shatterverse | (no subject)

Iroh had VERY IMPORTANT things to do. These important things involved the final touches for the plumbing system for the fire palace.

Then there was a bang and he was somewhere else entirely, in full Fire Lord regalia and with a person who looks a lot like Mai bearing down on him.

And behind her...

...just a sec while we process this information, please.

The timing of the newcomer's arrival is both good and bad. Good because it coincides with Mai's decision to make a desperate last stand and the flash was bright enough to cause the big hairy things behind her to cringe, dropping their guard. Bad because there is someone in her way as she spins to flick one of her last knives.

Her foot comes down on his and she lost her balance, stumbling sideways and going down in a tangle of limbs.

"Aaaghoof!!"

Iroh flails backwards - and the gold piece on his ponytail falls back into the undergrowth, which might be for the best - in a tangle that is mostly very definitely Mai.

But there were things chasing her and that's more important, so he struggles to disentangle and leap to his feet, slipping into stance.

A small ball of fire streaks through the woods into the face of the nearest beast.

Mai pushes herself to her feet with a grimace as well and, having judged that the one with its nose on fire is no longer a threat, flicks another blade at the eye of one she managed to graze before she went down.

She's down to two blades, but only one of the wolf-things left. Of course now she, apparently, has a firebender on her side?

She'll deal with that later.

She's too young, Iroh notices with half of his brain. Too young and he's been wrenched into a new world again and he really has to concentrate.

The third wolf (too big to be a wolf) goes down sharply with another face ful of fire.

As the last of the far-too-large wolves goes down Mai is still clutching her last two knives. She's pretty sure she can recover the two she just threw, but four isn't a very comforting number.

She's swaying on her feet from a combination of exhaustion and perhaps a bit of shock. It's been rough surviving out here on her own, and she's too tired at the moment to really devote any attention to the person who probably just saved her life.

Like she'll ever admit that.

They're in a lightly wooded area, so Iroh takes the time to make sure the fires he left are out, before turning to Mai.

Jesu, she looks tired. More so than he's ever seen her, and it breaks his heart.

He puts out a hand to steady her shoulder.

She's tired. Beyond tired, really, and her she reacts automatically.

Mai twists her shoulder away and takes a step back, knife coming up between them. Or, at least, that's what she tries. Instead of a smooth movement though, she grimaces in pain as her leg gives way and she folds to the ground in a heap.

Which is the first time she notices that her leg really, really hurts.

He inhales quickly through his teeth and quickly drops to a crouch beside he, mindless of the knife.

"You're hurt." His voice is rich and soft like his father's, but his tone is more natural, with none of the control a noble upbringing would afford. "Let me see."

Mai brandishes the knife, but the fact that she doesn't stab him means she probably isn't going to.

"I'm fine." Normally she'd be able to deliver a lie like that with a flat tone and no expression. The fact that her voice is audibly strained and that her face is pinched and tight reveals a lot more from her than it would from most other people.

And although there's no way she would know this, it reveals a lot more to him than to anyone else.

He meets the flat of her knife with the edge of his wrist, pushing it away gently, while her other hand reaches to her leg. He only needs to touch it briefly to find the break.

"OK, we need to get you to a healer. Do you know of any nearby?"

It's not the first time he's wished he were a waterbender instead.

She's opening her mouth to snap at him for touching her blade as his hand rests on her leg. Instead of saying anything she hisses in suppressed pain.

It's a nasty break, too. The bone doesn't protrude from the skin, but it's a close thing.

"No," she grinds out. Normally she wouldn't respond, but she needs something to distract her from the pain, and even conversation with a stranger (who looks oddly familiar for some reason) will do.

Right then.

He nods, setting his jaw to hide his fear about what he's going to have to do.

"I'll be back," he says, trusting her self interest to keep her still against the pain while he stands and approaches the nearest tree. Drawing his knife, he cuts the longest straight piece of branch he can find as well as a short, stout stick.

Returning to Mai, he tears a long strip from his own silk robes and wraps a part of it around the shorter stick. This he offers to Mai.

"Bite on this."

"Why?" she eyes him warily, clearly not trusting his intentions.

Having taken the time to examine her leg while he cut the makings of a splint she knows that she won't survive out here without some sort of help.

But old habits die hard, and she's been building distrust for years.

"Because" I know you and you don't like to scream "otherwise the pain might make you bite through your tongue, or worse."

Thank you, Dr. House and a basic medical training.

"The pain is not that bad," she counters. It's a challenge, a sort of "are you going to do something to change that?"

She's not pushing him away, though. And she's lowered her blade.

"It's about to get worse."

He thrusts the stick towards her again, insistent.

"Do you want to ever walk again?"

Mai doesn't say anything, but extending a white-knuckled, not quite trembling, hand to take the stick is probably answer enough.

She takes a deep, steeling breath, places the stick between her teeth, and looks at Iroh.

Almost immediately, he looks away, crouching by her leg instead.

He breathes in as he places his hands, reminding himself that it's not going to hurt him, and then levers, snapping the bone back into place.

If it doesn't hurt him, why are his eyes wet?

It's a question Mai might ask herself if she had any attention to pay to such things. But her eyes are squeezed tight and her teeth bite deeply into the wood. Even with that she can't help a pained moan from escaping her lips as the bone grinds back into its proper place.

He turns away quickly from her pain, if only to hide how much it pains him to see her like this, and uses more silk from his robes to bind his homemade splint tightly to her leg.

Having used that time to regain his composure, he looks back at her.

"I think that will hold until we can get you to a bed."

The pain and shock have her off balance, and biting comments are familiar, so that's where she turns.

"Only if you brought one with you." It's pretty obvious she hasn't been using beds very much herself out here.

"I can't bring everything," he says, countering her bile with a soft smile.

"We'll find somewhere safer, then. You need time to heal."

"And where, precisely, did you have in mind?"

Mai has never really responded well to people deflecting her like that.

"Are there no towns around here?" he asks. As long as she's sitting, insulting him, her leg isn't being made worse. It's enough.

"If not, I think we should head west until we find somewhere easily defensible."