Work Text:
cold steel is blue fire on my skin
sorry for my sins but i'd do it again
◇
Ty Lee's face itches. She likes being a Kyoshi Warrior, really, genuinely does, more than she’s liked anything in a long time—but the makeup is really starting to get on her nerves. Fire Nation cosmetics are so different from those in the Earth Kingdom. She was used to wearing light creams and sheer powders, not this thick, peely paint that sticks to her skin and nestles into the creases of her face.
And then the uniform. Ty Lee did not spend the first 14 years of her life trying to prove that she was unique and individual just to join a group of girls who all dressed exactly the same, all the time. Even their sleepwear was the same standard green smock and pants. Where was the color? Where was the vibrancy? More importantly, where was the pink?
But these were minor discrepancies. She really did like it there, truly. The girls were wonderful, so kind and gentle while still strong and capable. They all respected her and liked her and appreciated her, almost overwhelmingly so. And to top it all off, they were awed by her chi-blocking—so many girls had asked her to show them a thing or two that she had started to teach them the basics in groups.
Still, she couldn’t help the nagging feeling that something was off. Wrong. That the world had been seized like a toy globe by some toddler overlord and spun and spun and spun until its axis shifted and continents drifted and everything was left just a little off-kilter.
It’s not that she didn’t understand. Of course she did. She knew what was wrong, what was banging around the back of her skull like an incessant insect, what was twisting around her heart like a slithering snake.
But as she sat in the grass of the training grounds, Suki laying on her back beside her, she couldn’t quite get herself to think it.
(Hair slicked back and eyes keen, gold; blue flame spins around her like it's dancing, but she's always been too practical for that—)
“How’s Sokka?” she heard herself ask, the wind blowing her hair against the white paint on her face. She wonders distantly if any of it flaked off into her hair, and how long it’ll take her to wash out if it did.
Suki sighs. “I don’t know,” she says, fiddling with blades of grass by her feet. “He hasn’t sent me a letter in weeks. I haven’t either, but—” She cuts off, smiling over at Ty Lee. “It’s whatever. I’m trying not to worry about it. How’s Mai been doing?”
“Oh, alright. She says that Zuko has finally settled into the throne, and that he’s been doing a lot of great things as Firelord. Nothing surprising.”
Suki hummed in response, and they both looked on in comfortable silence at the girls training in front of them. They watched as Yuko brought Michi down with a swift leg-sweep. Ty Lee noticed the pointed silence after, that would typically have been filled with a sharp whoop or shouted compliment from Suki. She felt this oddity and a fearful anticipation began to spread through her chest. Suki was bracing herself for something, but what?
“Remember when Toph came by, couple weeks back?” Suki started.
Ty Lee looked over at her. Figuring out Suki had been stranger than figuring out everyone else. In the Fire Nation palace, everything was tucked down and away, stuffed into some corner of your subconsciousness that only showed through in twitches and spasms. Her time in Ba Sing Se proved that the Earth Kingdom nobility was similar, all of them fighting to the top with poker faces behind painted fans.
But regular Earth Kingdom citizens were different. After spending the last few months doing post-war humanitarian work in the nation’s villages and towns, she had found them to be kind and down-to-earth, the kind of people to sit in a bed of flowers and dig their hands into the soil.
The Kyoshi Warriors fell into this category of kind and down-to-earth, with the addition of being clever, keen-eyed, and stealthy. This nation was full of people with good hearts and Ty Lee didn’t know what to do with it—she hadn’t actually spent her life with most noble-intentioned people.
She hadn’t exactly fallen in love with the most noble-intentioned person, either, a small part of her mind whispered cruelly, and she left it there to lay as she always did.
“Of course,” she responded to Suki’s question, with more enthusiasm and a brighter smile than she really felt. “What about it?”
“She told me about all the old Sozin-era policies Zuko has been killing himself trying to repeal, and apparently one of them is the old same-sex marriage ban. Have you heard about that?” Suki watches her, laid out in the grass beside her, elbows sinking slightly into the soft ground. Her eyes are deceptively empty, open and blank, and her mouth curls up a little at one corner. Suki watches her, and Ty Lee watches her back.
