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"What's that?" Mai pointed to a caravan coming to the palace in the distance. Zuko had his arm across her, casually, but he didn't seem comfortable with her, and he was far more focused on the ugly face of the minister he was conferring with than his girlfriend, who ended up tugging at his sleeves.
"Not right now, Mai," he said, sounding more generally angry, not particularly directed at her. She was pushed to the side as he moved forward, crossing the steps in front of them to his father's side, his mouth pursed. She dawdled where she stood, not quite sure where to step, and then one of the smiling, simpering advisors next to her answered her question.
"Lady Mai," the man said. "I believe it is the concubine procession for Prince Zuko."
She frowned, and her heart thudded against her chest. "C-concubine?"
"Of course. For the harem," he told her. He seemed to take in her face, emotionless and yet twisted, and smiled genially. "Do not worry, Lady Mai. You are his betrothed and you will be Firelady. What is there to be concerned about? Let men have their urges."
How could Mai explain that she wanted more than a political marriage - that she wanted Zuko's heart?"
--
"You didn't tell me you were getting girls for your harem," Mai slid into Zuko's study and talked crossly, her hands held over her chest. Zuko seemed worried as usual, exhausted, his hands pressed over miles of papers.
"What does it matter?" he asked, almost yawning.
"I don't want you to spend time with them," she said through chattering teeth. "You have me - you can do everything with me -"
"Relax, Mai," he sighed. "I'm not planning on using them. It's for appearances, and they're exotic of some sort, dancers and something father wanted to keep around but couldn't."
"So you won't be with them?" she questioned.
Zuko groaned and pushed the papers to the side, falling back in his chair and pressing his hand to his scar. "What does it matter?"
"I'm going to be your wife," she said. "I'm everything you'll need -"
"Mai," he said as though he wanted to console her, "you are of noble birth, and you are betrothed to me because of what your father has given our nation, and I am thankful for that. But you do not control what I choose to do."
"I'm going to be your wife."
"So do what you will," he said. "Take your own lovers. You're the Firelady. What else could you ever want? Leave me alone, then."
"If I'm to be your wife," she asked, "couldn't I be your wife? In full? What's... what's all this?"
"Don't step out of your place."
She leaned in closer to him, then, until her body was on the other side of his desk, and he seemed so tired - she tried to kiss him, and he pushed away. They had kissed once, at one of the betrothal ceremonies, but he hadn't seemed to care very much. This was a simple pattern, as it was - Zuko was willing to do the bare minimum with her in public, but she had liked him for years and years, and perhaps before his banishment and capture of the Avatar they could have had something, but they simply did not.
He pushed her away, and then he pulled away, his face tightened, turning from partly handsome to dangerous and tired. "Go, Mai."
--
That night, at dinner, the concubines were taken out and presented to the Fire court. Some played music, and some danced. They were from all over - they were from the water tribes, and the Earth Kingdom, and some from the Fire Nation itself. They all looked polished to perfection but wore loose clothing, stomachs visible and cheeks red.
Mai thought that the display should have been far lewder than it was, in actuality. Ozai seemed enthralled with most of them, particularly the slightly elder ones, but all in all there were almost a dozen girls. She looked at herself and sighed, for she knew that she was a typical Fire Nation beauty, but that was the point of these girls, to be new and exotic.
Zuko seemed mostly uninterested, however, and that soothed her. He talked with the generals at their table for the first part of their meal, and only turned to observe the festivities when his accomplices looked at the dancing girls as well.
"Beautiful display," one of the nobles said, his eyes running over Mai, blinking past her as though she wasn't there. She thought crassly for moments, and missed the moment that Zuko turned towards the dancers and got enthralled.
For that was the word, simply, to describe the utter and complete way he stared at the girl on the dais. The lock of his jaw was still hard, but Mai knew the moods of his eyes, and they softened considerably. She gathered up the courage she had in herself to look up to the stage, and when she did...
