Work Text:
“And... positive.”
Ty Lee set down the seventh pregnancy test her friend had taken that afternoon. She gently took the silky-black-haired girl’s hand, her thumb brushing over her knuckles in a futile attempt to comfort her.
The subject of the pregnancy test, Mai, had not spoken a single word since the first test turned out to be positive. To say that this baby comes at a bad time is an understatement, even in a perfect scenario where her relationship with Zuko has been the most stable, having a baby never crossed her mind.
Let alone now.
First, they had broken up three weeks ago, and second, she hadn't seen him ever since. Literally, the last time her eyes had landed on him was the day she stormed out of his apartment in anger, finalizing what had somehow become their sixth breakup over something she could barely remember anymore.
No one knows of his whereabouts, not Mai, not Azula and Ty Lee, not even Aang and Sokka.
The only reason no one had reported him missing was that Iroh had reassured Ursa—who had nearly driven herself insane worrying about her son—that Zuko had gone away and did not wish to be bothered.
For a few seconds that felt like eternity, no one said anything, Ty Lee still with her gentle touch tracing over Mai’s thumb and Mai herself stared blankly at the ceiling.
Their silence was broken by the chirp of a car unlocking outside Mai’s dorm. Azula grabbed her coat and purse as if she had a destination in mind and was determined to get there as soon as possible.
“Let’s go!” Urged Azula, looking at her two best friends sitting still on the bed.
Mai looked at her, uncomprehending. Her mind was so scattered she couldn’t even process what Azula meant, leaving her with nothing but a blank stare. Ty Lee glanced between them before speaking. “Go where?”
“Uhm, the clinic?” Azula answered with her usual indifference, seeing no reaction from the girls Azula paused in disbelief, “Obviously...” her eyes fixed on her pregnant best friend, asking for reassurance of her initial plan “...right, Mai?”
Ty Lee followed her girlfriend’s gaze, landing on Mai, who had not shown any reaction to Azula’s plan. Mai is quiet and tends to stick to her taciturn nature, but her mind never shares the same traits as her personality, she always thinks, and for the first time after twenty years of living, Mai’s mind goes blank.
Seeing the lack of response she was getting, Azula clicked her tongue, dragged a chair across the room, and dropped into it directly in front of Mai.
“Oh, come on, Mai.” She rolled her eyes. “You can't seriously be thinking about keeping it.”
“Azula!” Ty Lee glared at her girlfriend, expecting more decorum regarding the situation. “It is a human being”
“Ty, it is barely more than a cluster of cells.” Azula shrugged. “Right now, it’s closer to a parasite than a person.”
Feeling the attention shift on her, Mai’s consciousness slowly crept in. “I-I don't know”
“Well, let's do a quick review.” Azula crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, her eyebrows not frowned anymore, taking a more relaxed stance.
“You broke up with him three weeks ago, and we don’t know where he is,” Said Azula. “And if that thing is Zuko’s, then it will probably be an idiot anyway—Ouch.” Her latest statement and attempt to lighten the mood were granted with Ty Lee’s fist landed squarely on her stomach.
“Azula!” Ty Lee pinched her nose bridge before fixing her girlfriend with a glare. “Can’t you be a little more supportive?”
“Look, I am supportive.” Azula exhaled a deep breath, a smirk slowly spread across her face. “Single mom and two gay aunts? I’m practically giddy thinking about how many people we’ll piss off.”
“Well, that bit is true...” Ty Lee hesitated. “See, Mai? There is a bright side to this”
Mai looked at the two with disbelief, realizing she might need to exert more effort to not flip the table and scream, “I'm a 20-year-old college student, Ty Lee.” She deadpanned, “I'm not keeping a baby just to piss off bunch of control freaks.”
Azula’s smirk softened. “Well then, let's go to the clinic”
“No!” Mai exclaimed, then her voice faltered. “I—I don’t—I'm not sure.”
Ty Lee and Azula exchanged a glance before both looked back at their friend. Mai had curled into herself, resting her forehead against her knees as though making herself smaller would somehow make the problem disappear.
“You know, Mai,” Ty Lee began softly, extending her arm to hug the slender body of her best friend. Under normal circumstances, Mai would probably brush her off and go on about her distaste for warm hugs, today is not that day. “It's okay if you want to consider it.”
Azula quietly climbed onto the bed beside them, another rare display of affection. She reached for Mai’s hand, her thumb absentmindedly tracing circles over the back of it.
Azula was right. Keeping the baby was not logical or practical. It was everything Mai stood against. She was troubled with the discrepancy between what her heart wanted and her better judgment.
“Yeah,” Azula muttered, giving Mai’s hand a gentle squeeze. “Who needs a father anyway? Aunties are much cooler”
A laugh escaped Mai as the room erupted with a fit of giggles. The three of them shared a laugh, and for the first time that afternoon, the room felt just a little less suffocating.
・・・・・
“What?” Zuko exclaimed. “You thought I left?”
Azula stood in front of Mai, blocking her brother’s view of her entirely, her stance making it abundantly clear she disapproved of whatever explanation he was about to give. “You went MIA for a month, dickhead. What else was she supposed to assume?”
“Shut the fuck up, Azula.” Zuko shoved his sister out of the way before making a beeline toward Mai, paying little attention to the two other girls in the room.
“Mai, I-I sent you a letter,” he stuttered, his hands instinctively reaching for hers, only to be met with a sharp slap on the wrist. Understanding he had earned that reaction, he quickly pulled them back, though he continued closing the distance between them. “I explained everything in it.”