“‘Course!” she says with false brightness. She could feel Suki like a snake slowly curling around her, head reeling back before it lunges. “What about it?” She tilts her head in that way she knows makes her look like a dumb puppy, even if Suki won't buy it.
“Just wondering what you thought about it, is all.” Suki shrugs with false innocence and Ty Lee experiences the familiar feeling of having to choke back a scoff.
Ty Lee shrugs the same way, almost mockingly. Suki’s eyes narrow minimally. “Oh, I don't know,” Ty Lee says flippantly, leaning back. “Don't know much about it. I think it's a great step towards the old, accepting Fire Nation that Zuko is trying to restore. Good decision.”
She tapers off, watching Suki stare down at the grass between them. Her eyebrows furrow and smooth over. Her knuckles twitch and settle. Her lips flatten and curve.
Suki, seemingly perfectly relaxed and still, flicks about in a million nervous tics, and Ty Lee waits for the snake to lunge.
“Katara wrote to me,” Suki starts, with a heavy weight to each word, “and she told me what Zuko was planning to do with… Azula.”
And there it is. The word sinks into her skin like acid-filled fangs, and she feels the breath knock out of her lungs into the warm air. Somewhere, distantly, she hears one of the girls cheer for Yuko but she doesn't scan it over as she usually would. Her vision feels odd, and her chest pulses in painful aches.
She tries to count her heartbeats to bring herself back to Earth, but they are too erratic in her throat, so she plunges her nails into the soft ground below her. She can feel Suki watching her with keen eyes. Ty Lee ignores her.
Once the moist feeling of grass and soil between her fingers relaxes her enough that she can think clearly, she carefully removes them from the newly-formed craters and settles them down into the grass again, hiding the dirt stains.
Ty Lee breathes out a careful breath, and speaks.
“And what did she say?”
Her voice is steady, blank. She can't muster the energy to brighten it to her usual cadence.
“He’s getting her psychological assistance full-time. He really wants to help her.”
The like you were supposed to is unspoken, but Suki doesn't know that.
Ty Lee simply hums in response, fighting back the closing walls of her throat.
Missing Azula is a double-edged sword. The simple ache of wanting her there, standing tall in front of her or curled up beside her or spread out over her, and the guilt that comes with it. Azula was acid fire, corrosive and searing but Ty Lee never got over the addictive feeling of getting burned and burned and burned until your entire body was boiling bubbled skin, but still surviving.
Handling Azula was like handling a wild blaze with your fingertips, but no one could do it like Ty Lee could. No one.
Ty Lee can tell that Suki wants her to say more, but she stays silent and tries not to let guilt choke her like smoke.
–
Steel is cold on her wrists. Darkness fills her vision so all she sees is black. She hears a rat scuttling in the corner and almost calls out for it to help her. Ty Lee doesn’t know where she is. Ty Lee doesn’t know how she got here.
Ty Lee doesn’t know how it all went so wrong.
–
“Who are you?” a little girl demands, tiny hands pressed in furious fists to her waist. Her hair is up in a knot, not a single hair out of place, and the Academy uniform fits her like a second skin. She’s also upside down, because Ty Lee’s head is hovering over the ground, her hands and feet planted firmly with an arched back connecting it all.
“I'm Ty Lee,” she chirps, flipping out of her backbend to look at the girl right-side-up. Now that she sees her more clearly, she knows exactly who she is: Princess Azula, second in line to the Fire Nation Throne.
Thinking it better to feign obliviousness, though, she pushes her face into hers and asks, “Who’re you?”
Azula rears back, pure righteous fury and child-like confusion fighting for dominance on her face. Ty Lee fights back a giggle.
“I'm Azula,” she spits out, like it's important—which it is, of course, but it's strange to see such a small girl speak like they're grown.
“Nice to meet you, Azula!” Ty Lee pulls back into her own space and puts her hand out.
Azula watches it with careful wariness before slowly taking it in her own, shaking curtly. After barely a second, she rips her hand away and returns it behind her back.
Taking that as a victory, Ty Lee brightens her smile even more. Azula doesn't smile in return, but she nods minutely, and spins away.
