A/N:
This fic has made me come to terms with the fact that long chapters just aren't for me. (At least, not in this fic for certain.) It makes me feel a tad guilty; I don't update very frequently considering the low word count. Such is life. I may be slow, but I am diligent. I hope you readers will bear with me. 3
Thank you ever so much to the people who have already reviewed, and to my lovely beta readers! I don't expect to have too many more Author's Notes in the future, so this one's for you, but the gratitude will always remain.
Fire Lord Zuko has no children. There was a time she was able to convince herself it was because she wasn't ready, that her opinion outweighed that of his counsel, his nation. She could ignore the subtle barbs of the Sages about her fertility, the chittering of her mother as she tried to offer her advice. Tom-Tom was over ten years her junior, after all, and those things just happened sometimes.
Then she heard the whisper. The most hurtful things always start that way, nothing but an inkling, a tickle of a thought that someone lends a voice and it skips from tongue to tongue like wildfire through dry brush. Court seemed made for such kindling.
Her child might not be a bender.
It is a larger stigma than illegitimacy, almost more distasteful than being the product of a mix of two nationalities—almost. If a child is a firebender, all other sins can be forgiven, but there hasn't been one in her family for four generations. She will be forgiven nothing. She will be weighed, measured, always found wanting.
She isn't ready to be a mother. She shouldn't care that they slander her ability to produce a fitting heir, that they drag her family's ability to join the royal lineage into question. She shouldn't care, but she does.
And then one day she doesn't, and that is worse.
She had never been happier to feel that pang. A dull ache hovering right below her navel, the telltale sign of her monthly courses come to call. For five long years she'd dutifully swallowed the poison that ensured her will was exercised in one small corner of that vast world. And who was going to stop her? She was giving them exactly what they wanted.
Four more days and there was no blood. The pain grew worse. Late at night as she lie awake – alone – in her bed, she imagined the thorns of that plant buried in her heart had finally pierced the flesh, ready to tear it apart with the next beat, the next breath.
In a fog of insomnia and sleep deprivation she saw scarlet and crimson like the robes she wore or the curtains that somehow, over time, had grown to block out the sun. But there was no amber or gold, no richness or warmth to soften the blow.
It was no surprise that she woke to blood at last. It stained her pillow, her lips—a kiss of betrayal. Even her body was no longer her own.
# # #
In her time of need, she turns to her oldest friend.
The ex-princess' room is comfortable. A soft bed clad in silk sheets, large windows with a scenic view. But they face west, forever taunting her with the sun's waning rays, and silk is a bittersweet luxury when it rustles against steel chains.
Their relationship is the same as it was but different. She is now the trickster, the deceiver, indulging a lunatic's fantasies because glassy, amber eyes are blind—blind to the future, blind to the present. They see only a fragmented past. Zuko can no longer look into them. He does not come here. He does not approve.
She visits two days later because the cough now festers in her lungs. A healthy person would notice the sunken eyes, the tremor in her wrist, the soiled handkerchief that has taken up residence with that stiletto in her sleeve. Anyone else would notice, but no one has.
"Mother, you look unwell." Mai has grown accustomed to the title over the years. She appreciates the irony.
They talk of nothing. There are hidden glimpses, moments frozen in time when she believes true recognition dawns over those patrician features. This visit, sadly, holds none of them.
"Mother, you look unwell." Often their conversations come full-circle, ending where they began, looping, forever looping, mirroring the play of memories in that broken mind. Usually it is a cue for the lady to take her leave, shooed away by the hovering nurses always ready with another draught that will keep the fallen royal a captive to her delusions. There is no better prison for one such as her.
"I'm dying."
Pain has made her fear many things, but that is not one of them. It feels good to say it, to give it the power of the spoken word, expanding and filling the small room until there is no place left for doubt—or pride. She is dying. The next breath may be her last.
"Impossible," and her friend wears a tight smirk that harkens back to a past life. "You're already dead."