( warning: contains non-explicit sexual content, so if that's not your cup of tea, don't drink from it. )
careful, you be careful
this is where the world drops off
weapon // matthew good band
Ever since Ty Lee has known Azula -- and that has been a long, long time -- all the Princess ever desired was to call the kingdom her own.
"What about Zuko?" Ty Lee had queried, old enough to know the hierarchy and the means of succession. Children never stayed young for long, not in the Fire Nation.
Azula would turn to face her then, all condescending eyes and a sharp smirk. "He'd make a pathetic Fire Lord. Fire Lords aren't supposed to cry. Anyway, I'm dad's favorite and I'm going to be Fire Lord." Then the Princess would grab a hold of Ty Lee's hand -- she never had a problem with touching Ty Lee, not even back then -- and she'd tug the acrobat up to some higher vantage point, usually a tree or the top of a wall somewhere. Azula would then stretch her arms out as far as they'd go, which wasn't very far, but from where they were standing it looked like she was wrapping the entire Fire Nation up in her embrace. When she turned to face Ty Lee the grin on her face was almost as large as the reaches of her ambition.
"When I'm Fire Lord, all of this will be mine. The entire Fire Nation."
"Will I be yours too?" Ty Lee is still innocent in some aspects, unaware of what she asks -- or that it is more of a prophecy than a question.
Azula's smile only grows.
And as the story goes, the kingdom is not Azula's to be had.
Ty Lee knows she's not smart, not in the way Azula and Mai are. She'll occasionally hear words like airhead and vapid drift by when people think she's not listening -- or when they don't care that she is -- and it only makes her smile wider. She'll never deny that she lacks Azula's strategic cunning or Mai's sardonic wit. She'll nod serenely if told it takes her a bit longer than normal to understand jokes or think of words or that the way she acts around boys really is shallow and stupid.
Ty Lee knows she's not smart like that, but there are things she understands better than anyone else. She knows that the doctors have it all wrong: you can't tear apart fifteen years of experiences and ideals and thoughts and emotion and start from scratch, like they're trying to do with Azula.
She's smart enough to know she wouldn't have Azula any other way, and that's why she succeeds where they fail.
Zuko comes to her days, weeks, months, later. He had been kind in allowing Azula to keep both her bending and her title, but--
"People are fickle, Ty Lee. As soon as you're no use to them you're forgotten or even worse, blamed." A pause that is a mere formality at this point. "Take her and go where you may, as long as it is not within our borders. I'm sorry, there was nothing I could do."
You could have lost, Ty Lee thinks absently before bowing to the Fire Lord.
They settle near some obscure village in the Earth Kingdom, close enough to make obtaining basic necessities and simple comforts an easy albeit time-consuming task, but far enough to avoid drawing any undue attention. The latter is hard to dissuade as any unfamiliar face in a small town draws immediate suspicion, but Azula's fierce silence invites no questions and Ty Lee's friendly mannerisms deflect any overt hostility. Strangers they are, and tolerated -- not accepted, tolerated. It is a truce Ty Lee can find contentment with.
She can't find it in herself to be too terribly surprised when mail starts coming for them a scant week after they've settled down. The first letter is bereft of the official Fire Nation seal but bears a modest sum, enough to keep them going for a little bit, along with Zuko's well-wishes. Mai also sends her regards. Letters then arrive every two weeks, a comforting source of constancy in the midst of an alien world.
It comes as no surprise, either, when Azula refuses to acknowledge her brother's words even exist. An Earth Kingdom hamlet is no fair trade for the Fire Nation palace and Ty Lee is well aware of that. She knows she's no replacement for an empire, and watches as the Princess storms off into the woods.
What does come as a surprise is the heavy hollow feeling in her stomach anyway.
What Azula does is her business. Ty Lee tries to keep it that way, but she can't help but be the slightest bit curious sometimes -- actually, a lot of times. Ty Lee is the one that goes to the village for anything and everything they need: it's for the best, really, Azula might be recognized and then they'd be put to flight again. Azula growled and muttered about refusing to be a prisoner even while in exile, and makes herself busy when Ty Lee is off on one of her trips, which happen surprisingly frequently.
Ty Lee enjoys the time she spends with the villagers and makes friends easily. Azula never had any taste for speaking of things that did not involve conquering or plotting and would find the simple conversations Ty Lee held boring, if not downright insulting. Ty Lee talks enough for them both, even though Azula is not there in person, and turns the villagers' attentions away from the Princess whenever the question of her existence arises.
