Writer's Note: I went a little bit back in time for this one. It takes place a little bit after "Hold Onto Me", but a while before "Changing of the Guard", just for reference.

Warning: Takes place four years post-series and contains spoilers.

Unsurprisingly, Mai found herself bored at times.

Oh, sure, being Zuko's wife was taxing, especially since, for the first time in recent history, the Fire Lord included his wife in practically every meeting and treated her as a co-ruler instead of just a consort. Which was, to her, actually really thrilling; despite spending most of her life under the thumb of her father's political career, politics as a whole – its dance, its double-edges, its ups and downs – was something she had always enjoyed. With Zuko, as unofficial co-ruler, she was able to remain in the flux of things, and even got to have a say. That was no small thing.

But the days that Zuko had to spend away from the Palace, when she had to remain to keep consul (something Zuko trusted only her with) in his absence, the days were slow-paced and boring.

On days like this, Mai wondered if being born into nobility was some sort of punishment from a past life. An average woman would throw herself over hot coals for the kind of life she was living (minus the politics, ironically), but Mai found the downtime dull, duller than her time in Omashu with her parents.

At first, Mai would spend her spare time making the servants nervous. She loved doing this. Ever since she was a kid, tormenting the servants was something she always made time for. Sending them on bizarre errands and asking them squeemishly personal questions...there was never boredom in that.

And while her mother had always told her that once she married, she would have to keep a house, she discovered that she really didn't have to; the house seemed to take care of itself, regardless of whatever it was she said or did. Thus, there really wasn't much to do in those regards, either.

So one day, when Zuko was in the outer islands checking the status of the people there, Mai left the palace and went into the city.

Despite being an elusive political figure, and despite the fact that she was no stranger to the common crowd, people still had a hard time recognising her for who she was. While she was not lacking in beauty, certainly on her own, without Zuko and his own distinctive features, she didn't stand out. And for once, she didn't mind being overlooked. She imagined that if Zuko found out what she did in her spare time in the city, he would probably throw a tantrum, and while that was amusing, it was also tiring.

It was best he didn't know.

She dressed casually, her hair down, the colours she wore subdued. Since her objective was to be overlooked or, indeed, to be quickly forgotten, she made sure that her looks were average at best. This wasn't hard; she had had a lot of practise with that as a child, as well.

What her childhood also prepared her for was the uncanny ability to be able to just listen to what was going on around her without feeling the need to speak up about it. And it was with this ability that she quashed the boredom and did her own subtle part in helping Zuko's rulership easier.

She listened to the rumours. She tucked them away. She infiltrated the average populace, silently gaining trust and acquaintanceship with them, all while rooting out the lies within the threads of gossip and listening to the harsh truths as well. In return, she added to the rumour mill, her own truthful tidbits of what she "knew" as fact, and very carefully chipped away at the distrust and lies throughout the hateful lies, revealing them as such in order to clear her husband's name.

It was hard work, to be honest. Finding the right words to say, especially when the people surrounding her were particularly fired up about it, was difficult. Despite being no stranger to schooling her words with caution, even she found that sometimes her words only added to the flames of distrust.

It was hard, but, oh, it was thrilling. Weaving patterns with words, bantering with masters like they were sparring, detecting the lies and the facts and reworking them...it was a kind of rush that was eclipsed by only two other things in her life: Sparring with Zuko, and mastering her martial arts.

It was her private joy. It was a small part to play. But it was no less thrilling or rewarding.

One time, however, it was her actions that were needed and not her words. And it was those actions that led to the greatest change.

"Mugai! Welcome!"

Mai looked up and smiled, giving a short wave before sitting at her usual table. "Mugai" was her pseudonym, one that she couldn't help but find amusing, given its meaning. Still, it was similar enough to her own name that she didn't have a problem responding to it, so that was enough.

The voice belonged to a middle-aged man who sat behind the service counter. He had black hair streaked with grey pulled into a topknot, and he never failed to dress cleanly and professionally. It was something Mai both respected and enjoyed about visiting his restaurant. The food wasn't bad, either.

