Title: Paint It Black
Prompt: #006 Apathetic
Notes: To be honest, this one is just sort of there. I don't like it, but I can't bring myself to delete it. Thus…
Paint It Black
Mai doesn't care. She never has. She watches the world through eyes jaded with apathy. Every emotion is dulled to the point of nothingness. If she was once as fiery and passionate as her boyfriend, she can't remember those days. That's okay. She is okay. Zuko can keep his rampant emotion, let it weaken him as much as it strengthens him. She is satisfied to stay within with her armor of apathy, perhaps not at her strongest but protected from the world anyway.
Zuko hates that, she knows. Mai can balance him, can be the ice that cools his unrelenting flames. She can be that for him, but she cannot be the sort of girl that Zuko wants. Zuko wants passion, wants loud arguments followed by gooey reconciliations, wants a girl who will have all of the fury of hellfire and all the comfort of a summer day. Mai is not that girl, forgot how to even pretend to be that girl long ago.
Their relationship is tumultuous at best. Not in the traditional way of fights. No. There is tension broiling beneath the surface at all times, just waiting to be released. And through it all, Mai keeps herself protected behind a wall of apathy.
So when the corner of her eye catches him looking at Katara with the sort of warmth and devotion that he has never graced her with…she doesn't feel anything. Her heart is curiously frozen, unable to even muster a little anger.
Instead, she moves a Pai Sho tile.