The last time Ty Lee had made a personal visit to the palace, it had been weeks before the start of the Midsummer Festival, when Mai had been inspired enough to invite the girl over to share the last of the spring wolfsberry wine from the palace larders. The night had begun with a spontaneous demonstration in acrobatics along the garden baluster and ended with a thoroughly inebriated Ty Lee sobbing into her lap and lamenting the childhood tragedy of the death of her beloved kitten, Garbanzo.
While the episode had been quite some time ago, Mai had no desire to repeat the incident again. She took an extra care to make sure the menu was well-planned, and only the most faithful of the serving staff were attending to them.
Not like she cared about gossip or things like that.
She stared at the nauseating floral-pastel table spread with an upturned eyebrow, pleased to see that her instructions had been followed and there wasn't the faintest sign of alcohol or canapés of the legume origin anywhere within reach. Satisfied, she waved the servants away, and once she was sure they were out of sight, slumped into one of the lounge chairs in a decided un-stately manner.
As much as she hated to admit it, she had begun to look forward to Ty Lee's visits.
Affairs in the capital had taken an unsurprising downturn during the beginning stages of the summit meeting. Preliminary negotiations were at a stand-still, and the new ambassadors were proving themselves to be incapable of the simplest tasks. Although young persons fresh from the academies and universities seemed hardly to blame. The Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom Confederacy had sent their best, the most talented in oratory and the most skilled. The Avatar's companion, Katara, had already proven herself …insistent in negotiations.
In contrast, the upper echelons of the Fire Nation's political cabinet were entirely bereft of any skilled, and experienced statesmen, many of whom had been removed from office or purged in the Ba Sing Se War Tribunals. What was happening now in the Four Nations Summit was not unlike what had happened in the years prior, and no doubt would continue in the years to come. The Fire Nation had lost the war, and a victor's vengeance was proving to be worth the fires of a hundred wars over. The country was being carved up like a melon.
While possessing little power herself, Mai saw no end of visitors from every noble family still residing within the capital. Those that had backed the wrong royal horse had lost their sons and fathers, and those that had backed the right one were losing their properties as colonies were expropriated, and wealth as investments from collapsed war industries dried up. Their bribes--though impressive and it pained her to refuse them--wouldn't have lent her (or Zuko) the clout she needed to save what it was that they wanted.
Chewing thoughtfully on an olive, Mai wondered bitterly if the Fire Nation knew of any methods of diplomacy besides those involving gunships.
"Gee Mai, gloomy much?" Someone said and she almost expected a hyperactive burst of pink to erupt into her field of vision, and for the familiar voice to begin prattling nonstop about circus bears, shoes, and boys. But when she lifts her eyes across the table, it's only Ty Lee offering her an apologetic and bright grin, appearing wordlessly in the opposite chair. Mai is certain that she will never get used to the dark green dresses that Ty Lee wears now, and thinks with a certain amount of deprecation how it blends in with the leaves of the garden's azalea and hydrangea bushes. She's heard that the islanders of Kyoshi wear blue, and that the green of the Kyoshi Warriors' uniforms was only an attempt at Earth Kingdom cosmopolitanism, but no matter how she tries to envision Ty Lee in peasant clothes, she always imagines Ty Lee wearing pink.
Oblivious to Mai's ire, Ty Lee continued. "Well, besides your usual gloominess."
"Ha-ha." Mai deadpanned, dabbing delicately at the corners of her mouth with a lace napkin. "Sorry I didn't see you come in, I thought you were a shrub."
Ty Lee giggled, pouring herself a cup of tea. "I came from work." She apologized, gesturing to the length of her torso, and what was presumably her civilian uniform. "But I kind of like it. You should see our dress uniforms."
Mai's face made it very clear how she felt about Earth Kingdom fashion, making Ty Lee laugh again.
"I'm just glad you feel better." Mai replied drolly as she took the teapot. She watched carefully as Ty Lee happily wafted the tea steam, exuding a contented sigh when she took a sip and settled comfortably into the chaise. Unsurprised that she was unable to find a trace of the fatigue or moodiness that Zuko had spoke of, Mai returned to observing her tea leaves quietly.
