Author's Note: My inexplicable and unholy love of babyfic for this pairing frightens me.
It was a simple truth that Mai had never really thought about her children.
She had thought about children, certainly. She was a purebred, high-blooded noblewoman of the Fire Nation. Until she was thirteen years old and Tom Tom was born, she had lived with the knowledge that it would fall on her sons to carry on her father's house. The three years following that had been a brief respite from such concerns (barring dreams of a future that she had convinced herself to give up on when she was eleven). Then it all came back to the forefront when she was sixteen, as one does not marry a newly crowned Fire Lord, especially in the wake of a hundred years of war, and not understand the need for heirs. Children had even become cause for a certain amount of anxiety when, nearly two years into their marriage, Mai had yet to produce any despite the high frequency and great fervor with which she and Zuko went about their connubial duties.
But those thoughts were all steeped in pragmatism, in the consideration of what was needed. Her father needed grandsons, or her husband needed heirs, or she needed salvation since she did not wish to be replaced for being defective in such a manner. (A fear that she had never explicitly articulated and that Zuko had only picked up on once, which caused him to stare across the pillow at her with a look of perfect incredulity, call her crazy, and be generally grumpy for the rest of the day over the insult, to her and to himself, that he perceived in it.) She was quite neatly detached from the thought of children. It was a distance born of a lifetime of having to fulfill obligations without regard to how she felt about it or how it would affect her in the long run.
So it wasn't until Mai looked up from brushing her hair and glanced over at Zuko as he stared down into the basinet containing their three-day-old daughter that the actual, visceral reality of parenthood finally crossed her mind.
"Oh," she said and dropped her brush.
Zuko was at her side before the clatter had finished echoing through the room.
"Are you all right?" he asked urgently, one hand on her shoulder as if to steady her and the other at the side of her face.
For a long moment she didn't know what to say because everything that was running through her head seemed silly, nor was any of it an actual answer. They'd made a person. She was trying very hard to make that not sound insane in her head. They'd made a person. A tiny, tiny person.
"I'm fine," Mai finally managed once she realized that Zuko had her halfway into his arms, ready to carry her over to the bed. In all likelihood so that he could then go to find some midwives and nurses and anyone else who crossed his path and yell at them for saying that it was all right for her to get out of bed, and move around, and breathe. "I'm fine," she repeated softly as she extricated herself from his clutches and headed towards the basinet.
One bright, round little face and a light dusting of dark hair peeking out from a blanket emblazoned with their nation's symbol, their family's symbol, and her entire world shifted.
"We have a baby," she informed Zuko as he made his way to her side. His expression was that same tentative mixture of happiness, curiosity, and confused nervousness that it had been for the previous three days as he hovered and worried and only rarely actually touched the child.
Mai wasn't entirely sure that he really understood so she carefully lifted their daughter into her arms and faced him.
They'd made a tiny, tiny person. One for whom they were entirely responsible. One who would get bigger and eventually become a normal-sized person. Who would face the world and do things and be things and some day produce little people of her own making that would continue the chain as it stretched on and on into infinity. They'd made a person.
Zuko managed to take one step back before Mai put the baby in his arms. When the baby chose that moment to wriggle just a bit and make a sound, Zuko shot Mai a desperate look, but she just adjusted one of his arms and took a few steps back herself.
"We have a baby," she repeated, a small smile working its way across her face.
Zuko stood stock still as if afraid to move, staring down at the child in his arms, and it only took seconds, not even minutes, before it sunk in. Mai could tell because she saw the tension leave his body, saw the set of his shoulders relax. She had borne witness to his childhood and many of the things that had been inflicted upon him during that time and it had never occured to her to worry about what kind of father that might make him. The look on his face justified that lack of concern.
"We have a baby," he said finally and smiled back at her.
"Yes," she agreed, staring at her daughter and her daughter's father, and knew that she'd have a hard time thinking of this part of her life as duty ever again.