Disclaiming Banner: Fan-fiction is the free expression of love for someone else's intellectual property. Someone else's.
A/N: Charliesky has made a salient point in a very kind review. If you can't or decide not to review; you're not really evil. I'm thrilled whenever I notice people reading my stuff, no matter what. And my sincerest thanks go out to anyone who might go further than that.
Manus
She loved watching hands. From an early age, Mai had understood people through their hands. Servants' hands, aristocrats', clerics', soldiers' nails/bones/ligaments/skin all stained indelibly with their lives.
When they first met, Zuko and Azula had almost the same hands. Their skin had been soft, well tended by servants the same way her own hands were. Beneath both sets of skin were bones and muscles that already had strength enough to break toys and hurt. The greatest difference she could see between them was that the Princess had the most burn scars; while her Prince's hands were so much warmer.
History brought them together so suddenly after years apart. Mai was different, but Zuko was changed. His skin was darker and rough from wind, and too much sun; and later what she learned was ill-tended frostbite. She wept for his hands, she never wept for his eye. His sense of touch was deadened by callous on callous and from breaking his fingers during practice. His knuckles were cracked and bleeding from laboring in teashops. The joints in his wrists were showing signs of arthritis after bearing too much weight during too many training sessions.
But he was still Zuko, and when she held him for the first time in three years his hands were still warm.