"I love summer, don't you?" Ty Lee mused breezily. "It makes me feel…relaxed. Calm? No…" She wrinkled her nose, her fingertips waving in the air as if she could pluck the words from it. "Something with an "uhm" sound."
"Comfortable." Mai supplied without missing a beat, mildly disgusted by how easy it was to fit into Ty Lee's thinking patterns.
"Yeah!" Ty Lee exclaimed. "I feel comfortable."
They had met like this for as long as Ty Lee had returned to the Fire Nation, casually and with no pattern beyond whenever Mai felt like it, and when Ty Lee had the time. Sequestered away in the most private corners of the palace, Mai tolerated Ty Lee's inane prattling, and allowed for the other girl to fill the silences she deliberately left unattended.
They never spoke of the old days, they never talked about how Ty Lee's search for her place in the world had locked her somewhere she was unable to leave, or how Zuko's ascension to the throne had left Mai exactly where she had been so desperate to escape. They talked inconsequentially, moving from one innocuous subject to the next, moving in circles for the sake of companionship.
And to Mai's gratitude, they never discussed the single element that had united them, who had brought them together and the conspicuous emptiness that was always present when they met under the leaves of the palaces' verdant garden. How it always felt that someone was missing.
It was agonizing to admit what she was about to do.
Mai wasn't stupid, and Ty Lee wouldn't have lied if she were pressed, but without a spoken word between them, the Fire Lady knew that Ty Lee had been visiting Azula in the depths of a sanatorium. It was an open secret that Mai had guessed immediately, and before long so had the rest of the capital and whoever else choosing to keep their ear to politics and common sense. In the meantime, Ty Lee talked about everything between the sky and the earth except for Azula, whether out of deference for Mai's new station or a personal affliction of masochism, Mai didn't want to know.
But if she were honest, Mai would admit that she had grown a little proud of the farce they insisted on keeping, how long they had been hiding from the reality they had created together.
"It's nice to see you're doing well." Mai said honestly.
Ty Lee smiled, plucking a plum from the fruit plate and rolling it across the back of her hand. "How about you?"
"Don't marry a politician, Ty Lee." Mai said darkly, remembering her previous thoughts and eliciting a laugh from her friend.
"By the way, your mother sends her regards."
"I hope you told her to kiss off." Ty Lee rolled her eyes, fully knowing that the Fire Lady wasn't in a position to do anything of the sort.
"She wanted to know why her letters were being refused. And when you're going to 'stop this nonsense and come home.'"
"I don't get how she expects me to help. " Ty Lee said bitterly, as if to say look at me, with the faintest hint of a pout on her lips. "And you can tell her to kiss the bright red side of my posterior aura." While their tones were glacial and they spoke trivially, the line that had been drawn between their families glowed like a faintly-healed scar. Mai's blood came from the highest of the noble houses, her ancestors having produced a tradition of prominent statesmen for hundreds of years. Her marriage to Zuko had singled her family out as the only noble house in financial stability.
Ty Lee's family held a lower fiefdom and so for generations served the crown by providing their children as soldiers or brides to the Fire Lord's allies. Ty Lee had fit into one of these categories, and her sisters the other, and with all of them serving Ozai's fallen regime, Ty Lee's house was falling into ruin. The matriarch was grabbing at straws.
"That's what I said." Mai mumbled and moved to pick up her teacup, as if suddenly finding something distasteful in her mouth. "Basically, anyways."
Ty Lee shrugged half-heartedly, her thin eyebrows knitting together as she glowered at the fruit in her hand. From the corner of her eye, Mai watched carefully as clarity settled over the younger girl's face, a determination that overrode the seriousness of what Mai was trying to broach.
"You know what we should do?" Ty Lee's eyes lit up timely as she started to grow excited. "We should go to the Summer's End Festival. I know Zuko's always busy, but you can come with me! We could grab some spice apples, watch the fireworks…Oh, it'll be so fun!" She continued to talk at length about the fireworks, gesturing with her spread hands to illustrate the illuminations of the explosions.
But Mai wasn't thrown, and she watched the younger girl's antics with a tested eye.
"Don't you usually have a date to those things?" Mai asked absently, her mind riffling a million miles a minute that she barely caught the way Ty Lee's face fell momentarily.
"I kind of wanted to go with a friend this time." She said wistfully, dropping the plum onto her plate, untouched.
