Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"So where are you from?" She had her boots up on the table like she didn't care what anybody thought.

Mai shrugged. "Doesn't matter."

"Me, I'm a colony brat." She smirked with a lazy self confidence, but underneath, Mai could feel her watching her, calculating, sizing her up like a cat with a lizard-mouse. "Mom's Fire Nation, no idea about my dad, but you know what, you're right. That doesn't matter. What matters is where you're going. So where are you going?"

"That's my own business," Mai replied, tired of the back and forth. "Not yours."

"Just trying to make conversation," she said shrugging. "Drink your tea, it's getting cold."

Mai didn't touch her tea. "You know what, I need to get going. Thanks for the tea."

As she stood up, the woman stood up too, tall and wiry, and probably capable of taking almost anyone she wanted in a fight. "Let's cut the crap, Mai. Drink your tea, and when you wake up, you'll be home. Or we can do this the hard way. I get paid the same either way."

Mai raised an eyebrow, picked up the tea, and brought it to her lips. Then, abruptly, she threw the hot tea in the bounty hunter's face and bolted.

o0O0o

Two nights later, Mai woke up in the dark, to the sound of a creaking floorboard. She slipped out of bed and pressed herself to the wall next to the door, and when it slid open, she stabbed the hand that reached around the frame, pinning it to the frame by the thin webbing between the thumb and fingers. As the bounty hunter screamed with pain, Mai grabbed her things and dove out the inn window.

o0O0o

It was five days before the bounty hunter caught up with her again. She had stayed off the popular roads and hadn't spoken to anybody. She had no idea how the woman had found her again, and it left her unsettled. The woman had a bandage on her hand, and a furious expression as she and her enormous mount wove through the trees after her. They were faster over clear ground, but in the dense forest, she could duck and bob, and they couldn't.

There was a loop of root sticking up out of the ground, and her foot caught in it before she had a chance to see it. Pitched to the loamy forest floor, she caught herself on her arms and crawled forward, pulling her legs up under her to get back to her feet, but it was too late. The bounty hunter's beast's tongue whipped out of its mouth and jabbed into her shoulder. It barely had time to hurt before the numbness spread through her, dropping her back to the forest floor.

The bounty hunter leaned over and hooked an arm around Mai, hauling her up onto the beast, in front of her saddle, easily as if she were a small child, and not a girl of fifteen. "Aww, don't feel too bad. You gave me a better chase than I've had in a while."

"Go throw yourself off a dock," Mai spat, relieved to find her mouth at least worked fine.

"Careful, kid," the bounty hunter drawled. "You stabbed me. I'm not inclined to be gentle with you. I'll cut you some slack because you're a kid, but if you push me..."

"You'll what?" Mai couldn't feel the beast under her, couldn't feel the bumps and jostling, but she could feel it in the way her head moved. It was strange and nauseating, and she closed her eyes, willing her stomach to settle. "You can't hurt me. You wouldn't want to piss off your customers."

"Like I said before, I don't think they'll mind a few bruises."

Trying to force her fingers to move, Mai said nothing.

"Why'd you run away, anyway? Looked like a pretty cushy life, being a highborn country noble."

Again, Mai kept her silence and bided her time.

o0O0o

It was dark before her fingers would do more than twitch. She flexed her arms and legs, rolling her shoulders experimentally and looked around for the first time since she had been locked into this cabin on a merchant ship. There was a cot, which the bounty hunter hadn't bothered to put her on, and a port hole. It was too small for her to crawl through, and even if she did, she'd be left clinging to the ship's hull, so she discounted it. Other than that, there was very little in the room, and nothing of use, just rugs, a small table, the comfortable furnishings of a cabin a wealthy noblewoman like her might have enjoyed if she had booked passage herself. It clearly wasn't meant to be a cell. Even the door wasn't a cell door. The lock had a keyhole on both sides. It almost made her laugh. Even with being captured by a bounty hunter and held prisoner, the niceties had to be observed.

Not all the niceties, obviously. She straightened her overrobe, tugging harder than she needed to so that the cloth scraped against her skin, to erase the memory of the bounty hunter's cold, clinical search for her knives, and her hands perfunctorily putting her clothes back on askew. Mai had lain there helpless, calling her every name her parents didn't know she knew, but the bounty hunter had laughed at her and kept on with her job.

With one last shudder, Mai slid one of the pins out of her hair. It fit into the keyhole easily. Working it gently, she waited for the soft snick of success before opening the door as quietly as possible. The hallway was empty. Mai slid out into the shadows beyond her doorway, closing it behind her, just in case anyone came to check.

