Prompt: Modern

Rating: M

Warnings: Institutional abuse, suicide, self-harm, assault, ableism, depression & anxiety triggers, implied child abuse

Word Count: 7880

Notes: Inspired by a recent lecture/discussion of institutional practices and abuses in the 1940s/50s/60s, consider this ATLA meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Modern

"So what're you in for?"

She holds the cigarette out until he realizes that she's asking for a light. It's cold up here on the roof, and he has to snap a few times before flame licks up between his fingertips.

"Where'd you get those?"

"Orderly named Jee. He can get us anything that's banned or absent from the shop. Especially if it's banned."

She's wearing the same white tunic and white trousers as him, but it looks better on her, wrapped and tied in a neat bow at her hip, loose sleeves sliding down to her elbows. She's pulled a hood up over her hair, and the edges frame her pointed face and straight black bangs.

"You never talk in group," he says. "I mean, I've never heard you talk on the ward."

"That's why I'm here," she shrugs, pulling her knees up to her chest. It's started snowing a little, and she scoots closer to him. "But we were talking about you."

She takes another quick drag, meeting his bewildered stare with steady eyes, blowing the smoke in a tight stream from the corner of her mouth.

"Is it because of your face?" she asks. "Did you do that to yourself?"

With one hand, he can almost cover the scar.

"I knew someone who did that," she continues, in that same flat tone. "She used to be on the ward, but I knew her on the outside, too. Song. Her boyfriend was firebender, and when he left, she started playing with matches. Burnt up her whole leg. That happen to you?"

He shakes his head.

"You don't talk in group either," she says, stubbing out the cigarette.

"My dad did this."

"Yeah?"

"I was little. He was fighting with my mom. I got between them. Thought I could stop him with my bending, but I was wrong. He did this to teach me a lesson."

"Can you see?"

"Yeah."

She nods, setting her chin between her knees and turning forward. The compound spreads out beneath them, spotlights winking through the blurry dark.

"Orange is such an awful color," she says with a kind of final certainty. He looks at her and can't help smiling a little.

"I tried to burn my dad's house down. I mean, I did burn it down. Mostly. I think the foundation's still there."

Her head turns slowly, pivoting on the point of her chin, her eyes wide open and neutral.

"I ran away a few years ago. I was living this guy, this friend. Found out he—my dad—was doing stuff to my little sister. So I went back and burned down his house."

"What happened to your sister?"

"She went to live with her friend. She's got a million sisters."

"So you'll get out on parole?"

He shrugs. His eyes dart down to her lips and then back up. She smirks.

"I dunno. Maybe."

"Do you want to kiss me?"

"Do you want to kiss me?"

She shrugs.

"I'm Mai."

"Zuko."

She nods.

"We're strangers inside," she says, and then leans forward and presses her lips very softly against his.

o.o.o.o.o

He watches the other kids, just to be sure Mai wasn't lying, but one by one, they head up to the nurses' station during Jee's shift and return with hands bundled up in their sleeves, with faces turned down to hide satisfied smiles.

The money's hidden in a sock at the bottom of his private, locked drawer, but Zuko waits until his roommate's cleared out before counting it. Mom's new old boyfriend Ikem has a pill problem, and of the twenty she'd scrounged together for him, only six gold and a handful of copper remain. Zuko folds a pocket into his tunic and pins the money there with a bent paperclip he'd stolen from the craft closet.

He feels watched approaching the desk, but most people are huddled around the TV, and the few other stragglers keep their heads down. This must be another unspoken agreement, like how no one talks first in group or puts a serious suggestion in the box.

Up close, Jee doesn't look as old as Zuko had thought. His hair is uniformly grey and bristled, but there are just a few lines around his mouth and at the corner of each eye.

"Hey, kid," he says. "You need something?"

When Zuko doesn't speak, Jee finally looks up from his charts.

"S-someone told me..."

Jee nods and reaches for a box beneath the desk.

"Point to whatever you need."

Zuko presses right up against the plexiglass separator, fingering the hidden coins.

"What if I don't have enough?"

"You've got enough, kid."

Zuko points to the cigarettes, the pack embellished on the outside with a leering blue mask. Jee nods, and gestures over to the pill window.

It's dim in this hall—pill time is dinner time, almost two hours ago. Zuko passes over two gold pieces, and Jee passes the pack, one gold piece, and seven silvers.

"You're Ozai's kid, aren't you?"

"What's it to you?" Zuko snaps, and his throat tightens up.

"Nothing," Jee shrugs. "I just knew him."

o.o.o.o.o

At dinner a week in, he finds a message carved into his mango slices. Mai is waiting for him on the roof, wrapped in a blanket stolen from someone else's room.

"I heard a rumor firebenders run a little warmer than the rest of us."

"We're not big fans of the cold."

