So much sunlight…Suki hadn't realized how much she had missed it. She simply lay there in bed, one hand on her belly, eyes closed, reveling in the warmth of the sunshine on her skin as it filtered through the window. It had almost always been cloudy at the North Pole, the sky clogged with ice crystals and snow. A sunny day was a rare luxury. There were some days where she just hung a lantern from the ceiling of their hut, lay on the floor, and pretended it was the sun shining down on her—she was that homesick.
Then Sokka would come home, proudly holding a string of freshly-caught fish, and the sharp pain of missing her home would abate. The sunshine suddenly didn't seem as important, not when he swept her up into his arms and warmed her himself. Who needed sun? She had him.
A sigh escaped her as worry closed over her heart again. The look on his face as he told her to run; the desperate kiss they had shared before he had grabbed his sword and left; the tears, warm on her cheeks, as she watched the walls of the great Northern Water Tribe city crumble into the ocean. Automatically, her fingers reached into her bodice, and pulled out a small piece of paper. Worn with use, yellow with dust, torn at the edges, it was soft beneath her fingertips. She pressed it gently to her chest.
Sokka…
"Suki!"
She looked up suddenly in surprise—Toph was in her doorway, looking a bit disheveled and wild-eyed. Suki smiled. "Toph. It's so good to see you. You look wonderful with your hair like that."
An uncertain smile made its way to the young earthbender's face, and a hand absently reached up to touch the bun on the back of her head. She had found it a bit more convenient than her previous, looser hairstyle. But the bangs that had hung over her eyes for many years remained. "Thanks, it's good to see you too. You look a bit better than you did yesterday." Suki chuckled.
"I would hope so."
The smile fell from Toph's face, and she made her way to her bedside. "They said you had something to tell me," she said, her expression serious. Suki felt her own smile fade—her grip tightened on the small piece of paper in her hand.
"Yes. I do."
-x-x-
"She says they're coming by sea," Toph told the audience in the kitchen—it was almost like a painting, everyone frozen in place, in the middle of various actions. "The Fire Nation navy is making its way around the southern tip of the continent as we speak."
"Did she say how she knows this?" Haru asked, his voice carefully controlled. Toph nodded—and held up a small, worn piece of paper.
"Sokka sent her a messenger hawk." Haru gently set down the dishes he had been carrying. Teo rolled forward slightly, and Mai placed the knife she had been holding on the counter beside the carrots. Zuko moved closer to her, gently laying a hand on the small of her back. Toph looked down at the paper. "It says they broke out of prison," she read. "They stole messages from the army base's central office, and those messages contained details of the attack. They said the attack on Lingsi will happen the 5th day after the summer solstice."
Teo blinked. "They broke out of prison?"
"It was probably the waterbenders," Zuko interjected from the other side of the kitchen table. "We hadn't yet built a prison for them, and were trying to contain them in a normal prison. I'm sure Sokka found a way to use that to his advantage."
"Are they coming, then?" Mai asked. Toph looked down at the paper in her hands again.
"He says they're going to try to make it here on time, but no promises. They've still got the Fire Nation chasing after them."
Teo noticed the pinch of fear in her expression—she was still worried for Sokka, understandably. He wondered whether Suki had noticed Toph's extreme concern for her husband's safety.
Haru put down the pile of dishes in his arms, and wiped his hands with a towel. "I'll go tell the Council," he said abruptly. "They'll call a meeting of the Board, probably by nightfall."
"Don't stay long," Toph ordered. "We have plans of our own to make, and you have to give us all the news you collect in the city." The tall earthbender nodded curtly, and quickly made his way out the front door. He left only silence in his wake. For several long moments, no one moved, and no one spoke. It almost seemed as if no one breathed. Then:
"What's going to happen?" Aku asked nervously.
"There's going to be a big fight," Zuko replied slowly, watching out the window in front of him as Haru sped along the rippling desert on a large boulder. "Fire Nation soldiers are going to try to invade the city."
