"So, I heard that you and Mai are official now, huh?" Ty Lee asked Zuko. She did the best she could to put on her trademark smile, happy and sunny, to be the perfect pink paragon of fun that people had come to see her as.
"Yeah," he replied, the traces of a small satisfied grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Even though he felt a faint strain in her voice, he was in fact Zuko, one of the most socially awkward teenagers one could speak with, and so brushed it off as an argument or some such other trivial matter that might have affected her.
"Wow. I'm so happy for you!" Ty Lee exclaimed, the cheery tone of her voice sounding strange to herself. She knew it was a lie, a big, fat, blatant lie. Well. Sort of. She was glad he was happy. Really she was. She wanted him to be happy more than anything in the world. She just wished that it was her that he was elated to spend time with.
"Thanks Ty Lee. It means a lot, you know," he replied, "I was afraid you might not, you know approve."
"Psh, don't be silly Zuko," she waved it off as if it was the silliest feeling in the world. In reality, it felt as if her heart been shoved down a garbage disposal every time she thought about it. It didn't make things better that he was with Mai, of all people. Her best friend, who she loved just as much as Zuko, the only one who could ever hope to try to compare. She felt like the biggest traitor there could be. But she had been with Zuko once, years ago, and she'd never really let him go.
He was her first love, really. Back when Mai had had a crush on him back when they were small children, so did she. She just didn't admit it then. Even someone who was considered to be as airheaded as she was knew better than to openly reveal to Azula and Mai that she had a thing for Zuko, not at that age. Sure, it came out eventually, but by that time she was better equipped to evade any sort of verbal attack or scorn by her friends. She let them think that she really did have the attention span of a goldfish, and that nothing serious would come of a relationship between her and Zuko. That he was just another crush of the week, a convenient target. They made bets on how quickly they would break up, thinking that Ty Lee was incapable of anything but shallow feelings directed towards boys. But they had dated, a few years back. It hadn't lasted long, only about a month, but it had a profound effect on her, being with Zuko. She had never felt like someone understood her quite as well as him. The inner turmoil that could be caused by a family, even though her situation was not nearly dramatic as his was. They had shared tears and laughs equally. But in one thing they were inherently different. Ty Lee always made an effort to be an optimist, while Zuko was always grappling with his misery, wallowing in it. He couldn't stand it, her smiling face, that begged him to be happy. Her, trying to show him the wonder in the smallest things, in the rare snow that the Fire Nation received, in the big things, that they were they even alive, her giving him that hopeful look, her encouraging him to find the bravery to keep moving past what he'd experienced in his few years of life. He was comfortable in his sorrow, had made a home in it, and, Ty Lee knew in her heart, was afraid to leave it. Afraid to be happy. Afraid to succeed. Better the devil he knew than the devil he didn't. And so he pushed her away.
He had tried before, but something about her made him change his mind. Every time. Every time but the last. Right before the last time, he realized what he had been doing to her. Taking advantage of her kind words all this time, shooting down her hopes and dreams with his pessimistic words, not content to disbelieve, but needing to show her how the world was really a disgusting place, not something full of wonder, like she thought. He thought she was deluding herself. But now he could see it. How hard she was trying, just for him. He saw the hurt expression on her face as he should have long ago. She was too good for him, and he didn't have the guts to try to do the same for her. He was a coward. He told her this, though not the part about protecting her. But he did say that he was a coward. He wasn't so little of a man not to tell her that. That it wasn't her fault. That it was the opposite. But she didn't understand, couldn't. All she knew was that she was being abandoned, that surely it was her, never quite good enough. That maybe she didn't try hard enough. She couldn't wrap her brain around the fact that it could be him. He was perfect to her. Not in the traditional sense, but his aura was that unlike anyone else's, raw and unique, and a perfect complement to her own. She couldn't handle the fact that she was alone, that he couldn't be near her. She cried and shook for days. She grieved for months afterward. And even now, she wasn't over him. How pathetic, she thought to herself.
All that time she had been wishing that he was happy. And now here he was, with his little piece of potential happiness. But she couldn't even feel the pure joy she was sure she'd feel when she knew that he was over his past. Because he wasn't with her. How selfish, she scolded herself. But selfish or not, she could not lie to herself; she was still as stuck on him now as she had been then. But this was what she had wanted, wasn't it? For him to find something or someone that could bring out the true essence of himself? But yet, she wasn't happy. She wanted to cry. She was losing her two closest friends to each other. But she loved them, and so she would lie until she believed.
"I'm happy for you" So happy, I could die.