She fits on his lap, tucking up beneath his chin, spindle-thin arms sliding around his back. They share a few cigarettes, and her mouth tastes like warm smoke when they kiss.

o.o.o.o.o

Mid-month he runs out of money, so he finally writes to Mom and Azula. Uncle is the one to write back, and the one to show up for the big stupid visitors' day.

"I should've taken you out of that house years ago," he sighs, and he looks a lot older than Zuko remembers, less a jolly tea-drinking prankster and more an exhausted old man.

"Who says I would've gone with you?" Zuko mutters, slouching.

Across the room he sees Mai hiding inside her hood again, sitting sideways on the chair, knees to her chest, everything covered but her eyes. There's an older man at her table who looks a little like her, with a baby and a woman who's too young to be Mai's mother.

"I know a judge in the system," Iroh says, ignoring the question like he'd never heard it. "I'm trying to see if they'll grant me guardianship. You could come live with me and Lu Ten. You and Azula."

He blinks and looks back.

"Would you like that, Zuko?"

A few days later, Uncle sends some money, and Zuko's roommate hangs himself during breakfast. The orderlies take away everyone's belts, and in protest, most refuse to wear pants. All the sheets get replaced as well, with scraps of easily-torn fabric. Zuko rolls over in the night and wakes with just fistfuls of fiber.

"We want you to stay safe," Joo Dee says during group, smiling way too wide for her narrow face. "All of us here, from the doctors to the nurses to the orderlies, are committed to your health and well-being. Now, would anyone like to start?"

"Where's the suggestion box?" someone says, to a round of nasty laughter. Joo Dee's cheeriness dims a little, her smile tightening.

"It has become clear to me that a few miscreant residents have been trying to interrupt our sense of community. Until such time as those residents step forward and apologize, I'm afraid there will not be a place for the shy among you to anonymously raise concerns."

"I bet it was the new kid."

"I can't even write," snaps the new kid, a young girl of maybe twelve or thirteen. She's short and stout and loud—not broken, like the rest of them, but just blind and unmanageable. She sits with her knees apart and feet firm to the ground, bent forward like this whole thing makes her sick.

"Now, now, no accusations," Joo Dee grins. "I'm certain whomever wrote those rude things is very sorry about it."

"No, we're not," Zuko mutters, and Mai laughs.

o.o.o.o.o

He'd already figured out how to palm the suppressors on the first day, and now keeps his supply stashed in the broken vent in his room. They haven't given him a new roommate yet, only stripped the bed and pushed the frame against the wall.

In small doses, the suppressor just tingles, and some of the kids get high off it, so when he runs out of Uncle's money, Zuko starts selling. He has his own needs, after all.

It's a steady business, made easy by how bad the observation is. Most of the orderlies make half a round every hour, but the rest of their shift is spent behind the desk and plexiglass, watching TV or reading old magazines. They'll break up a fight, but mostly they just let the ward sort itself out.

People seem to stick to their diagnoses. Like Mai said, they're strangers inside—she floats between the dark cloud of depressives and the serenity of the catatonics. The worriers usually hog the couch and the TV. The twitchers and pacers work the pai sho boards and the craft table and all the empty space in between. No one else here is an arsonist or a rager—though he's heard rumors about some delusionals hiding down the hall—so Zuko climbs onto one of the deep window wells, above a radiator, and reads.

Lu Ten's sent along some old pulp historicals—stupid gory action junk, but better than what's always on the news. Zuko only looks up when someone punches him in the arm.

"What the—"

"It's how I show affection," says the new kid, shrugging, climbing up and wedging herself between Zuko and the wall. "I'm tough."

"So what? You think I'm weak?"

"No, Toph. I'm Toph. My name."

Zuko blinks.

"Oh."

"I heard about you. On the radio."

"Yeah? What'd you hear?"

"That you're a firebender."

"Are you?"

Toph shakes her head and feels along the window bars until she's found one shielded by Zuko's knee. As he watches, her tiny fingers trace around the thickest part and then pull forward in a tight fist. Without turning away from the book, he reaches down as well, feeling where the metal has bowed.

"That's new."

"Useful," Toph shrugs. "So. You got any friends in here?"

He glances over to Mai, just now stepping over the prone form of one depressive, probably on her way to melt in with the catatonics. She doesn't notice his gaze.

"Yeah," says Zuko.

o.o.o.o.o

When Mai suggests sex, it's more a demand than a request—not that Zuko's going to complain. He's still a virgin with girls and not one hundred percent on what goes where, but Mai doesn't mind playing teacher.

The roof's way too cold now, so she leaves instructions in his papaya, a crudely carved map to an empty room at the end of the twitchers' hall.

"They never walk all the way down here," Mai says, stuffing some rags under the door. "Still have to be quiet, though."

There's no light in the room, but he still blushes as she unwinds her tunic and he lies back on the mattress they'd pulled to the floor. She brings his hands to her breasts, and when she shivers, he flares a little heat into each palm. She bites her lip and leans into his touch.

