Chapter 14: The Third Attempt
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Mai walked in the forest, trying to think over what she could do to get back on Zuko's good side. She probably shouldn't have been sneaking around behind his back. She was surprised to find that her cheeks were wet.
"I want Zuko back," she moaned to herself.
Suddenly, a sound distracted her, and she turned on the source with knives brandished.
Dark figures stepped into Mai's vision, and after deciding they probably weren't friendly, Mai started pinning them to the trees. She didn't think to call out, as there didn't seem to be too many of them. She'd neutralize the threat they posed and then get Zuko to figure out what to do with them. They just kept coming, and Mai found some of them were closer than she'd judged. The ground started moving under her.
Earthbenders! she thought, her shocked body unable to produce the word. Why would a group of earthbenders be ambushing women alone in the forest? They obviously couldn't know who she was. She was forced to jump around to avoid the rocks thrown at her. The shifting ground below her didn't help. But she'd done this before, and was confident she'd be able to hold out until Toph recognized the problem. She was tiring fast, though, and that wasn't helping matters. "Who are you?" she gasped out, breathing hard.
"It doesn't matter who we are. It only matters that we know who you are! You shouldn't have come into our territory without your friends to protect you, Fire Lady."
Mai froze. It was the wrong thing to do, but her body did it, anyway. She really hadn't realized just how tired she was, after all. She found herself on her back on the ground, trying to move, but not having the strength to do so. Soon, the earth moved around her wrists and ankles, anyway.
"You'll fetch a high price, your ladyship. You probably didn't know how big a job you were undertaking when you were crowned!"
"How do you know me?" Mai asked flatly, hoping she sounded calm. What would happen to Zuko if she were really hurt? Or just taken from him? She really shouldn't have been walking in the woods alone.
"The Fire Lord is very conspicuous with that scar of his. We saw the Avatar swimming nearby, too. The flying bison doesn't leave much to the imagination, either. It was very easy to deduce that you, being the only Fire Nation lady here, must be the Fire Lady."
Mai groaned. Maybe their disguises could use some help. She wished she could warn everyone else. Where was Toph?
"Let's take her away, boys!" said the leader, the one who'd been standing over her.
Some of his men moved closer.
Suddenly a hard gust of air blasted over Mai, knocking most of the earthbenders flat. She felt the earth shaking, and saw water flying by overhead. Then the restraints on her wrists and ankles fell away. Zuko was by her side in an instant, helping her sit up. She looked around and saw the shapes of men pinned to trees, some by her knives, some by ice.
Mai clung to Zuko with her waning strength, noticing that she was trembling uncontrollably.
"Did they hurt you?" Zuko asked darkly.
"Only my pride. That's never happened before."
"It wasn't exactly fair," Zuko pointed out.
Mai cleared her throat. "Boiling Rock," she said pointedly.
Zuko tucked Mai's head under his chin. "All right. That's understandable, but you couldn't see them too well tonight."
"That isn't it," Mai said. "I just got tired."
"Tired, huh?" Zuko's face almost smiled, not that Mai could see it. "Will you listen to me next time? That fight wasn't as long as the one at Boiling Rock."
"Fine. I don't plan on being left alone by you for more than five minutes, anyway," Mai insisted, and burrowed deeper into Zuko's arms.
Katara would have smiled at Zuko and Mai, except that she was currently glaring at the nearest enemy, and smiling would have ruined the effect.
"Toph," Aang called, "kindly monitor his truthfulness for me, please." Aang turned to the assailant nearest him, which happened to be the one Katara was already glaring at. "Which one of you is the leader?"
The man jerked his head to the left. "That one. Over there," he squeaked. "The one with the sword."
Aang located the man referred to, several trees over, iced in place. "What were you intending to do with Fire Lady Mai?" Aang demanded, his voice hard.
The man glared back at Aang. "We were hired by Fire Nation officials to take out one or both of the royal couple, or to take the Fire Lady prisoner and send her to work in the mines." He grinned wickedly at the stoic-faced Zuko.
Enough of Mai's strength had returned so that she could cling more tightly to Zuko. She wasn't really afraid of the fates that had been described, just of being separated from Zuko.
Katara felt her breath catch. Fire Nation officials?
"Who?" Aang demanded. "What are the names of those who hired you?"
"They remained nameless, but they promised a handsome reward."
Aang turned towards Zuko. "What do you think we should do with them?"
"I say we leave them here!" Toph volunteered.
"Toph!" Katara scolded. "We're not trying to kill them."
Toph shrugged. "It was just a suggestion, Sweetness."