Like every lie Ty Lee told, the words were true, but betrayed the story she wasn't telling. Mai guessed that it had less to do with dating troubles than with Azula's suicide and the impending summit that might soon negate the girl's miraculous survival. She tried not to think about the Ba Sing Se Tribunals, or about the fourteen year old girl she had betrayed for a childhood love. "Sorry, I can't."
I never wanted this. She wanted to say as Ty Lee forced brightness grew leaden. The Avatar's triumph had become theirs, when she had only wanted to save Zuko's life, and their treason meant that they stood on opposing sides of new societal lines. Mai might have been the trigger, but Ty Lee had always been the keystone. Their momentous betrayal sat in the dark, while Ty Lee, who had moved the wave of the Fire Nation's war movement, was being devoured by the world she had helped to save. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
A thick silence passed and Ty Lee looked stunned, and Mai realized that she had spoken every word aloud. With all thoughts of a slow and careful approach thrown out of the window in a moment of carelessness, Mai stiffened her shoulders and tried to prepare herself as she tore the tenuous remains of their friendship asunder, as she shoved them onto opposing sides of a different war.
"Mai, are you okay?"
Mai took a frigid sip of her tea, her eyes conveying irritation by the apparent alarm that her friend didn't even try to hide. Sometimes it briefly occurred to her that she was giving Ty Lee too much credit, and the girl really was as air headed as she appeared. Resolved, she bit the bullet.
"Take Azula to the festival, Ty Lee." She muttered, as Ty Lee blanched. She breezed on, her words outpacing her thoughts, as if the matter of breaking a coded oath and the fragility of their sanctuary amounted to nothing more than getting it over with as soon as possible. "Who knows, maybe she'll even enjoy it."
"Um." Ty Lee stammered, reaching a hand to the table as if steadying herself.
"The summit is deliberating over the demilitarization of Fire Nation, and Azula's case is on the agenda. Our delegation doesn't have a clue on what to do about her, and Zuko is lucky if he can negotiate himself out of a dark closet," Mai said in a single breath.
"Wait, I don't get--"
Grabbing Ty Lee's elbow and pulling her so that she could see the gray-brown of the younger girl's widened eyes, Mai knew that she was scaring her. But if she had to blame it on someone, it would be on Ty Lee and the stupid girl's inability to see the dangers she put herself in.
"I know you have this personal need to martyr yourself, but you're being stupid." It had been one thing to defect to the Kyoshi Warriors and the Earth Kingdom, but it was quite another to return and make daily visits to a dungeon. She had been inclined to agree with Ty Lee's mother, had she not known how desperately the older woman was trying to use her last unmarried daughter as a political bride. Ty Lee had failed to pick a side, and the fences were fast climbing, fences that Mai and Zuko's rule had made.
It's only to protect her, she thinks to herself. It's not out of guilt or regret, and it's not because I have delusions of what Azula might be.
"I'm telling you this because I have no idea what you're expecting from Azula. Whatever you're doing, it's a horrible idea." Mai said, low and even. She thinks to herself that maybe Ty Lee is everything that she imagines the girl has grown up to be, because the shock has evaporated from the girl's eyes and is replaced with a somber intelligibility that said Mai was treading thinly. With both of them, Azula was a subject that neither had a deep patience for.
"Mai…" Ty Lee started without a trace of humor or leniency. Her skin beneath Mai's grip paled, her forearm and hand flushed with red. "Please, you're hurting me."
She pulled her hand away, letting Ty Lee collect herself, and tried not to be bothered with how the silence was considerably more tolerable than the way Ty Lee was looking at her like she was a stranger.
"You're forgetting who she is, what she's like." The Fire Lady continued, subdued. "A few years in a hospital isn't going to change her. We had some good moments together, but that doesn't mean she's a good person deep down somewhere."
"Mai, stop." Ty Lee pleaded, shutting her eyes. "I know, okay? That's not what I'm trying to do."
"I don't know what you're hoping for."
"Mai, I know you're worried, but it's okay, I know what I'm doing."
