avatar around the world.
Hip, shoulder, shoulder. The next three knives landed better, close enough that there was no gap between Ty Lee's body and the steel, but not so close that Huan would be doing any additional mending—no amount of determination on Ty Lee's part to live the life of a simple circus performer could undo a childhood where she'd never been expected to lift a needle and thread. Mai's embroidery had always been above reproach. She'd ended up patching Ty Lee and Azula's clothing more than once when Azula's desire for stealth and speed kept them out of the reach of servants to pass the work off to. She'd closed a hole on Ty Lee's sleeve with tiny pink apple blossoms rather than a plain stitch, because she'd known that Ty Lee would be delighted by the discovery.
The crowd was applauding. Mai barely heard it. There were eighteen thin stilettos strapped to Mai's wrists. Under normal circumstances she kept a matching set strapped to her ankles, but the costume wouldn't accommodate them and she refused to prolong this more than she had to in order to placate Ty Lee's whimsy.
The stilettos hit the target, one after another. When the last sank into the wood, Mai stood back, considering her handiwork. There would be a perfect impression of Ty Lee's body punctured into the wood. Mai was not looking forward to wrestling her knives free of the target, but she also wasn't about to leave the task to some meat-fisted peasant whose only experience with a weapon was polishing the dulled prop sword that he swallowed for the entertainment of the masses. The urge to leave now that her task was complete was strong, but she waited placidly for Ty Lee to be untied and join her for a bow. Were she of a more fanciful nature, she might have imagined that she could hear her mother disowning her from beyond the grave. The thought filled her with a strange satisfaction.
Ty Lee failed to entice her into an encore performance the next night, or any of the nights after that. Mai had reached the limits of what she would do to please Ty Lee, although she thought that those limits might be further out then she set them for nearly anyone else. She had thought, standing in front of that audience beneath the prickling heat of the circus lights, Ty Lee's arms around her, that she was the only one left standing for Ty Lee to choose, but she supposed that was true for her as well—Ty Lee was the only other person in the world who really understood what it was to choose the losing side of a war with no greater incentive than a princess' beckoning finger, the only one who knew the particular delight and terror of being called Azula's friend.
They were only a day outside of Omashu when the messenger hawk arrived. The thin leather canister strapped to its back was stamped with Mai's own family seal, and she barely had time to unhook it from the hawk's harness before one of the animal tamers was spiriting the creature away, the light of new love in his eyes. Mai watched them go with ill-favor and hoped that she'd have no need to send a return letter, since she had little doubt that by the time the hawk was returned to her it would be either fed to the point of being unable to fly or cosseted to the point of deciding to join the circus and ne'er return to her family's mews.
Lady Mai. Yesterday I went to visit General Heng's widow.
The writing was barely legible. It was her own fault for leaving the Fire Nation so quickly that she was now forced to rely on Lee to gather intelligence about her exiled soldier. She didn't doubt his ability, just her own willingness to decipher whatever he had to tell her.
The lady was understandably reluctant to let a disreputable, if exceedingly handsome, specimen such as myself through the front door. Luckily your name was enough for her to grant me entry, even if she made me come in through the kitchens. You're so fortunate to have such a charming servant, because it didn't take long before we were laughing it up in her parlor, talking like two old friends over tea.
She also had some doubts about the accuracy of Lee's version of events.
It was easy to turn the conversation to her children; she's prouder than is probably politic right now of her two strapping sons and their various military accomplishments. When I reminded her that she did, in fact, have three strapping sons, relations between us chilled significantly. I was brokenhearted but, for your sake, I bravely continued to pester the lady until she had me removed. She and her youngest apparently fell out of touch following the death of his father. They were in regular contact before that, however, and she had his address in Omashu, which she parted with in a bid to get me to leave without further disruption. She also had the picture that I've included with this letter, which I liberated as her attendants escorted me off the premises. Shun is the one on the left.
