FIC: Ribbons in her Hair [Avatar, Mai & Her Mother & Zuko]

[omnicat]

Title: Ribbons in her Hair
Author: Omnicat v''v
Rating: K / G
Genre: Some Romance, some Angst, mostly Introspective Blather
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: All the way to the finale, baby! 100% known!canon-compliant as of my post-finale editing spree.
Warnings: None.
Pairings: Mai x Zuko, Mai’s Mother x Mai’s Father
Disclaimer: Not mine. Simple as that.
Summary: Mai gets married and flips her mother the bird. A thinly veiled character study.
Author’s Note: Uhm... enjoy?
 

 Ribbons in her Hair

Mai wore ribbons to her wedding.

Frilly ones to go with equally frilly knot-caps, like the ones she used to wear as a child. The ones she used to wear as a child, to be precise, taken from a box of trinkets dug up from between the roots of the tree she had entrusted them to so long ago.

Their life course was as backwards as her own felt, passing from the soft, fumbling hands of youth to cold, gnarled claws, saving adulthood for last: gloved in callouses but stronger than ever. The once scarlet fabric had faded, but the best wood and silk Fire Nation currency could buy had delayed decay long enough for them to be presentable a decade later.

Pink would clash perfectly with the stiff formality of the day, Ty Lee confirmed.

Zuko kept sending Mai curious glances whenever she ran her fingers over the too small hairpieces during their wedding feast, to which she responded with only a sincere but cryptic smile.

He had resolved the issues with his father through the appropriate steel and harsh words, and the Avatar had done the rest; the battle between Mai and her mother had always been one of silence, double meanings and cold shoulders, and that was how she would end it.



It would be too harsh to say Mai grew up unloved. That much she had to concede to as she prepared for the ceremony and stared at her reflection, stark and sharp, and dredged up memories of being warm and squishy enough to make fluttering ribbons and blushing cheeks look natural. But she figured out a little too soon what she was in for, and the knowledge did not inspire long-term affection.

Her parents had never been intentionally cruel to her, nor was she outright ignored until the late surprise that was Tom-Tom. In fact, her father rather adored her, in a helpless, anything-for-my-little-girl,-just-name-it,-but-are-you-sure-your-mother-is-okay-with-this? kind of way.

(Zuko still did not quite know why she’d been so wary of making their ‘thing’ formal - even more so than he was himself -, but she figured that by now, life might keep looking up even if she stopped being permanently prepared for disappointment.)

In her mother, though, Mai could locate (with the same coldblooded but non-lethal accuracy as she landed darts and knives) the seeds of her own latent disdain for humanity and dismissal of so many things, great and small, that others found engaging, endearing, entertaining.

That she knew it had probably been the same between her grandmother and her mother did not make things better.

No arsenal beneath her wedding gown, Mai decided. Ironically, resisting the urge to indulge in her favourite coping mechanism (just this once, a Fire Lady should always be prepared) felt like snapping off dead branches, whereas learning to decline the things she had been taught not to want had always been more along the lines of ‘nipping in the bud’.

Just one or two stilettos so as not to feel naked. If grinning looked even half as goofy on her as Ty Lee’s squees and Suki’s coos led to believe, her soon-to-be husband would take care of the rest.



From the way she had always talked to her daughter about marriage, Mai strongly suspected her mother had married her father mainly because he was clueless enough to leave management of the family’s social affairs to her, without realizing it was something he might have to be interested in himself. She rather enjoyed watching him mingle with everyone and their apedogs while her mother struggled to uphold an amicable demeanor and coax his attention away from undesirables at the same time.

Being born into a noble family but unable to firebend, Mai had been taught from a young age that her career options were effectively restricted to and by politics. (If only Azula had been human enough to keep her friends around just for the sake of being friends, or Ty Lee had run off to the circus earlier.) A good marriage was inevitable to be a crucial part of her life, more important even than the friends she made at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls. And she’d figured out long before it ever became relevant that this would be her undoing.

Her voice was not melodious enough for her high birth, her movements never gained the brand of delicacy her mother tried to instill in her. It was too obvious that her fake smiles were, indeed, fake, making her words - which she did know how to pick, at least - sound like the mockery they were instead of the required flattery.