It's over a lot sooner than he thought it would be—she doesn't ask a lot of questions but somehow knows, soft hands working him to hardness, her mouth warm and wet across his bare chest. Instinct drives his participation, but he doesn't have to do all that much. Mai grins at him and then sinks down slow, silencing his groan with both hands over his mouth. At first they're touching only as much as necessary, but then she tips forward, sets her hands on either side of his head and kisses him.

She seems almost desperate to keep him inside, just rolling her hips back and forth, and his hands drift up from her sides across her back to her shoulders and he pulls her close, close as they can get, skin-to-skin. She hums and moans and even though he comes first, she guides one of his hands down to her core, whispers breathy little encouragements until at last she collapses and rolls off and pushes up right against his arm.

"If you make me pregnant, I might get out of here," she says, and starts to laugh softly when he chokes.

o.o.o.o.o

He doesn't really understand why no one else has found the roof. There's a part of the wall in the craft closet that isn't really a wall—no handle, no lock, just hinges that swing forward and a thin metal staircase. No fence or net, either, just a flat open space and a little retaining wall to sit on and dangle his feet over.

The snow sticks this time, so Mai walks in his footprints.

"You're another lifer, aren't you?" she says.

"Another?"

"Like me. Indefinite hold. Danger to puppies, children, and trash cans alike."

"Are you dangerous?"

"To myself," Mai says, shrugging. "But my only ticket out is death or dismemberment."

She flicks the ash away, into the darkness, and passes the cigarette over. Zuko pulls in a good lungful before speaking.

"Why are you here?" he asks.

"I don't talk," she says quietly. "I was always quiet as a kid, but after Mom died and Dad jumped on Meng and Tom-Tom was born, I guess the silence just got too much for him. I mean, I don't even have anything to say."

"So he put you in here?"

"With all the fucking psychos," Mai sighs. She finishes the cigarette, and Zuko lights another.

"Well," he says. "There's always pregnant."

"No," Mai says, shaking her head. "That won't work. I saw one of them coming in yesterday. I'd just move down a floor."

She smiles, hand running through his hair.

"Though we can keep up the effort. I'll just be careful."

o.o.o.o.o

Quarterly evaluations come around at the end of the month. The doctors move in a mass through the ward, silent, inspecting. The head of the department has a cruel frown, big ears, bald pate.

"I heard someone call him the Secretariat," Toph whispers to Zuko during craft time. Joo Dee always tries to set her up with paint and an easel, which Toph always ignores. "I don't like his walk. It's sharp, like a military march."

One by one they are lead away and stay gone for an hour each, all of them returning tense and quiet. Zuko and Toph will be the last, as the newest—they sit together on a bench near the pill window, both too scared to talk.

When his name is called, Zuko stands and shuffles into a room with one chair facing the doctors, who are arranged behind a long table.

"And how are you this afternoon?" the Secretariat asks. His voice matches his face and mustache: thin and oily.

Zuko says nothing.

"I understand this can all be quite intimidating, but we're just here to talk. To see how you're doing."

"Fine," Zuko says, crossing his arms.

The rest of his evaluation goes okay. A doctor on the end—who Zuko has never seen before this day—stands and describes Zuko's progress in group and craft and individual sessions he's never attended. He hears the words right track and general improvement and good afternoon and then he stands, dismissed, and shuffles back out.

There's no message in tonight's fruit, but he heads up to the roof anyway. The snow's enough to risk a little flame, but only away from the roof's edge, huddled down by the door.

Mai burns through her pack in minutes and then starts on his, but it still takes him a second to realize she's not shaking from the cold.

"How bad was it?" he asks, and she doesn't answer, burrowing into his arms.

o.o.o.o.o

She tries to say it gently.

"Three weeks?"

"Sometimes four or five," she says, nodding. "They don't have the equipment here. They have to take me into the city."

There's an odd sort of buzzing in his ears.

"I don't really understand how it works," she says. "But when I come back, I won't be the same. I'm always...foggy. The first few days. It's hard to focus on things. And I forget."

"Forget?"

"Silly things. Like what time it is, or what's happening. Places I've been recently. New things, mostly."

"People?"

Mai looks down at her drawing—Toph seceded her usual place, sensing the need, and went to distract Joo Dee with irritation.

"I lose months, sometimes," Mai says. "Weeks, if I'm lucky."

For the past hour, he's been sketching her eyes, and he scrapes a little charcoal away, blurring the thin lines of her lashes.

o.o.o.o.o

The day they come for her, frost has blocked all the windows. They like to take people during meals—Mai wasn't given a tray, just lead to sit down at a table where she wrapped her arms around her middle and held perfectly still.

Two men in white suits and hats arrive—they could almost be part of the ward, save for their black rubber boots which track melting snow across the floor.

"It is time, Mai," Joo Dee sing-songs, and as she swoops down, Mai lashes out.

"No! I'm not going!"

