Azula sits in a corner of her room, shivering. The shutters are closed, blocking out the bars on the windows. Her mother has just left (vanished), and tears run down Azula's face.
"Azula?" Ty Lee says and presses herself against Azula's side. "Azula, are you alright?"
Azula almost shakes her head, almost but not quite, and turns it into a nod. "I'm fine."
"I don't believe you."
Azula grits her teeth, suppressing a growl. She can still feel the phantom punches to her back, and for a moment, she panics thinking her body will betray her (like Ty Lee) once more. Instantly, Ty Lee's hands are on her shoulders, massaging them.
"Relax," she says. "It'll be okay."
Azula sighs and relaxes into her touch.
*
Azula doesn't allow anyone to get close to her but Ty Lee. Ty Lee never leaves her when the apparitions come and go. They play with her mind, sometimes looking as she remembered, sometimes older, but Ty Lee stays the same, just as Azula does, and holds her when her mother lies.
*
Azula tangles her fingers in her hair as her body wracks with sobs.
*
Her mother's ghost visits most often, each time bringing the same lies. Sometimes she holds Azula, looking older and wearier with lines on her face that Azula doesn't remember and growing streaks of gray in her hair; and she feels impossibly solid and real, but Azula knows she isn't there, not really, and that Ty Lee is the only one she can trust.
And sometimes her mother appears just as Azula remembers her, the way she looked before she left; but this version doesn't hold her, never holds her, but tells her the same lies as the other, the lies she only believes are truth when they come from Ty Lee.
*
Azula lays on her bed, staring at the ceiling as she listens to the doctor speak. He asks her who she talks to all the time, and she says her mother.
"I've also heard the name Ty Lee. Who's Ty Lee?"
The doctor is incredibly thick, and Azula thinks it's just like Zuko to give her the worst medical treatment possible, just as it's exactly like him that he's never once visited her. The doctor repeats the question again and again until she finally relents and snaps an answer at him, telling him she visits all the time.
"There's never been a Ty Lee here. No one but your mother has ever visited you, Azula."
*
Ty Lee isn't always with Azula. Sometimes she'll leave for long periods of time, but Azula knows she'll come back like she always does, wearing her signature pink and a wide smile. The first time the fake Ty Lee comes, the real one has left, and Azula is taken aback by the taller girl wearing green that claims she's Ty Lee.
She approaches cautiously as if afraid of being attacked, and Azula thinks she is wise. Azula would never attack Ty Lee, but this being is obviously not Ty Lee, no matter how much she looks like her. She is older than Ty Lee for one thing, her wide eyes more narrowed, and she seems more subdued.
"Hey, Azula," she says, kneeling down in front of her. "How are you doing?"
Azula doesn't respond and slaps away the vision's hand when it attempts to stroke her cheek.
*
Ty Lee wraps her arms around Azula's shoulders and kisses her neck. "I love you," she says—so softly that for a moment, Azula isn't sure of what she heard.
*
The curtains are open, showing off the steel bars on the window, and Azula gazes past them toward the setting sun. Ty Lee moves to stand beside her.
"It's so pretty, isn't it, Azula?" She gazes at Azula with wide eyes and a big grin, and Azula can't keep a small smile from gracing her haggard face.
*
Azula sits on the floor, leaning against her bed, cold and alone. Ty Lee isn't here and hasn't been here for a long time. She tries to convince herself again and again that something must have happened and that any second Ty Lee will walk through the door, crying and begging her not to be angry; and Azula will draw her into her arms and tell her it's alright.
*
Deep down, Azula knows Ty Lee isn't coming back.
*
The door opens, and Azula's head snaps up, hope shining bright within her one second only to be snuffed out the next. Ty Lee walks through the door, but it's not the real Ty Lee, not her Ty Lee. It's another apparition.
Azula buries her face in her arms and cries, too drained to push the apparition away when it dashes across the room to hold her.
*
One day, Azula begins coughing and doesn't stop.
*
She tracks the progress of time by the aging of the fake Ty Lee. When Ty Lee left her, the vision appeared to be about twenty two. Now she appears to be about forty.
*
The dull ache remains, worsening day by day.
*
Azula blames the apparition. Ty Lee left when the fake one started visiting more often.
*
The doctors don't know what's wrong with her. One day, she's merely coughing, the next she has a raging fever, and she's confined to bed, almost delirious. She's lost all track of time, and it could have been days, weeks or years before the apparitions appear again, this time of her mother and Ty Lee. Her mother's hair is almost completely gray, and she reaches out and brushes the bangs from Azula's face.
Azula tries to jerk her head away, but it hurts too much. The fake Ty Lee places her hands on either side of Azula's face and leans down to kiss her forehead.
"I love you, Azula," she whispers.
Azula knows she's lying. The only one who ever meant those words was Ty Lee, and she hasn't seen the real Ty Lee for a very long time.
*
Azula knows she's dying.
*
Her last breath is one of relief.