She had to admit that girl, too, was beautiful. Zuko stared at a water tribe beauty who had fire in her eyes, dressed in red, unlike the blues of her other tribeswoman, the only girl not wearing the colors of her land. Perhaps in punishment - the dance she was doing, too, was not one of the scripted ones of the Fire Nation. It was something new and mystic, and even she found it compelling,
The issue came that Zuko seemed, as the rest of the room did, to be unable to take his eyes off her. Mai's thoughts sunk for every moment he spent tracing the girl's limbs, and thought about what he had said in the study, earlier.
For he had known Mai for years, and she had loved him, and he had never, ever looked at her like that - as though she was interesting.
--
Mai was told to her rooms that night, but she left anyway. She knew what she was walking to, knew in her bones, but she found herself destructively curious of what she would find in Zuko's quarters.
Zuko's roomed were curtained off, and she stepped stealthily around pillars, past servants, to hear the sounds from his sitting room. She had hope for a second until she heard two voices from the area.
"I hate the Fire Nation," a voice said, and she knew it was the dancing girl. She'd thought that Zuko had pulled away one of his father's mistresses after the show - and for this reason.
"You're here. What are you going to do?"
"I am not going to lay with you, Prince Zuko," she sounded fiery, and Mai's bones sank down when she heard something that sounded almost like laughter from Zuko's lips.
"Don't," he said. "Tell me your name, and tell me about you."
"They gave me a new name. They told me to -"
"No. Tell me your real name, water girl."
"I am Katara," she said, viciously, "and I am not going to sleep with you."
"So don't," Zuko drawled. "Tell me of yourself."
And that was a statement that he, in over a decade of knowing Mai, had never asked her.
--
The next morning Mai was led out of her rooms and then to her breakfast chamber. There was a flurry of activity in the rooms across from hers, the ones she had thought were uninhabited, and she frowned as she was so prone to do and then asked her maidservants what was occuring.
"They're preparing those rooms," she was told. Before she could ask further, she was led into the dining chamber, and along with Zuko and then Azula and Ty Lee there was - a girl, at Zuko's right. She seemed angry and crass and confused, quite a few things, and Ty Lee was chattering to her while Azula and Zuko traded stares quite as complicated as their relationship. Azula smirked at her as she came in and sat to Zuko's left and the princess's right.
"Mai," she said, gratingly. "Last night you must have -"
Zuko interrupted crassly. "This is Katara."
It was an empty statement, and everyone sitting in the room knew the connotations of the words. What ground upon her further was that he looked right into her eyes as he said that - as though he was not at all ashamed that he was seating his concubine at a table with his betrothed, his sister and her consort, after a night of whatever had gone on in his quarters.
He moved his hand to the side and then to Katara - Katara, a beautiful girl with large blue eyes and painted features and supple limbs, curvy and dark and beautiful - and gestured for her to address Mai, and Mai wanted to throw up, even as she kept her cool facade apparent.
"Lady Mai," Katara said, looking down.
Mai refused to say anything. She sat and ate her meal, and then when it finished she sat straighter until Azula excused her with an amused smirk. She would have spent time with Ty Lee, but the peppy girl grabbed the concubine's arm and then went to the busy quarters at the side, the ones that were for - for her.
--
In the evening, as Mai walked to see her parents and her brother, visiting the palace, she stumbled upon the girl in her quarters. And her quarters, indeed. The room Katara had been given was across from Zuko's, and had a door which led there. Mai's - even when she became Firelady - would be farther away from him.
Mai didn't know what quite to do, and somehow in the almost empty corridor, she almost hit the other girl. She took a moment to stare at Katara, at her slight height and her curves, and the red clothes she was wearing, the ones which showed far more skin than Mai's ever could.
"I'm sorry," Katara said.
Mai looked at her and frowned and continued out. But then, for whatever reason, Katara continued in the same way, as though she had something to say. "Ty Lee told me to go to the spa. I don't really know where that is."
She pointed to the side, and Katara twisted her brows together in confusion. "Let me just take you," she sighed, roughly grabbing the other girl's arm and taking her with her.
"You're Zuko's fiance," Katara said. Mai's grip grew rougher on her arm.
"Indeed."
"I'm sorry," she said.