"But Haru and Toph won't let them, right?"
Teo noted he'd been omitted from that particular selection of heroes, but he said nothing. He was accustomed to it. "That's right," he said firmly, ignoring the pang in his heart. "Nobody in the city will let them."
-x-x-
"The Board is meeting at sunset," Haru announced when he arrived. Everyone looked up as he walked through the door. "They haven't announced the attack to the general population yet—they want to wait until they have a plan."
"Probably to avoid mass panic," Teo commented, moving a wooden soldier on a game board across from Aku. "They don't want people running scared."
"Especially not when they need them to fight," Toph added bitterly from her seat in the corner.
Zuko and Mai stayed silent. They were both on the couch, Mai lying with her head in Zuko's lap, Zuko's arm laid across her waist. She felt him shift a little bit underneath of her—a bad sign.
She always knew what he was thinking.
Later, she went into Suki's room to find her in the same place as before: still staring out the window at the dying light. Mai cleared her throat—she looked up.
"I…I wanted to apologize," she said haltingly, clasping her hands awkwardly behind her back. "For the way I acted, I mean. I didn't mean to be rude."
The young woman smiled up at her sincerely. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm sorry too. I should have realized you were only trying to help: I just never associated you with that kind of thing."
Mai smiled, slightly abashed. "I know I haven't been very friendly in the past." Suki looked away and chuckled. "I'm just glad you've forgiven me for it."
"If Toph trusts you, I trust you," she replied simply. "She's the toughest girl I know. Anyone who earns her confidence must be dependable. I mean, she's letting you live in her house! I'd trust you with my life!"
They both laughed quietly, each well aware that it was a vast exaggeration. But the grain of truth inside it warmed the conversation all the same, and made it much easier to continue. Mai asked about the North Pole, having never been there herself, and sympathized about the cold, unforgiving weather, and the craving for sunshine and warm air. Suki asked about what it was like to live as wife of a prince, and commiserated on the feeling of being caged, surrounded by people with dazzling false smiles and egos big enough to fill a room.
They discussed having husbands, both the good and the bad. They discussed running a household—and all the physical labor. Then the conversation turned to children.
"To tell you the truth, I'm a little nervous," Suki admitted, looking down at her belly and laying a gentle hand on it. "I don't know if…if I can handle it. Being a mother. I mean, I would protect my child with my life, of course…" Mai nodded.
"But you're afraid you'll mess up, being a parent. You're afraid you'll mess up your child." Suki bit her lip, and nodded.
"Are you afraid of that?"
Mai sighed, twisting her fingers around each other restlessly. "Yes," she said quietly. "I was afraid I'd never be good enough. I didn't want that responsibility. I didn't need something else to love—I had Zuko. And I didn't want the baggage, both physical and emotional. I didn't want the pressure of always having to be a role model, I didn't want to be looked up to." Suki tilted her head in sympathy.
"But that's what you got when Aku came."
A bittersweet smile came over the young woman's face. "Yes.
"I had met Aku once before Zuko took him. He knew I was Zuko's wife, so he asked me questions about where he was, etc. I didn't think much of it. I don't think he did either: he didn't even know my name at the time. But on the boat…he wanted to know everything about me. He started calling me Auntie Mai, he asked me about my favorite colors and why my hair was so weird—" She touched the two knots on either side of her head, and Suki laughed. "—and I decided to teach him how to use knives. He's a fast learner."
"So you like him?" she asked with a quirked smile.
Mai gave one in return, her eyes bright. "Yes."
Suki clasped her hands over her middle, looking down at them. "You're lucky you got to skip all the infant stuff," she said with a small laugh. "And you didn't have to give birth."
"That I am very thankful for."
The two women shared a smirk.
"Auntie Maaaaaai," Aku called from somewhere in the house. "Where's Uncle Zuko?"
