A/N: The nasturtium flowers mentioned in the last chapter and now beginning to play a very important role from this chapter forward, actually have no slang name for them. The Tiger's Bride is an Angela Carter reference, and seemed to be part of a very fitting story similar to Ty Lee and Azula's. So, that isn't at all the right name for the flowers.
Chapter Six: Little Rebel Girl
Many miles away from the Royal Palace, a feminine figure garbed in black kneels on a roof while gentle rain pounds down from the grey sky.
It is far in the Western Fire Nation, away from Caldera, and away from the perils there. But that does not mean that everything is well and fine. Safety is unwise, and it always has been.
She is unarmed, her hands slick with mud as she looks below her, examining the path she is going to have to take. Licking her lips, she breathes in the humid and hot air as she feels her knees become sore. Watching. She has been watching for a long time as a scout for the people she is alongside.
It is a wet summer, and the girl is eternally grateful for that fact, even if she always feels out of sorts in the heat. Something moves ahead of her and she kneels deeper behind the decorations on the rooftop of the abandoned shop.
The movement was only a cat prowling through the abandoned town, and slowly, the shadowy young woman slides down the roof and lands with a small splash on the mud. She carefully navigates the streets, and deems it as abandoned as predicted.
It was left once the factory had polluted the farms, and the mines dried up. The Fire Nation only keeps things that are useful to it, and so everyone was displaced and moved to take up different jobs to serve the well-oiled machine of oppression.
She vaults through a broken window, carefully avoiding the shattered glass jutting up beneath her, and lands smoothly on her feet before waiting for her friends to follow her. Removing her ink black cowl, she reveals a very young face, tan skin and cobalt eyes.
Water Tribe. She is clearly from the Water Tribe, and so she has no place being seen by anyone; it would be impossible for her to convince anyone that she is even from the Colony Kingdom. Maybe some of them are interbred there; she is uncertain.
She just is certain that she had no choice but to go find something worth fighting for. The girl who demanded that she replace her father after his death. The girl who wanted to go into the Fire Nation and try to make sense of what she had gone through.
Her name is Katara, and she entered the Fire Nation a few seasons ago when she was still young and naive. Sokka tried to run away on his own after they wound up orphaned, and Katara followed him at all costs. They were taken in by a few insurgents hiding in the Western Fire Nation, but they were raided a few weeks ago, and now they leave safety.
Now their group of dozens is down to three, and they have no idea what they are supposed to do.
Katara thinks their only weapon is hope.
Sokka and Suki disagree.
Looking up, she is joined by them both.
"Are we even going in the right direction?" asks the other girl, glancing out of the window, at the endless landscape that might not even reach the safe house.
"I think we are," the first girl replies, although her voice comes out as a sigh. "This whole stretch is just gone. I thought that they would be a bit more... prosperous."
"Why do you think they're so reliant on the Colony Kingdom?" her brother remarks. "They dried their own country up a long time ago."
That is why the strikes scare them so much. Because the Colony Kingdom has more power than it thinks it does; it has the power to cut off the Fire Nation from everything it needs to survive and keep its people content.
"I found something while I was scouting the area," the Water Tribe girl says, reaching into her damp clothes and withdrawing a piece of slightly muddy, but mostly dry paper.
Her brother takes it from her and examines it. "This can't be real. Can it?"
"It's real," his sister says quietly.
The paper reads that in two days time, the collaborators with the rebels will be exposed and executed.
"So... some people must have chose to sell the others out instead of accept death." The brother is immensely disgusted by it. "Would you?"
Silence.
"I would rather die than betray my friends," Katara breathes, and that ends their conversation as they hide out in the house until the sun rises and the storm passes.
Suki, Sokka and Katara find wedding announcements in the same damp puddles as notices of execution. Wanted posters, new restrictions and rations, all excused by grand, bold faced lies. If people had no idea why resources were becoming difficult to get from the Colony Kingdom, they must be clueless.
Katara furrows her brow. Maybe they are clueless.
She is awake as she examines the collection of wedding announcements. On one, the dark new legislation about turning in anyone suspected of conspiracy has bled onto one of the petty wedding news about potential florists and other trivial nonsense.
