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[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters: Zhi (Zuko/Mai), Bohai (Sokka/Suki), Ren (Ty Lee/?)
Warning: AU
Pairings: Bohai/Zhi, REN/ZHI XD But uh... I can't write Ren. :(

It seems the Fire Lord is running out of candidates for son-in-law...


There were men who said that the Fire Lord's eldest daughter Zhi was the loveliest young woman in all of the Fire Nation, if not in all of the world. And it was entirely possible that this was true. She had inhereted her height, slender figure, and fine, glossy hair from her mother and her striking features and liquid eyes from her father's side of the family. But when her eyes went predatorially wide and her soft lips tightened in fierce disapproval, people still whispered about how much she looked like Princess Azula and got the hell out of her way.

Of course, the current object of her barely-restrained fury didn't have that option. Aside from the nervously fluttering drudges who both served their tea and policed their activity, there were guards at the door. And when Zhi's old nurse had left the unlikely pair together, it sounded as if they had been locked into the room.

Zhi hated Ren. She hated his hair, she hated his clothes, she hated the way he spoke; all of which was made abundantly clear with the way her brow furrowed and the corners of her mouth twitched with disapproval every time he was presumptuous enough to move or breathe. A cup of steaming tea had been set before her, and she had gone as far as to rest her perfectly manicured nails upon the porcelain before she had settled upon giving him the most pointedly savage stare she could muster.

Ren might have shrugged and tucked into the delectable-looking spread on the low table except for the disorienting way smoke kept curling from Zhi's nostrils and the rumors that had been circulating that she had set her last suitor on fire.

Comments

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

"This wasn't my idea." Zhi spoke around clenched teeth, fairly hissing. "You aren't worth the time it takes to think of a good insult, let alone to waste a whole day with."

She had encountered Ren very little at this point, as his arrival in court had been very close to the time she'd been shipped to Kyoshi to be beaten to a pulp by the resident warlord. And though she wasn't sure where she stood with Bohai anymore, especially since she'd abandoned the opportunity to return so that Irana could have her precious ship, Ren was certainly not a viable alternative. What had her father been thinking? That if she liked slumming, this scheming little idiot would be a good match? Hardly!

Zhi took a deep breath and exhaled an irritated cloud of steam.

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

Well, well, well. Underneath that pretty hair and heaving chest, Ren's third eye was detecting a buildup of spoiled-bitch-related chi.

He might have spent the last few months making nice with an older princessy-princess figure, but Azula Jr. was no moonchild, and this was Ren's turf. The worst that could happen was she'd up and attack him, which was what the court rumors expected from one of the Fire Lord's crazy daughters anyway. Win-win for him.

It was so on.

"I can see why they made you a diplomat," Ren drawled, politely. It wouldn't do not to be polite. They could trump up some half-assed treason grumbling on that. "Alla that royal charm and poise under fire."

He tilted his head and give the princess a once-over. "It's been a real honor to meetcha, Princess. I've heard you've got a real... touch with the common man. But if it's your royal whim, I'll let you waste a day with yerself."

With that, Ren pulled a notebook out of his pocket, and began nonchalantly scrawling out an inventory list.

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Zhi could have stabbed him. She had enough steel up her sleeves to fill him with numerous bloody holes. And she would have considered it, too, if his jab at her playing diplomat did not give her pause.

Yes, that was right. Though she had been locked back up in her little gilt cage, she was more a representative of her father than she had ever been before. And it meant she had to stop throwing tantrums and setting things aflame when she got pissed.

Zhi took a moment to settle her features into the sort of placid expression her mother managed so effortlessly, then said, "You seem so sure that I would turn you down."

Leaning across the table as if to impart some deep secret, Zhi gave Ren a glimpse down her collar all the way to the hollow of her throat: forbidden territory.

"Don't you think you have much to offer a girl?"

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

Ren glanced up from his inventory list.

Well hello, Azulas Jr.

Ren took a moment to appreciate the view. Then he looked right back down at his list, on account of he didn't trust no one who shut down that easily.

Damn. Ren'd been prepared to be a war hero for the cause and everything. There were plenty of dudes out there waiting to rally behind the plight of an injured suitor after Princess Irana's swath of carnage.

