Maiandzuko Stories

If I reach deep beneath myself, I feel a pulsing heart thumping within. And I'm shocked - that I am real and here and breathing. Often times, I feel I can't find myself. I feel afar and estranged from my own self. I've become numbed to my own feeling, and my ability to perceive feelings. When I'm around Zuko, though, I feel something. It's a quiet pulse. A thump that rings just loud enough for me to want to smoke another cigarette and talk a moment longer. I feel warm. And then the cigarette starts to hurt my lungs - or maybe the act of feeling has begun to hurt my heart. I'm not sure; it's all too similar. If my mother taught me one thing as a child, it's that love is a damned cigarette. Should I ever fall in love, I should remember how it will burn out with death. Crushing ends that fuse down to small stubs we wish we could hold onto forever. Love is like a cigarette, it can get you sick, but you never get sick of it.

"Pain. Searing pain. Her eye was burning, her face was on fire, and her only thought was of Zuko." Soulmates can feel each other's pain, and by Agni, do Mai and Zuko have a lot of it.