With nails and teeth and hands and knees, she fights, spitting, kicking, clawing, screaming.

"Hey, get off! Get away from her!"

Blood boils in his stomach—Zuko stands and singes the floor with two fireballs—Mai is breaking free, running for him, when one of the men crashes down on her. Everyone else is screaming now, food trays scattered and forgotten, and the nurses' station empties as the air explodes with water and fire.

Mai's voice has broken around painful sobs, and Zuko's vision blurs, his throat constricting, and he's crying, too, trying to reach her, but one of the nurses is holding a needle and pulls down the waist of Mai's pants.

Two powerful arms close around him from behind, locking across his chest.

"Stop," Jee hisses into his ear. "Stop it, or they'll take you, too."

Zuko goes limp, gasping for breath, as he sees Mai rolled onto a stretcher and carried away.

o.o.o.o.o

They start giving him the suppressors as an injection, but still he's sedated and tied to his bed for a week. Jee's the only orderly that sits with him like they're supposed to, spoon-feeding him soup and wiping up what slops out of Zuko's slack mouth.

"I'm sorry, kid," Jee says every time, and when he finds the books stacked in the corner, he starts to read them out loud.

o.o.o.o.o

Two things happen after Zuko is finally untied: he gets a new roommate, and someone finds the roof.

"After a very long discussion, we have decided that some fresh air would be quite helpful to some of you," Joo Dee beams. They are given lumpy, odd-smelling wool coats and taken up in groups of four or five, to a six-by-six box of wire fencing. Toph latches on to the hem of Zuko's coat and shuffles around in his wake.

"They locked us all down for a few days. Joo Dee sounded angry, but she was scared underneath. Gotta wonder what would happen if we all organized."

She pulls him to a stop at the fence, waiting for the perimeter to clear a bit.

"They took her stuff, too, but I scrounged you something. After dinner? By that room you two always used for sex."

He's glad the cold can hide his blush.

Jee's not on shift that night, so the common area is packed with disappointment. Zuko's on special watch now, and there's no chance to slip away to meet Toph, but he watches her head down the hall and come back to his window.

"It'll be waiting," she says.

"Is it a surprise?"

"Not really."

He finds a break in the routine two days later and sneaks down the hall. The mattress pushed back beneath the covered window, the bed frames tipped like barricades, the thin blankets bunched as pillows—the room is absolutely undisturbed. He wonders if anyone's even used it before, if the door is only visible to people looking for it.

His eyes take a second to adjust, and then he sees: Mai's hood. The jacket always looked too big for her, a tent of cotton and broken closures, but it fits him. Zuko pulls the hood up, and it just covers his eyes.

o.o.o.o.o

"Misery is a choice we make," Joo Dee says in group the next day, hands steepled tightly in front of her. "It is easier to stay where we are, even fun. Pleasurable. Misery ensures a steady source of pity and attention."

There's a cold heaviness inside him, somewhere between his stomach and heart. Zuko curls forward in the chair until he's bent double and his hands can reach the floor. The hood still smells faintly like Mai's hair.

"But, of course, no one wants to live so selfishly. We must all be responsible for ourselves, for our weaknesses. You choose your actions. You choose to stay sick."

She should consider a confirmation when Zuko throws up on her shoes.

o.o.o.o.o

Lu Ten sits on the other side of the table but doesn't touch it, every now and then throwing Uncle a bemused look, as if to confirm the reality of the whole thing.

"They said there were only certain things we could bring you. I hope you like the books."

He shifts around, trying to see through the thin sliver of space between the hood and Zuko's knees. With his arms holding legs tight to chest, Zuko can fit his whole folded body on the chair.

"Can you take the hood off, nephew? So we can see you?"

"See what?" Zuko murmurs, but they don't hear.

o.o.o.o.o

The roommate is new to Zuko but not the ward—another depressive, like before, but this one doesn't sleep at all, pacing every night from barred window to locked door. He's sixteen, too.

"Five times," he says like it's a badge of honor.

"Why do you keep coming back?"

He shrugs.

"Better here than out there."

"Even with what they do to you?"

"They don't do anything to me. If you smile, and nod, and go along with Joo Dee, you can get out in a few weeks."

"And if you don't do that stuff?"

"You end up like Mai."

Zuko stares down at the blanket, working his fingers into a new hole.

"How long has she been here?"

"Before my first trip," the roommate says, hitting the door and then turning back to start again. "Always here when I get back, too. Don't know if she's ever been released."

When he reaches Zuko's bed, the roommate pauses long enough to roll up his sleeves and show him the hatch marks marching up his wrist.

"It's how you know I'm not that serious about it," he says. "Whenever it gets too much out there, I find a knife and, you know, cross the street."

If it's a joke, Zuko doesn't laugh.

o.o.o.o.o

When Mai comes back, she is wearing a quilted, powder-blue housecoat and most of her hair is gone. What's left is cropped close to her skull, exaggerating the ghoulishness of her grey, gaunt face. Everyone gathers at the windows to watch her unloading, scraping patches of frost clear with their fingernails.