That one is both funny and sad. Katara folds it up and keeps it.
"I doubt all of the Fire Nation is like this stretch," Suki says, frowning faintly. "There are a lot of people who don't know the half of the wars. And a lot of prosperous cities that weren't forced to slave away in factories."
"But those aren't exactly the people we need on our side," Sokka says with an exasperated sigh. He rubs his temples. "This was a lot easier when we had people with us who'd been doing this for years."
"There have to be some people left. There have to," Katara insists softly. She frowns at the papers and finds one that has a very crisp portrait and description of the Monster of the West's bride.
She looks creepy to Katara. Necrotic, but beautiful, in a sickening sort of way.
"The girl getting married," Suki says suddenly, her eyes flashing as she gets a closer look at the portrait that Katara holds. Closely, Suki examines the caption about the colony that Ty Lee was from, and her suspicion is confirmed. "She was a rebel. A pretty notorious one, even though she sure didn't look like it. Her protectorate was just a bit north of Kyoshi Island, and the couriers... they sometimes mentioned her."
Katara looks confused by that. Suki then remembers how Katara and Sokka know very little of the Colony Kingdom rebellion. They were isolated in the South Pole, while Suki grew up on an occupied island, in which the first change in her life came when the protectorate to the north began to hide letters and statements about rebellion in the usual shipments traded from the Kyoshi Island pier.
"She was the girl with the flowers; the one who sent the flowers in the mail to mark that they were from the rebels. Nasturtium flowers, better known as Tiger's Bride. It's a symbol of the rebellion but the Fire Nation seems pretty clueless since the flower used to be a nationalist icon." Suki's lips twitch at how clever that is. "She was just kind of the girl with the flowers. Might as well have been the Blue Spirit to us, but the fact that she's the one marrying that monster..."
"How can the Fire Lord not know?" Katara asks in utter disbelief that even someone as arrogant as Ozai could ignore that fact, but both Sokka and Suki exchange a glance.
"I bet you anything that he does," Suki says quietly, turning over the picture of what once was someone like her. Katara's eyes flash. "It's more of a statement than the crack down on conspirators. No one is safe. I guarantee you that it was a conscious choice to make her some sick slave like that. The protectorates that went dark... they were the ones around hers, like, like mine."
Sokka remembers Suki trying to hold in her emotion as she learned about the utter destruction of her island. But she was glad that they went down fighting, even if they were rendered to ashes.
Katara feels extremely ill. "Maybe she wanted to. Maybe she realized that we're not exactly the winning side. You said you never even met her."
Suki looks at her feet. "Coming from the girl who talks about hope..."
"Like I said, I would rather die than betray my friends. But maybe her choice was harder than that," Katara says softly before rising to set up their beds for the night.
"Being whatever she is now is worse than death."
They all can silently agree on that.
It is better to die than betray your friends, Ty Lee is certain.
Even worse is to betray your family in order to make your way into another. In order to become a royal doll.
But Ty Lee is still trying to figure out if this is what she is wanted to do, or what she is supposed to do. Is she intended to keep going and join the royal family for her protection? Or is she meant to accept a noble death?
Ty Lee does not know what she is supposed to do in this situation, or, in fact, even what she can do. She has moved in to a beautiful room in the palace, and she watches from the freshly made bed as the servants arrange it. It will be her room for the rest of forever, unless she would prefer to sleep in with Azula.
But every person needs a room of one's own. That is simply how life works, in some ways. Only peasants and farmers have to be crushed into shared rooms; even Ty Lee and her infinite family had their own bedrooms.
"I'm sure you want to go shopping, to pick out new clothes and any other fixtures you want," warmly says the head servant and Ty Lee looks up at her with the most grateful smile that she can muster at the moment. "The princess would most certainly like to escort you."
Now, that sounds like a normal date. Ty Lee hates how her fingers twitch with brief excitement, how much she would like to go out with Azula. But right now, she should be thinking about how to save her mother's life, not about courting her possible future wife.
It is not a nice situation for anyone, and Ty Lee does not think that anyone will get what they want in the end.
