"Azula! How is it that you are supposedly able to read minds from people's faces but you can't figure out which part of a fitted sheet is a corner?" Ty Lee exclaims in utter exasperation.
Azula is on her knees in the center of their mattress, tugging at the sheets that Ty Lee is trying to get onto the bed. To say that she is doing it halfheartedly would be the understatement of the century. The two of them have been tugging at it, bickering the entire time.
They have moved into an apartment for Azula's sake which is ZuZu language for desperately wanting to be rid of her for a few weeks... or months. Ty Lee leapt at the opportunity before Azula could make a single protest, and the princess is not happy. Not at all.
Particularly about this making their apartment inhabitable by themselves.
Azula rants, "Normal people do not have to do this. This is a life skill that is completely and utterly pointless."
Ty Lee collapses, exasperated as she first looks at the scrunched corners of silky red sheets in her hands, and then at the ashes that were the pillowcases Ty Lee attempted to teach Azula how to use. "No. No it's not. This is exactly what normal people have to do."
Shrugging it off as an abysmal lie meant to trick her into being domestic, Azula lies down on the bare mattress. "I can't. I'm tired and agonized by my horrible failure with the pillowcases."
"Azula..." Ty Lee rolls her eyes hard. She should have expected this, to be honest. "Azula, get up and put the sheets on the bed. It isn't the hardest thing."
Well, to that Azula just sighs and lies down on the center of the mattress. It is coarse and bare beneath her back, but she is absolutely not partaking in this for a second longer.
"Please get up," Ty Lee says, her nails digging into her own face in frustration. She cannot handle this. She cannot handle two months of this.
Azula yawns and then closes her eyes. "No, just wrap the sheets over me as my burial shroud..."
"Oh, ugh..." Ty Lee rubs her temples, but that is not nearly enough to quell the avalanche of a migraine crashing into her head at full force. "You're not going to die by putting the one corner I have asked you to put ─"
"It is not one corner!" Azula shrieks and Ty Lee glances at the walls. She wants to say something about neighbors, but she doubts Azula cares about neighbors. "You've told me to re-do it a thousand times! You have made me."
Ty Lee groans, desperately wanting to give in. It is always more pleasurable to pamper Azula and let her do whatever she wants, but something about this making a bed situation has severely irked the usually placid ex-warrior.
"I am doing this because I love you," Ty Lee says warmly and gets the last remaining pillow hurled at her face. She punches it reflexively, and it bursts into two, showering Ty Lee with bleached feathers. "It's difficult for me to marry someone who refuses to help me even put sheets onto a bed."
Azula scoffs. "The best reason to marry me is that you will never have to lift a finger again in your entire life." She hesitates and then turns over, looking up at Ty Lee from the mattress. Ty Lee wriggles her nose, trying desperately to contain the fit of giggles that she knows Azula is trying to give her. "Princess Ty Lee, you are the prettiest girl in all of the land and deserve so much better than this."
Azula grabs a handful of the cloth and holds it up. Ty Lee tries to remain stoic and stubborn about the matter. Mai keeps telling her that she is too weak and permissive. Okay, yes, Ty Lee might do things like lay Azula's clothes out in the morning and brush her hair and do anything that she does not currently have a servant for, but it is out of love.
Oh, and for the sex. Yes, Azula does have some vague grasp around the concept of reciprocity. But, as Ty Lee gets older, she is horrified to realize that she would prefer reciprocity in the manner of Azula giving back at least a small portion of what she takes. That is wildly unlikely.
But today, no, today, Ty Lee will reign victorious and the bed will be made by Azula.
"You have not helped me at all," Ty Lee said this morning as the repertoire of carpenters, cleaners, art critics, inspectors, incense experts and furniture movers left.
"You haven't done much either," Azula replied coolly before walking across the room to find their only remaining tea leaves. She glares at it like a child to its vegetables, and then resigns herself to having to make white tea; she thinks it is the worst kind. "You could have purchased much more pleasing tea."
"You could have helped me at the market before we moved in!" Ty Lee snaps, her face ruddy and scrunched.
Azula turns as she finishes broiling her tea. "Mmmm. No. I didn't feel like it."
Ty Lee at that moment had the wake-up call that Mai and Zuko were continuously trying to force upon her. Azula had given up on giving excuses, looking so cozy in the knowledge that Ty Lee will blindly obey her.
"Come help me set up the bedroom," Ty Lee said in a way that made Azula very certain that they would not be taking a nap or something else more relaxing after an entire day of snapping cold insults at the pathetic peasants moving her furniture.
Azula walked in to see it so bare. Ty Lee would probably want to decorate.
"You, Azula," Ty Lee said as if giving a royal proclamation, "have not helped me ever on anything. And so after those mistakes, you are going to make your bed and lie in it.
"That isn't how that idiom is supposed to be used," Azula sings and Ty Lee looks about to punch her or scream or something crazy. "Fine. It can't be that hard."
It was more than that hard. Azula is now walking on top of the bed with her fragile firebender steps.
"Finding the corner to this is harder than finding the Avatar!" Azula yells, again making her throat raw and metallic tasting. "This is a two person job!"
"So are a lot of things I do for you," Ty Lee replies with a huge smile. Azula glares and lies down again.
"No," Azula says and Ty Lee wonders when she stopped arguing with a master negotiator and started arguing with a toddler. "No, you will absolutely not make me do this horrid task. Look at how my hands are shaking. Look at that! And..." Azula continues into her almost touching woe-is-me speech as Ty Lee watches, half-impressed and half-angry.
Azula finishes and awaits Ty Lee to grovel and beg forgiveness. Ty Lee picks up the fitted sheet and manages to find the corners within instants.
"See, love," Azula begins, "is that so hard?"
Ty Lee has absolutely no regrets about what she does next.