She makes it out of the car fine but has to be helped up the stairs, and her eyes roll wild in her head. Toph's fingers slip between Zuko's. When the elevator arrives, and the orderlies shoo them back down to the common room for lunch.

In group, a nurse has to help Mai stay upright in the chair.

"We must begin today with a bit of serious business," Joo Dee says, clapping her hands. "It has come to our attention that some of the residents are sneaking off and recreating in a way that is not compatible with our goals for your rehabilitation."

No one really understands what she means until her next words, and then the snickering starts.

"From now on, any mixed-gender grouping must have a chaperone present at all time."

The twitchers usually find the joke after a few minutes.

"Alright, which one of you jerks had an orgy and didn't invite me?"

Joo Dee loses control to a chorus of laughter, but Zuko doesn't join, staring across the room at Mai's folded hands, resting so serenely in her lap.

o.o.o.o.o

As the fog clears, he tries to catalog all the ways Mai is still the same. At mealtime, she separates her food into neat quarters and finishes one at a time. During group she doesn't speak—just sighs every now and then and stares determinedly out the window. While Joo Dee roams between tables during crafts, Mai listlessly drags a brush across the same section of canvas. At first, she keeps to the catatonics but soon the old pattern is established and she drifts between, one hand feathering across the backs of the chairs.

Same manner, same lack of smile, same demeanor. She remembers everything, it seems, except for him.

Only the roof gives him hope—on Jee's shift, he follows her up and watches from a distance. She walks right up to the fence, facing their wall, and her fingers rise hesitantly, latching onto the metal and giving it a small shake.

o.o.o.o.o

"So you can't recreate the moment. Maybe something similar? Like, just offer her a light."

"This isn't an afternoon serial, Toph. You don't just magic a memory back."

"Well," Toph says, shrugging, fingers closing over his plate. "Maybe you can bend it back."

"Those are my fries."

"I'm blind—I don't know any better."

"That's not how it works."

"What, like you would know?"

Zuko sighs and glances around the little soda shop. This field-trip, ostensibly, is a reward for good behavior. Last night one of the depressives became a twitcher and smashed up the TV and the wireless. But the snow won't melt, and the bus was already booked, so here they sit: Jee and Joo Dee and civilian clothes, silently consuming cheeseburgers and milkshakes.

"Look," Toph says. "If you don't try, you'll never know."

Opportunity comes in the afternoon—they shift into two groups, some wanting to walk through downtown, some wanting to see to the frozen beach. They stop a little corner shop first and then split in the parking lot. Zuko buys a lighter and steals a pack of cigarettes.

He sticks to the back of the group on the way. The town's built on an incline, so they slip and slide their way down a series of hills, in a cloud of exhaled fog. Zuko pulls the hood lower and hunches into the lumpy old coat.

A chain-link fence, padlocked and rusted, keeps them from the beach proper, but Jee finds an unguarded pier over the next hill.

"Just keep off the railing, alright?" he says. "It's too damn cold to go swimming."

They scatter. Zuko leads Toph over to a bench and guides her hands to grip the rail.

"It's all mush," she grouses. "Go do your thing and then come back. My feet can't see on this crappy wood."

Mai stands alone at the end of the pier, off-center, both hands resting on the rail and head bent down to watch the water.

"You, uh, you need a light?"

She answers without turning her head.

"I don't have a cigarette."

"Um, I do?"

She sighs.

"That's nice."

With mittens, he can't get a grip, so he pulls them off with his teeth and fumbles for the pack. Wind puts out the flame three times before she sighs again, leans forward, and cups her hands around the tip.

"So, uh," Zuko coughs, sputtering like a new smoker, "you want one?"

"I guess."

He lights hers tip-to-tip with his, inwardly cursing the suppressors for the millionth time. Mai takes the cigarette and finally looks at him.

"You must be new," she says. "Came in while I was gone."

"No," Zuko says, and his stomach is twisting in knots. "Before they took you away."

"Oh."

She shrugs, flicking ash into the sea.

"I don't remember you."

o.o.o.o.o

Toph holds tight to his arm on the trudge back up hill, lets him sit against the window and braces him in the seat. The bus's grumbling covers any chance someone might hear him crying.

Now he watches for the differences, and it chills him. He wants to grab her and scream in her face remember, remember, remember—but she won't. Mai is an island, apart, and she makes no effort to speak to him again.

She was never anything of a talker except when they were alone, but now she finds quiet corners with her roommate and a little circle of other girls. She never smiles or laughs—her participation seems perfunctory and only in response to Joo Dee's watchful rotation. In group, she answers the occasional question in monotone, and her paintbrush makes shapes of houses and smiling people. She is usually second or third in line for pill time, and she finishes every bite of food at dinner.