Ty Lee watches the princess stomp away with keen interest. Once the blustery girl rounds a corner, she smiles and returns to stretching.
–
Ty Lee doesn't know where Mai is. Ty Lee doesn't know if what they are going to do to Mai is going to be worse than what they are going to do to her. (She was always the favorite, but does that matter, here, in this cold cell after the worst betrayal?)
Her knees are pressed to her chest, arms wrapping around them in a vice grip, and she wishes Azula were here.
–
“Zuko’s gone,” Mai tells her as her lips wobble dangerously and her hands shake.
“The prince will return on pain of death, ” the Fire Lord hisses to one of his advisors, hidden in the shadows of a dark corner.
“I choose to leave with my nephew, my Lord,” Iroh vows, on his knees in front of his brother’s throne.
Ty Lee hears all sorts of whispered voices and scattered confessions; I never quite liked him—he always seemed like such a good boy!—and that scar, my goodness—
It seems like everyone in the Fire Nation has something to say about the banished prince. Everyone, that is, except Azula.
“Did you hear Ki-Lee was kicked out of Madam Ara’s class for her low marks?” Azula says with a cruel gleam in her eye. “Serves her right. If she didn't spend so much time worrying about that boy Chan Juan, she might actually get somewhere.”
Ty Lee listens to Azula’s vitriol as she often does, but instead of the words filling her with dull amusement, she just itches with concern.
Zuko has been gone for three weeks. Banished from the Fire Nation like a foul plague, taking a grief-broken old man, a small crew—and a piece of Azula with him.
“Of course,” Ty Lee responds dutifully, watching her friend carefully. Her shoulders are straight and back as they always are, her collar is ironed and starched at her chin, her eyes are cold and hard. It’s all so Azula, perfectly normal Azula, but then…
Ty Lee sees the tiniest hair straying near-imperceptibly out of her top knot. She sees the smallest corner of her tunic sticking just slightly untucked from her trousers. She sees the barest twitch of an eye, there and not there, the odd fluttering of her lashes the only clue it happened at all.
Ty Lee looks at Azula, who seems perfectly put-together and unaffected at the banishment of her only brother to everyone else. Everyone except Ty Lee. It's her greatest pride—that no one will ever know Azula like Ty Lee does.
“Are you even listening?” Azula snaps, her bangs flying as she whirls her head towards Ty Lee.
“I am.” Ty Lee keeps eye contact. Azula’s gaze flicks all over her face, hunting for a tell.
“Hmph,” she huffs when she doesn't find anything. “Well. Let's spar.”
Ty Lee smiles, chest filling with pride at Azula playing right into her hands. “Of course!”
They both settle back into their starting positions right there in the courtyard, because when Azula wants something there is no use wasting time trying to find a more convenient place to grant that wish. Most of the time, it’s easier just to give in and get it over with.
There will be no getting it over with today, though. Today, Ty Lee has a goal.
“Go,” Azula commands, waiting the fair second after before lunging. They have an unspoken agreement when they spar: Azula will only use her fire in moderation and will keep it from burning, and Ty Lee will not sneak up on her and use her developing chi-blocking unfairly. Ty Lee preens whenever she thinks about it—the way they must declaw and trust one another to declaw in moments like this, that they are truly equals. Ty Lee trusts Azula with the power to scorch her with a flick of her wrist, while Azula, if never stating it out loud, trusts Ty Lee with the power to incapacitate her with just a few jabs.
Ty Lee spins out of Azula’s reach and swings her leg out to sweep her feet out from under her. Azula jumps just like Ty Lee knew she would, and sends a wiry cord of fire back. Ty Lee flips backward to dodge it.
Once she lands back on her feet, Azula lurches forward again, seemingly going for Ty Lee’s shoulder. It leaves her right side open, and Ty Lee nails a small pressure point on her ribcage before dancing away again.
Azula gasps, and her eyes gain a new fire as she summons her rope of fire. She closes the distance and whips it towards Ty Lee’s face. Ty Lee ducks, the warm strip of blue flashing over her nose and heating it up slightly more than usual.
Ty Lee smirks. As Azula reels her fire whip for another hit, Ty Lee lunges for her shoulders and tackles her into the grass. Azula lets out a furious screech and goes down hard, Ty Lee following her down.