Katara rolled her eyes.
"They shouldn't be left alone, or they'll probably attack again when we aren't paying attention," Zuko said, pulling Mai with him into a standing position. "We'll have to imprison them somewhere they'll be watched closely. I'll also have to figure out who paid them to do treason's dirty work."
Aang turned to Sokka. "Is there a town nearby?"
"Yeah, there's a town nearby. How are we going to get all of them over there?"
"Tie them to Appa and fly them into town?" Aang suggested. "Unless you think it's better if we don't make Appa visible. If there's too many for one trip—" he peered around in the gloom, trying to see how many men there were, exactly—"we'll leave some here, guarded, and come back for them. We shouldn't use the balloon, I don't think; if they were to thrash around, they might upset the basket, and then you'd all be in trouble."
Zuko gently unlocked Mai's arms from around him. "I'll have to go and convince the villagers to lock them up. Of course, a couple others should come along to make sure I don't kill them." Zuko shot the leader a poisonous glare. "We'll see how much garbage Appa can carry."
Mai frowned at Zuko's subtle suggestion that she stay behind. Their fight had shown her how desperate she was to be with him, and the attack had shown her the actual horror of the possibility of being separated permanently. She tapped her foot at Zuko.
"Sorry, Mai. I don't want to overload Appa. I also don't want you riding him with this bunch."
Mai sighed. "Katara will keep me company, I guess." She gave Katara a small smile that looked more like a grimace.
Katara gave Mai a small smile back and nodded. She'd actually been hoping to go with Aang, but if Mai needed her here…
Aang headed off to their camp to fetch some rope. When he came back, Katara released the men one by one, while Aang, Sokka and Zuko trussed them up. They quickly learned not to let Zuko tie the ropes. Once that was done, they piled the men onto a slab of earth, and Toph and Aang ferried them to Appa.
Zuko stole one last kiss from Mai before leaping onto the available space on Appa's back.
Mai watched Appa fly off, and then turned to Suki, Toph and Katara. "I want to know now whether or not I'm pregnant, because Zuko is going to be alone with Aang and Sokka on the way back. Chances are, they won't be able to keep their mouths shut."
Katara bit her lip.
Suki drew a breath, but decided not to say anything.
Mai kept going. "If by some miracle, they keep their mouths shut tonight, we're going to be here for a while, meaning on this quest. There will be thousands of opportunities. Zuko can't think I'm pregnant if I'm not."
Katara nodded. "That makes sense; judging by how he's acted today, Mai is right." Katara said this mainly to Suki.
"How are we supposed to tell if Sunshine is a mom?" Toph asked.
Katara frowned and looked at Mai's stomach thoughtfully.
Mai shifted uncomfortably, but this was what she'd been asking for in the first place.
"You're somewhere close to the three month mark, aren't you? We should be able to feel something."
"Feel something?" Mai asked doubtfully.
"Yes. I'm not sure what, exactly, but Gran Gran would feel the stomachs of women who came to her thinking they might be pregnant, and she was hardly ever wrong about whether they were or not. Actually, I don't think she ever told anyone they were when they weren't; she just occasionally told them they weren't when they actually were." Katara grinned at the memory of the aftermath of one such incident.
Mai looked at Katara for a moment. "So, I just have to feel my stomach, and see if there's... something... different about it?"
Katara nodded. "I think so."
Mai pressed her hand to her stomach and rubbed it around. She stopped and sighed. "This is pointless. I don't know what my stomach feels like in its normal state."
Katara frowned, thinking. Then her face lit up. "I know I'm not pregnant. And neither is Suki or Toph. So we can compare our stomachs to yours, and if yours if different, then you're probably pregnant!"
Toph was apparently more observant than Suki and heard the end of this exchange. "Heck no! Keep your hands away from me, Swishy!" Toph grouched in earnest, taking a step back. She had subjected herself to a lot of things with this group, but that was one too far. "You can play with Suki all you want, but don't you even try me!" With that statement, her face flushed and she gripped the edges of her pants.
The group was silent for a moment until Suki broke the stillness. "Toph, are you pregnant?"
A look of complete sarcasm flowed onto the youngest girl's cheeks as she replied, "I have a new name for you: Dunce."
As Suki and Toph continued to argue, Mai decided she'd had enough. "We can leave Toph alone if she doesn't want us to do anything." She shrugged. "You and Suki should do well enough, Katara."
Katara sighed, and then started with her own stomach. After she was done, she turned towards Suki. "Suki, do you mind?" Katara asked rather hesitantly, reaching towards Suki's stomach. This is awkward, she thought.