Mai's smile fell, and she quickly glanced out the window. Sunset.
She knew exactly where Zuko was.
She had been right.
-x-x-
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Toph asked as they stood outside the council building. Zuko straightened his shoulders and nodded.
"I'm sure."
"You don't have to fight, Zuko," Haru said quietly, laying a hand on the other man's shoulder. "You have a wife and a child, nephew or not. And you have no obligation to this city."
The former prince turned to him, and Haru was immediately struck by how resolute he looked, standing there in the light of the streetlamps. "My wife and child live here now," he said flatly. "I have every obligation to this city."
None of them had any argument to that.
The Board Chamber was vast, but not many seats were filled. It was stadium seating, with chairs and tables sitting row by row in a semicircle around the center, steadily rising towards the high vaulted ceiling. Five older men milled around in the center, either talking amongst themselves or to the people now seated in the first few rows. Toph, Haru, and Zuko each took a chair, while Teo parked his wheelchair in the aisle next to Zuko.
"That's the Council," Teo told Zuko, pointing at the five men in the center. "They run all the Board meetings, and they make the final decisions after the Board has discussed it."
"Are their decisions absolute?" Zuko asked curiously. Teo shook his head.
"I don't know all the details, but I know there's a certain veto rule that allows the Board to cancel any decision made by the Council, just as the Board cannot make a decision without the agreement of the Council. But it takes a vast majority of the Board to overturn any decision—most of the power lies with those five men, even though they have to try to please as many people as possible in their verdicts." Zuko was impressed. They had made a very efficient form of government.
The eldest of the five men pounded a gavel against a podium. "Order!" he cried to the general audience. "The meeting shall now begin!"
Conversations simmered down to a few mutters and whispers as the man stepped down from the podium and returned to his seat at the center table. Another man stood up, walked to the podium, and announced, "Would Toph Bei Fong and her group come to the center, please? I believe they have an announcement to make."
"Her 'group'?" Zuko asked Teo as they all stood and made their way down to the center of the room.
"Any speaker is allowed to have his supporters back him up when he goes to speak," Teo responded quietly. "Because sometimes it takes more than one person to convey all the details in a convincing manner. The more people you have with you, the more persuasive you seem. The only rule is that every person must speak. They cannot be there just for moral support, or for show of force. That way, they must make a statement stating their beliefs, and that can be thrown back in their face if they only came down there to make it look like someone had a lot of supporters."
The brilliant level of government these people had continued to impress Zuko.
Toph walked up to the podium, and absolute silence fell over the Board. Haru, Teo, and Zuko all gathered around her—but Zuko tried his best to stay in the shadows.
"Yesterday," she said, her voice commanding and confident. "An old friend arrived at my house, having traveled all the way from the Northern Water Tribe." There were several mutterings—it was a significant distance away. "She brought a message with her, a message confirmed by someone I know and trust personally. He had infiltrated a Fire Nation prison, commandeering some of its land vehicles, and taking note of some of its important documents. Several of those documents described in detail an attack planned by the Fire Nation—an attack on Lingsi."
That caused more than a few mutters. After an instant of shocked silence, there was a complete uproar. Several people stood and shouted at Toph, chastising her viciously for bringing such horrible lies to the Board. One unhelpful woman began shrieking—until she was slapped by a short-tempered neighbor. All the other members were discussing the news in loud, panicked, urgent tones. Zuko shrank back a little, further into Toph's shadow. Toph herself had stiffened, and her knuckles were white where they clenched the edges of the podium. He could barely hear her muttering fiercely under the din:
"Blithering, panicky, stupid, mindless, dim-witted, moronic—"
"Order!" the eldest Council member was shouting as he repeatedly struck his desk with his gavel. Although the sound resonated wildly in the vast stone chamber, it had little to no effect. "Order in the Board! For the sake of all Spirits, sit down!" he roared finally, in a voice that was louder than Zuko would have thought possible coming from a man his age.