It takes him a while to realize that she's afraid.

o.o.o.o.o

Mom makes it to the next visit and brings her stupid boyfriend, who spends the whole time blinking very slow and trying so hard not to look high. Uncle's along, of course, and Lu Ten.

"They told us you're right on track," Uncle says. "A couple of months, and they'll be thinking of releasing you."

"Would you like to come home early?" Mom asks, sugar-sweet, like he's still five years old. Lu Ten is glaring at Ikem, arms crossed.

Zuko shrugs. More of him fits on the chair this time—he doesn't have to hold his legs to his chest, can rest his arms on his knees and frown at them through his hair. He half-listens to their questions, drilling his stare into the cracked tabletop.

The common room hums with similar conversations. Almost everyone has family on visitors' day—except Toph, whose parents never come, who sits alone in front of the TV and kicks anyone dumb enough to approach. Joo Dee keeps her distance, beaming before the nurses' station.

"Zuko, would you take off that hood, please?" Uncle asks gently. "Just for a while? It makes me very worried that you won't look at us."

"Dad, it's fine," Lu Ten says tensely. "If he wants to keep it up, just let him."

A bell rings somewhere—visiting hours are over, and the floor groans with shuffling feet. Across the room, Mai stands and so does her father and her stepmother and the baby gurgles and before he can think about it, Zuko's shouting.

"How could you?" he demands, rising, fists clenching thin. "How could you do this to her?"

"I beg your pardon," Mai's father says.

"You won't get it. How could you do this? Your own daughter!"

Mai is watching him sideways.

"Look!" Zuko yells, shaking off Uncle's hand. "There's nothing left of her! What's wrong with you? How could you do this?"

"Zuko!"

He grabs Mai's father by the throat—he doesn't remember crossing the floor, but tables and chairs clatter around behind him. A hundred hands seize him, but he pushes back, squeezing his own hands closed.

"Answer me!" he snarls.

o.o.o.o.o

Zuko wakes a few days later, sedated, tied down again, a needle shoved in his arm and the room empty. He's too drugged to move, to do more than blink. Every few hours, an orderly shows up with a bedpan and a new bag for the needle.

He gets a few monitored visits—Uncle and Lu Ten just visible through the glass set in the door, talking with the Secretariat. Holding his breath, Zuko can just hear them.

"We're keeping him under close observation for the time being. With these sorts of episodes, our first concern is his safety and the safety of the other ward residents. Here, he can receive intensive, focused treatment. But I don't anticipate that this will in any way impede his progress towards recovery."

Intensive treatment apparently involves leaving Zuko alone for hours at a time, constantly sedated, drifting between sleep and this limbless consciousness. Every once a while a doctor drifts in—the one from the evaluation, who had described phantom sessions—just to look over the bed, to make a new mark on the chart and move on.

Two weeks of this, and then with very little ceremony he is unlocked and lifted and shuffled back upstairs, where he is deposited on his bed and left until dinner.

o.o.o.o.o

Toph acts like a crutch—the sedatives are slow to leave him, and compounded by the effects of the suppressors. Jee slips a pack of cigarettes into his hood on the premise of a friendly back pat.

"Come on up to the roof, kid," he says. "You look like you could use some sun."

The snow's melted some in his absence, leaving long wet patches on the ground and bright brown treetops. The fence looks to have rusted in some places, but it keeps his weight when Toph leans him up against it.

With a little pride, she shows Zuko the improvised lighter she's made out of a battery and some wire. He has trouble keeping the cigarette steady, so she lights and then sets it between his lips.

"You look awful," she says, standing close to leech a little warmth. "What did they do to you?"

"Nothing," Zuko sighs, and wraps his free arm around her tight.

o.o.o.o.o

At first, the message carved in his mango slices just confuses him. Toph nudges him down the line when he hesitates and then follows close, sitting right up against his hip, leaning over.

"So?" she demands, after a long silence. "Are you going or not?"

"Going where?"

"Where the fruit says!"

"What?"

The random jagged lines reform into words after a moment, and he blinks.

"Oh."

"Idiot," Toph sighs.

An hour after dinner, Jee stands and stretches and then shifts his chair to face away from the twitchers' hall. Zuko slouches around the corner with the hood pulled tight.

Mai is waiting in the room—their room—but standing away from the mattress and blankets and bed frames, arms tight around her middle, staring at the floor. Her hair's grown enough to reach her ears now, and her bangs are almost back to normal.

"I didn't really know how else to get your attention," she says, when he's closed the door and stuffed the old rags beneath. He sits cross-legged before her, plenty of space apart. "I didn't want say something and risk it getting back to Joo Dee."

Zuko nods. There's no light, but Mai pulls Toph's lighter from a fold in her sleeve and lights a cigarette. Her eyes glitter in the orange glow.

"I don't remember you," she says. "I've tried. I always try, right after, when I'm awake enough to think of it. But nothing comes back. Nothing ever does."

She takes a long, shaky drag and exhales.

