Story State Visit to the South Pole {Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zuko/Mai Oneshot}

Title: State Visit to the South Pole

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender

Author: devilinthedetails

Genre: Romance; Family; Fluff

Characters: Zuko; Mai; Katara; Sokka; Hakoda.

Summary: Zuko and a pregnant Mai make a state visit to the South Pole.

Author's Note: The idea of Zuko visiting the South Pole on state visits and of the Fire Nation trading and investing in the Southern Water Tribe is inspired by the North and South comic series.

State Visit to the South Pole

“I’m glad that you came with me on this state visit to the South Pole, Mai.” Zuko turned from the steamboat’s rails to smile at his pregnant wife as she emerged from the enveloping warmth of their shared cabin into the frigid, polar air.

Her breath misting in the cold, Mai answered, deadpan, “I don’t know why I’m accompanying you on this journey in my condition.”

“Because you love me.” Zuko rested a gentle hand over the ever-growing mountain of his wife’s pregnancy as the ship steered past several ice caps floating in the ocean and approached the wharves of the South Pole’s largest harbor.

Once, during the war against the Fire Nation and in its immediate aftermath, there had been no wharves and harbors in the South Pole. The war had destroyed them all. Now the wharves and harbors were thronging with people and vessels from all four nations. There was a thriving trade in animal furs for fashionable winter clothing, whale blubber for illumination on dark nights, and oil to fuel the developing factories and chugging steamships beginning to fill the entire world–not just the Fire Nation.

Under him, Zuko was proud to say that representatives of the Fire Nation came to the South Pole for mutually beneficial trade and investment rather than for conquest. He wanted to promote peace and understanding with the Southern Water Tribe, not warfare, and had established a permanent diplomatic embassy in the South Pole’s most expansive settlement to strengthen ties between the two nations that represented opposite elements of the great, transcendent balance that ruled their world.

That was why the crowds in Water Tribe blue that were assembled on the wharves welcomed him and his wife with cheers as their ship docked rather than with hostile shouts as had happened on his first diplomatic mission to the Water Tribe. Then the people of the Water Tribe had rightfully been wary of his intentions, but now they had solid proof that he wanted to help, not hinder, their restoration efforts. The people of the South Pole might have been slow to warm up, but once they thawed, there could not be any more dependable and loyal allies, Zuko thought.

Thrilling at the sight of Sokka and Katara waiting on either side of their father, Hakoda, to formally welcome Zuko and Mai to the South Pole, Zuko added with a grin as they strode down the gangplank, linked arm in arm, “And because you haven’t seen Sokka and Katara in a long time. You’re missing them.”

Mai was unable to reply to this as they had reached the welcoming committee of Hakoda, Sokka, and Katara.

As Hakoda and Zuko sank into deep bows of greeting, Hakoda declared in a very official voice, “It is, as ever, my honor to welcome the Fire Lord and his wife to the South Pole.”

“It is, as always, an honor to be welcomed to the South Pole,” responded Zuko in an equally official tone. “May warm relations ever grow between us.”

“I can’t wait to show you the newest factory built to extract oil!” Sooka burst out, and Zuko noted with an inner smirk that Sokka had apparently concluded that the time for formal welcomes had passed like a wave. “You’ll be so impressed with the progress when I give you the grand tour!”

“I have no doubt we will be,” Mai remarked dryly. Sokka’s eternal enthusiasm about everything provoked the flattest comments from Mai as if that were necessary to remain some conversational equilibrium.

“You can give Zuko and Mai the grand tour of the factory tomorrow.” Katara directed a head shake that could only be described as fondly exasperated at her brother. “Right now, I am sure that they want to rest after their long journey. For Mai in particular, rest will be important.”

“Let us escort our honored guests to the Fire Nation embassy.” Hakoda inclined his head gravely, interrupting before Sokka could retort, and Zuko suspected that Hakoda was well-versed in the art of curtailing arguments between his two stubborn children.

As Hakoda led the way to a string of arctic camels elaborately saddled in the traditional style of the Southern Water Tribe, Zuko pressed his palm against his wife’s bulging belly. “It’ll be good for you and the baby to warm up inside the Fire Nation embassy. The South Pole’s chill can be difficult to adjust to, my love.”

“Don’t coddle me.” Mai swatted his hand away impatiently. “I’m not a pet to be stroked and cooed over.”

“I’m not coddling you,” Zuko argued, feeling as if more than his palm had been slapped. This was an ongoing disagreement between them: whether it was an affront to his wife’s dignity for him to be constantly touching the child growing inside her womb. “I’m touching our baby.”

“Our baby can’t feel you, nor can the baby hear you whenever you talk to my stomach as I keep telling you,” hissed Mai.

