This Be The Verse

Zuko was, by nature and by nurture, an early riser.

He would wake on the time frame of 6 to 6:30AM, untangle himself from Sokka, stumble to the bathroom to take a morning shower and brush his teeth, have his morning meditation on the corner of his living room where sun rays would bathe him equally (and Missy would sprawl on his lap and purr the whole time), do his morning stretches, brew tea for himself and coffee for Sokka and have breakfast ready by the time his boyfriend finally waltzed into the living room, hastily tying his hair, grumpy and almost late for work, while Zuko was sat by the meditation spot again, pages of poetry spread through the ground as he munched angrily at a piece of toast.

Sokka was not a morning person of any sort, shape or kind. Absurdly, comically so. In the process of untangling himself from his body, 29 times out of 30, he would scrunch his face in disapproval, mutter something about the morning being evil, then rolled right to to the other side, hiding under blankets and burying himself under pillows until his inevitable rude awakening because he’s late again and his breakfast is already packed to go, because Zuko knows better than to think he will ever sit in the counter to eat it instead of stealing a kiss, grabbing his breakfast and shouting ‘You’re the best, I love you, I’ll marry you one of these days, see you at night’.

(The 1 out of 30 scenario was when one of them did not fill Missy’s bowl to the optimal quantity and she was ever so thoughtful as to come into their bedroom, climb onto Sokka’s chest and kindly give him a piece of her mind at 1AM through unholy meowing that had him knelt on the kitchen, filling her bowl and muttering about how passionately he hated her.

Big words for a man who was caught on tape baby carrying her with a stupid smile at his face, calling her ‘my pretty baby’ every time she meowed softly at him, kiss her in between her ears, another meow, ‘yeah, my pretty girl’.)

So, it was truly a statement to how unsettled and on edge his boyfriend truly was when Zuko woke at 6:21, heaved a tiny sigh, detangled himself from Sokka’s body and heard him grumble and get up while he walked into the bathroom for a shower.

It shouldn’t unsettle him as much as it does, having his boyfriend actually wake up early after all the pushing Zuko has put to get him to wake before the time he has to gargle orange juice because he doesn’t have any more time to actually brush his teeth.

It should be nice. Sokka enters the shower right after Zuko leaves the bathroom (not without tugging him close by the shirt first and pressing a quick kiss to his scared cheek). It should be. The house is always so quiet in the mornings, even if he appreciates his rare of early serenity as much as anyone else, but considering that he works from home more often than not, and home is usually empty if not for him and their cat, I makes for a lonely work routine and any spare Sokka (or any other social interaction he gets in the house or running to any junk food to buy a small portion of fries for no good reason to escape deadlines or even to cry at a coffee shop’s bathroom due to the responsibility and the crippling anxiety of age) is very welcome.

So it is, in theory, nice, that he’s making breakfast and Sokka is dressing for work. They can talk. Talking is fun. They can kiss. Kissing is even more fun. But, in practice, where Zuko has the hair of the back of his neck all rattled by the unnatural morning he leads and walks to the kitchen (not without making a stop by the guest room and creaking the door open to see his sister still asleep), it doesn’t feel nice. He makes Sokka whole meal waiting for the other shoe to drop with noticeable confusion.

He’s ashamed to admit it, but it took him half an hour to realize what exactly was so wrong about the situation they’re in until Sokka sits on the other side of the counter, in front of the plate of scrambled eggs with onions, spinach, gravy and meat (because no, he could not eat seal jerky every day for breakfast, the unhealthy buffoon), the coffee mug Toph had given him last Christmas as a gift (cerulean blue with the words ‘what are you looking at, jerk?’ written on the bottom) cradled between his hand, and casually asks:

“So, is Esther Coleman up yet?”

“Sokka.” Zuko says, sharp as a whip, turning to glare at his unrepentant boyfriend, but being very careful to not let his exasperation drive him to burn eggs with furikake for two. “Could we please not compare my sister to The Orphan’s child psychopath?”

“Sure.” He says, his face sour as the candies Sokka likes to buy in packs, looking at him as if he feels a tad betrayed, as if he expected Zuko to band against his sister along with him, bringing his mug up to his lips. “You have any other child psychopaths you prefer?”

