"What are you doing?" Azula asks, summoning the courage, or perhaps just not caring enough to silence herself.
Ty Lee performs the same ritual every night, and Azula says little about it. There are many things she has grown to tolerate in this life, as she is sure Ty Lee has learned to work around Azula and her own oddities. But while Ty Lee actively tries to make Azula better, Azula simply stands back and allows Ty Lee to do as she pleases.
"It's... you never asked," Ty Lee says, sounding startled, and pleasantly so. Azula simply shrugs, with nothing else to offer.
"Well, I did notice that you can't remove your make-up and brush your teeth without carefully rearranging everything three times but I... never really thought much of it." Azula shrugs and tries to act superior. Ty Lee allows it, although it frustrates her.
"It's funny, sort of," Ty Lee says, finishing the rearranging of the glass case of black eyeliner. "Things would go missing in my house, and I, well, I would rearrange everything so it would be harder to find. I never stopped. Not that anything is going to be stolen from me in our private bathroom in this palace..."
"It consoles you," Azula remarks, sounding as if she thinks herself very clever for it. "So, what are you afraid of?"
Ty Lee simply shrugs; she has never psychoanalyzed any of her actions. It is easier just to embrace her quirks. That is, beyond all else, why she gets along so well with Azula. She does not try to change her, she does not even nudge her, she just holds her hand through it.
"Every night I dream about you dying," Ty Lee responds softly and her shift in tone makes Azula's eyes flash.
She sounds raw and sad, instead of glossed over and eternally pleasant. Even bare, here, in nothing but a silk robe and void of make-up, she puts on masks. Even with her wife of several years, she plays pretend.
Azula swallows. She has her own nightmares, but Ty Lee knows them too well because when Azula wakes up she feels as if they are real. And Ty Lee's hands would dig into her and she would know that the world she was living in was imagined, purely imagined as a torment of her twisted mind. But she never imagined her bubbly bride could have them too.
Princess Azula imagined Ty Lee's dreams would be blissful and sweet, and possibly tinted in light blue and vivid pink. Dreams about desserts and kissing beautiful people and maybe flying. Azula heard that some people dream about flying. Azula dreams about drowning, on a good night.
"You have nightmares?"
"Azula, I've had nightmares every night for as long as I can remember. I'm just as likely to talk about them as you are to talk about yours," Ty Lee says, adding a small glance of consternation. Azula swallows and picks at her fingernails. "I do little things. Little things to make sure it's... real or something."
"Oh, welcome to my world." Azula laughs mirthlessly, sitting down on the bed.
"I don't know. I've just done it since I was a kid. And I do it and feel... calmer. Less like you're going to die," Ty Lee says, trying to play it off as funny and failing.
"I'm flattered," is all Azula can say to that. She wants to tell Ty Lee she feels the same way. She wants to tell Ty Lee that their love is real and she will never have to worry. She wants to tell Ty Lee that she dreams about Ty Lee dying and sometimes has to convince herself it won't happen. But she just says, "If it works for you, by all means, go right ahead."
And Ty Lee finishes, splashes her face with water, and slips into bed with her wife.
Azula lies awake and listens for Ty Lee's nightmares. But they are silent, unlike Azula's screams. She listens to Ty Lee's breathing, and slips her hand to her wife's. She wonders if she feels the twisting pain of the surreal, and she holds her hand until they both are asleep.
And the next night, Ty Lee performs the same ritual.