Azula’s dimmed fire whip snaps against her cheek, but she nails a quick jab under her arm in response. Her arm falters, and Ty Lee takes the opportunity to grab both of Azula's wrists and slam them into the grass next to her head.
“Talk to me,” she demands, before Azula breaks out of the hold and sends Ty Lee flying off her.
She hits the ground hard. Before she can catch her bearings, though, Azula is on top of her, seething.
“And tell you what?” she hisses, molten gold eyes impossibly close.
Ty Lee’s breathing stops for a moment before remembering her goal. She yanks her leg out of Azula's hold and uses it as leverage to flip them over.
Azula's fire licks, stingingly, at her arms and wrists but she barely notices it.
“Tell me,” she wheezes, out of breath, “About Zuko.”
Azula lets out a pained cry and heaves Ty Lee off her again, slashing her in the cheek with her flame. It burns hotter than she expected, and the sting distracts her. Azula uses the distraction to seize her wrists and slam her into the ground face-down, body pressing her into the grass.
There's a brief moment when it's just the two of them, no ulterior motives or goals, twined together in the palace courtyard, Azula in all her controlling vulnerability and Ty Lee begging for a glimpse.
But the moment is broken when Azula snaps, “Time,” and jumps off of her, stalking away without another word.
–
Ty Lee is struck by how much she wishes Mai were here. Mai, with her dry disposition and false apathy that would settle her skin and put her heart at ease, or Ty Liu, who would hum softly in her ears until she drifted off gently to sleep, or the circus platypus bear, who would curl up in her lap with his head on her chest, purring quietly until she felt like she was filled with warm ash banana jelly. Still, right now, she just wants Mai, wants to hold her by her wrists and tell her, “I don't regret it. I would do it again. I never would have let her hurt you.”
But then again, another ache pulses in her chest, biting and vicious and vengeful. The corner of her heart that yearns for gold eyes and bluer fire, cunning grin and wiry frame.
Because more than she wants Mai, or Ty Liu, or the platypus bear, she wants Azula. And to look Mai in the eyes with her wrists between her fingers and say, “I don't regret it—”
She would know she was lying.
–
Ty Lee and Suki have been sitting in tense but content silence watching the girls spar in the grass when Suki breaks the quiet.
“You loved her, didn’t you?”
The words wrap around her throat and squeeze— Ty Lee blinks and breathes through the brief panic before relaxing back against the ground. Suki stares ahead of them at Yin and Lei, trading friendly blows.
“Yes,” Ty Lee answers simply.
Suki nods once, then turns her head to her curiously. “Why?” she asks.
“Because,” she hears herself say. “It was Azula. There wasn’t much else to do.”
Suki scoffs, not unkindly. “That’s not much of an answer.”
“Isn’t it?” Ty Lee’s braid whips against her face as she spins to look at Suki. The girl doesn’t flinch, but Ty Lee catches the slight twitch of her nose and clench of her lips. She tries to relax.
“What do you want me to say?” Ty Lee says, voice going sad. “That I liked her hair? That I liked her fire? I did, of course I did, but that’s not…” She presses her eyes shut for just a moment before opening them again. The sound of girls sparring echoes around her. “She made me feel… special, in a way I didn’t feel much, back then. Out of all the girls in the Fire Nation, all the girls at the Academy, out of me or Mai or damn anybody she… she picked me. Every time, she picked me.”
“Is that why you loved her?”
“No,” Ty Lee says simply. “But it helped.”
–
Ty Lee dreams of fire.
Ty Lee dreams of standing in a wooden room, eyes squeezed shut as fire licks at her flesh. She’s screaming but she doesn’t hear anything, and she feels her skin crispen into black strips like charcoal-colored parchment.
The flame licks up her arms and chest, grabbing hold of her neck like a noose. It climbs higher still, coating her face. She tries to scream in complete agony but her vocal cords are ash in her charred lump of a throat. Fire sears at her sealed eyes, smoke pouring into her nose, and when her eyelids burn off all she sees is—
Blue.
–
Let it be known that Ty Lee, of all things, is a runner.
