"I wish I had a comb!" Ty Lee exclaimed.
"Why?" Mai said flatly. It was their next yard time and Mai sat leaning against the compound wall with the pebble clenched in her fist, watching Ty Lee do handstands in front of her. "You seem to be amusing yourself just fine."
"Yeah, but I'd love to comb your hair," Ty Lee grinned at Mai upside-down. "You have such long, pretty hair, but you always used to keep it tied up."
Mai raised her eyebrows. "I don't have any hair ties here."
"Well you should wear it down more often!" Ty Lee said cheerily. She flipped herself upright and landed cross-legged beside Mai. "These prison outfits are so baggy, and you're so skinny and flat-chested, you'd look like a boy if you didn't have such pretty hair."
" 'Flat-chested?'" Mai repeated. She raised an eyebrow at Ty Lee but her lips curved ever so slightly. "I guess I'm just not a bouncy person," she retorted.
"I've told you a thousand times, I'm not bouncy," Ty Lee grinned. "I prefer… oh… what's the word I prefer? It starts with a 'B' too…"
"Bubbly," Mai supplied.
"Bubbly!" Ty Lee repeated triumphantly. "I love that word." She scowled suddenly and put her hands on her hips. "You might actually get some boobs if you keep lying around like you have been. Get up and do some exercises with me!"
"I hate bubbles," Mai scowled.
"Yeah, yeah, you like your drinks…flat…" Ty Lee smirked. "Didn't you and Zuko have a fight about that? On Ember Island? About bubbly drinks, I mean, not your flat chest—"
Mai sighed and looked down at the pebble resting in her open palm.
"Ooh!" Ty Lee exclaimed, with sudden great enthusiasm. "Where'd you get that pebble?"
"I found it in the courtyard," said Mai. She folded her hands over it but Ty Lee grabbed her fists.
"Mai—I never noticed—your hands are so scarred!" She held Mai's hands up; the palms and fingers were covered in thin white scars.
"That's what happens when you play with knives," Mai said.
"That's why you wear gloves…" Ty Lee said. "…Hey, you started practicing with knives because you were bored at home, right?" She squeezed Mai's hands. "Maybe that pebble could be your knives in prison!"
Mai tossed the pebble up and caught it between her third and fourth fingers. "Maybe," she said with a small smile.
Ty Lee suddenly jumped. "Look, Mai—Li Yut, Agri and Nysa are on the other side of the courtyard."
"Good," said Mai, rolling the pebble between her fingers. She almost dropped it when Ty Lee seized her arm.
"Let's go talk to them!"
"Why?" Mai snapped as Ty Lee dragged her to her feet. "I'm sure they'd love nothing more than to beat us bloody."
"But…" said Ty Lee. "Their story about the Ba Sing Se refugees was so sad! And they said—they said that it was our fault. I didn't even think about that. Did you?"
"No." Mai sighed. "I just wanted to get out of Omashu."
"Do you think Azula knows? That we were hurting refugees?"
"Definitely," said Mai darkly.
"Come on, let's go talk to them."
Mai scowled, but followed Ty Lee across the courtyard.
"Hello!" Ty Lee called as she approached the Kyoshi. Mai and Agri exchanged wary glances.
"What do you want?" Li Yut asked imperiously.
"Just saying hi," said Ty Lee. "I think we're the only girls about our age in here. So we should be friends!"
Li Yut raised an eyebrow. Agri laughed openly. "Kyoshi warriors, 'friends' with Fire Nation brats?"
"Not brats," Li Yut said sternly. "Dangerous war criminals."
"You're the reason we're in here!" Nysa exploded.
"You two are either spies or you're even dumber than you look," said Agri. "We're enemies."
"Why, though?" Ty Lee said sweetly. "Nobody's watching us in here. I mean, the guards are watching us, but they don't know us. Nobody here knows us. Nobody expects anything from us. We're locked away from the outside world. So let's be friends!"
The Kyoshi only glared.
Ty Lee smiled, undeterred. "We're in prison, right? So in a way we can do whatever we want. I mean," Ty Lee laughed, "Things can't get much worse. We might as well do something crazy and be friends."
