Legend

.

Azula flicks her wrist and adds blue flame to the swelling pyre. She doesn't turn as she hears the screen door clatter.

"Azula!" Ty Lee coughs through the acrid smoke. "What are you doing?"

"Preserving my legacy," Azula replies. She tosses Dr. Hew Len's paperwork into the pyre. "Do you know what would happen if the people of the Fire Nation read these? If they learned how one of their fearless leaders was nothing more than an insane, raving lunatic? It would nullify everything I've ever accomplished. My name would go down as a failure in history."

Ty Lee bites her lip. If she were younger, she would have blurted out something stupid. She wants to tell Azula all about how Zuko has kept her so quietly and discreetly tucked away, that many people in the Fire Nation do not remember they had a Princess; if they do, her name is Izumi. But somehow, that seems worse than Azula's legacy being tarnished.

A truth is easier to conceal than it is to reveal a lie.

So, Ty Lee takes a step closer and offers out a hand. Azula isn't surprised by many things, but this intrigues her. She passes Ty Lee some pages and she hurls them at the fire with such force, embers crack and dance at their toes.

.

Today, it rains. Pours. Monsoon season has arrived in the Fire Nation and forces Azula indoors.

She could bend in the rain. Easily. Lightning even more easily.

But Azula hates the rain and so she sulks inside.

"No firebending inside the house, Azula," Ty Lee not-so-gently reminds her. She hears the scraping of a table across the floor returning to its original spot. "Thank you."

Ty Lee is exhausted. She sets another tin bucket down under a leaky roof and wanders into the den. She sits on the couch next to Azula. She holds a picture frame; the same one she tried to smash.

"Tell me who she is," Azula says, pointing at Izah.

"She's my daughter," Ty Lee replies, wondering if Azula's mind is trying to play tricks on her. But her breathing is slow and her voice steady.

"No." Azula flips the picture over and looks Ty Lee hard in the eye. "Who is she, and why does she look like me?"

"Huh. I never thought that. But come to think of it, she kinda does, doesn't she?"

Azula could have smacked her senseless.

Ty Lee inhales. On a day where the sky is dreary and the rain falls, they have nothing but time to waste.

"Well, it all started at this party..."

.

Parties in the Earth Kingdom are very different from parties in the Fire Nation, Ty Lee decides. In the Fire Nation, there is wild entertainment around every corner; live music, theater and troubadours, competitive sports and games.

In the Earth Kingdom, Ty Lee tries to wrap her head around lounging around in a dimly-lit scene tucked beneath a grocery store in Ba Sing Se's Lower Ring. She sips her moscato and watches as her fellow Kyoshi Warriors lounge on the beaten-up couches in thick clouds of hookah smoke. There's some dancing, but it's more subtle shifting side to side, like awkward teenagers at their first formal. For once, Ty Lee feels herself fading into the background.

And then, she notices him. Staring straight at her on the other side of the room, as if the rest of it doesn't exist. The golden gaze pierces through her chest and awakens a forgotten ache.

Suddenly, he is next to her and passing her a drink. This one is sweet, and much stronger than her last. A few sips brings the roses to her cheeks. He smirks.

Perhaps there is something in the way the Earth Kingdom parties, after all.

Or maybe it is that he knows that she knows that he knows that they are both from the Fire Nation, and it is the shared heat bringing them together.

He presses her to the alley wall, her legs cold in the winter and his breath hot on her neck. Her nails scrape at his chest. She feels a badge and pins underneath the ragged peasant robes. Military.

"Come back to my place," he purrs.

"I don't know," Ty Lee slurs back. "The other girls... They'll wonder where I am."

"It's in the Middle Ring," he adds.

"Oh, then in that case..." She kisses him again. What she would give for a night in the Middle Ring with warm showers, clean robes, and fresh meals. Royalty has spoiled her expensive taste.

Ty Lee doesn't remember much more of that night.

When she wakes up the next morning, she is not at a suave apartment in the Middle Ring, but some hole-in-the-wall motel on the Lower Ring's south side. No note, no breakfast, and nothing but the taste of cotton in her mouth.

Somehow, she is not surprised that the man lied.

.

"And that's all I remember," Ty Lee concludes, palms up. "Turns out the Kyoshi Warriors don't take too kindly to unplanned pregnancies."

Azula is not impressed. "That still doesn't answer my question."

"What do you mean?"

"Why does she look like me?"

Ty Lee sighs and doesn't look at her. Azula doesn't like it. "Out with it."

"It's... Well, whoever that guy was, he reminded me of..."

"Of?"

"You."

Ty Lee can't tell what Azula's response is. Her face doesn't change as she seems to stare right through her. Ty Lee fumbles for words. "I'm sorry Azula, I—"

Azula kisses her hard. She presses a hand to her chest and forces her down onto the couch cushions.

"Shut up," she commands.

Azula kisses her harder to muffle her moans from her daughter's innocent little ears.

.

They sit side-by-side on the porch steps. Lavender twilight cusps the yard and Izah dances through the wet grass. Yellow fireflies spring up at every step.

"Look, mommy! I got one!" she exclaims, cradling it with both palms for Ty Lee to see.

"Aww, he's so cute! Let's put him the jar," Ty Lee replies.

"Have you ever smashed one?" Azula asks with a sinister grin.

Izah gapes at her in horror. "No, that's mean! Mommy says we don't hurt animals, no matter how big and no matter how small!"

Azula sighs. "You're right, Ty Lee, she's your daughter. Certainly no child of mine. Congratulations."

Izah takes the mason jar with her and skips back into the grass.

Ty Lee giggles. "Do you understand now, though? I mean, I don't have much in life, but this little girl... Well, she's my legacy."

"No," Azula replies, indifferent.

"Oh, come on. Lie for me just this once."

Azula pecks her on the lips. "Always."

.