Her boots rang against the metal floor, so she stripped them off and gripped them one handed as she made her way through the dark. Her knives were probably with the bounty hunter herself, so that was where she needed to go. Mai forced down her discomfort and bent low to look through the keyhole of the door next to hers. In the gloom, she could just make out the shadow of a form on a cot. The door was locked, so she picked the lock and silently slipped inside.

Sure enough, it was the bounty hunter, in a soft sleeping robe and socks. The moonlight through the porthole glinted off two keys to her wrist, and Mai guessed they were for the two cabins. They would have to wait until she found her knives.

Her heart beat so loud in her ears she didn't know how it didn't wake the whole ship, but the bounty hunter slept on. Mai poked through the room as quietly as she could hunting for her knives, doing her best to ignore how strange her clothes felt without them underneath. The light from the porthole was not enough to dispel the shadows, so she only found the bounty hunter's pack when she tripped over it. It clanked.

With a panicked glance at the bounty hunter, who continued sleeping, to Mai's everlasting gratitude, she pulled the pack open and found her knives, still in their sheaths. She hurriedly stuffed everything else back in the pack and pulled out her thinnest knife. Delicately, she sliced through the string holding the keys to the bounty hunter's wrist, stuffed her knives into her boots, and crept out, using the newly acquired keys to lock the door behind her.

o0O0o

She sold her stolen steamer skiff for scrap as soon as she made port, and traded some of her new cash for a local peasant woman's clothes and supplies. It was cold, so she bought warm boots, an extra coat and blankets for her bed roll. There was snow on the ground, and she knew it should be winter in the north, which gave her hope she was close to Ba Sing Se. Either way, she seemed so impossibly far away from her parents' villa on the eastern edge of the Fire Nation archipelago.

But she wasn't. That was the problem. She still had a bounty hunter on her tail. And Ba Sing Se was the only place she could think of where maybe, and only maybe, she might be safe.

She wanted to break down, to yell curses at her parents for doing this to her, for trying to marry her off to a creepy old man in the first place, and for paying someone to drag her home so they could do what they wanted with her, and use her without caring about her at all. But she couldn't break down. She had to keep going, or she didn't have a chance, and they really were going to get her back and get just what they wanted. Her breath shook as she forced down the tears, and the rage, but she did it. She picked her foot up off the ground and started walking.

o0O0o

The villagers said the outer wall of Ba Sing Se was a two day trek westward, so Mai knew she would have to make camp and sleep before she was safe, but that didn't mean she had to like it. The sky was clear, and the air was mostly still, so she stepped off the road and into the pines to find a clear enough patch of ground. As she spread out her bedroll, she checked to make sure all of her knives were where they should be, even though she could feel all of them against her skin. It was going to be a long time before she stopped doing that.

o0O0o

She woke with the bounty hunter sitting beside her. Mai reached for her knives.

She put her hands up for Mai to see. "Whoa whoa whoa, hold up, I just want to talk."

"Yeah right," Mai snarled.

"Look kid, I'm here to offer you a job." She cocked your head. "You got skills. You're smart, stubborn, I can respect that."

"I bet you can," Mai said without sheathing her knives. "Why do I get the feeling this is all a plot to lure me in?"

The bounty hunter smiled in what was clearly supposed to be a disarming manner. She fell miles short of the mark. "Now why would I do a thing like that?"

"Because it's a lot easier to capture somebody, when they're not struggling?"

"That's what shirshu venom is for." She smirked. "Besides, you could always just escape later. You're good at that. Locking me in my room was a nice touch."

"Thanks," Mai said coldly. But she considered. "What kind of a job?"

"Bounty hunting, what else?" She waved a hand nonchalantly through the air. "I'm looking to expand. I could use an assistant. Or an apprentice."

"And you wouldn't just turn me over to my parents for the reward money."

"Why are you running from them anyway?" she asked, and Mai couldn't detect anything other than honest curiosity. "You're not at all what I was expecting."

"My parents want to marry me to a newly promoted admiral. He's forty years old." She eyed the bounty hunter warily. "Why, what were you expecting?"

"Wow, gross." She seemed to mean it. "I was expecting some silly, spoiled little rich girl running away to see the world, but you're not that, are you. You're tough as nails."

"I try." Mai gripped her knives tightly. "So what would this job with you pay?"

"Well I could start with not charging you for the skiff you stole that I had to pay for," she drawled. "Or the doctor I had to see for the hand you stabbed. Thanks for that."

