This is for the Tyzula Week prompt favorite song and is of "Broken" by Seether.
I
Ty Lee thinks about the way she laughs.
No, no, she tries to remember it. She does not know what it sounded like. Did Azula ever laugh? She must have. It was probably cruel. Or at least in response to cruelty.
It cannot have been that long.
Ty Lee sits down and stares at her palms. All she wants is to remember one person's laugh. Why is it so hard?
Why has she never felt so broken and alone until the moment she cannot recall how Azula laughs?
She cries herself to sleep that night.
II
"I'd feel your pain for you, if I could," Ty Lee says, kneeling down.
She tries to look nonthreatening, because she has never seen anything as vulnerable as Azula at this moment. Ty Lee wonders if it is the wrong thing to do; Azula would hate to know how she looks broken on the floor. Then again, Azula is the smartest person Ty Lee has ever met and maybe she knows already.
"Then maybe you would understand it," spits Azula. Ty Lee nods with closed eyes.
They sit in their positions, one groveling, one curled up, one patient, one trembling, both tired and broken.
III
Azula thinks about the way Ty Lee looks.
No, no, she tries to remember it. There is a braid. There are big eyes. She used to think so much about every single way she looked, every single mark on her skin or oddity of her features.
Azula is observant and observed Ty Lee more than she should have.
But she must be as good at forgetting people as she is as good at everything else.
She told herself to erase Ty Lee from her past.
Maybe she succeeded too much.
She just wants to remember what it was like to touch her arm.
IV
Azula would not feel Ty Lee's pain for her, but she would do anything to understand it.
She has never been brought so harshly to reality as she has been right now. Ty Lee wailed something about Azula hurting her by being broken.
All Azula can think as she sees Ty Lee cry uncontrollably is that they both are pretty damned fucked up.
V
Azula does not feel right with Ty Lee gone.
She never thought she could become reliant on someone, but she thinks she has been. So many little things come to the surface when she spends two years away from someone she vowed to spend her life with.
Mostly, she does not like waking up alone from her nightmares.
That is the worst part.
VI
Ty Lee misses Azula every single day.
She had to leave; she was suffocating. Azula did not want to take a single step towards becoming a decent, productive, moderately happy person. Ty Lee wanted to heal her and steal her pain away and just could not do it.
So she left.
But right now she has gotten halfway to sleeping with a guy and stopped and left and apologized.
It does not feel right.
VII
"The worst has to be over," Azula insists, trying not to look at the wall she destroyed. "It literally cannot get worse than this."
"It can," whispers Ty Lee, picking up charred papers that turn to ashes in her hands.
Azula sucks in a deep breath and walks away. She refuses to be in the presence of someone who hates her for no reason.
She does not get that the reason Ty Lee feels so defeated is because she loves her so much.
VIII
Ty Lee kisses Azula and holds her hands and lies on top of her.
Even this does not have light or life in it anymore. Azula stops when Ty Lee starts to cry and she sits up in the bed. Ty Lee keeps lying there, staring at the ceiling.
"I can't fix you."
"I'm not broken."
"We both are. We are. Our marriage is."
Azula does not know what to say to an optimist. She does not know how to take away the level of pain that could make Ty Lee say such negative things.
IX
The day Ty Lee leaves, she packs up and disappears before Azula notices. She cannot face her. There are no fights left to fight except for this one, and Ty Lee wants to dodge it.
There are no monsters left to slay except for the ones they become when in each other's presence.
Ty Lee leaves home and goes to find another home.
She does not think her heart will ever be whole again.
X
They reunite on a cold and sunny day, two and a half years after Ty Lee left.
Ty Lee feels her heart flutter. It stopped doing that around the time Azula dragged her down into an abyss. She smiles. It is a real one, which she had not experienced in the presence of her princess since the earliest days of their dead marriage.
Azula feels her knees weaken. It is not a sensation she has experienced in years. She is speechless. It is not a state she has been in since the earliest days of her marriage.
"Do you…?" Ty Lee starts before cutting herself off. She feels stupid.
"Do you want to get a drink?" asks Azula.
Ty Lee nods.
A perpetual ache has vanished; a missing piece has been returned to its place.