On the other hand, he sorta liked not being on fire. You won some, you lost some.

"Don't matter what I gotta offer. It matters what you want, and what I am." He wrote some more. "This offer isn't serious. Plus, I don't like wearing skirts. Fucks up yer mobility something fierce."

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Zhi prickled a little at the continued references to Bohai, but she felt steadier now that Ren had looked at her. She was used to being looked at. Hell, she liked being looked at.

Tilting her head, because she knew just what was her best angle, Zhi shook her head just enough to let the beads on her braids tinkle, not giving his attention a chance to wander.

"It doesn't matter what I want," she said. "I'm not a man."

After a pause to allow him to consider this, she added, subtly insinuitive, "I hear that you like to barter. What would you trade for me?"

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

For a moment, looking into the abyss between Azula Jr.'s perfectly-proportioned breasts, Ren had a strange, compressed, caged-animal feeling. He knew full well that there was no way he could answer that question without screwing himself over.

So he decided to call the Princess' bluff.

Ren blinked, faux-innocently, as though his poor ignorant ass had no idea what kind of negotiations she was talking about.

"Begging pardon, but I figure I musta misheard you." He shifted as close as he could to the Princess without leaving his seat. All the better to shut her arms down if necessary. Among other things. "It's nice you gotta interest in commerce, but maybe you aren't in the know? Where I come from that kinda bartering's liable to get a guy arrested."

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Zhi laughed, so light and sweet it seemed almost genuine, as she settled back upon her cushion and patted her glossy braids.

"I could have you thrown in prison for even insinuating such a thing," she said.

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

Ren had his self a serious think on that.

"That's true," he considered. "You'd be within yer royal rights. But if the Fire Lady could arrest me without causing a serious shitstorm she'da trumped up a charge before now. The Fire Lord didn't send you here to provoke me. I'd be a martyr to all the courtiers you and your sibs have ever scorned, my investors would be pissed, jobs would be lost, the deal with the North would fall through, and Xi Feng'd have one helluva job on his hands."

The Fire Lord Zuko was a whole lot of thinga, mythical and majestic and even kinda frightening, but he was not capable of beating Ren at his own game.

"I wonder why he did send you," Ren mused, darkly. Princess Zhi was very beautiful and Ren studied her bone structure, trying to see what his mother had loved, the great Azula's sharp bone structure beneath all that pale skin. "I think... he sent you here to remind me of my place."

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

One of Zhi's thin brows arched, and she seemed genuniely interested for the first time since she had entered the room. Of course, why wouldn't she be interested in any chance to grind him under her heel?

"And just what place is that?"

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

"With my mother," Ren stated the obvious, because apparently Princess Azhila ran a little slow. The contrast between them could not have been more blatant. She looked like she'd stepped out of a propaganda poster.

"He knew you'd think this was beneath you, and he wanted me to know it, only..."

Ren stood and walked to the door, resolving to leave before he said something that'd get him clapped in irons no matter what.

"If that's the message the Fire Lord was trying to send me, you maybe oughtta think on what message he was trying to send you."

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Zhi rose to her feet in a rustle of silk and a cloud of delicate perfume.

"My father would not waste my time just to make some kind of statement, governor," she said crisply. "This is a genuine proposition."

"Besides," she added, examining her nails, "if he truly believed that your place was outside the Fire Nation court, he would have cast you out long ago. Half of the things you pulled when you first got here would have given him plenty of reason to banish you."

[birdsarecalling.livejournal.com]

"But you were right. This proposition is a waste of my time, and yours," Ren countered. "Everyone knows that the Fire Lord wouldn't force his daughters into marriage. So the only thing it can be about is the message. I figure yer not in on that, now, so as a gesture of goodwill Imma make this easy for both of us."

Most of the shit Ren pulled when he first got there were stupid and petty, and by the time he'd learned how to conduct himself all proper-like, there was nothing the Fire Lord could pin on him.

Ren did not even bother to force his smile to reach his eyes.

"It was an honor to meet yer ladyship, but I believe I'm feeling a kinda ill. Damned shame of a thing. I would not wish to expose the Princess to that kinda terrible malady."

He coughed a single fake cough.

"I'll see you around the Court, my lady."

With that, Ren bowed his exit, and retreated off into the halls of the Fire Palace.