“What?” Mai stared at him as if he’d just confessed to seeing a 400-foot-tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings
Bewildered by her cluelessness, Zuko tried repeating the following sentence slower, somehow convinced that was the confusing part. “I mailed you a letter to your house, Mai!”
“Don't you read it?” Zuko sighed, thinking of the possibility of his girlfriend tossing the letter or his sister burning it.
“Read it?” Mai echoed. “I never even got it.”
Silence stayed in the room for a few seconds, everyone, especially Zuko, trying to make sense of the situation, stammering once again, “But-but I mailed it myself!”
“Well, forgive her for not living in the eighties,” Azula replied dryly, immediately understanding where the misunderstanding had come from the moment Zuko uttered the words mail and letter.
Ty Lee, who had often taken the role of mediator in their friend group, let out a quiet sigh as she attempted to defuse the tension. It wasn’t an easy position to keep. Between Azula’s tendency for an argument and Mai's stoic nature, someone has to be there to balance the dynamic, and Zuko's letter tomfoolery certainly does not help her job at all.
“In her defense,” she said gently, “no one really reads letters anymore, Zuko.”
His eyebrow furrowed in protest, Zuko could think of plenty of people who still read handwritten letters. He got the idea from Uncle and his penpals from the Earth Kingdom, and his roommate, Aang, wrote Katara one almost every week whenever they were apart. Sokka teased him for it, but he still ended up reading half of them over Katara’s shoulder. Plenty of people he knew still read letters, but it only dawned on him that his girlfriend, who barely replied to text messages, is not the sentimental type who regularly checked her mailbox for handwritten apologies.
Right before Zuko could object, she continued with her usual cheery voice, “But now we know, he didn’t leave you, Mai!”
“I’m still freaking pregnant, aren’t I?” Mai let out a frustrated groan. She swore she could feel herself growing gray from the amount of stress this situation had caused her. Her eyes transfixed on Zuko, catching on to what had happened to his letter, her anger layered with confusion on how Zuko could even reach the conclusion that sending her a letter was a good idea. “And was your phone not good enough for you, idiot?”
“Guru Pathik said I needed to let go of earthly attach—” Zuko’s explanation cut off.
“Of course he said that, he is a fucking monk,” Azula snickered, shooting another sarcastic remark at Zuko's odd explanation. “What's the plan, dum-dum? Go bald?”
“That’s it.” Zuko pointed toward the door. “You two. Out.”
Zuko hurriedly ushered Azula and Ty Lee out of the room before shutting the door behind them, ignoring the girls' protests, leaving him and Mai alone.
As soon as the door shut behind him, the tension that had briefly dissolved into chaos settled over the room once more. He saw her, Mai sat on the edge of the bed, her face buried in her hands, hiding from his gaze—or perhaps hiding the tears threatening to spill from her eyes.
Zuko slowly walked over to her, placing his body in front of her yet again, his knees planted on the floor. This time, when he reached for her hands, she didn’t pull away. He gently lowered them from her face, their fingers intertwining without resistance.
“Mai...” His voice was barely above a whisper. “I’m so, so, so sorry about that stupid letter. I don't know what I was thinking.”
Zuko took a deep, long breath. His eyes drifted toward her still-flat stomach before returning to hers, silently contemplating how to bring that up. “Are you gonna keep it?”
“Do you want me to?” Mai replied almost thoughtlessly.
Zuko let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. He paused and thought for a moment. “I want what you want,”
“Burdening it all on me.” Mai let out a humorless scoff and slipped her hand from his grasp, folding both arms across her chest. “Great.”
“No-no!” Zuko caught himself, letting out a frustrated groan as he carefully searched for the right words, as if one wrong sentence could cost him their relationship. “Mai, I know that we’re still young, but if I learned anything from that spiritual trip, it’s that I need to work on myself.”
He paused, threading his next words. “And I don’t want to lose you. I can’t.”
“It was supposed to be a three-month retreat, you know?” His hand traveled to the back of his neck as he let out a nervous chuckle. “But every second I spent away—whether it was doing immersive rituals or sitting through enlightenment seminars—my mind always wandered back to you. I missed you so much. The thought of living without you because I couldn’t get my act together… It terrified me.”
Mai winced. For one horrifying second, she wondered if her boyfriend had narrowly escaped being recruited into a cult.
“So above everything else... whatever it is you decide, your happiness is all I care about, Mai.” His voice softened. “I love you.”
Mai studied him in silence. His burn scar, the one that gave him a little edge, was strangely enticing. His tired yet gentle face, his hands were rough from weeks of traveling, and the tunic hanging from his shoulders had seen better days. He looked exhausted.
From tearful confessions beneath the rain to breaking up in the middle of the road over yet another miscommunication, their relationship had never been easy nor perfect.
But Mai was just a girl who struggled to express her emotions, and Zuko was just a guy with a temper he was still learning to control. Yet despite every quarrel, every flaw, and every shortcoming, love had remained the one thing constant.
So, maybe perfection was simply never meant for them.
Mai cupped his face, her thumb caressing the scar along his cheek. For a brief moment, she allowed herself to imagine all the futures that still lay before them before finally pulling him into a kiss.
“I love you too, dork”
・・・・・
Mai and Zuko emerged from the room to find Ty Lee and Azula waiting just outside the door. Ty Lee immediately straightened, pretending she hadn’t been listening, while Azula didn’t bother hiding it in the slightest.
“So?” She asked.
Zuko glanced at Mai before quietly slipping his hand into hers. His fingers tightened around hers in silent reassurance, and he pressed a fleeting kiss against the back of her hand. Mai lowered her gaze, taking a long, steady breath.
“Let’s go.”