"That's my hood, isn't it? I bought it at the shop a few weeks after I got here."

She gives a short, bitter laugh.

"I remember that."

"How long have you been here? You never told me."

The confirmation seems to scare her, but Zuko keeps his gaze steady. Every part of him hurts.

"Since I was twelve. I remember most of it. They didn't start the treatments until my second eval."

"What's it like?"

Her free hand drifts up into her hair, just grazing her temple.

"I don't know. Everything just...goes away. Like that feeling you get, when you're really tired and trying to fall asleep and suddenly it's like you're falling and you jolt up at the last second."

He sticks one finger out of his sleeve and traces some nonsense characters on his knee.

"I'm sorry I hit your dad."

"You choked him."

"Well, I'm sorry about that too."

"I don't need protection," she says sharply, and he nods. "But no one ever stood up for me before. So thanks, I guess."

o.o.o.o.o

He's a little mortified to think of what Toph might've told Mai, so for now they stick to simple conversation. They're not even strangers this time—Mai shifts her focus to Zuko and Toph exclusively, giving up her evening's drift to curl up against the radiator at his feet.

Mai takes the lead, and Zuko follows happily. It's hard to rebuild what was never lost for him, but he gives short answers to Joo Dee's questions, draws ponds and waterfalls and a valley in crafts, and in the evenings before lights-out he reads to Toph from an old, approved tome of mythology.

Even the weather seems on their side—cold gives over to balmy warmth, to sunshine on the roof and greening trees and mud squelching beneath truck tires far away.

The coming quarterly evaluation shatters the illusion.

Agitation returns—Mai smokes cigarette after cigarette on the roof, rubbing her arms, and Zuko feels a little nauseous.

"We've done everything," he says. "Exactly what they wanted."

"It feels the same. I remember that. It always feels the same."

o.o.o.o.o

This time, Zuko is not taken to a room with a chair and a table and a long row of doctors. Two orderlies escort him to the elevator, and they ride all the way to the first floor, where he is shuffled through a maze of corridors to one small, frosted-glass door. Chief of Psychiatry—Long Feng, it says.

Inside, the Secretariat lounges behind a high black desk, smiling.

"Come in," he says, as the orderlies close the door behind Zuko. "Won't you please sit down?"

The cold in his chest isn't just the work of the suppressors. The Secretariat arranges and rearranges some papers on his desktop.

"Do you know what keeps you here, Zuko?"

"Doors," he says, without thinking. The Secretariat laughs.

"Physically, perhaps. But I meant, what compels your residence within this unit."

Zuko sets both hands flat on his knees. His fingers itch with the desire to pull up his hood.

"It was a court order. You committed a crime—willful, malicious arson. The prosecutor was very set on adding attempted murder to that list, but the evidence wasn't substantial enough."

"I know all of this," Zuko says with deliberate caution.

"The court believed—and we naturally agree—that your best interests were not to be served by a lengthy prison sentence. Here, we could hope to rehabilitate you. To...eliminate the negative personality characteristics influenced by your past abuse and trauma."

He smiles wider, and leans forward over the desk.

"You were sentenced to six months, and you've nearly served them. Though you have shown remarkable progress, you still have a way to go. However, I can only extend your sentence should you prove a danger to yourself or others."

"I attacked someone."

"Yes, well, that's the other reason I'm recommending your release. Your little friendship is a distraction from your healing. You would both best be served by your release."

Zuko is dismissed with an intercom buzz and a fluttering of the Secretariat's spidery fingers.

Back on the ward, Mai is waiting, shell-shocked.

"They're so pleased by my recent progress," she says. "They think it means the treatment's working. They want me to go for another session."

"When?"

"Soon."

o.o.o.o.o

He has exactly three conversations about the plan.

The first, with Toph, is bittersweet and annoying.

"I've got nowhere to be," she says, shrugging. "Besides, with you gone, I'll be queen of the ward."

"You'll get in trouble."

"They don't know I can bend. Besides, poor helpless little blind girl can't tie her own shoes. I'll be out of the running immediately."

He nods a couple of times, bringing her hand to his cheek so she can feel.

"I won't make it too easy," she says quietly. "Can't let someone ruin the fun again."

The second conversation is with Mai.

"You don't know me," he says and pulls her in. She breaks the kiss, gently, leaning back and licking her lips.

"I don't remember you," she says. "There's a difference. And I trust you."

"You've no reason—"

"Whatever's waiting," she says firmly, and her hand covers the scar, "is miles better than staying here."

The third is with his roommate, who hands over the razor with a bit of bribing.

"Do you know the trouble I went through to get that?" he sighs, swallowing part of the chocolate whole.

"You don't need it to get out," Zuko says, "just to get back in."

"Got me there. What are you waiting for? I told you, across, and you're fine."

"You'll call someone, right?" Zuko asks, for the seventh time. "Once I'm out, you'll bang on the door and wake up the ward?"

