It was a dry summer in the Fire Nation, but it was raining that day.
Ty Lee believed in omens, and it certainly was one, as it turned out. Because on that first rainy day, something came to her porch on the damp breeze other than soaked leaves. She thought maybe she should pretend just not to hear, but she did not live alone, and so, as she leaned there on the windowsill, she felt helpless as it happened.
She waited, and then slowly walked to gaze over the balcony. The inn was her happy place du jour, and she could not let it be crashed, burned and pillaged. It felt like that was happening as she tried to conceal herself behind the dusty antique tapestries.
"It's a dry summer, isn't it?" Her comment made Min, the older woman who owned the inn, laugh.
It was not even that funny. She could do better.
"Come in, sweetheart. You look drenched."
She walked in, looking like she was not intruding on something so sacred.
"I'll have my dear girl help you get settled. You don't seem to have too much on you," Min said and Ty Lee tried not to be angry or to blame her. She could not know. She did not know.
Ty Lee smoothed out her clothes as if it made some kind of difference. She felt as congested with age as this place even though it had only been a handful of years. Her descent down the stairs was needless elegant and she was senselessly proud of it.
The effect was arguably as good as Ty Lee intended; she was not quite sure what she had intended. Azula did look surprised, but her small expression of shock was gone before anyone could notice or let it sink in.
"Ty Lee, darling," Min said with a wave. Her calloused hand was adorned with contradicting brightly painted and curled nails and that drew attention away from each other for a heartbeat. "Can you show her up to our third room."
Two guests. They had two other guests, but it was not going to make any difference. Only one mattered right now, as much as Ty Lee hated to say it.
It had been a long time since their last collision, since they last fell apart. They were in silence as Ty Lee led her up the stairs, and the acrobat could not understand it, or why Azula would be so quiet. Ty Lee at last unlocked the door at the end of the hallway and allowed the traveler inside.
Ty Lee searched for the words, but she had nothing to say. Except for her rehearsed words that she stumbled through before she memorized the script and became quite good at working here.
"Fine," Azula said and Ty Lee wanted her to say more. Anything more, anything, even if it were an insult or another worthless comment on the weather. "I'm going to change my clothes now."
Her eyes rested on the puddle she had already made on the floor and Ty Lee just swallowed.
"Fine," she said, hoping she sounded just as cold as Azula was.
The only acknowledgment that they were not perfect strangers was, "You could stay if you liked, though. For the show."
Ty Lee's shoulders moved a little too much with her breath as she left without the respectful bow she owed guests, much more the princess.
Even the transient princess.
Ty Lee tossed and turned in the night.
It was becoming later and later, and she did not think that there was any way she would be able to sleep. She could hear the rain, rain again in a summer that had such a drought that Fire Lord Zuko had to figure out important countermeasures to take.
Ty Lee wondered briefly if she was just dreaming all of this, but she knew she was not.
The strange, strange rain lulled her to sleep.
In the morning, Ty Lee idled in the doorway leading to the dining room.
It was a beautiful place in a beautiful, happy inn, near a gorgeous town and a beautiful stretch of open land and a sunrise that Ty Lee knew was worth it. The dining room was just as beautiful, but one thing was there in her line of sight, impossible to overlook.
Her new guest was at the table, drinking tea and charming their guest on his way to the fishing cities with some story Ty Lee did not listen to. She was eloquent, more so than during their tumultuous and dreadful relationship after Ty Lee sacrificed all she had to make Azula better, and then let herself be discarded.
Or maybe she discarded Azula.
"Ty Lee," Min said brightly, "don't stare at the guests like that. Come in and share breakfast."
She did not want to lose this, and so she walked inside and sat down beside their much quieter guest only staying for the night.
Ty Lee struggled to listen as Min glowed and grinned beneath the endless compliments and the sugar coated taunting that happened without a single golden glance thrown Ty Lee's way.
"Well," Azula said as she finished her superfluous compliments that made Ty Lee take slow, deep breaths, "I'm traveling. I'm only stopping for the night. I had a heartbreak a little while back and I just decided to... go."
"You're young. It's common. Are you looking for something? Yourself? A relative? Somebody you lost?" Min asked warmly, knowing it was common for travelers to have someone in mind, not someplace. Human nature, perhaps.
"Maybe somebody who doesn't exist," Ty Lee suggested, and Min looked glad to see her speaking to their new guest.
"I am," Azula said and Ty Lee didn't buy it. "Well, I wasn't, until very, very recently."
"Wonderful." Min smiled, and did not pry into the sweet young girl's life.
Ty Lee looked at her, staring intently, waiting. Azula did not look up.
Maybe she was a mirage.
She was a mirage. Ty Lee learned that when she was lingering outside and trying to avoid work. The former acrobat was forced beneath the sloped, red metal roof, on the porch, in order to avoid the rain that was suddenly pouring from the open sky.
"So, what brought you here?" was an awfully prying question from someone who did not even look Ty Lee in the eyes for a night and half a day.
"I was just staying for the night, and I never left," Ty Lee said, not wanting to turn around. But Azula walked to stand beside her, leaning just slightly over the railing of the porch. "It's tranquil."
"Big word for you," Azula said and Ty Lee just sighed.
"So, why aren't you traveling as Princess Azula. In style. Or have you done something awful and are on the run?" Ty Lee said.
"I think you might have mistaken me for someone else. You know, I always thought Princess Azula was so much more beautiful than I am," Azula said with a smirk, and Ty Lee sighed. "But for someone sexy like you, I could be anyone you want me to be."
Ty Lee looked at the rain, and how it pounded against the dirt like an artillery strike.
"That's not as cute as you think it is," Ty Lee said, but she did not want Azula to leave. "But, yes, a stranger would probably have a better chance with me than you."
"How painful. I will never recover from such an insult," Azula said but her sarcasm revealed too much. "But I'm sure you imagine those strangers as me. You won't get over it."
"You're the one who's running away from home and pretending not to be yourself because I broke up with you," Ty Lee said and then she was gone.
Ty Lee did not know why she said that.
But she did not quite regret that either.
Azula avoided her for the rest of the day, waiting for the rain to pass so she could leave.
Her past actions were all intentionally tempting, trying to goad Ty Lee. But a single sentence repelled her away, and the acrobat did not want to say anything else either.
Ty Lee did, secretly, deep down, hope that the rain would never stop, and Azula would have to stay. But the sun shone again, and the dry summer did not end.
"Good luck with what you're looking for," said Min as she bid her guest farewell.
Ty Lee was carrying the single bag Azula had, the very odd addition. She was clearly at some kind of crossroads.
"You really are running, aren't you?" Ty Lee asked as she held the bag and Azula stood in the doorway.
"Maybe." Azula looked Ty Lee up and down.
"You're a mess, aren't you?" Ty Lee could think of no other explanation for an Azula with just a small bag of belongings, traveling alone, going somewhere, going nowhere.
"You could come with me."
"To help you? To fix you again?"
"Yes."
Ty Lee had no words. "Do you really think that? That I would just leave this again and follow you so you could chew me up and spit me out and say you learned a lesson and I helped you get out of bed in the morning."
"Of course," Azula said and Ty Lee was pretty certain Azula thought it was true. "Maybe that's the person I'm looking for."
"I'm..." Ty Lee waited a moment. "I'm looking for somebody else. Ty Lee forced herself to say. "She's somebody I loved a lot, looks a lot like you, but she went away a really long time ago. If you see her please send her my love."
Well, Azula was not prepared for that response. And, so, she stood in the doorway, speechless, as Ty Lee handed her the bag.
Ty Lee closed the door.