A/N: I know the writing in the last few chapters has been pretty bad. I wasn't really invested in writing about a bunch of ten-year-olds (and eleven-year-old Zuko). But I feel like the writing in this chapter is less bad, because I'm less annoyed with the plot now. Actually the writing's probably worse. In fact, it's all downhill from here. Enjoy!

Hot Knife | Chapter IV

It was all very dramatic. Chai's father had arrived home early in the afternoon a full week ahead of schedule. The conversation at brunch was strangely scarce, and her parents spent most of the meal exchanging identical looks of concern. Chai wasn't sure whether she preferred this to the customarily nauseating love-fest that traditionally commenced whenever her dad came home on his monthly leave of absence. The silence didn't bode well, that much was certain. And so, she took it upon herself to alleviate the tension. But how?

She spied a bowl of small, round fruit at the corner of the dinner table. Inspiration struck. "Have you ever realized that lychee fruit are like eyeballs encased in dinosaur skin?" She plucked one from the bowl and proudly held it out to her aunt and uncle as irrefutable proof of her observation.

The adults looked at each other.

"Chai, that's a leechi nut," Fai corrected her.

Discouraged, Chai sullenly peeled the reddish husk from the fruit, allowing the pieces to fall to the table. She held up the naked fruit, determined to succeed in creating a moment of gaiety. "But look—the inside of the fruit is whitish like an eyeball, but more semi-transparent like…like a polar-bear dog's fur! 'Cause you know, their hairs aren't really white; they're hollow, so they won't freeze to death." She popped the fruit into her mouth and chewed, waiting for a break in the foreboding atmosphere that held the dining table captive.

Gan slurped a noodle; it disappeared into his mouth with a wet smack. Fai watched him with her lips pursed in disapproval at her husband's table manners. He snapped his chopsticks at his daughter, mimicking her chatter. "How is it that a nine-year-old girl knows so many words?"

Chai rolled her eyes. "I'm ten, Dad. I'm just gifted, I guess. Precocious, even."

Her mother chuckled indulgently. "You have such an imagination, Chai. Perhaps you'll become a great scholar someday."

Uncle choked on his mouthful of noodles at his wife's comment. "Dearest Fai, I'm afraid the royal scholars would go mad after an hour of 'intellectual' conversation with our daughter." He clicked his chopsticks at the would-be scholar once more. "You, young lady, are trouble."

It was an almost impalpable change, howbeit, just as those words were uttered the tension returned to the table. Fai placed a hand over her husband's. It seemed to be a cue, because he set his chopsticks aside. "Chai," he said, all traces of humor gone from his voice, "your mother and I have something to tell you."

Chai folded her knees up, tucking them under her chin so that her heels rested on the edge of her seat. She wrapped her arms around her stout legs. "What is it, Dad?"

Her parents exchanged significant glances for possibly the hundredth time that afternoon.

She regarded them with a longsuffering sigh. "If the two of you have telepathic superpowers, it better run in the family is all I'm saying."

Gan cleared his throat sheepishly before regaining his composure. "Okay, I'm not sure how to tell you this, so I'll just spit it out."

"Gross," she muttered, and then sobered when he shot her a stern look. "Sorry. Continue."

"Chai," he said, and then paused yet again. As previously stated, it was all very dramatic. "Your mother and I haven't been honest with you, which is something we regret. The truth we wish to tell you that we never told you but are going to tell you now is that…" Another pause.

Chai rolled her eyes.

"Fai is not your mother. And I am n—"

"Are you serious?!"

The expressions on the adults' faces were reminiscent of a pair of squirrel deer caught in a predator's sights. Petrified with fear.

"Dad."

"Yes?" the man who claimed not to be her father said.

Chai let her feet drop to the floor, and she leaned forward with her hands clasped on the table's wooden surface. "How many times do I have to tell you…your jokes just aren't funny. I'm not even kidding. You're a prison warden for Sozin's sake! Bad jokes are not the recommended method for inspiring fear in the hearts of prisoners."