Years of loving Azula quietly at her side, years of catering to her every demand and want, years of letting that blue flame consume her, over and over and over again, until she was nothing but scorched and conquered land.
She doesn’t know if Azula ever loved her, too. But silly things like requited love stop mattering when you look forward and can’t see a damn thing but the girl with the blue fire that burns you.
So, when the circus passes through and a clueless flyer boy tries to hand them one, and Azula snatches it from his fingers and pierces through it with her nails before stalking away—Ty Lee sneaks another one from his hands and slips it into her pocket. Later, she stares at it for hours and hours, this sheet of brightly colored paper with COME SEE THE CIRCUS! painted in bold red across the top, and wonders.
She wonders, and wonders, and that night, dresses in the only black shirt and trousers she owns and sneaks past her sisters and the wall and the ticket collectors at the front of the tent and watches the gleaming fire never held back but never meant to burn, either, sees the vibrant colors and the spinning girls and the bright tricks and wants, for the first time in her life, something she could really have.
“Azula,” she says, and it's been a year, a year since Zuko disappeared, and Azula is stronger and Ty Lee’s chi-blocking is better than anyone's ever seen but something died the day Zuko did. Even if he didn't die, even if he was still out there roaming the world, he was dead to them, had to be, because ghost-hunters are hardly anything more than ghosts themselves. “I'm leaving.”
The princess turns to her, all sharp edges and keen eyes. “What do you mean?” she snaps, her head snapping just barely towards her.
Ty Lee considered doing this in all sorts of ways. A letter was too flowery and romantic—Azula would have just burnt it. Sneaking into her room and confessing before disappearing into the night was too dramatic, and Azula might have made her stay. For just a second, she toyed with the idea of leaving without saying goodbye. Disappearing without a word and leaving this perfect, psychotic princess to be tortured with wondering what had happened to her. But she couldn’t— she couldn’t do that. She wanted to say goodbye to the one thing that always felt just a little like hers, even if Azula would never belong to anyone. (Ty Lee likes to think that if she ever did it would be to her, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t think she wants to.)
“The circus troupe is leaving tomorrow and I’m going with them,” Ty Lee says. Her voice is steady. Her face is blank. Her limbs are loose and nothing in her body gives away the hammering of her heart.
Azula doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Ty Lee has always been keenly aware of Azula’s presence, her every puff of breath and stepping feet, but this is something else entirely. This feels like the crash before the explosion, when two colliding entities become one, for just a moment. Her heart is in her throat and her throat is in Azula’s hands and Azula’s hands are locked in between her fingers—
For this brief instant, they are the same, and Ty Lee wants to pause it before everything is engulfed in flame.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” Azula asks, and in an extraordinary moment of weakness Ty Lee hears the tiniest falter in the middle—but it’s gone as soon as it’s there.
“Yes,” Ty Lee answers honestly. “Right now.”
She looks over to Azula, this girl still barely looking at her, completely still to anyone else but shaking like a tender leaf to Ty Lee. She wonders if this is the end. It doesn’t feel like it. She wonders more if she wants it to be and has no answer.
“And if I stopped you?” Azula snaps. Her head whips fully towards her, and maybe it would have frightened anyone else, but Ty Lee just feels sad.
“I would ask you not to.”
Azula says nothing to that. For all she pretends to never bow to any will, to do what she wants and what she wants alone, Ty Lee can see through that. She’s more loving than she pretends to be. She’s kinder than she pretends to be. And she wants Ty Lee to be happy.
Ty Lee knows that. Is banking on it.
She also knows Azula wants to ask why? She also knows Azula wants to press her forehead to Ty Lee’s collarbone and say stay. She also knows Azula wants to grip Ty Lee’s top and beg why are you leaving like Zuko and Mother, you permanent thing that was supposed to be here forever?
And Ty Lee would say because you burn. She would say I can’t. She would say because you took me for granted, over and over, and you may love me just as much as I love you but it doesn’t matter if you don’t treat me like it.
But Azula doesn’t say any of that, and neither does Ty Lee, but they both hear it through the deafening silence.
–
“Ty Lee,” a voice whispers in her ears. It dances along her manacles and brushes back her hair. Ty Lee leans into it.