For fuck’s sake.

“Aren’t things tense enough without this petty name-calling?” Zuko grumbles, turning his back on Sokka and opening the cupboards to pick up plates for him and Azula. “Koh, she’s been here for a day. What did she do to you?”

“Would you like me to go about it in alphabetic order or chronological? Hell, should we recall what she did to you? Or is it easier to ask what didn’t she do?”

“Sokka-” He tries, turning to him, breakfast be damned.

“You were in the hospital for weeks.” Sokka says, and he’s suddenly standing, waving his hands about and barely holding himself back from shouting. “Zuko, you could have died!”

“I know that.” Zuko roared, voice rising above Sokka’s for one moment that was so angry it rang like a 13 year old boy trying to be angry so he wouldn’t admit he was scared. The silence that rang in between them was long and heavy, with angered breaths and shifty eyes avoiding each other’s gaze less they were ready to admit that they were both right if only they also admitted to being both wrong. Fine, Zuko thinks, he can take the first step, he’s used to being wrong anyways, but he’ll do it with his eyes close. “Do you think Ozai was only abusive with me?” He whispers out in a breath that sounds like an exhausted crone, a haunting house through which wind passes and pulling a groan from the depth of his guts. “I wasn’t always a great person either, Sokka, but I had people on my side. Azula had no one.”

“No one?! What about Ty Lee and Mai?!”

“I’m not saying she was right, but I didn’t exactly take Uncle’s offer of help at the beginning either-”

“You know damn well you and her are not the same!”

“No, Sokka, I don’t! I really don’t!” His eyes drift to the hallway where he thinks he saw a shadow pass by and feared it was Azula, but it was just Missy and her orange fur striding through the halls as if she owns the place (in all fairness, she does, the darling tyrant). His nerves ease slightly, but her hands grab onto the marble balcony. “She never asked for help, ever in her life. And she called me. She called me for help. She’s my sister. I owe it to her to try and help.”

“You owe her nothing.” Sokka snarls.

“I want to try and help.” He corrects his wording, sounding as firm as Sokka, just as unmovable but he doesn’t want to actually fight. He really doesn’t need to fight, but he is not kicking his sister off their house, no matter the fact that when she had hugged him late last night he half expected her to stab him between the shoulder blades or something equally worse. “Please, Sokka, I know I’m asking a whole fucking lot of you, but… Please, stand by me on this one? Please?”

Sokka’s face does that thing where it softens and hardens all in one moment, when his feelings grow too grand for him to bear so he pushes them down slightly to rule over the chaos with a clear head.

“She cried.” He confesses, in a horrified whisper no younger sibling’s tear should elicit. “Azula collapsed on my arms and cried like I haven’t seen her cry since she was five.” There it goes, the shocked numbness of the night before wearing out on the edges and making his gaze blurry as he looks into the nothingness at the right of his boyfriend’s face, shaking his head slightly. “And those pictures of mom…”

Ursa. Agni be good, would he ever not be haunted by his mother? Every time he thought he had finally worked out through everything the ghost of his mother and the painful rose-tinted memories could have made him. He hides his face in his hands and only half wishes his hands could hide him from all the things that crept into this house in the cover of the night much like tears threaten to creep into his eyes.

Just one easy month with easy to handle things, is it asking much?

There’s a heavy sigh from the man by his side - who’s suddenly on his side and not n the other side of the counter - and Sokka’s calloused hands wrap around his wrists, pulling them from his face and guiding him to the back of the other’s back, lips press a gentle kiss to the top of his head, and, just like that, he’s being hugged and collapsing into his boyfriend’s shoulder.

“You have the worst family, I swear to La.” He mutters into his hair. The way his lips brush against small patches of skin, always so near his temples, feel like another kiss.

Zuko presses his face against his shoulders a little more, as if his face is a pancake.

“Sorry. Didn’t pick it.”

Sokka’s amused breath is huffed out near his ear, and he mutters something akin to ‘not a real excuse’ before going thoughtful quiet. Zuko doesn’t feel  like speaking and it always takes his boyfriend some time to get his emotions  in order, so he merely relishes the morning hug as if the morning wasn’t as chaotic as a car accident in the middle of the highway.

