AN: I got a lot of requests to expand on one of my oneshots from Tyzula Week, and so this story is based on the world/characters of that story. It's a pretty formulaic paranormal romance with some twists. This is technically my Tyzula Month fic, but the #TyzulaTuesday prompt worked so well as a prologue (and Tyzula Month starts tomorrow, so, well…). It probably will take longer than June to properly write, but I'm going to keep up as much as possible. Likely it will take most of the summer. Lastly, this will probably go up to M at some point.

Happy Tyzula Month, and I hope you enjoy the story!


closer


prologue: toys


It is raining on Kyoshi Island, and two girls stand on the rocky beach.

They are soaked to the bone and their conversation has bitterly ended. Now they can only stare at each other and search for the right words.

Unsurprisingly, Azula finds them first.

"I promised I wouldn't hurt you. You are the only person I have ever cared about enough to…" Azula cannot continue.

"So, you're just going to leave me like this? The rain is such a nice touch; it's dramatic," Ty Lee snaps, her eyes glistening with tears instead of joy for the first time in a long time.

"Run off with him. I don't care." Azula shrugs and pretends not to care.

"But I love you. I love you!" Ty Lee screams, and she is certain the entire island can hear her.

"You are just a toy that I have lost interest in," Azula says. It is not true, but she has always been an excellent liar.

Azula begins to walk away and Ty Lee tries to think, tries to do something about it. She grabs the arm of a brutal monster—a monster who has killed people in front of Ty Lee's eyes—and tugs her back. Their lips collide and the warmth inside of her is stronger than the cold rain.

Ty Lee slides her hands to Azula's waist, regardless of the danger. She would die for this; she would die for their love. Azula remains uncertain about it, but she does not resist when Ty Lee pulls her closer until Ty Lee's back hits the mossy rocks behind them. She pulls Azula closer, and closer, and closer until their hips are so tightly against each other that they must be setting the rain on fire.

Azula stops herself the moment her hand snakes up Ty Lee's shirt.

She pulls away from her soaking girlfriend — ex-girlfriend — and they both exchange a glance.

"You felt it," Azula says through bared teeth. "Is that evidence enough for you."

Ty Lee does feel… weak, but she thinks it has to be a broken heart, not a breaking body.

"I don't care," she says, because she does not know what else to say anymore.

Azula always wins.

"I do. Goodbye, my broken little doll." Azula turns and the cold rain masks hot tears.

She walks away, and this time, Ty Lee lets her disappear.

Ty Lee would follow her to the ends of the Earth, but she does not know if Azula would let her tag along.

Dolls are meant to be broken.


chapter one: fancy


Everybody knows everybody on Kyoshi Island. It is a small place that survives on fishing, farming and the mainland coal mines, and does not have much else.

So when the Kasai family moves there, the news spreads like wildfire to all two-thousand residents. The newbies are a mystery that everyone wants to solve, and Ty Lee lives as close to the Kasai family as the rural houses get, which means she has the ability to greet them first.

It excites her so much. She can barely contain it, hopping up and down in her kitchen.

"Can I go meet them?" Ty Lee pleads, her hands clasped together.

Her mother looks her up and down. "Yes. Bring them these; I just finished."

Mom pushes a box of cinnamon cookies into Ty Lee's hands. Ty Lee nods, rushes outside, finds her bike, shoves the cookies inside of the basket and snaps it shut, and rides over the coarse dirt road past the fields of crops.

She slides to a stop in front of the old but beautiful house and hops off of her bike. A super-hot teenage boy sits outside on the front steps and Ty Lee frantically waves at him.

He is dressed so nicely, and he is so well groomed. He looks like a prince, or something.

"Hi!" she calls out, walking to the front of the fence.

"Hi…?" He stands and walks towards her, looking puzzled.

Ty Lee smiles and loudly explains, "I'm Ty Lee. I'm your next door neighbor."

The boy looks over his shoulder at the empty land to his right. It would be lucky if a tumbleweed passed by. "I wouldn't call that next door."

"Well, unless you live in town or by the beach, this is kind of how it is on Kyoshi," Ty Lee kindly says.

"Right. Oh, uh, I'm Zuko." He extends a hand and Ty Lee stares at it. She realizes he is trying to shake hands too late, because he pulls his hand away and awkwardly wipes it on his jeans.

Ty Lee has decided that he is definitely a prince. How classy is shaking hands?

