To say that Mai was behind on work was something of an understatement. The Fire Nation was behind on time just by nature of the war that they had raised. That was manageable. With Zuko, her, and some of the upper nobles, advisors and generals working on it, they could eventually get things sorted out... and that was what they had begun doing.
But things hadn't proved to be as simple as that. Some of the generals had commited war crimes under Ozai, and while they had been pardoned except for the more sever crimes, the other nations were rightfully unwilling to work with them. Beyond that, there were quite a few nobles and advisors she knew that were still loyal to Ozai, either openly or in secret, and they had to either be dismissed or bypassed depending on their level of influence.
And finally, there was Zuko. His heart was in the right place, he really did want to see things fixed and the balance restored. But his pride and his honor, and by extension his anger issues, were getting in the way. She felt like she was fighting to push several tons of rock up a hill with a small group of people, and the strongest of them couldn't make up his mind if he wanted to push or pull.
That was the reason that she had General Iroh summon Zuko. How much smoother things would go if Iroh would take on some of the responsibility of fixing the world, but he was content to manage his teashop and watch things go on. Iroh felt that it was time for a new generation, but it wasn't a new generation that they were dealing with outside of the Fire Nation. Experience would serve them all well.
He wouldn't have it, however. And so Mai was forced to go about it in the most roundabout way of having him provide a little mentoring to Zuko. Assuming that Zuko picked up and put into practice even half of what Iroh passed on to him, there was the stakes at hand that if he found out Mai had arranged it, he would lose it.
She rubbed her temples and sat down the papers for a moment, letting her eyes readjust and relax a bit before she got back to it. She had just settled into the readjust part of that plan when she heard a slight scuffle in the hall and her doors suddenly burst open, a few guards pilling on top what she thought she made out as Ty-Lee's pink clad form.
One of her trademark sighs later she was up and walking towards them. "That will be...quite enough." She half expected to look down and see Ty-Lee grin back up at her, having fun with making her life and the guards life a little more inconvenient, but a little more lively at the same time.
The expression she wore was quite serious, and the three paralyzed guards she glimpsed outside the doors showed her that Ty Lee hadn't taken her usual time to play and sneak around. She made a mental note to see about having a few more guards assigned to this wing of the palace and have the standing ones reprimanded. If Ty Lee and been an assassin, there was a good chance her or Zuko could have been quite dead.
At her word, the guards immediately let go of Ty Lee and jumped straight up and to attention, looking slightly flustered and a bit embarrassed. "Yes Ma'am. Lady Ty Lee demanded to speak with you and didn't allow us to revive permission. When we told her to wait, she forced her way through."
Mai glanced them each over once as Ty Lee picked herself off of the floor and then nodded at them. "Very well. You men our dismissed. Ty Lee may stay." The guards saluted her at once and then turned on heal, marching back out of the room and closing the doors behind them.
"Ty, childhood friends or no, you can't just..." Her words faltered a bit at she realized that Ty Lee was glaring at her rather harshly, and uncharacteristically. She wasn't sure if she had ever actually seen this much anger in her friend before, and it was enough to make her stop.
"Tell me that you had nothing to do with it Mai." Ty Lee's voice didn't have the usual charm and bounce it usually did, instead low and stern. Whatever it was Ty Lee was upset about, she was sure that Azula had something to do with it. She was the only one that could cause someone like Ty Lee to become this ruffled.
"Look, Ty. I don't know what little conspiracy Azula's put into your head, but..." As she started to feel might become a repeated pattern for the duration of this little conversation, Mai felt herself cut off again.
"Azula didn't have to tell me anything. In fact, she didn't tell me anything. She just yelled at me Mai. And you know what? I didn't blame her. It hurt, but no matter how much her words hurt, what you and Zuko have done to her is far worse. I can't believe that you would..." It was Mai's turn to interupt Ty Lee, throwing her hands up in a stopping motion.
"Stop, Ty. Look, what are you going on about? I can tell you that I haven't so much as seen Azula since the boiling rock, let alone have any hand in the arrangement of her treatment. I have far more important things to deal with than that sociopathic has been..."
If she could have listed every possible event that could ever occur in her life, she was sure that what happened wouldn't have ever so much as crossed her mind. Ty Lee struck her. And not just a light tap, a full forced slap crossed her face that she was sure would leave a mark for awhile. "Don't you dare, Mai. Don't you say another word."
Mai didn't retaliate. She didn't even say a word. All she did was stair in stunned silence at Ty Lee, her mouth slightly moving, trying to form some symbiance of anything to say, with her hand slightly stroking the burning skin, but the event had been so far outside of anything she had ever given any credence to happen that her mind was still trying to process what had happened.
"Mai. You have her locked in a cage smaller than she is, beaten and bleeding. As bad as she looks, I think your not even feeding her every day. She could be sick, and she might by dying. Shes as crazy as she ever was, and instead of helping her like a good friend and brother should have been, you've been quietly waiting until she died."
That gave her something to mull over. As terrible as that sounded, as terrible as it might be, it was infinitely more tangible in her mind. She could see the plausibility. Zuko hadn't let anyone near Azula besides the guards and her doctors, which meant if that wasn't true, just guards. He himself hadn't even been to see her until yesterday. Even so, Zuko was a good man, for all his faults. He wouldn't just leave his sister to die. "Ty, I think you saw something wrong, or Azula made you think of things the wrong way. There isn't anyway that Zuko would just leave her to rot. Shes his sister, Ty Lee."
Ty Lee shook her head, a few tears rolling down her face, streaming from her eyes. "It doesn't matter, Mai. He hates her. He really, really hates her. And now shes sitting down there, dying in a hole, because Zuko just wants her to be gone."
She thought about it and turned it over in her head. Zuko certainly had the power to hold a lasting grudge, but that level of vindictiveness was beyond him. He was burning and passionate, but he wasn't sadistic. Not like his sister was. No, that was something that she would do to him, not the other way around. It wasn't possible.
...Not unless it wasn't vindictiveness that had made the decision. If what Ty Lee was saying was true, it wasn't just his sister he had locked away. He had pinned everything that he hated about his family, everything that had haunted him, onto her. Azula was a bad person, there was no saving that. But she wasn't bad to the point that Zuko would do something like that to her.
"Ty... I think if you just wait until Zuko gets back, we can sit down and talk to him, and he'll straighten this whole thing out." She had to give her husband a chance to explain the situation. More than likely, Azula had just gotten into Ty Lee's mind and convinced her the Zuko was out to get her.
"No. Mai." She said, as she turned to leave, casting a look over her shoulder. "I don't want you doing anything until you go and see her. See her yourself, Mai. See whats happening. You owe her that much, if nothing else." And then Ty Lee was gone, and Mai was left alone with a pile of papers, and the feeling that life was about to get a lot more complicated.