She continued as Fai and Gan looked on in incredulous silence. "Think about it—they'll probably plan a massive jail break just to avoid another round of your comedy routine, and then you'll be forced to scour the nation in order to retrieve every last one of them, like a common dogcatcher, which would mean sacrificing precious hours of sitting on your armored butt playing Pai Sho with the rookie guards,"—they really couldn't get in a word edgewise—"and then, without Pai Sho, how else do you plan on cheating the rookies into working overtime without pay; not the mention the significant amount of gold that'll go into funding an international manhunt, which will, of course, eventually cause the Boiling Rock to sink into bankruptcy, all of which will either result in nationwide budget cuts, which will plunge our nation into an economic crisis, or worse, get you fired! We'll be poor!

"You promised to buy me a dragon moose!" She stopped and wheezed for oxygen. Melodrama was a taxing endeavor.

Fai spoke first. "Chai dear…dragon moose are carriage animals. Wouldn't you perhaps prefer a mongoose dragon? They reportedly have quicker reflexes."

Chai squeezed her face between her palms in anguish. "Dragon moose. Are. Adorable," she declared, distraught that her mother was apparently unable to grasp this irrefutable fact. "And this is the Capital, not the Black Cliffs. We're not exactly living on the edge. What use are quicker reflexes on a mongoose dragon when city traffic moves slower than a snail sloth?"

"Chai!" Gan bellowed.

Both ten-year-old and mother paused mid-discussion and looked at him as though his presence had slipped their minds entirely. "Yeah, Dad?" the former said.

The prison warden scratched his head as his daughter regarded him expectantly. His fingers inadvertently tipped the two-pronged headpiece out of alignment; it sat crookedly on his head as he sighed deeply. "I'll buy you a dragon moose."

She nodded. "Good call, Dad."

A hush spread over the dinner table like a thick slice of soggy bread, which is expectedly an uncomfortably experience for all persons present. Both adults sat in their chairs, exhausted from their attempt to reveal the truth to the child that crouched across the table and unsure of how to proceed.

"Anyway, I already know."

Chai looked at them. They stared at her. It was rather comical.

She took it as encouragement to continue. "I don't know why you would lie about it. It's pretty weird, but I mean, you must have had your reasons. I'm grateful to you more than anything, Mom…if it's still okay to call you that."

"Grateful?" Fai repeated in disbelief.

She nodded, looking down at the fruit peels on the table. "I know Mom wasn't pregnant or whatever when you guys got married, and I'm old enough to know that babies aren't delivered via stork, but not old enough to know where they come from, so maybe it's actually bears? But I'm pretty sure you have to be pregnant first and that means you look like you swallowed a watermelon, which you weren't according to the servants at Auntie Lan's house. So, that can only mean that Dad watermelonized someone else before the two of you got married, but you decided to raise me anyway because you're, I don't know, the most awesome mom in the world or something. I personally would have killed Dad, but it's nice that you didn't." She stopped and glanced up at them. They were still staring. Somehow it was a lot less comical.

Gan's jaw had dropped open, but it snapped shut as the girl finished speaking. He inhaled through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. This went on for about a minute. Chai and even Fai watched in fascination.

"Ye-e-s," he said finally. "Or you're adopted."

Chai blinked. "What?"

He sighed wearily, as if the burden of the secret had finally lifted from his chest…and perched onto hers. "You're adopted."

Her face contorted as she attempted to make sense of this revelation. "Are…are you guys cannibals?"

"Of course, not," Fai exclaimed. "Why on earth would you think that?"

"Because maybe you're fattening me up for slaughter, like the witch who tried to eat Hansel," she explained. "Or maybe I'm Gretel, and you're raising me in your cannibalistic ways. Oh my codpiece, was that really roast duck or were we just eating roast prisoner?"