"If you think we're gonna—" Agri began, but Li Yut cut her off.
"You want to be friends?" she said. "You can start by teaching us 'chi-blocking.'"
"Sure!" Ty Lee beamed. "I can do that!"
The whistle blew. Li Yut and the other Kyoshi got to their feet.
"All right," said Li Yut. "Next free period. You two teach us how to block chi, and we'll see how it goes from there."
The Kyoshi strode away from them and soon the mass of red-clad prisoners returning to their cells hid them from Mai and Ty Lee's sight.
"Well that wasn't so bad!" Ty Lee said brightly.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" Mai asked in an undertone. "Teach Earth Kingdom people chi blocking?"
"They're not 'Earth Kingdom people' here," Ty Lee said firmly, with a slight crease in her brow. "And…it'll probably come in handy if they ever go back to helping refugees. Plus it'll be fun!"
Mai sighed. "You can't resist an audience, can you?"
Ty Lee stuck out her lower lip. "And you can't resist being a downer!"
Mai glowered. "You know we can't trust them."
"They think the same thing about us. Look, just trust me on this one, okay?"
They were nearing Mai's cell. A guard seized her arm and plucked her out of the herd as Mai, scowling, hissed, "just be careful!"
"It'll be okay, Mai!" Ty Lee called as the guard pushed Mai inside and the door closed between them.
…
Flat on her back on the cot, Mai tossed the pebble with her fingertips. She flicked it higher than before, then lifted her legs and caught it between her toes.
"We're in prison…We might as well do something crazy…we can do whatever we want…nobody's watching us."
She lifted her other leg and tossed the pebble from foot to foot.
"Mai! Your father was appointed governor! We're like royalty here. Be happy, and enjoy it! … Mai…Do your hair properly, daughter; Prince Zuko won't look twice at you if you let it hang about your shoulders like that."
"Zuko loves me!"
"Prince Zuko will marry the most advantageous match his father can arrange. And your looks are an advantage, Mai!"
Mai caught the pebble between her thumb and forefinger, and stared at it until its dim silhouette eclipsed her mother's face in her mind's eye. Then she sighed and tossed it again.
She saw Zuko's face, his dark hair falling into his troubled gold-colored eyes; saw Zuko's letter, in his stiff, awkwardly formal handwriting and heard his stiff, awkwardly formal voice in her head; and she heard her own voice as well, reading the letter aloud in a tiny cell as he listened: "Dear Mai…I'm sorry you had to find out this way…but I'm leaving."
The quick tension in his face, then the flash of fire—the guard leaped in front of her: "I'm here to protect you!"
"Get off of me!"
Mai pressed her palms against the hot iron floor of her cell and felt again the door of that other cell slamming on her, saw Zuko through the tiny window—the crinkles between his eyebrows as he looked at her, then his shiny red scar and burnt ear as he turned away, as he left her imprisoned, behind.
She saw Ty Lee grinning; Ty Lee doing cartwheels across the prison yard. "Locked away from the outside world …we can do whatever we want!"
Mai put a hand to her long, straggly, free-flowing hair. She laughed aloud.
Azula had laughed too. Mai had seen the smirk on her face even halfway across the boiling lake as she backflipped from Zuko's gondola to safety, as she settled in to watch her brother die, and the guards on the prison dock had smiled at Mai when they saw her approach, smiled as she drew her knives, smiled even as she raised them.
Mai laughed louder, Azula's furious face burning in her mind's eye. "No, you miscalculated! You should have feared me more!"
Mai gasped for air, her sides splitting, a tear sliding out of her eye.
"The Fire Lord has ordered that he be killed on sight…the whole Fire Nation wants him dead…I doubt he could survive much longer, not with Azula and the Avatar out to kill him."
Mai gasped again as tears welled up in her eyes.
"Let them rot!" Azula screamed, and only weeks before, as they drilled into the walls of Ba Sing Se: "Azula can shoot all the lightning she wants at me…"And now—her uncle's fearful face: "Princess Azula wants you executed!"
She clutched her sides and rolled to face the wall, but she could not muffle the sound of her sobs as they echoed emptily in the tiny cell.