AN: This is for Tyzula Week, for the prompt "Lost."
It's just a short scene I envisioned while working out the other day.
/Butterfly in a Hurricane/
Ty Lee could not hide that she had been crying. Zuko saw it and knew he had to at least try to comfort her, even if he never was any good at it.
She sat on the steps outside of the palace, too afraid to leave but too afraid to stay. After this morning, when Azula did what Azula did best, she realized she was broken, that she had lost the battle she was trying to win.
"Is something wrong?" Zuko asked, sitting down beside his friend. The friend who had been dating Azula for the past few months. Ty Lee was spending the summer in the Fire Nation, and she and Azula finally seemed to make amends after his sister insisted that she would never forgive Ty Lee for making her believe they were in love.
The first time Ty Lee tried to win her back, Zuko was present to intervene if anything got violent. Azula glared and her nostrils flared and she said, "You destroyed everything I ever cared about. You made it so I cannot look at anywhere we once were without tasting you like blood in my mouth. I do not think you can even fathom how sick it is to make someone believe you love them and then reveal it was all a sham."
That would have deterred a sane person, but Ty Lee kept coming back whenever she was in town. Azula rejected her. Then, not long ago, Azula accepted her.
Zuko was waiting to find Ty Lee crying outside.
It was bound to end poorly.
"I lost her again," Ty Lee finally explained after attempting to collect her thoughts.
Zuko asked, "You broke up?"
"No. I broke her all those years ago before Sozin's Comet came and she never forgot it and never forgave me for it and I hate myself," Ty Lee whispered, bunching up the fabric of her skirt in her sweaty fists. Her heart bled out on these stone steps.
"You never broke her," insisted Zuko, grabbing Ty Lee's arm and forcing her to face him while he spoke. He had said it many times before, but Ty Lee never believed him. He did not suppose she would start now.
"I broke her. I really did love her but I really did betray her too and she's never ever gonna forget it because we're in love and that's a really bad thing with our history," Ty Lee said, beginning to blubber again. She coughed and reined in her tears. "I just wish I knew this would happen so that I would've made better choices!"
Zuko was not a huge fan of regrets about the Boiling Rock, but he sighed and tolerated them. "So… you could let me die a painful death?"
Ty Lee blushed and her heart fluttered. "You're one of my best friends and I never would want you to be dead but I don't want her to be either, you know?"
"You didn't break her." Zuko said it a thousand times. He knew he would probably have to say it a thousand more to Ty Lee.
"Not…" Ty Lee looked away for a moment, then composed herself and returned her gaze to Zuko. "Not this time. This time she broke me."
"What did she do, anyway?" Zuko questioned, unsure how Azula could do that to Ty Lee. The cheery—usually cheery—girl beside him always seemed impervious to Azula's malice.
Ty Lee recited in an eerie, soft, wounded voice, "She made me fall in love with her all over again. She took me to all the places I dreamed about and kissed me in every beautiful place and looked up at the stars and said such beautiful words that I couldn't talk for hours and made it so I could never look at the sky or stars or sun or any monument in the Fire Nation or floor in this palace without tasting her like blood in my mouth."
Zuko blanched. He was not expecting that. "She—she probably didn't do it on purpose." Okay, he knew even Ty Lee would not believe that.
"She did, Zuko. She did. I begged for her back and so I guess it's my fault but she really honestly made me feel special and important and then just tore me down."
The Fire Lord and Kyoshi Warrior sat there on the steps in silence for ages.
At last, Zuko remarked, "You know when there are big hurricanes that they write about in scrolls. The ones that devastate whole towns."
"Mhm…"
"They name them after people in the records."
"Why?"
"Beats me. I think it's something about trying to humanize the destruction of nature, or some old tradition. But they name them after people."
Ty Lee fixed her gaze on the floor.
They name storms after people.