Slowly, the crowd complied. One by one the members lowered themselves into their chairs once more, the din was quieted, and the Board was once more silent and looking down to the center of the room. The Council member eased himself into his seat with a few crackling joints, then gestured kindly for Toph to continue.
The young woman took a deep breath. "This is not a joke, and it is not a lie. The information is fact: not story, and not rumor."
Haru spoke up: "The truth of this information is not questionable, and not open for debate. The Fire Nation navy is planning to attack Lingsi's walls by sea five days after the summer solstice. At this time they are already rounding the southern tip of the continent. We must make provisions to prepare."
"Exactly what are you proposing?" a member called out with frown from the middle of the audience. Teo rolled forward.
"We've already been preparing for this day ever since Lingsi was founded," he said. Zuko was impressed by his calm, authoritative demeanor. The boy was a natural public speaker. "We knew, as the last sanctuary in the Earth Kingdom, we would be targeted by the Fire Nation. How could we not? We represent the last fragments of the free world."
He drifted off into silence then, nudging Zuko lightly beneath the podium. Zuko blinked, his mind struggling to catch up. That's right, everyone in the group had to talk, to add to the discussion… Reluctantly, he stepped out from behind Toph, ducking his head humbly. In his mind, he really had no right to be there. This wasn't his city. He was just willing to defend it, that was all. More than willing. He would do whatever it took to protect the haven these people had built, the haven that he and his family now shared.
Still, that was a little bit of a far cry from what he knew he had to say now. He knew he was a stranger in this city; telling these people what he thought they should do felt presumptuous. But what choice did he have?
"We humbly propose to the Board," he began, "that the precautions and preparations for the attack that have already been made be set in motion. The army is trained and willing: just give them a battle plan. You have inventors working on defense systems and weapons: now you can give them a deadline. You can begin planning for a siege, which is a very real possibility. You can give weapons to non-bending fighters—I know for a fact that those preparations have already been taken care of." He thought of Haru shooing Aku away from a box of sharp stone blades, and had to bite back a smile. The Board was listening attentively now, their focus determined. "You have been getting ready for this day for years," he continued. "Now it is upon you. You must be ready: and you can be." With that, he stepped back, hands clasped tightly behind him. Haru clapped a hand on his shoulder—Teo elbowed him with a grin, mouthing, 'Awesome.' Zuko grinned back in return. Toph brushed past them all to move to the front.
"We leave the decisions up to the Board and the Council, considering our suggestions," she announced. "I and my group step down and hand the discussion to the Council."
-x-x-
It was very, very late that night when Toph, Teo, Haru, and Zuko arrived back at the house, exhausted and worn. The discussion had lasted for hours. Zuko, who was used to the slow-moving debates of the Fire Nation court, was surprised by the amount of progress they made. They had decided to leave the battle plan up to the commanders of the army. Haru would distribute weapons to the non-bending citizens, and they would attend training classes supervised by a few former Kyoshi warriors. (Zuko managed to figure out from the discussion that these women were much, much older, and had probably never met Suki or any of her friends like he had originally thought.) The construction department would turn their focus to creating a thick, impenetrable wall of earth to separate Lingsi from the beach, where most of the fighting would be taking place. Teo's father, the Mechanist (who was living separately in the middle of the city) was immediately alerted to the imminent threat, and he responded in a message that he had already been working on several weapon prototypes, and it wouldn't take long to finish them—added to the inventions he had already finished, they were well-equipped. Preparations for a siege were to be decided the next day.
The entire house was dark when they walked through the door. Zuko swiftly lit some candles, handed them out, said goodnight, and walked to his bedroom.
When he entered, he saw exactly what he expected to find: Mai sitting on their bed, arms folded, legs crossed, already in her nightgown with her long black hair about her shoulders, looking very, very dangerous.
He shut the door, and braced himself.
Her syllables were short and abrupt: "Ab-so-lute-ly not."