“I’m going to stand by you no matter what, you know that.”

His heart warmed considerably, the way his chest did when he drank hot oolong tea.

“I know.” Zuko hides a thankful smile against his shirt, but he does lift his face to press a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He says and kisses his forehead in turn, his warmth breath and the tenderness of the gesture almost enough to make the slight stubble scratching him lightly unimportant. Sokka kisses his hairline one last time, then steps back to pick his bag and fish his car key from the bowl. “But if she kills you that will be entirely your fault.”

“She’s not going to kill me, Sokka.” Zuko hisses, exasperated.

“Are you sure?” Sokka asks, narrowing his yes over Zuko’s shoulder to the general direction of their guest room. Zuko did the one reasonable thing to do: he glared back at him, pushed him through the door then promptly closed it behind his back. “I called Katara to check if you’re alive later.” He added, like an afterthought, from the other side, knowing better than to try to put up a fight after one too many times being kicked out of home and into work.

Which, for future reference, not the way announcing such a visit under the current circumstances should ever be announced.

“You what?” Zuko asked,sounding just as strangled as the statement rightfully deserved. “Sokka, she hates Azula!”

“Which is why I trust her to give me a fair assessment of what is going on, because, I adore you, but we both know you won’t tell me shit.”

“She’s just as biased as I am! If you wanted a neutral party you’d have called-”

“No one! Everyone hates her!”

“The point still stands: Katara is going to murder Azula!”

“It’s better than Azula murdering you!” He argues, and Zuko just knows he has the face of someone who thinks they’re being reasonable, and he could open the door solely to punch it. "Plus, Katara is a doctor. She's not going to kill Azula, just… Severally incapacitate her something.” 

“One more sentence and you’re sleeping on the couch.”

A second of silence is too short of a time for Zuko but too long for Sokka, apparently because he tries:

“I love you…?”

Zuko promptly hit his forehead against the door, internally asking Agni why did he hate him so much. Zuko was a relatively good person, he did relatively nice things, he had a fucked up family but he didn’t of which scrotum he would be shot out of.

“I love you too.” The words came muffled, both because he had his face buried in his hands and his hands pressed against the door, but Sokka heard him, of that he was sure. “Now go to work.”

He knocked twice against the door before leaving, and Zuko was left with a possibly homicidal sister, an unfinished poetry book, a cat that hated strangers and the fact he couldn’t grasp how Sokka made knocking on doors sound affectionate.

Azula read once somewhere that sociopaths slept with too many pillows on their beds (or was it touch starved people that did that?) and that insecure people would wrap themselves fully in blankets to sleep, therefore she took to only sleeping with two pillows and the thinnest silk blanket money could buy less she wanted to encourage such things on her person and laid on her side, posture relaxed, forcing herself to take meditative breaths that guided her into sleep every night.

The night in her brother’s guest bedroom throws all such protocols through the window.

(She feels entirely comfortable blaming Zuko for all of it. He was the one to hug her and hugging her started this mess, so it was clearly his fault.
She was surrounded by well-meaning idiots that were walking liabilities to her person with their concern and their gentle hands and their adamant will to take care of her though she scarcely had given them much reason to.)

Sleeping in the guest room is awfully easy. She was exhausted, though she had not much exercised that day and took quite the long car-nap on her way here, but then her brother was carrying her bags inside his house, defusing tension with his boyfriend (whom she totally threatened more than once and won't that just make for a lovely dinner conversation?), cradling a cat in his arms and smiling at her still (would he just stop? He keeps talking, and being kind, and acting as if nothing really happened, nothing like a knife to his chest and three years away from home and she feels more and more tired by the minute) then guiding her into the guest room he had take the time of setting up and making sure she was comfortable and settled in for the night.

The bedroom he and the boy shared wasn’t much far away from hers. She could hear him sob when the soft crying began. Azula turned to the side, her back to the door and was met with feather pillows.
Waking up in his guest room was equally terrible; there were four pillows in the bed for some reason and she slept with two of those under her bed and clinging to the other two as if they were two halves of a person she could bring together to actually hold. Disgraceful, really. She tried kicking them out of bed but she was trapped with them because she wrapped herself in the most fuzzy blanket she has ever had the displeasure to touch.