“Ty Lee,” it says again. “You are stronger than this. I made you stronger than this. You’re really about to break from a little darkness? Toughen up.”
She searches for the voice, tries to find it, even though she doesn’t know where she is or if her eyes are even open. Her fingers press to her eye sockets but there’s nothing there.
“Oh, my darling acrobat,” the voice coos. “I burned them. Remember?”
Suddenly, all she sees are gold irises blazing blue and she shrieks.
–
“That thing you said,” Suki starts with, when they’re eating lunch outside on a log. The sun is hidden behind the clouds and most of the girls are out on a hunting trip together. Suki and Ty Lee declined, though, tired after their last war-relief trip. “About Azula always choosing you.”
Ty Lee freezes momentarily, bowl of jook motionless in her hands. She quickly regains mobility, though, turning to look at Suki.
“What about it?” she asks with false brightness, wiping a rice crumb from the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t think that’s right,” she says. “I think Azula always chose herself, first and foremost.”
Ty Lee looked at Suki looking at her before shrugging and breaking the eye contact.
“Okay,” she responds. “Maybe she did. But so did I. Sometimes we chose each other, sometimes we both chose her, sometimes we both chose me. That’s how we were. All or nothing, all the time.”
Suki shakes her head. “I don’t think she ever chose you,” she says, voice sad, and it makes Ty Lee angry. Like Azula did so many terrible things to her that Ty Lee didn’t return in equal measure.
“You weren’t there,” Ty Lee spits out. “You didn’t… she did choose me. Over herself. Not often, but… she did.”
“When?” Suki presses, and Ty Lee breaks.
“When I left for the first time and she didn’t stop me,” she answers, gaze hard and red like she doesn’t often allow it to. She should feel annoyed that she’s playing right into Suki’s prying hands but she can’t muster the energy. “She wanted me to stay more than anything, would have gotten down on her knees and begged me to if it wasn’t Azula. Really, she could have just ordered it. Tipped off my parents that I was planning on escaping, and she could have gotten what she wanted. But she didn’t. She just… let me go. Because I wanted to, even if she didn’t.”
They’re quiet for a long time after that. Ty Lee dimly hears a cat-owl yowling somewhere deep in the woods, and the sun is starting to poke little sunbeam holes in the clouds over their heads. She takes another bite of her jook as she waits. Ty Lee is many things, but impatient has never been one of them.
“I didn’t know that,” Suki says finally, and Ty Lee looks back at her.
She nods, once, in response. “I know,” she says. “All anyone remembers of her is the monster Fire Nation princess. Sometimes I think I’m the only one that knows there was good in her once.”
“But there was bad, too.”
Ty Lee shrugs. “Of course there was. There’s bad in everybody. It’s just that no one ever bothered to teach Azula to bury it.”
“Didn’t you? Bother?”
“No.” Ty Lee looks on, thinking that’s the end of the conversation, but Suki isn’t out of questions.
“Were you afraid of her?”
“Of course.”
Suki shakes her head. “How can you love someone you’re afraid of?”
“Because there’s no other way to love Azula, and she was just as afraid of me.”
–
“Hello? Are you Ty Lee?”
Ty Lee’s eyes fly open and catch on a girl with white face paint and colorful makeup standing in the doorway, dressed in all green with short brown hair. She recognizes her, in a detached sort of way. Her eyes flutter closed once again.
“Miss? Hello?”
Ty Lee jerks awake again. The girl is crouched in front of her now, eyebrows furrowed in concern. Ty Lee lets out a pitiful moan. She’s so, so tired, but all she’s done is sleep. She’s never felt like this before in her life.
“Miss, I’m going to need you to answer me. Please, are you Ty Lee?” The girl gently settles her hand on her shoulder, and Ty Lee jerks so hard her manacles clack together and her wrists ache.
Somehow, she manages a soft nod and a hum of affirmation.
“Okay.” The girl nods once, securely, and turns her head away. “I’m going to need some back-up over here, there’s no way this girl can walk!”
Ty Lee barely registers anything else—she feels herself drift off and only dimly recognizes the sensation of being lifted up in several pairs of strong, wiry arms before completely blacking out.