"I have these cinnamon cookies my mom told me to take over, and, you know, I've been given the super grand task of greeting our latest human sacrifices." Ty Lee deviously smiles.

"Our what?" he demands, his eyebrows shooting up.

"I'm kidding. You look really scared. Oh, sorry, I mean…" Ty Lee smiles and he forgets any transgression that may have happened. "I'm supposed to welcome you all."

"You can come inside, if you want," Zuko says, gesturing towards the large farmhouse.

Ty Lee nods, grabs the cinnamon cookies, and follows Zuko across the yard and in through the front door. It is painted such a lovely color of red. She forgets about the door, however, the moment she walks inside and sees the furniture that is mostly set up.

It is the fanciest stuff Ty Lee has ever seen. She feels like she is in a beautiful museum.

"Hello," says a girl who looks Ty Lee's age. She is even prettier than Zuko. Way prettier than Zuko, actually, and her hair is so glamorously styled. "Who are you?"

"Ty Lee. I'm your next door neighbor." Ty Lee licks her lips and tries to fit in. She doesn't in this house, no matter how straight she stands up.

"Next door?" The girl cocks an eyebrow before ignoring that nonsense moving on. "I am Azula, and it is very kind of you to welcome my family. Forgive my brother for being so tactless."

Ty Lee cannot compare to the regal way of speaking, so she holds up the box and says, "I have cookies."

"Alright." She does not look pleased about it, but she still looks gorgeous. "Oh, this is my brother, ZuZu, and my sister has apparently vanished. My father is arranging the master bedroom upstairs and I doubt he wants to be disturbed."

"I'd love to meet them. Or not. Whatever works." Ty Lee brightly smiles and the siblings' expressions warm. She suddenly notices the hue of their eyes. Pure gold; Ty Lee has never seen golden eyes before.

"Who's she?" asks a girl with a husky voice. She leans against the staircase railing as she examines Ty Lee. She dresses in a way that is twice as intimidating as Azula.

With the three unfamiliar teenagers staring at her, she feels both excited and like she is on trial for a crime.

"I'm Ty Lee. I'm your next door neighbor." She wonders how many times she has said that.

Azula and Zuko's sister dryly says, "There isn't a next door here. I hate this place. Did I tell you that I hate this place?"

"It's… it gets better, probably," Ty Lee says. The girl shrugs. "I guess y'all are probably from the city. Somewhere."

"We're from a lot of places," purrs Azula. "The most recent was Omashu and before that Ba Sing Se, but I was born in Caldera. We all were."

"Those are awesome! I'd love to hear about it and stuff." Ty Lee is so genuine that the trio is taken aback.

Zuko says, "I'd love to tell you. You could come over sometime."

Azula shoots him an expression of distaste and Ty Lee's shoulders shake as she tries to keep herself from giggling. Ty Lee is very used to that kind of male attention.

"Your house is really fancy. I love it," Ty Lee says, looking around for the thousandth time.

"Yes. We have quite the collection of antiques," Azula smoothly says. If someone bottled her voice, they would never need oil again in their life. "My father loves the past."

"Umm, will you guys be at school? There's really like only one school, so we'd be together!" Ty Lee cannot stop smiling, because these three siblings seem pretty awesome and she would love to be friends with them.

"We will," says Azula.

"We'll see you there." Zuko sounds much more enthusiastic.

Ty Lee winks at him when she leaves.


In the evening, Zuko faces off with Ozai.

"I have no idea why you think we can hide here," Zuko says, locking eyes with his father.

They sit in their living room. The television plays, but none of them give it their full attention. Moving again has been unpleasant. They do it too often for the past hundred years. That is what happens when you have to run from what you have done instead of face the music.

"Hiding in plain sight is safer. This island is small and easy to overlook. I have no idea why you won't let this go," Ozai calmly replies. He knows all three of them disagree with the decision, but it is his to make.

"I'm going downstairs," Azula says, standing and leaving. She can already see the unnecessary fight between Zuko and their father brewing.

She wanders through the room they furnished first, before anyone like the sweet neighbor girl could disturb them. It is the workshop in the basement. It is dank and unappetizing, and it makes her sick to see. They were not rendered to this back in Caldera.

They owned the world before they became convicts and then fugitives.

After passing tools that are not for making birdhouses, she stops walking at the shimmering surgical table. Always so well cleaned, as if that can make up for it being so far from a proper sacrificial altar.