She groans in mild rage and kicks them all to the floor.
What is even up with Zuko’s guest room and being this ridiculously comfortable? Is he housing children in here?

Whatever. She probably overslept too, in this ridiculous room and in this ridiculous house but there’s no father here to keep on enforcing strict arbitrary time frames, so Azula stands, shoves her hands through her bags for the small nécessaire then walks to the bathroom because she feels like walking to the Koh-damned bathroom.

Essentials and things she will miss included her skincare routine because it did not take a genius to figure out that not only she would not be allowed back to pick her products as she also would not be getting any allowances anytime soon to replace them. Azula was already in for a terrible no-good couple of… Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

Does it even matter?

It’s going to be rough either way but she’ll be damned if she develops bags under her eyes over it. She’ll cross this hell well-composed and with her skin moisturized, thank you very much, Father and not-dead-Mother and Agni too, who must be having a little too much fun at the absurdities that come out of this family.

Azula knows for sure that touch starved people take warm baths, because the warmth could be assimilated as touch by the brain, and given that the warmth was plenty and enveloped a person, that in turn could trick the brain into feeling much like it would if the person in question was given a hug or something equally as pathetic. So as another baseline rule, back home she would only take ice cold showers to keep her mind lucid and to not cave to her own brain’s shortcomings and yearning for affection.

Right now, she glares into the shower of the guest bathroom and turns the faucet of hot water calculatingly, another hand placed under the flow of water, until she achieves the perfect warm temperature. Her clothes go, kicked to the laundry basket her brother has in his guest room (why does it look so much like it's lived in? The guest rooms back in their family's house were vast and luxurious but also cold and notably empty. Zuko's just look like they are there so he can ask people to stay the night after they talk nonsense for too long after dinner and it becomes late or drank one too many glasses of wine to be safely sent driving back) and takes a stand under the pouring water.

It’s not anything like a true hug (Azula, Ty Lee’s warm brown eyes, are you okay?) but it feels some type of way that is not entirely unpleasant.

Azula's stops for a moment, truly unsure, and goes through her brain for any other scraps of useless information or small articles she breezed over that could be applied to the situation she's in; all that comes up are movies.

She sits on the floor, though that sounds dubious, because that's what people whose lives have just been turned upside down do in movies, brings her knees to her chest and wraps her own arms around herself, as the warm water pours over her. It's not fully horrible though not fully effective either: the heat engulfs her as a whole and melts parts of her she had not been still existed after these many years, wears down her walls until they fall altogether and her shoulders shake with quiet sobs.
But it’s still not a hug.

Stupid, she thinks sniffling silently some twenty minutes later, standing up shakily to close the water stream off. Steam hung above her, heavy and warm in the air, Stupid. Stop being a baby about it, act your age.

She collects herself, all the pieces that fell off and spread through the floor when she dared to loosen herself slightly, powers herself with healthy amounts of anger to keep pushing through it all.

Azula was above small moments of pathetic failure and this was just dear old Zuzu brushing off on her.

She combs her hair back into her seamless topknot, telling herself all the while she will persevere through yet this one more situation as always and ignoring the ghosts on the edges of the mirror.
Her phone remains uncharged and turned off on the bedside table when she leaves the room and walks unsurely towards where she remembers was the living room.

“Zuko?” She calls out to the peacefully quiet house.

She was expecting for him to call back, but instead she gets the same orange cat from yesterday jumping on the spot a few feet ahead of her and hissing like it means to claw her eyes out. Azula backs off immediately and starts putting together excuses for the probable casualty of killing Zuko’s cat if does go for her neck.

“Missy!” Her brother says, another click of his tongue, like the one from yesterday but much more aggravated and here he comes, dressed casually in maroon clothes, scooping the cat into his lap where she becomes a tiny pile of fur and not-homicidal intent. Ha, good try. If that didn’t work for Azula, it’s not going to work for a cat. “You’re terrible.” He mutters fondly to the cat and starts scratching the back of her ear as if it did not very clearly tried to kill her ten second ago, before turning his smile to her. “Good morning, Azula. I… Uh, I had made breakfast, but we’re closer to lunch time now, so… Your breakfast is in the fridge, if you want, I ate mine. But if you want lunch, I’m making lunch.”