She took her place right in the middle of the room. The fact that the owner, Puro, had made the effort to greet her, despite how busy it was, also touched her. She eyed the menu, checking for new items, while her ears opened and listened to the buzz around her.

"It was so boring, that play. I had seen the one before the end of the war, and it was far more interesting..."

"And he just got up and took the money, just like that despite the fact that it was meant to be a tip!"

"I can't believe that the curriculum is changing in the schools! Apparently it's all wrong..."

Pretty standard stuff, Mai noted, setting the menu down to signal that she was ready to order. The only thing that was slightly interesting was the mentioning of the schools; that was Aang's doing, mostly. Apparently he had managed to infiltrate one of the schools while staying in the Fire Nation, and what he had learned there was pretty disparaging. Now he was working with most of the curriculum staff to correct whatever discrepancies in history there were.

He would know, she thought. He was there.

One of the waitresses set a mug of tea in front of her and took her order. Mai sniffed the tea once she was alone and made a face. It was a far cry from Iroh's tea, or even her own. Still, she had an appearance to keep up, and she sipped it, only a little.

"I heard the Avatar is actually over a hundred, but he only looks young because of some ancient airbending technique..."

Mai smirked into her mug. Partial truths, all of it, always.

"And I said to him, like, no you didn't just say my hair looked stupid."

"You so didn't!"

"Of course I did!"

From the corner of her eye, Mai made sure that those two voices did not, in fact, belong to two girls that she had known while growing up that shared the same face as her best friend. They didn't, and she was relieved.

"Mugai!"

She looked up to see Puro hovering at her table with a big grin on his face. She wasn't sure, but for a few weeks she was starting to suspect that he was soft on her, and it amused her: It seemed that the only kind of man she could attract were highly emotional dweebs and overly preened older men.

"Hello," she replied. "How is business?"

She said it to be polite; really, she wasn't too interested, especially if what she suspected about him was true. She merely wanted him to speak his mind and get it over with so that she could go back to listening, however anti-climactic it seemed to be.

As Puro rambled about numbers, Mai tuned him out. Maybe today was a bust, anyways. Once he's done, I'll head to the next place and try again...

"Mugai, what do you think?"

She jerked her head up, suddenly realising that she was supposed to be offering input, something she just did not have. "I think you should do what you think is best, Puro," she said hastily, ensuring that none of her initial apathy showed in her words.

Puro smiled, obviously placated. "I thought you would say that, Mugai. Indeed, I think it's a great idea, too, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it."

What did I just agree with? She wondered idly, smiling faintly in reply to his words and sipping her tea as a bluff.

"So, obviously, you are feeling dissatisfied with the Fire Lord's mandates, as well."

Mai jerked her head up, her heart suddenly stuttering. She looked up, fighting desperately to keep the mask in place. "What?" she spluttered.

"Oh, you know," Puro replied, pulling out the spare chair at her table and sitting down across from her. "How the Fire Lord outlawed Agni Kais, and decided that he would take audiences with average people over nobles as a norm, and how he lets his wife co-rule." He blinked, smiling a little. "Not that I think a woman is any less competent as a ruler, but everyone knows that the regent of the Fire Lord's place is in the shadows. This one, what's-her-name, she is always beside him, and even speaks up in the middle of meetings. It's insane." He stared at her with wide eyes. "If Ozai were still able to, he would smack his son up and down the courts for making a mockery of the Nation."

It was interesting. Mai had never thought of herself as the type of person to rise to bait, let alone lose control of her temper. The few times she had gone ahead and blown up in fury had always been around Zuko. And now, as her hands clutched at the hot mug so tightly that it hurt, and her jaw ached because of how hard she clenched it to keep from snapping, she realised that it was pretty easy to lose her temper on Zuko's behalf, as well.

"So, your plan," she said softly, her voice carefully monotone. "You think it will change that?"

Puro leaned in, sensing a comrade in her. "It's not for lack of trying, lemme tell you," he admitted. "I've heard that a few people have tried to off both the Fire Lord and his wife, but somehow, they shake it off. They're like dragons, those two."