"What does your friend do?" they ask, often with an underlying tone in their voices that is quick to remind Ty Lee that they think they are sneaking something by her. She shrugs, smiles and laughs: the perfect one-two-three that has Azula fleeing from their minds like fog before sunlight.
The truth is, she doesn't know what Azula does.
The Princess is prone to disappearing for hours at a time and Ty Lee has to get used to the fact that Azula sometimes does not return for days. At first she had the sneaking suspicion that Azula was scouting the area, perhaps devising a plan for escape -- but to where? Azula would return with leaves on her clothes and dirt on her hands, but it was only after a few weeks time that Ty Lee finally discerned the faint smell of ash beneath all that earth.
The belly of the woods is perfect to hide any light that might arise if someone should decide to bend fire in the middle of the night. The velvet-indigo skies are perfect to hide any smoke that might billow upward if something should catch on fire, whether by accident or intent. The trees will swallow any sound that is made, whether it is the sharp snapping of flames or the lethal hiss of lightning dancing around fingertips. And the dirt is perfect to mask the dry stink of soot that would leave testament to what an exiled firebender does in her spare time -- and exile leaves a lot of spare time.
Ty Lee does not mention anything: Azula's absences, the dirt, the smell, or the hours spent awake in loneliness. She patches the Princess' clothes when holes mysteriously appear, singed black around the edges. She leaves food and water on the able when Azula's not there and she has to visit the village; when she returns, Azula is more often than not missing once more -- but the meal is gone.
She holds her breath every time she hears the door open in the dead of night; Azula's presence fills the house like a secret. She knows the Princess lingers outside her door for an instant just longer than a blink before moving on to her own bed. The next morning it is the same: wash, rinse, repeat. She knows the act, her lines, too well to deviate from the play.
Ty Lee still thinks it is the best of all worlds, though she often wishes Azula would pause outside her door for a bit longer.
Ty Lee stifles a yawn as she nears their residence; it is late, and she did not mean to stay as long at the village as she had. The insistent posse of village boys had hounded her from dawn 'til dusk, constantly trying to outdo each other with gifts and tricks.
She doesn't think any of their uncertain bravado can quite match an explosion of azure and a lithe figure taking flight, but she smiles all the same.
Ty Lee pushes the door open and her hand automatically reaches for the small lantern that always lies on a table to the right. She finds herself stuck in that position, arm extended, as she blinks stupidly in the bright blaze coming from the other end of the room.
Azula looks up from the fire she's just made; it cannot be but a minute old -- the area surrounding the Princess isn't even warm yet, let alone the entire room. Ty Lee stares, uncertain. The routine has been interrupted, the protocol violated -- here's an act that she has no script for and all the leading lady can do is gawk.
Azula chuckles low in her throat, a sound that is not unpleasant to hear, and beckons for Ty Lee to draw closer.
"Today is your birthday, correct?"
Ty Lee can feel her spine jolt as if Azula had just nicked her with a careless stray bolt of electricity. She's seventeen today. But before she can respond Azula gestures impatiently once more, the distance between them obviously too great for the firebender's satisfaction. Ty Lee moves closer still until she's standing directly before Azula, who remains seated on the floor.
Ty Lee feels skittish for reasons she cannot name.
Azula chuckles again but with a decidedly different tone; one of her hands rises to rest against the back of Ty Lee's knee. It's an odd place to be touched but an area that's still sensitive, even moreso because Ty Lee isn't used to feeling another person's hands on her, and she instinctively starts when Azula's fingertips press against her skin. She isn't sure how to respond (Agni, I'm not even sure what's happening) but she ends up flinching when that hand starts moving up higher, and Azula stops and looks up at her with that scrutinizing gaze that makes her feel stripped to her soul. Ty Lee never had a problem with Azula touching her before but then she'd raised her hands against Mai, and the Agni Kai had happened, and, well--
"Tell me about the circus," Azula says after an eternity of seconds.
It's perhaps the oddest request Azula has ever made, but Ty Lee knows any request the Princess makes is less of a question and more of an order, so she takes a seat beside the other girl and starts to speak. She tells Azula about the animals, recalling the silly platypusbears that Azula had sneered at upon first arriving at the circus to fetch her for their quest. She tells Azula about the thrills she had experienced while walking along the tightrope and swinging from the trapezes; if there is a hint of longing in her voice while she relates the tale, Azula doesn't respond to it. She tells Azula about the other acts: clowns and knife-throwers and jugglers and daredevils and the Fire Nation's Strongest Man, and this one individual who was perhaps possibly maybe more flexible than she was because he could tie himself into knots, and--
"Wait. Knots?"
