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“Tarrlok’s not that bad when you get to know him,” says Pema as she brushes Oogi’s moulting coat, causing sky bison fuzz to float everywhere. She seems to find brushing Oogi relaxing, and Tenzin doesn’t really want to bother her during moments like this when she’s free of the children and she has a moment to herself, but...
“He interrupted me twelve times today,” Tenzin says. He paces around the courtyard. It’s a beautiful day outside, so it’s the perfect weather for disgruntled pacing. “Twelve times. In front of the rest of the council.”
“You counted?”
“He’s been doing it to me for months. I thought I was overestimating the problem, so I decided to count, and it was actually worse than I thought.”
“He can be blunt,” says Pema. “That’s how Water Tribe people are.”
“I can tell the difference between when he’s being blunt and when he’s being rude. I think he is being rude. Besides, I’m half-Water Tribe, so I don’t think I can chalk this up to cultural differences.” Tenzin loves his wife, but hoo boy, whose side is she really on?
“Okay, sweetie, I see your point,” Pema says. “He’s got under your skin. I know you probably want to airbend him out the nearest window whenever you see him.”
“It’s not quite that drastic,” Tenzin says. (Oogi chooses this moment to emit a skeptical fart.) “He just has a habit of railroading meetings instead of fostering collaboration and I’ve ran out of ideas about how to deal with him in a constructive way. How did you get on with him, back when you dated and… Wait, didn’t he break up with you?” Why does she keep defending him? She always does this when he vents about Tarrlok.
Pema pffts a bit of sky bison fuzz away from her face, then answers, “It was mutual. We just didn’t have the, uh, romantic chemistry. Also, he definitely didn’t want children. Said he wanted to focus on his career and leave a legacy through that.”
Doesn’t want children? How nice for Tarrlok. He probably gets to sleep in, and take baths whenever he wants, and listen to music on the radio without hearing the entire household screaming in the background, and he will never know the joy of having a small child release one of those special high velocity child sneezes upon his shirt. (Tenzin isn’t sure if all children sneeze so violently, or if airbender children are especially adept at it. When Meelo has a cold - which is always - he can propel green mucus about five feet, much like one of those lizards that spit venom.)
“Anyway, we only dated for three months,” Pema continues, “but I liked him because, well… it seemed like he tried really hard at everything he did. So that’s how we got along: I thought he was interesting and hardworking, and he said I was sweet.”
Tenzin wants to ask ‘you liked him because he was a tryhard? how is that an attractive quality?’ but decides against it, because it would make him sound petty.
Pema almost answers that for him, though. “I met him at a time when I wasn’t sure what to do with my life, so I liked his sense of purpose.”
Tenzin wishes he couldn’t relate to that. He’s always had a rough relationship with ambition: whenever people assumed he was ambitious, it was only because he seemed that way in comparison to his siblings.
“So maybe you should try to view him as… As a guy who means well and is trying his best even though you disagree with him on a lot of things,” Pema says. “I think your problem is that you’re taking his behaviour personally when he’s just, well, dealing with the world as best as he can, the only way he knows how.”
“That’s sound advice. I’ll try to remember that,” Tenzin mutters, and wanders closer to Oogi so he can remove an irritating piece of straw from the sky bison’s left nostril.
Then Tenzin accepts that he is a very flawed man who can be very unchariable, and he asks, “Did Tarrlok kiss like a wet fish? You can tell me. I will keep the secret safe.”
Pema throws a clump of sky bison fuzz at him. “Why do you care? Buy him a drink at a big event sometime and find out yourself.”
“I would not cheat on the mother of my children with a man who interrupted me twelve times earlier today,” Tenzin mutters, and then lapses back into grumpiness. “Also, yesterday, when I was trying to explain the impact of the recent changes to air traffic regulations, he interjected with ‘I think what Tenzin means is…’ and then rephrased exactly what I was saying, even though I was explaining myself just fine....”
Pema reaches over and pulls Tenzin closer to her. He kneels down by her side, so their shoulders are touching. Pema starts to pull sky bison fur out of the brush so she can gather it into a hairball.
Tenzin sighs. “I’m just annoying myself with this, aren’t I? I mean, it’s not like Tarrlok is here right now to personally get on my nerves. I am getting on my own nerves by thinking of Tarrlok.”
Pemma smiles as she gathers the fur. “Easy to say. Hard to remember when you feel angry.”
“Honestly I think I’m just envious of his hair,” Tenzin says very quietly.
Pema bundles some of the fur into a ball, then places it on Tenzin’s head, as an impromptu wig.
“Thank you,” Tenzin says gravely.
Then he sits there and feels his scalp itch.
“I still can’t believe you dated Tarrlok years ago,” Tenzin says. “...Wait. You never told me how you met him in the first place.”
Pema keeps pulling moulted sky bison hair from the bristles of the brush. She places it into a little pile, which Oogi carefully sniffs. “Oh, a guy was hassling me, and Tarrlok saw it and knocked the guy out cold with that… water whip thing people do, you know. I can’t remember the proper name of the technique, but it looks pretty scary when you see it up close because it’s so fast.” Pema pauses there, as if reflecting on something. “Anyway, at the time, I thought Tarrlok was chivalrous.”
Tenzin keeps his thoughts on that to himself.
“One of the guy’s teeth landed by my shoe,” Pema adds, as a quiet aside.
Tenzin says nothing about that.
“Tarrlok’s a nice person really,” Pema says, although her inflection makes it sound more like a question than a statement.
“I’m sure he is,” Tenzin says, then places the bison fur wig on her head instead.