A thought suddenly occurs to Ty Lee, and it is not a particularly nice one. She does know that finds Azula to be interesting, and beautiful, and funny and smart and probably the est of all of those things. Ty Lee is well aware that Princess Azula of the Fire Nation is one of the most intriguing and seemingly perfect people Ty Lee has ever encountered.
Another, more fleeting thought, is that, perhaps one day, she would be Princess Ty Lee of the Fire Nation. But that one is even more frightening, and so she goes back to lean on the first.
Her first is to give Azula the best date of her life, and then lean on that in hopes of getting to talk to her mother before things escalate. Or at least, somewhat more suspiciously, be able to talk to Zuko. He was the Blue Spirit after all.
"I love shopping," Ty Lee says honestly, although her tone is cheerier than she is feeling.
"I will go request the princess's presence." The servant bows more deeply to Ty Lee than anyone has before. It gives a rush of power, of importance, and Ty Lee does not regret how much she desires that.
Ty Lee looks at her room and feels... glamorous.
Glamorous and utterly selfish for indulging in this while her friends, and who knows who else, could be awaiting the chopping block.
They arrive at a flower shop and Ty Lee tugs Azula inside.
"You want flowers in your room?" Azula inquires with a smirk.
"Yes," Ty Lee says softly. "I wear them in my hair all the time, well, did, of course, because they don't really survive cross-ocean trips. Maybe we can even see some that would be good for the wedding!"
She grins with her teeth glittering white and pretty. Azula finds it endearing; it awakens something quite odd and vaguely erotic in her, and she has nothing better to do but look at flowers.
Ty Lee is engrossed as she looks around, searching for something that is classic enough to work with her new royal wardrobe. The florist arrives near her and Ty Lee stops carefully comparing some roses.
"I was thinking you might want some of these." In her hand is Tiger's Bride.
The vibrant oranges and yellows, Ty Lee could never miss for a second. Nor the look in the woman's eyes as she sees Ty Lee.
"They're beautiful," Ty Lee whispers, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
Zuko, now this... maybe she is not alone in this land as she thought that she was.
"They're the perfect flower for you, I believe," warmly says the florist with a gentle boy. Azula strides towards the back and the shared gaze is broken as the shop owner bows much more deeply to Azula.
"I love these," Ty Lee says prettily and Azula sees her honesty and innocence.
"You'll have them. Anything you want, of course," Azula says, thinking that those are the right words for a future wife. To give her bride anything she desires is the most important foundation of marriage.
[X]
It has been five weeks since the strikes began in the Colony Kingdom. They do not seem to be of much importance, as Caldera goes on as usual, save for some lack of goods that people whine loudly about, but do not miss too much. It will, Ty Lee thinks, either get much worse, or much better.
"What do you like?" Azula inquires as she takes Ty Lee by the wrist. Her nails feel fairly nice against Ty Lee's skin, and she wonders what it would be like to be scratched by them. For Azula to change her mind and slit Ty Lee's wrists like the Monster of the West would. But instead, she chooses to take her hand and guide her through the streets.
There is nothing wrong with an attraction to her, Ty Lee reassures herself. She is not the Fire Nation, even if she claims it. Azula might just be a wonderful wife for you, and you should enjoy yourself while you can.
"I like a lot of pink. Oh, a lot of glamour, if you know what I mean?" Ty Lee says blithely, already feeling the shopping high taking over her body.
The body that Azula cannot help but gaze at, cannot help but want to taste and explore without reprieve. But the princess refuses to force herself on someone else; it sickens her to the core. All she can do as try to build some form of trust, which also sickens her to the core, and seems even more impossible than restraining herself sexually.
She wants Ty Lee to be a wife, however. Not a courtesan or some sick sexual outlet. Or worse ─ a friend. In all honesty, if somehow father got Mai between his sheets eventually, it will happen with Azula and Ty Lee. Patience; Princess Azula has learned patience as she learned war.
"I think we should begin at the boutiques with all of the crafted furnishings. Clothes are in the other direction," Azula orders coolly and Ty Lee does not protest. "And then stop for tea, I suppose?"