Mai didn't say anything, speeding up her pace until she could shove Katara down a corridor, continuing on her own path to the correct tearoom. Her mother and Tom-Tom were waiting inside. He was a growing boy, of perhaps five, and he ran to her arms. She clutched him there, tight, for a moment, until her mother - her prim, proper, classy mother - spoke.
"I've heard that Prince Zuko has taken a favor to some girl. A water tribe whore."
"Perhaps," Mai whispered. "It doesn't matter, does it?"
Her mother's lips clenched. "Your father pressed to establish your role as Firelady, Mai. You must keep the future Firelord in the proper pockets. You have been unnecessarily in love with him for years, at this point. And yet despite this he is taking women?"
"I..."
"Whatever," her mother said. "Do not make us regret the sacrifices we have made for you."
--
"Azula said that we'll be going to Ember Island next week," Ty Lee flipped into Mai's quarters, a smile on her face. "It'll be fun - all of us - and right before your wedding, too."
Mai and Zuko's wedding had been in the works for so long that she barely felt it, anymore - the concept of them, and marriage, was too far out of reach. But Mai enjoyed Ember Island, somewhat. The last time they had all gone, Zuko and her had some moments together - some time on the beach.
"I'll start packing, then," she said. "It will be fun."
"If only you liked the spa," Ty Lee frowned. "Katara always comes with me, and it would be nice to have all four -"
"Katara?" Mai questioned, her heart heavy. "What about Katara?"
"Well, she's coming, of course," Ty Lee said. "You should talk to her more! She's really nice." Then she placed her two feet firmly on the ground, for once, and turned her head at her friend. "What's got your aura so grey, Mai? Katara is my friend -"
"Katara is Zuko's concubine," Mai hissed. "She's -"
"So? You're his wife. And it's always been us -"
"So?" Mai felt like breaking down, for once. "So, I love him, Ty Lee! I'm not just marrying him out of obligation, and now everywhere I go she's there, and she is with him - I swear, he has talked to her more, twice as much, as he has seen me our entire lives . . ."
"Oh." Her friend looked sad, strangely. "Love can be difficult, I guess. Especially when someone doesn't love you back. But you're going to marry him."
"But so what? He has her - I'm never," she murmured something. "I'm never going to be good enough. He is never going to love me. He cares for some random water peasant more than he will care for me -"
"I'm sorry, Mai."
Mai fell on her bed. "I'm sorry too," she whispered. "And I think I'm too sick to go to Ember Island."
--
Mai thought that she would, at least, have a wedding night. She needed to sire children, at least. She didn't know if it would hurt more, losing it all to him, but it turned out that she did not even need to worry. After their wedding ceremony, he let her sleep on his bed, and he went somewhere else. She could only imagine where.
She knew. She knew that he was losing himself in his passion tonight, but not with her. He had not been doing it with her.
It was that night that Mai gave up on the Fire Prince's love and thus condemned herself to some sort of irredeemable fate. She was to be the Firelady, after all. There was no reason for her to complain, when she had the power of a nation in her hands, when she could sit quiet and let him love someone else, when she could let him go.
--
The next Fire Princess is not hers. Mai cannot have children, or so the tales stay. Fire Princess Mai may have power but she cannot give the Fire Prince what he wants, and so the next heir to the throne is a girl with dark skin and golden eyes, a stronger firebender than her father. A firebender - Mai thought that Katara was suspicious during her pregnancy, but she would not condemn Zuko to any sort of strange fate.
So she doesn't, and Fire Princess Izumi runs the halls of the palace, a legitimate heir, sired of the Fire Prince and not of his wife, but of his favored - his only - concubine. The same concubine who he takes on vacation every year, leaving his wife alone in the palace. Concubine is not even the word anymore, especially when Katara learns the smaller parts of Fire Nation diplomacy, when she starts to visit hospitals, to whisper in Zuko's ears in a strange way. There are politics to play in the palace, and there are politics to play with the women Zuko loves, and yet...
Mai is so tired. She wishes she was loved, and she does not care for much else anymore.