No, you don't. But she had reached the most she was going to get from the younger girl, and Mai wasn't willing to push further when she had made her point. It wasn't her place to lecture Ty Lee, and frankly, she didn't want to. There was something disturbing and sick in the way her friend was unwilling to let go of the past, something that turned Mai's stomach to acid. As much as she wanted to sway Ty Lee from her path, she didn't want to linger longer than she could tolerate. "Fine." She said instead.
In the void left by the aborted conversation, a tenseness fell around them that signaled the near end of their meeting. They looked at each other, unsurely, as if testing the awkward space between them. Exhausted by their exchange, it seemed that neither girl was willing to make another attempt at civility. Always the politer one, Ty Lee rose from her chair and made an excuse about having to teach classes and saying that she would be back another time, and Mai accepted it, knowing that the time would never come. She had broken something between them, mentioning Azula had brought the princess into their refuge as surely as if the girl herself had walked into the garden, gleaming armor, crown, bloodthirsty smile and all. By mentioning the summit, Mai had reminded them that they weren't on the same side anymore.
Regret touches her heart as she watched her childhood friend ascend the stairs that lead back into the palace. She remembers a time when Ty Lee used to balance on her hands, never walking when she could cartwheel, flip, or dance her way to wherever she wanted to go. When Mai was younger, it was an issue of aggravation, when now its absence only pains her. Ty Lee had never been carefree, and her smiles never fully honest, but she had something that she lacked now. Mai couldn't pinpoint it, and the feeling nagged at her. It reminded her of Ty Lee's auras.
Mai was searching for a word.
"Mai?"
The Fire Lady blinked and realized that she had been staring. Ty Lee had stopped and turned to look back at her, hovering at the top of the stairs and facing her, unsurely and expectant. Mai is never nostalgic, she doesn't have the inclination and can never stomach the need to dwell on the past.
Even so, she can't help but clench her jaw as she spoke through gritted teeth. "What is it?"
The feeling was persistent, and Ty Lee's eyes shone with a heartbreak she had already resigned herself to.
"What do you think they're going to do with Azula?"
Mai had no qualms with lying, she did it often, and often at the expense of others. Like Ty Lee, she spoke half-truths that never told the whole story, playing on what the other girl already knew. Azula had humiliated the entirety of Ba Sing Se, uniting the throne and its puppet master in a single voice. Ozai's life imprisonment had been a paltry recompense, hardly retribution. The war tribunal had only been a prelude, the Fire Nation's dead war ministers and generals only having whetted a dangerous appetite; the Earth Kingdom was screaming for the princess' head on a stake.
What Ty Lee didn't see was that Zuko had an agenda of his own. His own advisors and cabinet feared the old regime, hated the militaristic regime that had been a knife at their necks for a hundred years. The princess' life was the last obstacle to the era of peace and diplomacy that Zuko had promised. She had been her father's heir, the personification of his ideals and all that remained of his legacy. Azula was a shining beacon that represented a very real and legitimate claim to the throne, a banner under which all of Zuko's political opponents and enemies would unite and rally. Even half-crazed or dying, Azula would always be dangerous.
Ty Lee wears green now. It stands amongst the red that bathes the Fire Nation, and burns against the memory of pink skirts and auras. Mai had no qualms with lying, she did it often, but she had already betrayed one friend and wouldn't do it to the one who had saved her. But the whole of Ty Lee's heart and compassion couldn't have saved Azula from the fate she was destined for, all of Ty Lee's worry and pity couldn't save the princess anyways.
So she spoke a half-truth. "I don't know, but we have the state minister defending her." And half-way through her last sentence, it hits her. "She'll be okay." She remembers what Ty Lee used to be.
Ty Lee turns until her body is draped in the shadows made from the eaves of the palace and the stark light of the sun. She looks older than eighteen, burdened by something invisible, the poise that had been in her shoulders, forgotten. She was dispirited and defeated. If there was a fight to be won, it wasn't inside the girl to keep going.
Her profile crumples into the darkness, leaving spots of bursting color in Mai's eyes that reminds her of forests and the grass of the earth. Something inside her wanted to call out to the girl, to bring her back and return to the isolation they had created together. But something had been moving far faster than either of them had dreaded would, pushing them into future, dragging servant, queen, and disgraced royalty alike into the light of the new world. Mai didn't believe in spirits, auras, or gods, but if she ever prayed for salvation or the ability of beings larger than themselves to keep them safe, she was praying now.