"I would love that," Ty Lee says earnestly, and Azula can see the truth in her eyes.
The fact that a war might be brewing is the last thing on their minds. All the small rebellions just feel like a gentle buzz of bees trying to make noise over an opera. And it is a gorgeous story of Ty Lee trying to distract herself from her crimes.
Crimes that Azula does not know about, even if the princess knows Ty Lee's father was a rebel. But not that her father took the blow for Ty Lee, dying in her stead, and giving her this chance. She wonders too often at night if he wanted her to do something while with the royal family, or if he figured that ─ as is true ─ the safest place is married to the future Fire Lord.
Can you imagine a rebel as Fire Lady? No. Can you imagine the girl playing with fascinators, kimonos and squinting at shades of silk curtains as Fire Lady? Absolutely.
Azula watches her with an amused expression, her lips curled in that small smirk. Ty Lee only notices today that she wears different shades of lip paint; they all just seemed orangey to Ty Lee, and she never pressed any further than that.
Ty Lee is beautiful, Azula notices. And she intrigues her in a number of ways that Azula is not quite certain of. She is exactly the type Azula likes; gorgeous, shallow, preferring to be subservient than to hurt or cause trouble with others, ambitious and easy to manipulate. It helps that Azula has enjoyed at least half of their conversation.
"I like these," Azula says softly, and Ty Lee looks into her gilded eyes.
Azula is beautiful, Ty Lee notices. And she intrigues her in a number of ways that Ty Lee cannot explain, and does not want to have to understand. Ty Lee is the kind of person who does not need to know where the cat came from or is going, she just wants to know if there is a cat. Azula is exactly the type Ty Lee likes; stunning, unafraid and with a fire in her that draws people like moths to flame. More so, Ty Lee thinks that what the Monster of the West needs is someone who can see the shreds of humanity in her, and Ty Lee thinks she is the person who can do that.
Princess Azula watches and guides her fiancee, sometimes listening to her, sometimes not. The entire time, contemplating just where this relationship might go.
Because right now, it is uncertain.
And Azula hates uncertain things.
[X]
Azula wakes in the night to someone knocking gently on the door. She mostly expects Mai, and so she does not bother with much in the ways of clothes or looking remotely presentable, but when she opens it, there is her fiancee, standing in the doorway, rubbing her arm.
"Is there something wrong with your room?" Azula asks before realizing how cold she sounds. "I only mean that we can have anything fixed that you dislike."
That probably was not any better, but Ty Lee does not seem to mind in the slightest.
"I've never really... Slept somewhere this quiet. Or alone, really," Ty Lee says softly, and it is very true.
Over the past days separated from her mother, Ty Lee was too exhausted for conditions of sleeping to even mean anything. But now that she has realized the extent of her situation, the silence, the creaking floorboards and the distance from anyone or anything makes it impossible to sleep.
"You don't like to sleep in silence?" Azula asks with a cocked eyebrow. She is quite confused by the request, but she does not care, and steps aside to let Ty Lee inside.
The princess contemplates questioning her about how she is doing with her mother's imminent trial and imprisonment. But Azula figures that is not the best talk for the moment, and so she just closes the door and walks across the room to get back into her bed.
They lie down beside each other and it feels quiet strange to be so close, the heat of their bodies combined beneath the layers of soft blankets. Ty Lee closes her eyes, but her breathing makes it very clear that she is not asleep, and Azula lies awake, in one of those rare instances in which she does not know what she is supposed to say.
"Is something wrong?" Azula attempts, the words odd in her mouth. She is not even sure if they are the right ones, because she cannot remember the last time she attempted to hear about other people's problems, or let them know she cared by inquiring about their condition.
"I'm just a little lonely. How... could I not be?" Ty Lee whispers as she rolls onto her side and examines the princess with eyes that sparkle even in the shadows. How could I not be afraid of your lunatic family and betraying everyone I love and having to marry you and have sex with you? and in that thought, Ty Lee decides she does not get nearly enough credit for the things in life she does not say.
Azula has great distaste for the fact that she cannot properly read Ty Lee in the darkness, so, instead, she lies there quietly. She imagines that Ty Lee will talk to her, that she has no choice but to latch on to Azula to weather the storm that will be entering this family.