"Any time."

"See, tough as nails." She grinned. "After that, we'll see how you do. I'm June, by the way, but you, kid, can call me boss."

"I think I'll stick with June," Mai told her. "And you can call me Mai."

Chapter Text

"Hey, Mai, we got a job."

Mai leapt down from the stable loft. "What kind?"

"The easy kind from a rich teenage idiot." She smirked. "He wants us to find a boy. Perfect job for training Hoshi."

"Oh great, a rich idiot boy who wants a boy." Mai rolled her eyes. "What, are we a matchmaking service now?"

June shrugged. "He's got his girlfriend with him."

"That's even worse."

Her boss walked off snickering as she opened Hoshi's stall door. Mai followed reluctantly, attaching the training lead to Hoshi.

"Don't worry, I've run into this kid before. At least his creepy uncle isn't around this time."

o0O0o

A small gaggle of children stood outside the tavern, leerily eyeing Nyla as she snuffled at the ground. Mai examined them. That was more than a boy and a girl. It was in fact three girls and two boys. "What is going on?" Mai hissed.

June shrugged. "Prince Pouty over there hired me to chase down that girl in the blue, and it went sour-"

"Hunting down girls for boys always does."

"Yeah yeah, I know," June waved it off. "Anyway, he actually wanted to find the bald monk kid with her, and now, he's joined up with the girl, and and the rest, and now the bald monk kid's run off again."

A Fire Prince and a bald monk. Mai had a terrible suspicion as to where this was going. "So we got to find him. I hope this job pays well, because I already know this job is going to suck."

"Getting paid?" June chuckled darkly. "Who said anything about getting paid?"

As June strolled over to the kids, Mai stared after her in horror. With great reluctance, she fashioned Hoshi's training lead to Nyla's saddle, and waited for her boss.

June sauntered back over, children in tow, a hunk of meat in her hand. "Nyla..."

Nyla lunged for the meat, wolfing it down.

"Who's my little snuffly wuffly," June cooed.

Nyla's tongue darted out of her mouth.

"Whoa!" June dodged and patted Nyla's nose firmly. "Careful there."

Hoshi sneezed. "Don't get any ideas," Mai told her.

"Okay," June said at last. "Who's got something with the Avatar's scent on it?"

Mai hated being right. She really really hated being right.

"I have Aang's staff." The girl held it out to June, who offered it to Nyla, before tossing it to Mai.

"Hey, be careful with that," the Fire Prince shouted.

Mai ignored him and held the staff out to Hoshi. The shirshu pup snuffled all over it while her mother worked to sniff out the smell. She circled, nosing the ground, before stopping, circling, and nosing the ground again. And again she circled, sniffing the air and the ground. Mai watched her puzzled as she flopped down and covered her nose. Hoshi ran forward, whimpering and sniffing at the air.

"Hey June," Mai called. "What are they doing? I've never seen them do that before."

Well?" Prince Pouty, or whatever his real name was, crossed his arms.

"Your friend's gone," June told them.

One of the kids, the shortest, a girl in green, glared. "We know he's gone, that's why we're trying to find him."

Standing up, June turned to them fluidly, like it didn't matter. "No, I mean he's gone gone. He doesn't exist."

"What do you mean Aang doesn't exist?" the boy in blue said. "Do you mean he's... you know, dead?"

"Nope, we could find him if he were dead. It's a real head scratcher."

"Helpful, real helpful," the little girl in green snapped.

"Great," Mai said. "So we can get going and not do this weird charity gig."

"Don't sass me in front of clients."

"If they aren't paying they're not clients," Mai reminded her. "Your rules."

"Wait," the fire prince tried to order, but it sounded more like a plea. "I have another idea. There's only one other person in this world who can help us face the Fire Lord. I'll be right back with a smell sample."

He ran off, while Mai slid down from Nyla's saddle to go comfort Hoshi, who had rolled over onto her back snuffling confusedly. She nudged Hoshi with her hand until Hoshi rolled back over. Rubbing the top of Hoshi's snout above her star shaped nose, she looked to June. "So what do I do now."

"I don't know," June said. "Never seen this before. I guess we wait for Prince Pouty."

The boy in blue snickered.

"Sokka!"

"What, he's a prince, he's pouty, it's funny!"

The aforementioned prince pouty skidded to a halt, a foul-looking sandal in hand.

Sokka gagged. "You saved your Uncle's sweaty sandal?"