Her mother only complained about the symptoms, of course. But Mai was thoughtful and observant enough to realize that the intelligence her teachers at the Academy lauded her for, and the self-awareness Azula valued in her, were the root of the problems with her mother. A girl with dimmer wits but greater need for approval would not have ruined such a pretty face and light complexion with a dour expression, picked grudgingly at the hair at the nape of her neck until the glistening black locks came undone from her buns altogether and spilled messily over her back and shoulders, or evaded learning how to move in overly restrictive clothing by keeping to herself when the other children went out to play.

All too soon, her mother had come to the conclusion that she was entirely unsuited for the game of strategic marriage. And instead of trying to change what little her daughter had going for her, the older woman resigned them both to lives of preventing any more damage than birth had already done, and making the best of those inborn qualities.

That was how Mai knew she was, in fact, loved. And the knowledge was like ash in her mouth. It meant never moving from the spot her mother sentenced her to at social gatherings, no matter how much fun other attending children were having, not bothering guests with poignant, undiplomatic questions, and learning to be stealthy enough to avoid detection or else be lectured, at excruciating length, on all that was disappointing and shameful about her.

That Mai knew it had probably been the same between her grandmother and her mother only made things worse.

Clean, clear anger was more useful than the apathetic swirls of disgust and disappointment that resulted from adding pity to the mix. Though the general lack of explosions, loud noise and bodily harm did make it easier to take revenge and sever ties at a royal wedding without anyone but the intended victim noticing.



The unification ceremony and official vows were a political gesture more than anything, a necessity attached to something she cherished because at the heart, it had nothing to do with court or duty or her mother. May as well put it to some good use.

Find a weak, pliable man if she didn’t manage to land herself any of the real big fish, that was about the gist of what her mother had planned for Mai’s future. To keep making her play the game, knowing she would never benefit from it, and settle for a life of material comfort with a man who was useful but would never truly challenge or cherish her.

As an impressionable child, Mai went along with it. By the time her body started changing and her mother proclaimed her ribbons to be too infantile for a girl on the verge of womanhood, Mai gave them up because she had always had to give up the things she liked before long, and she had learned to convince herself she’d never wanted it in the first place.

Going with Princess Azula as a teenager was the best thing that ever happened to Mai. Better even than meeting Zuko back when her mother would still tell her she wasn’t allowed to come back home from the palace before the princess’s bedtime. The new levels Azula took honey-coated tyranny to finally roused true rebellion from the passive aggressive neutrality Mai had taken up while she was stuck between loyalty and resentment.

Before agreeing to marry Zuko and bear his children, Mai had concluded she was sick of vicious cycles and would do it only to break them - hers, and his too, while she was at it.



Throughout the ceremony, Mai felt eyes boring into her back; heard her mother’s voice as things settled down after the chaotic end of the Hundred Year War, stern tones snatching up strings that had come undone in the upheaval, and she was informed which young noblemen were on the list of her potential husbands.

The young Fire Lord, whom Mai had never let on wasn’t as unreachable as her mother thought, because she didn’t want her to interfere and somehow turn him as un-stubborn, useless and boring as her father, had earned himself a special mention as being no longer an option. The combination of his disreputable past, marred face, alleged whimsical nature, precarious hold on the throne and high liability of being assassinated along with all his allies, somehow managed to outweigh even the allurement of Mai becoming Fire Lady.

It would have been touching if she didn’t care for Zuko more than she cared for most of her blood relatives combined. (The uncle who had gotten her in and out of the Boiling Rock excluded.)

Because in the hand that held hers, attached to a man who was once a clueless but headstrong boy and was now a man with a bit more sense in him, who loved her right down to her lack of suitability for strategic marriage, for reasons she let him have because she loved the hopeless jerk just as much, who inspired her to fight for what she once thought unattainable; she felt the memory of sneaking away from Azula and Ty Lee to play with an awkward Prince Charming without getting teased for it, of one fountain in the Fire Nation palace courtyard and one in the lower ring of Ba Sing Se, of having portraits painted and spending lazy days and sultry nights on the palace grounds while her parents were in Omashu, of denouncing her country and flat-out refusing to return home to do as she was told and wilt away.

Bright summer sun ruined her complexion, the faded ribbons in her hair fluttered with every movement, and Mai thought that independence was the best thing since inappropriate friendships in strange places and long, private honeymoons on Ember Island.

PSAN: A review a day keeps the writer’s block away? (Not that it would help me much, but still, nice thought...)