She blinks a couple of times. Many things make her want to slam her head against a table, but the one that calls her attention he most is:

“Lunch?” She asks, tilting her head every so slightly to show her confusion.

“What time, exactly, is it?”

“About 12:45, I think.”

She overslept six hours and fifteen minutes.

Agni, Azula’s truly out of it.

“Lunch will do.” She says, shifting her feet unsurely, and Zuko nods, almost as unsure before mustering another smile at her.

“Good. What would you like to eat?”

“Anything.” Azula answers, in a shrug, because, really, she’s not about to be picky over food when she’s on his house out of his favor. “Where... Where is…” She gestures around the house vaguely, and Zuko frowns, looking around as if trying to figure out what she’s referring to. Fuck, why can’t she remember his name? She threatened him she should know. Her head tilts back in exasperation, her hand flopping towards the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. “The boy?”

Silence does not eat away at her nerves, as it is known to do with others. Instead, it just falls to ankles-high, like snow or mud, uncomfortable and non-consequential. She brings her face down again, gaze fixed at her brother, demanding and unimpressed. Zuko looks back at her, face scrunched is disbelief and perplexity.

“Do you mean… My boyfriend?” He asks, sounding like he’s expecting her to be joking. His own brow arches to match hers and the murder cat is glaring at her now Azula disrupted her owner’s attention and halted his petting. “Sokka?”

Why is he asking ass if she’s supposed to know what the man who alienated Zuko from their family is called? It’s his boyfriend and he seems just as fond of her as she is of him.

“Is that his name?” She asks, disdain heavy on her voice, to which Zuko shifts defensively, and narrows his eyes with something that’s not sadness at all.

“Yes.” He says, chest inflated as if he was waiting for her to hurl insults at the boy.

Normally, she would, but it doesn’t seem very smart to antagonize one of the owners of the house by speaking badly of the other, even if the other in question deserves every insult o his person she could string up.

“Then where is Sokka?” She asks, and knows she would be thinking ‘shove it’ if she was any other person at the sight of startled surprise and the sagging of Zuko’s posture.

“He’s off at work.” He drawls the words out, face still turned to slightly away from her like he expects entirely for a biting comment.
Just because the ma- the boy deserves to be insulted, doesn’t mean she’ll do so when Zuko expects. She doesn’t exist to indulge his whims.

“Don’t you work?”

“I am a writer.” He says and that… That reaction is new. He looks almost disappointment - no, not disappointment- sad, by the answer she gives him. He tries to smile again, but this time her lips twitch feebly but nothing comes, not when his eyes look heavy like a storm cloud. “I work from home.”

“Oh.” She says, keeping her face cool and devoid of reaction, her eyes always purposefully away from the bookshelves by the TV where familiar book covers stand neatly side-by-side. “What do you write? Dreary romances?”

He snorts, bitter and resigned and shakes his head, looking off to the window with the view to his front door. 

“Come on.” We’ll have visit to lunch, so I should get started. He says, his eyes avoiding her entirely, down to the floor, then he bows and lets the murder cat lose with a gentle nudge and the a chiding. “Behave.”

Fine then, Azula thinks but only slightly bothered, They’ll talk about hid poetry another day.

When she wakes the sky is cerulean blue and cloudless, birds are chirping birdsong, the sun is shining, the weather is nice and Aang's arms are around her waist, her ear to his chest, listening to his heartbeat with a pleased sigh.

It would have been a good day, could have been, but she didn't get nice things.

Katara turns to a side, stretching herself lazily and turning to the other side to reach for her phone, Aang following right behind her, not budging his hold around her waist and hiding his face against the dark brown mess of her hair, nuzzling into it gently. She smiles to herself, sneaking a glance to sleepy Aang over her shoulder fondly before she looks at her phone.

It all goes downhill from here.

There are up to thirty texts from her brother with different degrees of paranoia each, a plea to spend her lunch break with Zuko so she can tell him he’s not dead and the knowledge that Azula Igarashi is apparently staying at his house now.

“Shit.” She says.

“What?” Aang asks sleepily, muffled against her shoulder. She nudges his side, offers her phone for him to read the texts. He does so, eyes narrowed in sleep slowly and gradually growing more aware, his brows climbing up and up his forehead until they nearly touch his arrow. “Shit.”