"Go ahead," Suki told her.
Katara felt Suki's stomach, and determined that it felt very much like her own.
Then Katara turned to Mai. Mai cringed slightly as Katara laid a hand on her stomach, but as she'd requested that Katara do this, she refused the urge to pull away. Katara pressed down and slowly felt in a swoop around Mai's stomach. She paused a moment when she reached the bottom part of the swoop. She pulled her hand away and felt her own stomach again, and then reached out and felt Mai's once more. No, she wasn't imagining things. There was a hard, rounded ridge in Mai's stomach that wasn't in either hers or Suki's.
"Well?" Mai demanded.
Katara grinned at her, eyes glowing. "I'd say you're pregnant!"
Mai grinned so widely that Suki nearly fell over. "Well, won't the Fire Lord like to hear that after all the abuse his brain has probably gone through today!" Mai hugged Katara before she thought twice. "Thanks. Knowing makes me feel a lot better."
Katara blinked at Mai, in near-complete shock at being hugged by the notoriously reticent Fire Lady. "You're welcome," she finally managed.
"When are you going to tell him?" Suki asked.
Mai drew back. "When we're alone. I don't want one of the other guys to say they knew all along."
They fell into talking about lighter subjects.
All throughout the conversation, Mai's thoughts turned to exactly how difficult it could be dealing with a pregnancy on the road—especially when treason was hanging over their heads. She paid less and less attention as the minutes wore on.
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Appa flew over the tops of the buildings of the Earth Kingdom town. "This place ought to have a good place to lock them up," Sokka said.
Zuko nodded, looking from the town to the earthbenders. He trained his eyes on the different buildings, trying to decide which one would be the prison. He was unable to talk, because he was afraid he would end up breathing fire instead.
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Topekaia was outside the town, searching for some herbs. When she saw Appa flying into the town, she knew she'd finally found where Mai had gone. She followed Appa into the town. She was surprised when she got close enough to see that several men were tied up on Appa's back.
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Aang and Zuko hopped off of Appa.
"Is there a jail around here?" Aang called. His voice was rough with controlled anger.
"We have some thugs we need locked up," Zuko added, and fire did indeed collect around his fists.
People came out of their houses and workplaces to see what the commotion was about.
When he saw that he had their attention, Zuko gestured up at the earthbenders. "These men tried to kill my wife. They're earthbenders, so we'll need wooden cells."
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Topekaia slipped into an alley way before either Zuko or Aang could see her. Fire Lord Zuko's wife is Mai, she thought. So someone dared attack the Fire Lady?
"I was supposed to be there to protect her," she whispered to herself under her breath.
Then she wondered, How was it they overpowered Mai? She counted the men: twenty-five. So that was what happened. There was only so much you could do with shurikens. Still, there was something that she was missing. Mai was agile, even if she was overpowered. Perhaps she had been wounded.
The very thought sent a shiver down Topekaia's spine. Her friend, wounded, hurt. She turned her gaze to the prisoners with new fury in her eyes. She would see that they were locked up. She knew where the prison was.
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A few men moved forward to take some of the assailants away. "Who are you?" one of them asked Zuko and Aang.
"I'm the Avatar," Aang said, "and this is the Fire Lord."
Zuko winced. A thought occurred to him at that moment: what if these thugs had come from this town?
A few men stopped what they were doing. "They attacked the Fire Lady?"
Zuko and Aang nodded.
The general mood changed. More people came forward to help.
"Way to promote peace... attacking foreign dignitaries," some muttered.
Zuko relaxed. He would have helped, but Sokka and Aang stopped him.
"We'd like for them to live, Zuko," Sokka said, a bit shakily, not sure whether to laugh or not.
Zuko hung back, folding his arms and staring at the men who'd almost taken his wife away.
With a determined stride, Topekaia pushed through the crowd until she was standing right in front of Zuko.
"Fire Lord," she began, ignoring the shock on the faces of the three young men. "If it so pleases you, I will show you the cells in which these fiends are to be kept." Her voice was calm but her eyes blazed. He had thought they hadn't needed her? Well, now they must see that, if she couldn't be their friend, at least she could be useful. Useful—sometimes she hated that word.
Zuko blinked. "Um… sure. Where did you come from?"
"I've been following you, tracing you, one could say. In case something happened. Which, it seems it has." Topekeia's voice was calm, but there was no mistaking its knife-sharp terseness.
"Wow. Someone was tracking Zuko. Ironic," Sokka laughed.