"We're not cannibals," Gan assured her firmly. "Hansel and Gretel. Are those Water Tribe names?"

Suspicion still lurked in the ten-year-old's features. "So, you just took me in out of the goodness of your heart?"

"She," Gan nodded at his wife, "took you in out of the goodness of her heart. I reluctantly went along with it, but you turned out to be okay. I guess we can always cook you into a nice stew if your rebellious teenage years get too annoying for us to—ow!"

Fai withdrew her elbow from her husband's ribcage. "What your father is trying to tell you is that although we did not give birth to you, we love you as our own," she said.

"You don't know who my parents are?" Chai asked.

Her mother shook her head. "Unfortunately, we do not. It's uncertain if you are even a child of the Fire Nation, which is why we have had to keep your adoption secret," she explained.

She nodded numbly at the realization that she would probably never meet her biological parents were, if they were even still alive. "That makes sense," she mumbled. "So, you're still my mom and dad?"

"Absolutely," Fai said as Gan made a noncommittal noise beside her. Another jab to the ribs produced a pained "Yeah, kid."

This brightened her mood somewhat; at least, it was enough to make her pick up another leechi nut to eat. "I knew I'm too pretty to be related to Dad by blood," she remarked.

Her parents relaxed visibly, although concern lingered in their faces. Gan retrieved his chopsticks, which he clicked warningly at his adopted daughter. "Watch it, kid," he said, but there was no real threat in his words.

"We found you in a dragon moose feeding trough, wrapped in cabbage leaves, on the last day of our honeymoon," Fai blurted out. The relief of not losing the only daughter she had ever known apparently had the same effect as a truth serum. "Because your father neglected to remember the closing time for the carriage rides."

"Also, I know I told you that your name means 'scorpion,' but you're actually named after a drink," Gan added cheerfully. "Shu Jing was freaking tea vendor central. I bet if you cut one of the villagers, they'd bleed tea instead of normal red blood."

It was then that Chai came to realize that her life was a joke of cosmic proportions.

"Oy vey."

"Chai, stop speaking in languages that don't exist," Fai chided before scowling at her husband. "And I'll have you know that I protested this."

He held up his hands in a defensive gesture. "It's a great name! No one else in the Fire Nation has it."

"That is because it's the name of a beverage," she snapped.

He gave her a wounded look. "You agreed to it eventually."

She rolled her eyes. "We were newlyweds, dear. I didn't want to fight on our honeymoon."

Nostalgia drew a grin to his face. "It was a pretty fantastic honeymoon, wasn't it?"

Her expression softened. "It was perfect, dear," she said. "You made me feel like a princess."

"You're still my princess, Fai."

"And you are my strong, handsome knight. I love you more than all the riches in the world."

"I love you more than noodles."

"I would have preferred cannibals," Chai muttered.

Uncontrollable vomiting commenced in the distance.

/

Life resumed as usual. Despite Chai's claims of emotional trauma, her parents deemed her fit to attend school the next day. The second week at the Academy began with lessons in physical education, which was taught by a barrel-chested, tomato-faced cliff of a man.

"Well, if ye aren't the sorriest looking litter o' runts I ever seen. Ye'll refer to me as ma'am and nothing else!"

Or woman, apparently.

Chai slipped away at the first mention of push-ups and wind sprints. Physical activity was not her idea of real schooling. Not that she thought much of school to begin with. She brainstormed alibis as she crept around the grounds in search of a quiet nook. Maybe the library…

"I almost didn't recognize you without all the talking."

It took half a miracle and the fear of being overheard by an instructor on patrol to keep herself from shrieking. Instead, she dropped to the ground and lay there, flat against the earth in an attempt to camouflage herself. Yes, she could feel her skin and clothing turn gray even as she hugged the brick. Her eyes closed and she considered taking a nap. The shade was nice and the brick was cool against her face. She wouldn't get caught; she was one with the earth.

