(no subject)
Title: Baby Steps
Fandom: Avatar
Pairings: Zuko/Mai
Genre: Humour
Word Count: 1,666
Notes: Quite random, inspired by ninjatrauma's craving for Zuko/Mai babyfic because I started thinking about it and couldn't kick it. I actually wrote this about two or three weeks ago, but I was going to try and finish the last two christmas fics first before I posted it. As I seem to be wading through molasses so far as writing is concerned, however, I've decided that that is highly impractical.
Summary: Being a father is much, much harder than being a Fire Lord. Don't let ANYONE tell you otherwise.
The thing was, as Fire Lord, Zuko liked to think he feared nothing. He was one of the most powerful men in the world, probably the most powerful excluding Aang. (Katara and Toph didn’t count. They were women.) He had strength of will, was intelligent, could best almost anyone in a swordfight and his firebending had, over time and with Iroh’s patient guidance, become something to behold with no little awe.
He was the ruler of a very large and very impressive nation.
And he’d just fainted.
“Sissy!” Mai spat, glaring at the prone body of her husband on the floor and hoping spitefully that he’d hit his head on the way down. “I’m the one in gut-wrenching agony, so why is he the one passing out?”
“Before all else, a father is a father,” Iroh told her, as she was clenching her teeth and gripping the bedclothes so tightly they were in danger of ripping. “A father confronted by the rigours of childbirth is prone to momentary weakness. It is tradition.”
“When you wake up,” Mai snarled at Zuko, spasming in pain, “you will wish you had never been born.”
“I would remove my nephew from the room, but I do not wish to leave you unattended during the birth,” Iroh said, not bothered by the homicidal way in which she was glaring at said nephew. Threats made during childbirth were usually not carried out.
Usually.
Mai grunted at this, and Iroh took it for agreement, boiling another pot of water. Ideally there would be a midwife to help in these circumstances, but Zuko was paranoid and didn’t trust anyone else to deliver his child safely.
To be entirely fair, Iroh had fainted during the birth of his own son. It was, after all, tradition. But he was older now, and it was easier to be objective when it was not his own wife or baby.
“In childbirth, like bending, you must concentrate on your breathing,” Iroh said encouragingly as she screamed. “Breathe deeply.”
“Do not make me kill you.”
When all the mess and pain and pushing and breathing was done and the child had given its first resonant wail, Iroh wrapped it in swaddling cloth and placed it gently in its mother’s arms.
“Congratulations,” he told her with a smile. “It is a very healthy girl.”
Mai considered this.
“Good,” she said, only with a slight hint of exhaustion, because experience had proven boys were much more useless than the so-called fairer sex. “She’s called Aiko. If my husband objects, that’s his fault for passing out.”
“Aah, a name that combines the names of her parents. Lovely.”
“That had nothing to do with it,” Mai lied, utterly pokerfaced. “I just like the name.”
“Of course,” Iroh agreed, but his amused tone suggested he wasn’t buying it. “I will give you and Zuko a moment alone with your daughter. I am sure he will wake up soon.”
Mai realised, as Iroh exited the room, that there was a faint smile on her lips that she hadn’t even noticed, and okay, maybe she wasn’t quite up to her usual standard of pokerfaced. Still, no matter.
These were extenuating circumstances, after all.
~
“The problem with hiring a nurse,” Zuko said, severe frown suggesting this was a grave and troubling matter of state, “is finding someone that can be trusted with our child. Not to mention the heir to the throne. Uncle, what do you think?”
“I think that a child should be raised by its own parent. I regret that I was not there to watch my son grow up,” Iroh said meditatively. “Often this is also preferable for the child too, so that it may form a bond with its parents and grow to be a fine and well-adjusted adult.”
Annoyed by the unsolicited opinion, Zuko opened his mouth to say that duties of that nature were beneath the dignity of the Fire Lord, his father had certainly had never stooped to involve himself in such matters, and there was nothing wrong with how he or his sister had turned out.
Then he thought about what he was actually saying, and closed his mouth again with a disturbed expression. On second thoughts, maybe that explained something.
“Mai,” Zuko said firmly, crossing his arms and trying to look like he hadn’t just swapped sides mid-argument because the Fire Lord was strong in his convictions and not easily swayed, dammit, “No child of mine is going to be neglected like that. We are not getting a nurse.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, apparently not at all ruffled by this declaration. “Just so long as you don’t think I’m going to do all the work, because it’s not happening. Either you learn how to change a diaper, or we’re getting a nurse.”