Zuko felt sheepish. He backed away from Topekaia and put his hands up. "All right, so it did. I'm sorry we left you behind."
Topekaia's eyes flashed. "Are you really, Fire Lord Zuko? I don't think you appreciate how much being a part of the actual Fire Nation meant to me. I was really beginning to feel like I belonged and that I wasn't just a useful piece of the chain to be cast off at will." She wiped her forehead as though she were surprised at herself. "Can you understand that?"
Zuko was very serious now. "Of course I understand the need to belong. I'm sorry I made you feel that way. I had no idea. I was hoping we'd be back before we were really missed. You can be a part of the mission if you still want to be."
Topekaia beamed. Her smile was so wide that she was almost afraid that she looked like a ditsy girl at play. "Thank you, Zuko. Now about the prison for these men."
She nodded to the villagers who had already lined up the offenders and she led them to the abandoned prison where she'd been staying.
Zuko wasn't sure how to react to Topekaia looking like Ty Lee. He decided on being happy about it. He nodded and followed her.
Once they had finished locking up the prisoners in their cells (both Zuko and Topekaia enjoyed giving some of the men the occasional hard shove) the party returned to Appa.
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Appa landed with a grim-faced Zuko, a sleeping Sokka and a serious Aang. Mai rose automatically, determined to do as she'd said she would, but something held her back. She'd seen already how worried Zuko got at the slightest sign of her illness. The prospect of nine months of continuously becoming less and less helpful in battle, and at the same time less and less independent, made Mai shiver involuntarily.
Zuko slid down Appa and hurried over to Mai. "We got them locked up tight," he announced proudly.
"That's nice," Mai said distantly.
Zuko pulled back to look at her. "Is something else wrong?"
"No." Mai struggled with the definition of "wrong" in this instance.
"Then what is it?" Zuko asked.
"Can we talk about this alone?" Mai tugged on his sleeve, leading him toward the forest.
Zuko glanced around. "Sure, I guess."
Sokka frowned. "What does she have to say that she can't say in front of us?"
Mai needed no literal daggers to emphasize the look she shot Sokka.
"Never mind." Sokka sat back.
Mai dragged an overwhelmed Zuko into the trees.
"All right, I'm done waiting. What happened?'
"Well, Zuko, I think the Order is going to have to think up a new condition for agreeing to serve you."
"You mean, other than wanting me to produce an heir with you? Well, I don't think they're really holding to that, seeing as it's probably them who sent assassins after us—" Then Zuko blinked. "Do you mean to say that the first condition is now... irrelevant?"
Mai nodded. "They can't say they're serving a Fire Lord with no heir."
Zuko's jaw dropped. His brain started reeling. "Wow," he managed. He just stared at Mai. "Are you sure?"
"I made sure nobody told you until I was." Mai nodded.
Zuko let out a breath he'd been holding. "Oh, Agni. We were supposed to do this but now..." Zuko nearly fainted. After regaining his balance, he stared at Mai. "That's wonderful," he said, and his voice came out shakily. An overwhelming amount of emotions and thoughts were rattling around in his brain, and he was having a hard time sorting them out.
"Really?" Mai asked cautiously, sensing Zuko's disturbed state.
"Really." Zuko looked over to the clearing, hoping nobody would be coming over to check on them. They probably expected him to yell or something. "How many of them know?"
"Everyone," Mai sighed.
"Everyone knew but me?" Zuko exploded.
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Katara and Aang had been talking at the campsite when Zuko's shout rang through the woods. Katara glanced in the general direction of the shout. "I guess she's told him," Katara remarked.
"Told him?" Aang echoed.
"That she's pregnant." Katara's tone indicated that what she'd been referring to should have been obvious.
"Oh." Aang paused. "Does that mean that I no longer have to keep quiet about it on pain of death?"
Katara couldn't help giggling a little. "I suppose not. Although it was never quite 'on pain of death,' more 'on risk of severe pain.'"
Aang shrugged and returned to the previous topic of conversation.
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Mai covered her ears and backed away. "I didn't want them to. It was going to be between Katara and I, but Suki guessed, and then she told Toph, and Sokka, and Sokka told Aang…"
Zuko shook his head in bewilderment. "Well, we'll make the best of this. Will you let me take care of you more now?"
"If it'll keep you happy." Mai fell into his arms, having restrained herself for the better part of the conversation.
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Many thanks to the kind people to took the time to brighten our week with their reviews: 4everMaiko, gloomy maiko lover, Kimjuni2, and Silvereyes12.