"Is it your mission in life to be as weird as possible?" Mai said, peering down at the prone girl from where she sat on the wide balustrade.

"Impossible," Chai muttered. "You can still see me?"

Mai rolled her eyes and leaned back against the column that obscured her from view of passersby. "Did you think you transformed into a pile of bricks?"

She sat up and scooted closer to the column in case anyone walked by. "Something like that. Ditching class are we, cousin?"

"Something like that."

They spent several minutes sitting in peaceable silence, neither worried that the other would rat them out for playing hooky. Here, in the shade, it was almost as if they sat outside the realm of consequences. Chai closed her eyes and dozed lightly as Mai balanced a needlelike blade on her finger.

"You know what I realized?" Chai said, as the other girl added a second needle to the next finger. Both needles stood perfectly still.

"That the world won't end if you stop talking for just ten minutes?"

"Nothing about my life makes sense. I've come to the conclusion that someone out there must have been incredibly bored."

A third needle joined the others. "Are you going somewhere with this?"

"I'm a cabbage patch kid."

"I'm not listening anymore."

"I'm adopted."

There was a pause. "I thought we went over this," Mai said. She held her left hand before her, palm facing up, with a silver needle balanced on each fingertip.

"I know," Chai replied, "but I was kind of hoping it wasn't true."

"Have you looked in a mirror?" the other girl said bluntly.

"As rarely as possible."

"Not my problem."

She craned her neck back to catch a glimpse of Mai's face, but only got as far as her knees. "My estranged relationship with mirrors or the fact that we're not real cousins?" she asked the knees.

"Both."

"Ah, well."

Mai uttered an exasperated noise. "Do you remember what you said to me when we got back from the palace?"

"That Ty Lee is the Matrix master?" Chai guessed. She took the girl's silence as a negative. "You mean when you said we weren't cousins?"

"What did you say?"

She played back through the memory. "That it still feels like we are cousins—oh, Mai. You think of me as your cousin!" A grin bloomed on her face.

"I never said that," Mai said curtly.

"But you didn't not say it," Chai exulted.

"Whatever. I can't help it if you're deluded."

She was grinning broadly now. The weight on her chest shifted. After all that had been revealed, nothing had really changed. She had always noticed the dissimilarities between herself and her guardians, but she now had the reassurance that she could go on living her life as usual. Gan and Fai were still her parents and Mai was her mean, gloomy cousin. Everything was as it should be. The worst part was over. It had to be.

"So, how's your boyfriend?" she said suddenly. "Is he still butt-hurt over the water balloon thing?"

"I'm holding a handful of needles above your head."

"Just asking."

"You, there!"

Both girls turned their heads at the deep voice that thundered through the hall. The physical education instructor loomed menacingly at the other end of the hall; the sight of the beastly adult had her scrambling to her feet. Mai flattened herself against the column, her clothing blending in with the painted wood, and with the advantage of the shade, she was virtually invisible. She cast a triumphant look at Chai as if to mock her own prior attempt at camouflaging herself on the bricks.

"You think I wouldn't notice one of you runts snuck off in the middle of class? Get over here and I might go easy on you, since you're a first time offender. I don't have all day, so get your rear in motion!"

Chai obliged. She broke into a run in the opposite direction. A series of heavy thuds notified her that the instructor was hot on her heels, shouting expletives that were probably not appropriate for use in an educational setting. The irony of running around school grounds in order to avoid participating in physical exercise was not lost on her. She would probably be caught sooner than later, and she had absolutely no plan of action for what would happen then. Her feet kicked up dust as she ran for her life.

It was just another day.

/

A/N: Well, then. Glad that's over with. There's a small time jump coming up ahead, so you can look forward to that.

Thanks to sunflower13, Moon White Rose, and Rumpologist for the reviews. And to Rumpologist: Bear Zumba makes my thoughts sizzle, yo. I am so down for this party.