They had reached the arctic camels, and with a final searing glance tossed over her shoulder at him, Mai accepted Sokka’s offered arm and allowed him to lift her into the saddle beside him.

Biting his lip to prevent himself from snapping back at his wife, Zuko instead climbed into a saddle beside Katara.

Desperately seeking support for his position from the most adept healer he knew, Zuko appealed to Katara, “It’s not pointless to talk to a baby in the womb, is it? A baby in the womb can hear us and know from our tone how much love we feel?”

Animals understood tone, Zuko thought, so was it truly so crazy for him to be convinced that his baby could hear and react to his words–his voice–in his wife’s womb?

“Mai’s twenty-four weeks along, isn’t she?” A furrow knitted Katara’s brow.

“Yes.” Zuko bobbed his head in eager affirmation. He knew exactly how far his wife was in her pregnancy. Mai sometimes even accused him of being obsessive about it. But he was certain it wasn’t obsession. No, it was only his determination to be the best father and husband he could be–the father and husband Ozai had never been to him or his mother.

“Then the baby should be able to hear you if not now then in a week or two at most.” The furrow in Katara’s forehead disappeared to be replaced by a smile that could melt feet of snow. “You can tell Mai I said so, but you can also tell her that I think she’s right. You shouldn’t coddle her.”

“I’m not coddling her,” insisted Zuko, wondering if Katara had been more of an advocate for his wife’s cause than his own after all.

They arrived at the series of interconnected ice houses that served as the Fire Nation’s embassy and dismounted from their arctic camels.

Zuko and Mai exchanged bows with Hakoda, Katara, and Sokka, expressing how much they looked forward to the grand tour of the factory they had been promised to take place tomorrow. Then they crawled through the lowered tunnel entryway into the ice house where they would stay during their state visit to the Southern Water Tribe.

After a moment of crawling, they emerged from the tunnel into the higher level of the living area. In the living area, there was a fire burning that must have been lit by an embassy servant and whale lamps glowed throughout the room and in the window that would allow Zuko and Mai to stare up at the stars and glorious Southern Lights at night. Smoke from the fire rose to the vent in the domed ceiling and drifted out to be carried away on the cold wind.. With the fire, their own body heat, and the insulation of the snow from which the ice house was built, the temperature inside was far from freezing.

Still, the thick pelts and furs that covered the raised ice shelf that would serve as their bed were very inviting and warming, Zuko noted inwardly as he and his wife sank into the pelts and furs, lifting them to their chins as if they were blankets.

Despite their argument, Zuko danced inside when Mai leaned against him, no doubt wanting to have the heat of his body pressed against her back. Before her pregnancy, Mai had preferred to be the one twining around his curled frame, but with the baby growing ever larger inside her, she had been forced to shift positions, nestling inside him instead.

Wrapping his arms around her, he felt as if he were protecting her and the baby. He murmured as their bodies came together, “Katara says that the baby should be able to hear my voice if not now then in at most a week or two.”

When Mai only humphed at this revelation, Zuko went on, “She also says I shouldn’t coddle you. I’m sorry if you think I am coddling you, Mai. I just want to be the perfect husband and father.The husband and father that my own father wasn’t.”

“I know.” Mai grabbed his right hand and brought it to rest over the baby swelling inside her. “But the perfect husband and father doesn’t exist, Zuko. Just do the best that you can, and the baby and I will forgive your imperfections as long as you apologize for them in an endearing and humbling fashion.”

“I am trying to be the best husband and father I can.” Zuko nuzzled his cheek against Mai’s shoulder.

Mai was silent for a moment before sighing so Zuko could feel her soft, measured exhale beneath his hand. “I know,” she repeated.

“I could use fire-bending to warm you and the baby if you’re cold.” Zuko tugged her even tighter against him, grateful beyond words that she was his to love and hold.

“The cold doesn’t bother me,” Mai replied in the dispassionate manner which she did so much else. “But the gesture would be sweet.”

His heart pounding at this final sentence, Zuko summoned heat–not the sizzling blaze of a raging flame, but the gentle warmth of a cackling fire in a hearth–to the hand pressed against Mai’s swelling pregnancy and smiled. Firebending this far from the equator was hard, but not impossible when he remembered that life energy was fire, and fire was life energy. Snuggled beside his wife, Zuko treasured and clung to the life energy he felt inside himself, inside Mai, and inside his unborn child.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for commenting!I'm so happy that you found the descriptions delightful and that you enjoyed the slice of life arguments about coddling. I definitely think it is understandable and admirable that Zuko wants to be a better husband and father than Ozai was, but at the same time, I couldn't resist having tough Mai want to give him a hard time about coddling her even when she's pregnant. But deep down I think she does like Zuko's coddling...