"I think it's kind of sweet." The little girl in green blushed.

The prince tentatively held the sandal up to Nyla.

Mai held out her hand. The sandal slapped into it. The smell hit her nose. Her stomach flipped over in revulsion. Holding the sandal out to Hoshi, she pinched her nose closed, wishing she could rip it off. As soon as Hoshi had the scent, she threw it back at the prince. Her hand felt grubby. The scent stuck to it. She wiped it off on Nyla's fur.

June leapt up into Nyla's saddle. "Let's do this."

That was all the warning Mai had before Nyla took off with Hoshi attached. Mai clung to Hoshi's harness as the pup scrambled up her mother's tail.

Distantly she heard the prince call out, "Hey, wait up!" Don't bother, she wanted to tell him. June didn't slow down for anybody, especially non-paying clients.

o0O0o

"So we're looking for your uncle," Mai said as Nyla began to slow down to a steady lope, the sky bison lumbering beside her, Hoshi's training lead clipped to his reins.

But before he could reply, or Mai could say anything else, June broke in, "Your uncle? You mean your creepy uncle who groped me while I was paralyzed?"

"Yeah, him," the prince confirmed.

"Oh yikes," Mai said.

"Sorry."

"You know..." June said. "Mai was the job I took right after you."

"Wait, she hunted you down?" the little Earth Kingdom girl cut in. "Why?"

"My parents are Fire Nation nobility," Mai said tonelessly, like it didn't matter. "I ran away. They wanted me back."

"Hey the same thing happened to me!" She leaned out of the bison's saddle to throw an arm around Mai. "I ran off to teach the Avatar earthbending, and my parents hired too guys to kidnap me. But I invented metalbending and trapped them in the box they tried to put me in."

Mai shrugged off the arm. "I threw hot tea in June's face, stabbed her, and locked her in her room."

June yelped. "Hey, don't give these idiots any ideas."

Toph stuck her tongue out at her, and then patted Mai's hand. "You seem like my kind of girl."

"Your family's Fire Nation nobility?" the prince asked. "Anybody I know?"

"I don't know," Mai said. "Probably not. My parents are Michi and Ukano from the northern spine islands. They never bothered much with court or the royal family."

"Probably better that way," he said. "My family kind of chews everybody they come across up and spits them out."

"Is that why you're working for the Avatar?"

"I guess."

"I don't mean to pry. It just seems kind of drastic."

"Zuko used to be hunting the Avatar," Sokka broke in. "Because he was banished. It-"

Zuko glared at him.

"You know, it's a long story. You'd probably get really bored."

Mai smirked. "I don't think I would be."

Zuko turned his glare on her. He looked so sulky, she almost couldn't stop herself from laughing at him. "What about you? You ran away from your family. Why?"

"It's not that complicated," Mai said, offhandedly. "My parents wanted to marry me off to a middle-aged admiral."

"Anyone I know?" he asked again. This time, there was something strange in his voice.

"No idea," Mai said. "It's not like I know who you know. I don't know much about him, just that he had just become an admiral, and his name's Zhao."

Zuko, Sokka, and the Water Tribe girl all groaned in appalled shock.

"I guess you know him then."

"Oh yeah," Sokka burst out.

Zuko swallowed. "Yeah, we definitely knew him."

"You're lucky you got away," the Water Tribe girl said. "He was pretty awful."

"At least he's dead now," Sokka said reassuringly. "He's dead, right?"

"Yeah he's definitely dead," Zuko assured them. "I saw him die."

"That's good to know." It meant she could go home someday, if she wanted to.

Of course, her parents could always find somebody else to marry her off to. She wouldn't put it past them.

The girl in Fire Nation red was lying on her back with her eyes closed, ignoring all of them. Mai nudged her with her elbow. "Taking a nap?"

"No."

"It's okay if you are. You were up all night last night."

"I'm trying to take a nap, but you all keep talking, so it's kind of hard."

"Sorry," Mai told her. She wasn't. She didn't get to sleep. Hoshi was asleep, flopped over in the sky bison's saddle, round baby belly in the air without a care in the world, and it wasn't fair at all.

"Don't be," she said. "Sleeping on the back of this thing was probably always a lost cause."

"Why aren't you on the bison, then?" Mai asked.

"Your big baby shirshu took my place."

"Sorry," Mai said again, this time a little more sincere. "So how did you end up traveling with these guys?"

"Sokka and Zuko broke me out of prison."

Mai whistled. "No kidding?"

"No kidding."