It seemed that Mai would have some ruffled feathers to smooth once she returned home. Or not. No one left to please, and no one's career to advance. What did it matter if a general's widow thought that Lady Mai had sent a servant to harass her? She fished into the canister until she found the second sheet of paper that she had overlooked, smaller than the scroll with Lee's letter but better quality, the page thick and smooth between her fingers. A round-faced woman and man with gray in his hair but a body still kept in fighting trim sat at the forefront of the picture. Standing behind the couple were three men about her age, although they all must be older by now. She recognized on their faces the rigid inattention of someone forced to pose for the portrait artist's brush, and felt her own spine stiffen in sympathetic discomfort.
The two older boys had the look of their father, wide through the jaw and thick through the shoulders and arms. Shun was smaller and leaner, with a great deal of his mother about his eyes and the curve of his chin. Mai thought there might be something familiar about his handsome, thin-lipped face, but if she'd seen him before it had been as a child, and Mai barely bothered to remember people she had met in the last week unless she had reason to.
An address and a face. Lee really had outdone himself.
She skimmed the last few lines of the letter with disinterest that quickly became trepidation as she read. There is absolutely nothing else of note to report. Life at the palace has been so excessively dull that I fear you would expire immediately were you to hurry to resolve your business in the Earth Kingdom and return at your earliest possible convenience. I have certainly not been told by any venerable authority figure within our grand Nation that I should keep my big mouth shut when corresponding with you and, by extension, General Iroh.
Right. And there had never been a war in Ba Sing Se.
Unsubtle, even for Lee. He was fortunate that Zuko wasn't actually the kind of ruler who would intercept his subjects' correspondence to make sure that his orders were being followed. Lee hadn't signed his name, but there was a drawing beneath the final line that might, if she squinted, resemble a flower. Maybe not; she was dubious enough of her interpretation and Lee's artistic skill to ask Iroh when she showed him the letter later that day.
"A lotus, unless I'm mistaken," he said. He chuckled, but she couldn't help but feel that it sounded forced. "One in dire need of some water, I think. Your friend might have a sharp eye, but I'm afraid his talent as an artist leaves something to be desired."
Mai studied him. "And the rest of it? Obviously something has gone wrong. Aren't you worried?"
"No," Iroh said decisively. "I trust my nephew's judgment. If he hasn't written to me himself, it's because he doesn't need my help." The words sounded true when he said them, but there was something shadowed about his eyes. A moment later the shadow was gone and he was smiling at her. "I suspect Master Lee is just feeling a little overwhelmed right now and wishing for my—our hasty return."
"How can he feel overwhelmed? He never does anything."
Iroh was quick to turn his laugh into a cough. "Bored, then? Or lonely?"
Yes, that sounded more like Lee.
"I guess we'll find out when we make it back," Mai said with a sigh. "For now, better to focus on finding the princess." It seemed unlikely that she would find Princess Ursa lurking at the back of some Earth Kingdom hovel with the man Mai suspected had been charged with escorting her away from the Fire Nation, so oblivious to the changing world that she hadn't immediately returned to reclaim her royal birthright—and to reunite with what was left of her family, that would probably be important to her too, although Mai could barely fathom it. Mai didn't know whether she hoped that it would be so easy or dreaded the possibility. She didn't exactly want to spend months chasing leads around the Earth Kingdom, but the search being over and done with so soon would ruin what little entertainment it provided and leave her once again at loose ends.
The next morning, standing beside Iroh at the end of one of the long bridges that led to the gates of Omashu, Mai was forced to reassess. She wasn't sure why she'd ever found this hunt entertaining. Her breakfast sat cold and heavy in her stomach. "Let's get this over with."
A/N: I hope you enjoyed the update (after over a decade!) but please know that a version of the story that has been heavily revised for style (but not for plot-relevant content) will be posted on Ao3 going forward. You can find it at archiveofourown -dot- org / works / 26284816 / by replacing the -dot- with a period and removing the spaces. Sorry for not sticking with , but it's just not a platform that I use these days. Thanks!