Katara groans, hiding her face on the pillow.

“I know.”

So here she is: in the small gap of hours between one shift and the next, that she could very well be spending maybe trying to see if Toph is to tag along and have lunch with her, walking towards the beige-colored house her brother and Zuko have bought about two years ago and has ever since been the coziest and most welcoming dance hall she has ever seen, even though she loves her own house dearly.

Dance hall, that is, because since they moved in together and bought their cat they have taken dancing around the fact they both act like a wedded couple and the very obvious question that involves a ring and kneeling that they’re taking too long to pop out.

It’s going to take even longer with their friendly neighborhood sociopath in the guest room, as if Katara needed any more reason to hate her.

She takes a deep breath and does as Aang told her to: think nice thoughts and you’ll have nice experiences. She’s the hopeful one in the family, isn’t she? She can manage nice thoughts, even if, she’ll admit it, Katara finds her moral compass very heavily leaning towards the act of murder. But murder is illegal and Katara is not Toph, so, sure, nice thoughts.

Nice thought of the day: even though there’s a sociopath in there that she is legally, morally and Zuko-lly not allowed to murder, this is still Zuko and Sokka’s house, so she gets to pet Gingery and she gets to eat free food and the free food just so happens to be Zuko’s, who apparently has a personal book of recipes to every single person he knows because Tui forbid the same person eats the same plate when they come over.

Not that she was complaining he took over cooking, but the guy needed out-of-the-house hobbies.

Katara has barely put a foot on their driveway and the door opens, Zuko smiling with all his teeth and all his nerves and the 'please let my sister leave another day, officer' look about him that would be very convincing and sway her into sparing his sister, if she didn't see his sister inside the house, glaring over his shoulder glaring as if Katara had personally offended her. She shakes her head minutely at Zuko and he seems to collapse into an acceptance of his defeat.

“Hi, Zuko!” She greets him nevertheless, hugging him tightly because she's not rude and he's still her friend (a very tense one at that, she will report that to Sokka). “What the actual fuck?” She whispers against his ear.

“I made crème brûleè.” He says, like a peace offering. ”Please don't murder her.”

“I wouldn't kill a person without just cause.”

Zuko seems relaxed by that, and Katara keeps to herself she has plenty of just cause to murder Azula after every thing she has done. Doesn't feel particularly prone to saying so either, when he smiles that grateful smile and turns to (re)introduce her to his awaiting sister.

Azula looks nonchalant and aloof as always, with her nose held so high she might be aiming to touch the stars with the tip of it. Katara notes mildly mournfully that, with her money and privilege she has fixed the nos Katara and broken só beautifully through her anger into near perfection. It is a bummer. She thought if nothing else, she would have made her nose slightly crooked.

“Hello…” She says, almost hesitant through her calculating eyes before trying a name she does not seem to have much certainty over. “Kara?”

“Katara.” She corrects, as patiently as she can manage.

Azula's face twitches dismissively.

“Close enough.” The girl has the nerve to say through a shrug, before turning around and towards the living room's couch.

Nice thoughts.

Murder.

Nice thoughts.

Murder.

Nice thoughts.

Zuko squeezes Katara's shoulders, looking for all the world just as exasperated as Katara was infuriated and murmured something about remembering the crème brûleès before turning her back to the kitchen to save their lunch from burning in the oven.

Katara pulls her phone to text the one sensible person she has left.

Mai hated her work.

She was good at it, it did pay well, could be considered mentally stimulating, she chose the major too, but she hated her co-workers, so she hated the job too, out of principle.

Work was terrible. Capitalism was awful. She wasn’t going to do anything about it, but complaining did wonders for the soul, no matter what Ty Lee said it did for her aura.

( Apparently it had gone from gray to gray-like-red and her girlfriend found that such a massive improvement she put crystals everywhere in the house.

If Ty Lee explained her once again what rose quartz were for she just might begin to hate rocks too, and not even specific rocks. Rocks in general.