Despite herself, Mai had to smile a little. Although she knew Puro meant it as an insult, it was rather flattering to be called a dragon, after all.

"So a group of us figured that, hey, why not just go about it from the inside, like I told you? That way, no one will know until the very last minute, and we should have a good shot at the Fire Lord, if not both of them, you know?"

Mai raised an eyebrow. Although her insides were clenched at the very thought of leaving Zuko exposed, she knew that an opportunity like this wouldn't present itself this easily ever again.

Too bad. I had always like Puro. Oh well. Everyone has to learn someday…

"Are you in, Mugai?" he wondered, his voice a whisper. "I can tell you have some fighter in you. You always seem to be alert. You'd be amazing for our cause. Are you in?"

Mai nodded. "Oh, I'm in," she replied. "I'm very much in."

Rue the day that anyone tried to lay a hand on Zuko in aggression ever, ever again.

Zuko came home late that day, looking tired and smelling of ashes. When she met him to help him undress, he seemed to just melt under her hands with exhaustion. Gently, she smoothed her hands over his back and knitted out the knots in his shoulders with her fingertips. She listened to him despair about the day, and how while most of the Nation was cooperating, there was always that set of rotten apples that seemed to ruin it all and make it ten times worse. She listened, spoke comforting words to him, and helped him to bed, all sincerely.

But in her mind, she was planning. She was reworking the plans she had made with Puro. She was setting the terms to fit her own needs.

Except when Zuko kissed her. Then he was the centre of her universe.

It was, she had to admit, a rather good plan they had hatching.

Puro's group consisted of ten people, a mix of both men and women, mostly men. It was no secret that while Agni Kais were banned and the army was used only for peacekeeping, most of the army brats and old hands were retiring out of relief, and the numbers within the military were low. Plus the fact that, with the recent coups that had been staged on both Mai and Zuko, it was getting harder and harder to keep royal escorts around.

Thus, the plan was simple: answer the posting and get recruited as royal escorts, or at the very least guards, and find themselves into the palace. Then, when it was least expected, murder Zuko or, if luck happened, Mai, and take over the Nation themselves and once again start a plan for world dominance.

It was good, if it worked. It was also laughable.

For starters, each guard they trained had to undergo a vow, one that, undisclosed, was said in front of Toph. If they were sincere, Toph would nod. If they were lying, well, she would react less subtly on behalf of the monarchs, and that person was out of the running.

There was no way that they would make it past the preliminaries. Toph would be able to root them out within seconds.

Unless Mai got to her first.

Mai's prolonged absence from the Palace wasn't ignored, but it wasn't unusual. Pretty much everyone within the courts knew that if the Fire Lord and his wife vanished for an undisclosed amount of time, it wasn't something to panic about. Sometimes it was Zuko who went missing, sometimes Mai, and sometimes both.

The only person who seemed to notice was Zuko, and that was because he wasn't invited.

"Where are you spending your days?" he wondered, watching her walk into their bedroom with her hair down and her clothes plain. She was startled; she hadn't expected him to be home quite yet.

"Around," she replied shortly.

Zuko narrowed his eyes. "Around?" he echoed.

"Yes."

"Your hair is down," he observed, "and you're wearing peasant clothes, Fire Nation peasant clothes."

"So what?" she shot back, feeling a little defensive. She wasn't doing this for laughs, after all. Even if he didn't know about it, he could still just butt out.

"Are you doing something I should be worried about?"

She jerked her head to look at him, to fire a scathing sentence at him to shut him up, but just one look into his eyes made her freeze: his face was drawn with worry, and his eyes looked scared. He clutched at the blankets tightly with his fingers, and every once and a while he would bite his lip.

Mai stared at him, feeling her mouth go dry. Wordlessly, she walked over to his side, sat down on the bed in front of him, and cupped his face into her hands, shaking her head slowly. Zuko opened his mouth, but she held his face tighter, stopping him. She shook her head again, her mouth a stern line, glaring right into his eyes. He closed his own, relaxing a little into her grip, and he reached up and touched her forearms with soft hands.