Zuko had a sudden bad feeling about this.
“Would you like a nice cup of jasmine tea?” Iroh asked him with a peaceful smile.
The bad feeling got worse.
~
“Why is she crying?” Zuko demanded, holding Aiko up with a confused and vaguely paranoid expression. “Mai!”
Mai rolled her eyes, not looking up from her book. “She needs her diaper changed.”
Zuko stared helplessly at Aiko. Aiko cried. Mai continued to read.
It was very obvious who was expected to fix this.
You can do this, Zuko told himself. How hard can it be?
Ten minutes later, Aiko was naked and crying, and Zuko was struggling futilely to figure out the arcane art of folding a diaper correctly, aware that he was doing it wrong and too much of a perfectionist to let it go (especially when it wouldn’t stay up) but not sure how to fix it.
“How the hell does this work?” he demanded, feeling like joining Aiko in her frustrated sobbing. “It won’t stay!”
“That’s because you’re doing it wrong,” Mai said calmly, and turned the page.
Zuko knew that. He just didn’t know which way was right.
Mai took a bite of the apple in the hand not holding the book.
“Uncle!” he yelled, in frazzled desperation. Aiko screamed.
“He’s out,” she reminded him, after she swallowed the bite of apple.
Zuko cursed, remembering too late that she was right. “Why don’t we have a nurse?” he muttered darkly, and Mai’s lips curved in a faint smirk.
“You are the one who wanted to experience hands-on parenting, dear,” she pointed out, infuriatingly logical, and Zuko gritted his teeth.
When Iroh came home, Zuko was going to kill him slowly and painfully for ever putting that thought in his head. Why had he decided not to have a nurse? Was he crazy?
Yep, all Iroh’s fault.
“I can do this,” Zuko snarled with grim determination, trying to convince himself. “I am the Fire Lord! I will not be defeated by a mere diaper!”
“Sure you can,” Mai said, which might have been soothing if she were anyone else’s wife but instead sounded amused. There was a crunch as she took another bite of the apple. “Have fun.”
In the end, it only took half an hour for Zuko to get it right, which was practically no time at all. Really.
He was so engrossed in learning how to change Aiko’s diaper that he didn’t notice that he was covered in baby powder or that Mai hadn’t turned the page in at least twenty minutes and was instead watching him and Aiko, hiding her smile behind her book.
This kind of thing was not at all befitting of the dignity of the Fire Lord. Luckily, Zuko hadn’t noticed that either.
~
“Mama, why is the sky blue?”
“Ask your father.”
“How come Uncle Aang can bend ALL the elements?”
“Ask your father.”
“Can I play with your throwing knives?”
Mai considered this.
“Sure,” she said, because Aiko wasn’t that stupid and Mai had had her first knives at when she was that age. Besides, Zuko had a sixth sense when it came to Aiko.
Sure enough, five minutes later:
“Mai, you let Aiko have a KNIFE?” Zuko exclaimed, high-pitched shriek suggesting he was this far from cardiac arrest, and really, you would never suspect that he’d learned how to fight with knives when he was still learning to walk. “What if she cuts herself? Say something!”
“If you stab anything,” Mai told Aiko, “you clean it up. If you kill the cat I’m not replacing it.”
“MAI!”
“What? She’s got to learn sometime,” Mai said reasonably, and hid her smirk behind her hand, because Zuko was so funny when he was apoplectic and one of them had to be the cool parent, after all.
“No knives,” Zuko was saying in the background, sounding very harassed. “And no fire bending until you’re at least ten.”
“But daddy, Great Uncle Iroh says…”
“NO BUTS.”
Later that night, when Aiko was all tucked up in her room (without any knives), Zuko turned to Mai in bed and said, accusingly, “You do this on purpose, don’t you?”
She could have said, “do what on purpose?”
She could have said, “of course not.”
Instead she grinned and said, “Did it really take you four years to figure that out, darling?”
Zuko groaned and buried his face in the pillow. “No,” he said, voice muffled. “It just took me this long to mention it.”
“But you’re so cute when you’re paranoid and flustered, how can I help myself?”
People thought being the Fire Lord was difficult. They were wrong. All it required to be a good Fire Lord was power, intelligence, and diplomatic and political skills. What was really hard was being a good husband and father, and while Zuko was one of the best in the world at many things, he had to admit that probably wasn’t one of them. Grudgingly, he would concede that Aang was probably better at both. Zuko was trying, though, and that was the important thing.
Childhood was all about learning, and Zuko realised now that Aiko wasn’t the only one growing up.