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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

[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.