Looking at that hunk of metal and remembering what her family had a mere century ago makes her feel sick.

She looks forward to school tomorrow, simply so she can escape this prison.


"I heard that they're on the run from the law," says Jin to her three best friends, Ty Lee among them. She is as eager to meet the Kasai siblings as everyone else at school. "I mean; why else would anyone move here, right?"

Ty Lee, Suki, Jin and Song stand in the parking lot, waiting for the trio of new kids to arrive. Ty Lee likes lingering outside of the school in the morning, but right now she feels so on edge.

"So, how old are they?" Suki asks. "I think the boy is in my grade?"

"I didn't ask," Ty Lee says, shrugging. "Whatever you've heard, I've heard."

Someone grabs her from behind before she can say anything else and she screams, before bursting into laughter. Suki cocks an eyebrow at the display of the extremely oblivious Ty Lee and extremely unfortunate Sokka.

"Hey," he says as he sets her down.

"Hey!" Ty Lee chirps and her friends murmur variations of greetings.

"Are you still hiking with us tomorrow?" he asks and Ty Lee nods. "That's good. Really good."

Ty Lee gasps and he watches her, shaking his head.

"We could ask those new kids if they wanna come!" Ty Lee brightly suggests. His expression sours for a moment, but he shrugs.

"If they want, I guess. Maybe they need an initiation to the great outdoors." He crosses his arms and Ty Lee is still extremely oblivious.

"Yeah. They're city people," Ty Lee says, almost laughing at the thought of those pretty and dressed-up teenagers trekking through the wild.

"You met them?" Sokka asks.

"Oh, yeah. I went over for a couple minutes yesterday," she explains, smiling widely.

The conversation ends when its subject shows up in the parking lot. Zuko drives a very nice car that will be ruined very soon, and they get out reluctantly. Ty Lee's eyes don't follow the hot boy, for the first time in her life; they follow one of his sisters. Azula. Her name is Azula, and her gaze finds Ty Lee, sending her into a panic.

Ty Lee dashes to her first class as fast as she can.


Azula's first class is English, and she sees that she shares it with her neighbor girl, Ty Lee. She instantly walks to sit beside her, and studies her monochrome pink school supplies. Azula does not know what to make of it.

"You look so amazing," Ty Lee says cheerily. "Do you like Kyoshi Island so far?"

"Well…" Azula shrugs. "I have lived better places."

Ty Lee laughs.

"I guessed that," she chirps.


Suki leans against a locker with Ty Lee during their mutual free period.

"They're pretty. I don't know what I think of them as people, but they are pretty," she says.

"Right?" Ty Lee replies eagerly.

"I met Zuko in Math. He's okay," Suki says. "I think he's the prettiest."

"Maybe." Ty Lee doesn't know. "I wonder why they don't wanna talk to anyone."

"They're probably really on the run from the law," Suki jokes, then shakes her head. "I'd be scared too. I love Kyoshi Island to pieces, but everyone is kind of looking at them like they're in an aquarium."

"Towns in the four digit range kind of do that," Ty Lee replies. "We could eat lunch with them. That would be so nice. They really should feel way more welcomed than they do."

"We could. I hate to say this, but I'm kind of… wary. I don't like the way they look at everyone else either," Suki admits shamelessly and Ty Lee frowns at her. "What? I'm not completely dazzled by golden eyes and impeccable skin. The world isn't separated into pretty people and bad people."

"I forget that sometimes." Ty Lee doesn't know what to say other than the truth.

Suki smiles. "I know it."


Azula sits beside Mai. They hide outside of the cafeteria, away from the eyes that already seem so skeptical.

"I want to go home. I have no idea what our home is, but I want to go there. This place is awful," Azula whispers.

"We're on the same page," Mai replies. "I almost hope we get caught and have to leave. Maybe you can date that girl who's so damned in love with you."

"Who?" Azula asks. If she had a pulse, it would rage.

"Our next door neighbor," Mai says. "It's almost funny how she looks at you. All of us, but mostly you."

"I am not Zuko. I have a sense of self-preservation, and therefore will not get tangled up in a romance that will inevitably end in ashes," Azula says. She does not want to sound so vehement, but she feels that way.

Mai stares at her for what feels like decades.

"You're way too old for this virgin thing. It's kind of pathetic," Mai finally says.

Azula does not even bother with a response.