"Just fucking cut if you're going to cut," the roommate groans. "You live, or you die. Not knowing's part of the thrill."

He raises his open hands defensively against Zuko's glare.

"I'll call them, alright?"

Zuko breathes in and then out. At the first bite of razor against skin, his eyes start to water, but he powers through, drags the blade all the way across.

"Not too deep!" the roommate hisses. "You're gonna need your hands, remember?"

He massages Zuko's forearm, encouraging the blood flow, as Zuko sets the razor against his other arm.

"I'm already getting lightheaded," he says, exaggerating the wooziness.

"Then let me."

The roommate's hand is lightning quick, and Zuko's skin seems to simply unzip.

"You'll call them?" he asks, but passes out before the answer.

o.o.o.o.o

He half-wakes to the sound of Uncle weeping.

"Unfortunately," the Secretariat says. "We see it all the time. Release approaches, and they get anxious. They've grown so used to the comfort of the ward, to the safety and the routine, that the outside world frightens them. They'd rather die than have to try re-assimilating."

He's sedated again, but not tied down, which he'd count as an improvement. Uncle is the only part he hadn't planned on—the gentle hand passing through his hair, the whispered encouragement and regret. Lu Ten stands close to the door, by the echo of his voice.

"Is there anything we can do? I mean, should we just take him home?"

"Leaving the facility, I believe, would be detrimental to Zuko's mental health at this time. We'll return him to the ward. Let him feel comfortable, and then we'll work on reintroducing him to the outside."

He's too drugged to smile, but he feels a little flicker of warmth rise in his chest.

o.o.o.o.o

Zuko is sent back to the ward long before his wrists have healed—the orderlies are forget every now and then to change the bandages, and the sight of his own blood seeping through such pure white cloth leaves him a little queasy.

"C'mon, kid," Jee says, at the start of his shift, tapping the doorframe. "Let's get that cleaned."

Jee takes him behind the plexiglass, to a small room behind the nurses' station. It feels almost delightfully taboo.

The gauze unwinds slowly between them, until the jagged stitches and swollen red skin is exposed.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, kid."

"How'd you know my dad?"

He uncaps a brown bottle and douses a cotton ball with the clear contents, gently wiping around the edges of each cut.

"We served in the same unit. During the war. I always thought he had a cruel streak, but I never imagined he'd take it out on his kids the way he did."

Zuko raises a hand to his face and winces at the movement.

"He did this, y'know."

"Yeah, I know."

Zuko holds both arms flat as Jee begins to wind the new gauze.

"You're better than that. Better than your dad. You didn't deserve that, and you had every right to fight back."

"I wanted him to die," Zuko says, looking down at the floor. "I wanted to kill him in that fire, and it didn't matter if I died, too."

"Does it matter now?"

Zuko nods, and Jee gives him a tired smile.

"Can I have some paper? There's a letter I want to write."

The lettering isn't the quite the perfection he'd always drilled—he has trouble keeping a solid grip on the brush, but Jee helps him seal it with wax and then they're standing on opposite sides of the plexiglass again.

"Would you just hold onto it for a while?" Zuko asks. "Just wait a few days, before you send it."

o.o.o.o.o

He wishes he could start a few fires to help the riot, but the suppressors still sit heavy on his chest. Glass breaking wakes them—it's the first time he's seen the roommate grin and laugh, and they both go charging out into the hall.

Joo Dee screams at them from behind a tipped-up couch. The nurses' station and elevator are barricaded, and the air is alive with laughter and projectiles.

"Don't stop!" Toph says. "Go!"

They said their goodbyes yesterday, but still he pauses, tries to reach for her through the melee.

"Go," she says again. "I'm gonna be queen!"

So he turns away from it, as the TV goes up in a shower of sparks and another window shatters, runs down to the craft closet.

Mai is already waiting on the roof, clutching her stomach nervously. All they have is their clothes—he passes the jacket over and she pulls the hood up, so that the edges frame her pointed face and straight bangs. The fence gives way under her hands like tissue paper—Toph made the seams perfect, so it'll drop back and be like nothing changed.

"Wait," Mai says, when he's almost through. "What the hell is that?"

A bag the color of the wall and roof slumps down beside the door. With a wince of pain, Zuko pushes back to his feet and snatches it. The sides fall open, and he sees only a sea of leering blue masks.

"What is it?"

He lifts up one pack—too heavy to be cigarettes—and the bottom falls out, showering gold pieces into the bottom of the bag.

"Jee," he says, gratefully.

They run right up to the retaining wall and stop. Rain makes mist of the compound, darkening even the closest lights. The yard is a yawning blackness, far below.

"Well, Zuko," Mai says. "Time to go."

He knows where the extension is, knows how far and how short and how many steps to the access stairs, but as Mai takes his hand, a little thrill of terror works through him.

She smirks.

"Do you want to kiss me?"

He does, and they jump together.