"Just tell me when you can, okay?" he whispered. "Just tell me."

"I will," she agreed. "If I need to, not when."

It was two weeks to the day that Mai stood in line to take the final oath to become a soldier within her husband's army. Before her were her "comrades", practically bouncing with anticipation and eagerness to get started on their plan.

Mai had barely managed to grab Toph before her name was called. Needless to say, Toph was shocked to realise that she was there. "What are you doing here, Queen Cool?"

"I need you to do me a favour," Mai replied, not rising to the bait. "I need you to ignore the liars in this batch of men and women."

Toph narrowed her eyes, her mouth a suspicious line. "Why would you want me to do that, Mai?" she wondered, her voice thick with underlying confusion.

"Because you have to," Mai answered sternly. "I'm asking you to, because you have to. It will all come together and you'll see why then, but you need to let the liars go."

Toph hesitated, her unfocused eyes hard. She sighed, then shut them. "Fine," she snapped, obviously angry at having any part in this. "But anything that happens is on your head."

Mai knew this. She had known this from the start. It was what made it so important.

"Also," she added as she left. "Ignore the fact that I'm in the lineup as well, okay?"

"Wait, what?!" Toph shouted in reply, but it was too late. Mai was already back with the others and ready to swear herself loyal to her husband.

It went off with a hitch. None of the soldiers were declared liars, and thus everyone trained was recruited. Puro and his friends were elated, and they invited Mai to celebrate, but she declined.

"Didn't think you would," Puro admitted. "You seem more like a tea person than a whiskey person."

Mai smiled and waved her goodbye.

That night, when she slipped her way into the bedroom, Zuko was already home and fast asleep. In the dim light of the solitary lamp, he looked almost identical to the small prince she had known so long ago. It made her feel wistful, like a traitor, even, that she was spending her days helping along an assassination plot while he was working to maintain peace.

You have to keep it from him for a reason. If he knew, he would go nuts. It's better this way.

She sighed, undressed, and curled up right into his back, burying her face into his shoulder. He sighed in his sleep, pushing back against her, and she shut her eyes. Tomorrow it would be over. Tomorrow, everything would be fine.

When Mai held the knife to Puro's throat, it was over.

Granted, it had come close. Puro and his comrades had been chosen as royal escorts, and were on their way to "meet the Fire Lord", which really meant "kill the Fire Lord", when Mai had dipped out of the line, flicked out a knife, and held it up to her former bartending acquaintance.

It was, needless to say, rather satisfying to do this. After all of the weeks of posing, of lying, or comprising herself and making Zuko worry about her, especially in terms of fidelity and loyalty, it was satisfying to use Puro as an outlet for this frustration.

Puro, however, wasn't too bright on the uptake. "Um, Mugai," he stuttered, his eyes wide. "Are you sparring with me?"

"No," she snapped. She leaned in, unable to suppress a thin smile. "You're finished."

"Mugai, what are you doing?" Gogi, one of the others, demanded. "Are you crazy?"

"You're the ones who are crazy," she answered. "Thinking you can just get away with this kind of thing. Thinking that it was acceptable to challenge the balance."

"You traitor!" Xiaola, one of the women, shrilled.

"You're the traitors," Mai replied, lowering her knife and pushing Puro roughly away from him. She was, above all, disgusted. "You don't get it, do you? We, as a nation, needs to learn humility. You're only making it worse. Back off, or face the consequences."

Puro's hand hovered over the sword at his hip, his eyes narrowed. "And if we don't?"

Mai smirked, reaching into her sleeves and toying with a stiletto. "Then you face me."

Needless to say, they chose the latter. If Mai were to think about it later, she had really hoped they would. Fighting them brought her so much joy, especially after all of the idiocy they had made her resort to.

When they were all either knocked out or dazed, Mai pocketed her remaining weapons and sighed. She leaned down to where Puro lay with a dazed face and said, very flatly, "I'm the Fire Lord's wife, you moron."