–
Ty Lee’s steps echo through the hallway. It’s dark, with sparse golden torches that remind her of sharp, flashing eyes (she quit hoping she would stop seeing Azula in every fleck of the world a long time ago) lining the walls and illuminating the stone floors with a dull glow.
She looks up at Zuko. Even though she was younger than him, he had always been frozen at terrified thirteen in her mind, baby-faced and unblemished skin. Now, looking at him as he leads her to their destination, the lights reflect off the ridges of his scar in a way she finds herself sickly fascinated by.
Her shoes, his tunic, the ceiling—her attention flicks from item to item, object to object, in a desperate attempt to calm the racing of her heart and the pounding of her blood. She feels her veins like needles inside her skin. Her braid brushes against her back like a coiled viper. The clicking of her shoes sends vibrations like earthquakes through her body. She’s on edge, not unlike the way she’s been since the last time she saw the princess of the Fire Nation, but so, so much worse.
Zuko continues to lead her through the hallway, oblivious to her whirring mind. Or perhaps not. She always thought him a little incompetent, dumb and unskilled, but she is beginning to see how wrong she was. It’s strange—she’s not often wrong about people, but Zuko seems determined to be the exception. Ty Lee wishes she could look at him, see his eyes, and not be eleven years old again in a palace courtyard, falling in love with the most dangerous girl in the world—but she has yet to be successful.
He finally stops in front of a metal door. Ty Lee feels her heart like a horse trampling the inside of her ribcage.
“Are you sure about this?” he says, eyes old and aged and so Azula. In a brief moment of pure human wretchedness, Ty Lee is grateful for the scar, because it makes him look less like her. “She’s… extremely unstable. I’m not sure what she is going to say to you.”
Ty Lee, still filled with so much anxiety she could burst from it, laughs darkly. “What could she possibly tell me in that cell that she hasn’t already?”
Zuko, seemingly with nothing to say to that, just nods mutely, and opens the door. He holds his arm out in the universal go on in gesture.
She swallows and steps inside.
–
“I don’t miss her,” Ty Lee says to the mirror.
“I don’t miss her,” Ty Lee says to Mai.
“I don’t miss her,” Ty Lee says to the frog-squirrel.
Ty Lee paints her face white and her lips red, dresses in a green uniform Azula would have hated, and takes off with the superhuman woman-warriors that will never remind her of fierce gold eyes and scalding blue fire. Ty Lee runs and runs and runs, like she is thirteen years old escaping to the circus, but the Fire Nation princess is around every corner. Some days, she can’t even look at the sky without seeing its azure color and the aureate halo of the sun and thinking of her.
No matter how fast Ty Lee runs, how far she goes, Azula chases her down every road and pins her to the dirt.
–
“...’Zula?”
–
“I don’t get it; you’re so nice.” The Water Tribe Girl (Katara?) says to her. “What were you doing with a monster like that?”
–
“Ty Lee.”
–
“We’re finally free,” Mai drawls, her deadpan biting into Ty Lee like wolves’ teeth. “Took long enough.”
–
“—didn’t come sooner. I should’ve—”
–
“I’m so glad you’re on our side now,” Sokka tells her, grinning. “The Kyoshi Warriors are gonna love you.”
–
“—don't want to hear it. You’re here now, aren’t you? More than I can say for—”
–
“Stop lying to me,” Suki says around the fan in her teeth. “You do miss her.”
–
“—love you, I—”
–
“I love her,” Ty Lee confesses to Suki’s eel-hound. “I don't know why. But I love her.”
–
“—know you don’t mean that—”
–
The woods are completely empty, terrifyingly silent, and maybe it’s some kind of eerie precursor or dark foreshadowing because the quiet jerks broken as Ty Lee screams.
–
“I do, ‘Zula. I do. Believe me?”
Azula’s eyes are cold and dead as they look into Ty Lee’s wet ones, but she can swear that somewhere, deep in those dull yellow eyes, she sees the tiniest spark of life.
(Nothing could kill her girl. Nothing.)
“Alright. I believe you.”
Ty Lee grins a watercolor grin and gently presses chapped lips to Azula’s grime-ridden hand.