It is not easy to become one of the Fire Nation Royals. And Azula does think she is beginning to like Ty Lee, albeit she does not know if she could fall in love with someone if she tried.
"It must be hard never seeing your family again," Azula says callously, although she thinks she is being helpful. Ty Lee bites her lower lip. "I'm sure it's difficult for most people."
"Because it's announced, that means... it can't..." Ty Lee trails off, her cheeks heating up.
"Are you afraid my father will revoke the contract?" Azula breathes quite gently and Ty Lee swallows. She very much wishes Azula were not so astute about these things. "He won't. I know your father and mother are dangerous, and I know your protectorate was the first to revolt, but so long as you don't do anything stupid, he won't pass you up. And I think I might like you."
"You think you might like me?" Ty Lee asks softly, wondering why she feels so flattered by that. So happy about that. "I think I might like you too."
"There's an attraction I won't deny," Azula purrs as she slips closer to Ty Lee. The sexuality of the moment makes them both hesitate ever so slightly. "But I need time with people. We need a history before we can have a future as lovers."
"I'd like to make that history," Ty Lee says honestly.
Azula closes her eyes, and fights the rampaging and heated desire within her to take the girl beside her.
Ty Lee is a delicate thing to manipulate, and Azula will not screw it up with base human desire.
[X]
"Umm, Azula," Ty Lee inquires at breakfast. "I was wondering if I could try talking to Zuko again. I feel bad about hurting his feelings last time."
Azula shrugs. Oh this poor girl needs a dose of reality, but her optimism is both sexy and sickening.
"Go right ahead. I'll tell the guards you're going to try." Despite Ty Lee's undeniable charm, Azula does not think she will make any progress with Zuko.
Azula has a thousand times more charisma, and she tried with her brother until she just gave up.
[X]
"Hi, Zuko," Ty Lee says softly and he looks at her in utter confusion.
"I didn't know my sister's concubine was allowed to talk to a high security prisoner," he spits, but a glint in his eyes asks her to sit down.
"I am attempting to give myself wholly to my family, including you. And you didn't seem to want to get to know me around Azula," Ty Lee says sweetly, and that makes the guards stop caring at all about the discussion.
Zuko looks at her and Ty Lee gazes at him.
"So," Ty Lee slips him a paper she wrote earlier in her wedding planning book, "tell me about your family."
"My father married my girlfriend and I haven't seen her since. On holidays I get to attend dinner with them. I am very happy staying in my quarters and pretending that I don't exist. Is that all?" His aggravation might be real, or practiced, but then Ty Lee watches him begin scrawling characters back to her as she pretends to pout at him.
He hands it to her.
"Well, fine, if you don't want to talk, we don't have to," Ty Lee says shrilly with a fluttering of her eyelashes.
The Blue Spirit watches the Girl with the Flowers go, and thinks about how much she looked like one of them already. He wonders if this is her choice, or, fuck, maybe she even loves Azula. Zuko is unclear, and the letter doesn't say much except for an explanation of her past. Nothing about her current situation.
He wrote back what he could, and hoped that it wasn't an attempt of his father to get names out of his son again.
Maybe it was. Zuko is beginning to find that he doesn't care about anyone.
Except a few people. His uncle, his best friend... the girl he can still smell when he thinks about her in her dreams. She has the scent of sea salt, even when far inland, and earth, and maybe a hint of tobacco in her dark hair, although she didn't smoke, and something oddly sharp and spicy, like cinnamon. And her eyes haunt him, because when he made the difficult decision to go searching for his uncle in the Colony Kingdom under guise of the Blue Spirit, he left the security of hiding with the insurgents in the Fire Nation, and the Water Tribe girl he never told I love you behind.
Maybe it was a mistake.
Zuko has made much, much worse decisions.
And he pays for them every single day he draws breath.
[X]
A diviner examines Ty Lee, in some kind of odd step in the marriage conditions. There is already enough to balance without juggling all of the strange Fire Nation customs. Especially when a custom involves being felt up by an old lady with tattooed on eyebrows.