The Earth in general, for producing crystals and letting esoteric people fantasize about their properties. They were crystals. )

It’s 4 and some to her halves in the afternoon and her work is just two hours shy of ending for the day, so she could go back to home and the stupid crystals and some alternative food Ty Lee found at the all green restaurant by the dance studio and tested she’d get for them to try. Sure, sometimes Ty Lee struck gold on her finding, but most often than not Mai kept frozen pork chops on the fridge to reheat as necessary.

She’s only mildly vexed Katara did not have lunch with her today, but mostly because that meant she had to go and have lunch with Song- who was a nice girl, all in all, but too sweet and kind and prone to making small talk an overworked and hungry Katara would not try.

Still, it was better of a company than most of the weird people that found appealing the fact a, and she quotes, ‘cute goth girl’ worked in forensic pathology. It was alright, though, the texts she sent her ranting about the conditions she was forced to endure for a plate of Zuko’s food made up for her lack of company and amused her greatly. Especially when she began to rant about no mater how many crème brûlées Zuko could, and she quotes, ‘whip out of is ass’, Azula’s body would be found in a inconspicuous woods and she counted on her expertise on how to properly dispose of a corpse.

‘Both my girlfriend and Zuko would be extremely upset with us’

‘But think of the greater good’

‘Not my thing’

‘Think of personal satisfaction then’

‘Do not sweet talk me into crime’

‘You’re really going to let me down like this?’

Which was about the time that three things happened: a) her lunch break ended, b) Mai ghosted Katara and c) Katara’s lunch break ended and she had to make a run for it.

All in all, she’s greatly amused and her spirits are high, which is very good. Good humor was essential to handle yet some more hours with dead bodies.

So, when her phone buzzed right before she put on her gloves and went back to her (actually very) clean work, she assumed it would be Katara to ask her a favor or Song after having read Mai’s text warning her that she forgot her wallet at the restaurant and she could come down to collect it whenever she was free.

“Yes?” She answers, not sparing a look at the screen of her phone, eyes fleeting over the chart with the informations for the unfortunate woman who had passed away earlier that day on room 345 and had an interesting combination of factors going for her.

“Mai?” Ukano’s voice rings from the other side.

Oh, no. She tilts her head down, chin against her chest, holding back a long-suffering sigh, What did he want now?

Her good mood drains out of her at impressive speed, as if she was a bathtub whose plug had been pulled out and down, down the train goes the water. Mai exhales tiredly and briefly considers hanging up the phone.

“Yes, Dad?” She asks instead, giving into the role of the diligent daughter she still struggles to shrug off her own shoulders.

“Do you still talk with Ozai’s Azula?” Oh, of course he was asking about Azula.

How are you, daughter? How is your work, daughter? How is the girlfriend I disapprove of, daughter? Why did your mother divorce me and took my son, daughter?

“No, Dad. I haven’t spoken with her in over two years.” Something I dearly wish I could say about you.

He groans and mumbles something, as if she’s displeased him or not given him the answer he wanted her to give him. Tough luck. He probably is sucking up to Ozai anyway, always after the Igarashi favor even if he loses his whole family in the process.

Maybe he and Ozai deserved each other.

“What about his son?” Ukano tries again, almost bargaining for information. “Your childhood boyfriend?”

“Zuko was not my childhood boyfriend, Dad.” Mai answers, finally letting out just how annoyed she was with him, as per usual with any interaction they had.

“Zuko, that was it.” He replies, absentmindely and completely ignoring her, but what’s new? “Does he still have the same number?”

“Yes.” She says, exasperated, because this is a waste of her precious time and she could be doing so much more with these five minutes she’s pouring onto Ukano and never getting back. “Why do you even want to know that?” She asks in a groan, before realization strikes her like a slap to the cheek and her whole body tenses.

Always sucking up for Ozai’s favor… Azula who had turned off her phone yesterday after getting into Zuko's car. Azula who had trashed her room and ran away from home. Azula who was at Zuko’s place.

Zuko who hadn't spoken with his dad since he survived the last attempt on his life.

Her eyes widen at the phone, her fingers leave her temples, hands placed in either side as if she could placate her father’s poor life decisions through the phone.

“Dad—”

“Thank you, darling, I will send him the number. Goodbye.”

The phone call cuts off.

Mai stays frozen for only a moment before she starts typing with a panicked hurry.