Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
On their first day of living together at the Academy, Ty Lee accidentally stepped on and tore the hem of Mai's favorite dress. Ty Lee started to pout and her eyes welled up at the thought of upsetting someone, and although Mai was fighting the urge to lodge the blunt end of her writing brush between the girl's eyes, she only had to take one look at Ty Lee's face to see how sorry she really was. And although Mai could be difficult back then, she was not without a heart.
She stopped glaring, let it go, and grumbled her grudging forgiveness. (Ty Lee squealed her joy and hugged her, and Mai pushed her away, saying that just because she didn't kill her didn't mean that they were friends.)
They began instruction in calligraphy together, and with every sloppy brushstroke and bad grade, Mai grew more and more certain that she was never going to get it right. She didn't let on, but Ty Lee knew when she noticed Mai frowning more than usual during their penmanship lessons.
She only smiled at Mai, put an arm around her, and reminded her that everyone makes mistakes and that she didn't care if Mai was a dope - she was her friend and that was all that mattered. ("Um...thank you?")
As they grew older, they made many more mistakes - with each other and in life. (Mai gave Ty Lee a new haircut while practicing with her knives, and then later a fancy new scar. Ty Lee gave Mai a bad case of food poisoning with her first-ever batch of dumplings, and Mai retaliated by stealing Ty Lee's cookware and burying it in her garden at home, just to name a few.) They learned many things from their errors - most importantly that they were both far from perfect, and both needed to know how to forgive if they expected to stay friends.
And they always did forgive, in their own way. Ty Lee with a smile and gracious hugs; Mai with downcast eyes and reluctant apologies (because more often that not, she'd started it).
Of course, that didn't mean things were always perfect.
Ty Lee was picked to be the Maid of Honor at Mai's wedding, but she wound up missing the whole ceremony because she got caught up in practicing acrobatics in her new dress. ("I had to try it! The skirt was so...springy? Sproingy? ...It was so something that I just had to know what doing cartwheels in it would feel like, Mai!") Not even adulthood and the wisdom that supposedly came with age was enough to stop them from hurting each other.
Of course, because Ty Lee was a good friend, Mai was willing to forgive her...but only after she'd torn that springy-sproingy skirt to shreds with her stilettos.
A/n: You're welcome, libowiekitty! This is a request she made a few days ago, and I hope it came out good enough for her. I always figured that two completely different people like Ty Lee and Mai would be constantly pissing each other off, but they make it work.
This piece was supposed to be sweeter, like the quote that inspired it above, but instead I just ran with the idea and it became so silly. Sorry for the sappy bit in the middle, but my brain kind of went dead halfway through, before it picked up again near the end. Hope you guys liked it just the same.
(Disclaimer: I don't own A:TLA.)