"How'd you get put in prison anyway?"

She sighed, opened her eyes, blinked against the sunlight, gave up, and closed them again. "I'm Earth Kingdom. I was fighting the Fire Nation. That's all it took."

"I don't have a stake in this war," Mai told her, trying not to sound apologetic. "I'm Fire Nation, but I never fought for it. June and I take all kinds of clients."

"I don't think that's how it works."

"No," Zuko interrupted. "It really really isn't."

"Why not?" she demanded.

"It just isn't," he said, which Mai took to mean he didn't have a real answer. "When it's your nation, your people, it makes ot your responsibility to make your nation be better than this."

"Maybe it's different for princes," the little earthbender mused. "I mean I ran away to get away from my parents, not for the greater good of my people. Nobody thought it was my responsibility to protect the whole Earth Kingdom."

"It is now," Zuko pointed out.

"Yeah, I still don't know how that happened."

"So what's the big deal anyway?" Mai wondered. "The Fire Nation's been fighting the Earth Kingdom for as long as I've been alive. They've already conquered Ba Sing Se, why is it so important you need your uncle right now?"

"Because he's a sad little boy who likes creeping me out," June called back.

Zuko scowled. "That's not it."

"I figured."

"My dad wants to use Sozin's Comet to burn the Earth Kingdom to ash to make it stop rebelling and end the war once and for all."

Mai couldn't believe what she was hearing. It just didn't connect. "What?"

He shrugged, but it was more like hunching his shoulders. "I guess no one can rebel if everybody is dead."

"What the-" Even June didn't know what to say to that, which distantly, Mai found comforting. It meant she wasn't expected to find a response either. "That's... What's even the point? What about the colonies? What about the villages that aren't rebelling? what about..."

What about people like them in dingy waterfront taverns, just earning a living, not bothering anybody? What about people like June's mom, who she sent candied pineapples to every summer solstice?

"I don't think my dad cares."

And that was what was so monstrous.

"Anyway," Zuko said, determinedly. "That's why we need my uncle. He's-"

"The Dragon of the West," Mai finished. It wasn't important, her parents thought, if she was never going to court, to learn the names of the whole royal family, but she needed to know about the great heroes of their nation. "I did go to school. I do know that much. Didn't he try to conquer Ba Sing Se? Why would he help us?"

Zuko suddenly looked small, and she wondered what she said.

"Zuko's uncle's great," the little earthbender insisted defensively. "He tried to stop Azula from conquering Ba Sing Se."

"But I didn't," Zuko whispered.

"Yeah," Sokka said. "But you're making better choices now. Even Katara agrees, and she-"

"I what, Sokka?"

"Nothing!" he shot back hurriedly. "Anyway, Iroh's definitely on our side, and he broke himself out of prison, so he's tough And he's the Firelord's big brother, so he might be able to stop him."

"Iroh's the best," the earthbender girl said forcefully.

"He is not," June muttered.

"He is!"

"Toph just likes him because he made her tea that one time," Sokka told them.

"That's a lie," Toph shouted. "You take that back! But seriously, Iroh's the best."

It was weird, Mai thought. Maybe it was like what the other kids at school had gotten to be like, when they weren't the only noble girl in the village, who had to be perfect all the time to show the peasants how it was done, and went home to tutors every night to make sure she knew just what perfect was.

But Zuko was a prince, and Toph, by her own admission was a noble. They were allowed to be like this with these people. She swallowed. "He's a legend," she tried. "Before Ba Sing Se, everybody said he was the greatest Fire Nation general who ever lived, greater than his father, greater even than Sozin."

Zuko nodded seriously from his place in the bison's saddle. "That's why we need him."

o0O0o

The wall rose up in front of them like something out of a story, ot like something built by real human beings. For a moment, Mai just stared at it, stunned.

"We're going to Ba Sing Se?" Zuko asked. Mai thought that should be obvious, but she couldn't make her mouth work, so who was she to judge?

June shrugged fluidly in the saddle. "Nyla's getting twitchy so he can't be too far. Good luck. Come on, Mai, let's get going."

"You know what?" Trying to sound braver than she felt, she unhooked the training lead from Nyla's saddle and hooked it onto Hoshi. "I'm going to go with these guys, maybe see if I can help."

June looked her over, and then sighed. "Fine, okay, fine. If that's what you want."

Mai nodded, a little more certain. "It is."

June leaned over Nyla's side to clap her on the shoulder. "Go save the world, kid."

Mai smiled. "I'll try, boss."