Ty Lee nods.
Another order: "Show me." The Princess extends her arms, her wrists and palms lying together as if she were praying.
Ty Lee can only stare for a second. After all, Azula has this thing about her hands being bound.
In the end, she acquires some rope -- more like string than rope, but it would do -- and ties Azula's wrists together. She's actually quite knowledgeable when it comes to knots: years of helping prepare the safety netting has not faded from her memory, especially since it was often her own ropes that she was readying. Ty Lee was never careless with life to begin with, and holds her own in especially high regard: which is why she flinched away from Azula's touch, away from the hands that have only delivered pain and destruction.
It's the steadiness in Ty Lee's hands that mask the quivering of her heart as she demonstrates what she knows for Azula, the girl whose golden eyes have not left her face, not once, even as Ty Lee runs through her spectrum of knowledge. "This is a trick knot, one of many… and this is a type of bend… and this one's a hitch-- oh, hitches are good, that's what we used at the circus and they'll hold just abou--"
"They will?" Azula murmurs, and Ty Lee isn't sure whether or not the question is rhetorical; her mouth opens to answer the Princess but she feels those hands on her skin again, resting on her neck before sliding lower, lower, lower.
The knot doesn't slip.
It's simultaneously everything Ty Lee expects and doesn't expect. For all her flirtatious tendencies she's yet untouched, a fact that Azula finds out all too quickly -- Ty Lee would have felt chagrined if she weren't too busy focusing on other things. It's fumbling and raw and yes, it does hurt, and there's a point where she has to bite back tears. But Azula has more patience than death and Ty Lee eventually feels that sweet tension break, her own voice as foreign as the electricity that runs screaming along her nerves.
"Happy birthday," Azula says without expression when Ty Lee's breathing returns to a rate that doesn't resemble a panic attack, but Ty Lee swears she can feel the Princess start to smile when she leans up to press her mouth against Azula's for the first time.
Ty Lee knows she's not smart, but she also knows the true present isn't in the act itself, or even the victory in coaxing Azula to lie next to her for the night. The Princess swears it'll be the last and only time; Ty Lee smiles to herself and knows that it's just the first.
Her true present is not the act: she knows what was done between them was the benefit for them both. Azula may have her title but not an inheritance. She must substitute the mountains and valleys of the Fire Nation for the dips and curves of Ty Lee's body; her wins will not be over nations but a single girl: instead of leading vast armies across plains it is her fingers that skim across the flatness of Ty Lee's exposed stomach and in time she will come to find that battleground a very familiar one, knowing exactly where to linger and when to advance, all to the increasing, insistent cadence of Ty Lee's heartbeat; her triumph will not be in surrendered swords and cities but in limbs that quiver like a proud battle-standard in the wind.
Her true present is not even the kindness Azula had shown her in having her hands tied together. It will be an image permanently branded into Ty Lee's memory: the Crown Princess of the Fire Nation sitting there with her hands bound at the wrists with cheap rope, all so that Ty Lee would not be frightened.
Her true present comes after this: Ty Lee fumbling with words, desperately trying to learn the art of pillow-talk to keep Azula's silence at bay. She is failing spectacularly. "You would have been Fire Lord. You would have had a kingdom. I can't give you-- maybe one day, maybe, you'll learn to love me half as much as that." Ty Lee doesn't know where she ranks in Azula's heart: surely the Princess loves the idea of Lordship, loves firebending, loves triumph, loves glory and honor, loves the Fire Nation, loves her father and maybe even her brother and her mother more than she loves Ty Lee. Surely this is true.
Years from then, Ty Lee will remember several things. She will remember the sweet-slick salt in the air, something she smells less with her nose and more with her tongue. She will remember Azula reaching out for her, hands held to each other with rope. She will remember the Princess hovering above her, eyes glowing brighter than the fire they're lying beside, glowing brighter than victory. She will remember lying there with Azula behind her, the Princess' breath heavy on her neck with the history between them. She will remember the tightening of the Princess' arm around her midriff, possessive, protective.
And above all, she will remember her true present: Azula's answer.
"More."