Disclaimer: I don't own them, once again.

A/N: I wrote this one-shot in response to some Maiko bashers on ASN who insisted that Mai would never really understand what Zuko had been through in exile. So this is to remind us all that understanding can only work as a two-way street.

Understand

Zuko was exhausted. He wanted nothing more at the moment than to put his head down on his desk and go to sleep. His eyelids felt like they weighed tons.

Spread before him was a vast assortment of papers. But they were not crisp, official documents, tied with ribbon or marked with rich black ink. They were grimy, often wrinkled, and smeared with fingerprints and mud. The ink ran in several places on these papers, and some of the handwriting was atrocious.

These were not ordinary papers.

"Zuko? Are you still here? Do you know how late it is?" With effort, Zuko raised and turned his head to see Mai leaning against the doorframe, wrapped in her nightgown and with a mixture of concern and mild irritation in her eyes.

" 'Mfine," mumbled Zuko, trying hard not to blink. "Go back to bed."

"You are not fine." Mai insisted. Her eyes narrowed slightly. "You've been working all day. You only stopped once to eat. I know how seriously you're taking this position, Zuko, but you've only been Fire Lord for a couple months. Take a break."

"No," said Zuko, with surprising force for how weary he felt. He picked up another piece of paper, and read the first line.

Dear Fire Lord,

"Zuko, this is crazy. I'm not going to let you do this to yourself. I don't usually worry about you, but if you're making this a habit…" Mai was remarkably good at sounding cool and harsh when she wanted to.

Unfortunately, her voice was grating on Zuko's already pounding head. His frustration and exhaustion rose together and became anger.

"I need to finish these, and I will. I can decide what's best for myself, Mai. These are important."

"For Agni's sake, Zuko," Mai said, her voice scaling louder than its usual even volume, "They're letters from peasants! From people who aren't even Fire Nation! How can you say that that's more important than your--"

"You don't understand!"

The three words tore themselves from Zuko, and he knew the moment they left his mouth that they spoke to more than just the present situation. They spoke of something that had pricked at Zuko more than once; Mai's ignorance of what had befallen him in the years of his exile.

It was true. There were times when it was painfully true, and painfully obvious. She just did not know what this kind of thing meant to him. Mai did not have dreams about a little boy with messy hair waving two broadswords aloft in a sunflower field with the eagerness of youth. She did not know about the gentle young woman whose leg was adorned with a puckered scar so like his own. She had not seen the little family clustered around a pregnant woman, the husband gently helping his wife along. Mai had never seen the little communities, the isolated tribes, the island villages.

She did not know. And he did.

That was why he stayed up late by torchlight to read the letters that the common people, from Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom and beyond, sent to him. The ones that addressed the concerns of mothers and fathers, farmers and merchants. The ones that asked only for his ear and perhaps his help.

Zuko clenched his fists and bowed his head after his outburst. He did not look at Mai. He didn't know whether she was furious, or hurt, or both. She probably had a right to be both. But that fact remained between them, a wedge he didn't want to acknowledge.

He had been away for a long time. And he had come back changed. Did she really understand how he was changed?

He stared at the wood grain of the table. He memorized the ink blots on the letter before him. Anything so he wouldn't have to look at Mai.

"You don't understand," he mouthed silently at the tabletop, his mind assailed with memories, some painful, some unexpectedly happy.

The chair on the other side of his desk grated as someone pulled it out. There was the softest rustle of cloth.

A cool hand, not rough and insistent, but amazingly gentle, cupped his chin. Zuko was so tired, he did not fight the touch. He allowed her fingers to lift his chin, to raise his head.

She was closer than he'd thought. He was looking right into her dark eyes. Her black hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders. Her expression was not hurt, or angry, or even confused.

"I don't understand?" she asked. It was a question, not an attack.

Numbly, Zuko nodded his head within her grip.

So softly he hardly felt it, her thumb traced the line of his jaw.

"Then tell me."