03 - Regret

Mai hugged herself, trying to preserve what little of her life-force remained. But she knew it was completely futile.

She was being drained, and nothing now could stop her from becoming all used up.

She should have seen this fate coming. For all her life, she had been warned about the dangers of straying from the path set out for her. For so long she had complied, meandering from one side of her road to another but never daring to pick another destination for herself. Yet the desire to do so had built up over time, until at last she had dared to leap off the path and into life's wilderness.

And when she hadn't been destroyed by it, she'd taken on the foolhardy overconfidence of youth, tempting fate time and time again, each more egregious than the last. With every victory, she thought her own immortality proven more thoroughly.

Until now.

Until the choices that had led her to bind her life to Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe. Until she had strayed so far from the path that she became lost it the darkness. Her wandering had led her here.

To this moment.

The moment of her death.

She wished she could say it was worth it. That she still had some of that youthful cockiness, at least enough to say that a life of freedom and love was worth any tragedy. But she could not. She fully regretted the choices that had led her here. She hated herself for making those choices, and she hated Sokka for presenting those choices - as inadvertent as it might have been - to her. With her final breath, she cursed Sokka and everything he stood for, and wished the darkest of fates on him and everything he cherished.

Mai sneezed and huddled closer to the fire-pit.

Sokka sighed. "You're cranky when you're sick."

"Shud ub," Mai whispered with the last of her life-force, expecting death in the next moment. Unfortunately, death was extremely tardy today, so she had to make do with sniffling and pulling her jacket, coat, and cape around her even tighter.

Sokka said, "Do you want some more soup?"

Mai moaned. "Yes, bleaze."

As he scooped some from the pot, he said, "You know I'm not the type to take pleasure in other people's suffering. (I mean, unless I really, really dislike them.) So I don't want you take what I'm about to ask the wrong way." He held the bowl of soup out for her. "Do you regret saying that if Toph could handle the South Pole, you could, too?"

"Shud ub," Mai repeated, taking her soup. She sipped at it, and then felt the need to add, "I hade you. You gobbe sick."

"I did no such thing. You got you sick by not wearing your hood while it was snowing. I just said you'd hate it down here." The corners of his lips twitched. "In fact, I remember making a wager about that."

Mai groaned. "I thoughd snhnow was bluffy. Like fur. Dho one tode me ids so heaby and code."

"Of course it's heavy and cold! We make bricks out of it, and if it wasn't cold, it would melt!" He was fully grinning now. "A kiss if I'm right and you hate it here. Weren't those the terms?"

Mai begged within her hearts of hearts for death to take her, but for some reason she was proving too hardy even for this horrific torture. So she settled for sipping her soup and glaring at Sokka. "Ibe dying a'you wamb a kihhss?

Sokka shrugged. "Maybe it will make you feel better."

It was a small hope, a flicker of a chance, but Mai would have kissed Azula herself if it might have given her relief from such an agonizing death. So she put her soup down, leaned toward the cheek Sokka was proffering, and gave him a peck.

As soon as her lips left his skin, she was overtaken by a sneeze.

Even Sokka's cry of disgust and outrage wasn't enough to give her any pleasure. She was about to fade from this world, after all, and the dead had no use for schadenfreude.

Sokka wiped at his face and sighed. "Now I regret this, too."

Mai held out her empty bowl. "Bore soup, bleaze?"

END