He stared at her, his face going practically purple with the weight of the confession. Wordlessly, she stood up and walked away, going to alert the real palace guards in order to clean up the mess.

It wasn't the first time that her eavesdropping led her to an encounter, although it was the first time that she had to make an effort to steer it away. It also wouldn't be the last time, she knew. Until she managed to expose and imprison each and every one of them - the ones who strove for action rather than the ones who just complained - there would be no peace.

On her way back to the royal chambers, still dressed in soldier regalia, a blast of firebending stopped her in her tracks. Faster than a blink, she jumped into a stance, her hands already holding two razor-sharp shuriken.

From the shadows, wearing a livid expression, came Zuko. Her mouth opened, and she stood up to her full height and tried to look casual, but it was no use; he was too angry to care.

"Why are you dressed like that?" he snapped, stopping a few inches from her. "Why are you skulking around? And, most importantly, why did you ask Toph to lie?"

Mai almost smacked herself on the forehead. I forgot to ask Toph to keep her mouth shut. Of course she would tell him…

"I don't have to explain myself to you," she answered, her voice surprisingly level. "From the sounds of it, you already know. So why do you need to ask me? And what makes you think that it gives you the right to bend at me?"

"I only know that when traitors took the oath, you told Toph to restrain herself and let them pass," Zuko responded, his voice close to a snarl. "And that she had to keep her calm when you took the oath. So tell me, Mai: are you going to be my royal escort now? Are you going to be the one who protects me while I walk from court to court?"

Mai smiled thinly. "Why not? I'm good at it."

"What did you do?"

Mai threw up her hands. "I stopped them, okay?" she responded, finally losing her temper. The fact that he was shouting at her, when she had put herself through so much trouble to make this whole thing work, was what broke her control. "I set them up and stopped them. They're in jail. No one was hurt, and you're safe. So back off!"

Zuko stepped closer, and she bristled, her eyes narrowing. "So that was what you were doing when you were out late? Manipulating traitors to set them up for their own arrest?"

"Yes," she answered, her jaw set. "I've been doing this for ages. This was the first job that took this long to expose, however. But I'm not sorry, and you're being dramatic for nothing."

"Assassins?"

"Yes."

And with that one word, Zuko's anger seemed to just…die. His face fell, from the angry mask, to that fearful face he had worn a few nights ago. Wordlessly, he reached for her, but she jerked back, confused. "Don't touch me!" she snarled. "You were berating me like a child five seconds ago, and now you think you can touch me?"

Zuko sighed, lowering his hands. He looked away, hiding his face with his hair. He muttered something, his shoulders drooping, and she didn't catch it. She fought he urge to roll her eyes and leaned in closer. "What did you say?"

"You…could have gotten killed," he answered, his voice a murmur. "You could have died. There were ten of them, most of them men. They were trained as soldiers, and they could have killed you."

Mai blinked. "They weren't benders. They didn't have a chance."

Zuko shook his head, still hiding behind his hair. "You don't know that, Mai," he answered flatly. "They could have surrounded you, gotten you when you were distracted. They could have killed you."

His voice broke, and Mai winced. She felt like a fool; he wasn't mad at her for not telling him she was sneaking around. He was mad at her because she had put herself at risk, and what was worse, she had done it for him.

She reached forward and touched his hair, brushing it away from his eyes. He looked up, his yellow eyes dark. "You honestly didn't think I would get the warden's report on their incarceration?" he said.

Mai blushed a little at that. "It honestly never occurred to me," she admitted.

"You could have died, Mai," he answered, looking up again. "And for what? For what?"

"For balance, Zuko," she said firmly.

Zuko shook his head slowly. He reached forward again, and this time she let him. When he buried his face into her neck, she held him close.

"There's no balance without you," he whispered softly.

"You're an idiot," she answered softly, but it was with affection. She stroked his hair, and he held her close.

It wasn't the first time, but it wouldn't be the last time, that Mai would work to rid the Nation of threats to the throne. But it was the last time that she did it alone. That much was clear.

And she didn't mind so much.

Maybe it was best that Zuko knew.