"Is this, uh, actually necessary?" Ty Lee asks innocently, this time, like many times, actually clueless and saccharine.
"Yes," nods the very important looking woman in front of her, and her two female assistants. "It is invaluable, of course."
Ty Lee has been stripped down to underclothes, and her skin is prickling with goosebumps despite being in the dry Fire Nation heat. Being examined is not necessarily the strangest of happenings, but she cannot understand exactly why and no one has been very clear about it.
"Are those pierced?" asks the woman with the cold, analytical eyes.
"Are what pieced?" Ty Lee says, her hands resting on her barely covered breasts. "No. No. Of course not."
The examination does not go uphill from there, but she finds, as soon as she is put into a robe and sent off to go settle into her beautiful new room, and trim the flowers for her hair, that there are two guards waiting for her. Ty Lee pulls her robe tighter around herself, feeling even more exposed than with the old diviner's cold hands on her body.
"The Fire Lord would like to see you briefly before you settle into your accommodations," one recites as the other is clearly trying not to look bored.
Ty Lee's heart begins to pound out of control, her stomach doing backflips as she recalls the flowers. As she recalls going to see Zuko. Remembering that she had requested to see her mother again, although she thinks she is certain that she is testifying for her mother's death.
She is led, at last, to Fire Lord Ozai's office, in which her eyes drift around, and she keeps her hands tightly on herself. But his eyes do not even flicker there for a second, and Ty Lee is... kind of offended that he doesn't at least briefly examine her bare legs.
"You wanted to see your mother," Ozai says calmly and Ty Lee looks up at him.
"I don't... I promised to testify in the trial. I am loyal to you and Azula, not... not her. But she is my mother and I want to say good─" she stammers, but he holds up his hand to silence her.
"You may see your mother. I will have you escorted to a neutral meeting room, and then you can return to my family, hopefully, at complete ease. You and my daughter shared a bed last night; I'm glad of it. And you've been wearing your hair properly too." He sounds proud of himself, strangely, and Ty Lee does not know how much he knows.
That is the frightening thing.
[X]
Ty Lee winds up escorted to a room, but she quickly realizes that there is no way out. She is in prison, oh she is in prison and there is no escape. There is no escape and she can only see a chair, and then notices a bed with a slender body on it to her left, and to her right, a notebook of some sort.
In the center, in front of the chair, is a set of handcuffs.
Altogether, they seem strange. It is then that she realizes that she has heard about these sick traps. She has heard about them, and Ty Lee has somehow committed transgressions against a family she truly was becoming happy to join.
Ty Lee looks around, and suddenly the chest of the body on the bed shudders. She walks over there quickly, and finds her mother, looking wan and sweaty.
"Are you okay?" Ty Lee whispers, horrified. She presses her hand to her mother's forehead and she has a strong fever. "You're sick. What did they do?"
Her pretty, wide baby animal eyes swim with tears.
"Take this." Mother shoves a piece of paper into Ty Lee's hands. It is sweaty from her mother's illness, and Ty Lee feels so much guilt for having fun on a date with Azula while this was happening.
She unravels the small scroll and reads.
On the notebook, write down at least ten names of collaborators and rebels in the Southern Earth Kingdom. Your mother will receive medicine, and she will be spared the execution as long as you continue cooperating. Or, you may take the poison beside the notebook, and end her life painlessly. In the center of the room are chains. You will be wed, but not willingly, and not as yourself. You will be a prisoner, half-conscious and half-alive.
Ty Lee looks at the options and sits down, trying to control her breathing.
No, no, no, no.
Azula wouldn't let this happen. But Ty Lee knows nothing about Azula, except that they have a spark. There cannot be love with what they have so far; it is forced infatuation.
Knowing Azula, she probably does not care what happens to Ty Lee.
Even if she symbolizes protection to Ty Lee in this palace. Azula is a shield that Ty Lee has some very complex feelings about.
And then she snaps back to reality, far away from anyone who could but likely wouldn't help her. Wondering if Azula knew about this. If Azula is as sadistic as Ty Lee worried.
No, no, no, no.
How can Ty Lee make this choice? How?