"Mai…" he began with a sigh, placing the candle on the bedside table and extinguishing it. The room was already well-lit by the lantern hanging above the headboard.
"I said no, and I mean it," she snapped. Zuko turned away, taking off his tunic and laying it on the dresser.
"These people could use an extra hand," he said quietly. She spluttered, sounding as if she were struggling very hard to keep her voice down in the sleeping household.
"You don't owe these people anything!" she exclaimed softly. "Nothing! And yet you're willing to just go and risk your life for them? Fighting against your own country, your own country's soldiers?"
"I'm protecting a safe haven for those people hurt by my country, by my country's soldiers," Zuko replied with a touch of chill in his voice. Mai was silenced. He continued to undress, laying his broadswords against the wall and pulling on his nightclothes. "And it's not even just that, Mai," he continued, turning towards her. "We live here now. You live here now. Aku lives here. It may as well be our country."
She turned away from him, towards the lantern. "That doesn't mean you have to fight," she muttered. "It doesn't mean you have to go chasing glory or honor or…or whatever it is you're supposed to get from battle."
She was upset, and he knew it. He moved to sit beside her on the bed, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders gently. "I'm not after those things. You know that."
Mai leaned into him wearily. "That doesn't make it any easier for me, Zuko. Or for Aku."
He winced. "He'll understand, I'm sure," he whispered. Mai wasn't sure whether he was talking to her, or himself. "He's a child. I'll be a hero, just like Toph and Haru."
"And I'll be a lonely, wrinkly old widow raising her nephew with the only two other people unable to go into battle: the overly-optimistic handicapped wheeler, and the motherly warrior wife," she said dryly, pulling away from him and standing. Zuko chuckled.
"It's hard to imagine you being wrinkly," he said frankly as she moved around the bed. She looked back at him sharply.
"It's hard to imagine being a widow."
Zuko's smile fell. Mai walked over to her side of the bed, got under the covers, and lay still with a small sigh. It was clear that was the end of the discussion for her.
But it wasn't for him.
He extinguished the lantern, getting into bed himself. Then he moved over, closer to her, and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "I'm sorry, Mai," he said softly. Mai rolled over to face him—and in the moonlit darkness, he could see the pain in her expression.
"You're a fool," she whispered, absently tracing his jawline with a finger. "Your emotions reign over you too much."
Zuko caught her hand. "Emotion's not such a bad thing."
"Easy for you to say," she mumbled. "It's so much easier to live without it. But having you in my life has made that quite impossible."
He raised an eyebrow. "'Quite'?"
"Quite."
"I'd like to keep it that way," he murmured, kissing her sweetly. "What a motivation to come back from the battleground alive."
"I never said I'd let you go," she murmured back, but not as firmly as she might have.
"Toph will grind me into dust for not going. She'd say I was being a coward and a hypocrite."
"Not entirely untrue," she teased lightly. Then her frown deepened. "Although, you have a point. Shall I take my chances with fate, or with Toph?"
Zuko grinned. "Fate may be a fickle mistress, but Toph's a merciless bitch when she wants to be."
He heard her giggle, a rare occurrence. "I suppose I'd rather have your body than a pile of dust," she conceded.
"It would look much prettier at a funeral, I'm sure," he said, moving in to kiss her again.
"I would brush your hair and everything," she muttered. "Make you look nice for once."
"I resent that."
As Mai faded into sleep in Zuko's arms, she wondered at what she had just done. Zuko had single-handedly made her change her mind—made her agree with him. Was she going soft? Was she so terribly out of practice in the fine art of saying 'no', and sticking with it?
After a few moments, the expression on his face appeared in her mind. Serious, determined. Sure beyond all doubt. She rubbed the hand on her waist gently, feeling his rougher skin beneath her fingers. She had rarely seen him so certain of himself. Perhaps that was what made her change her mind; the thought that her husband had found a cause he wanted to fight for.