Hypnagogia Part II: Jetties
Azula does not know how far she is willing to go to rescue Ty Lee and salvage her family.
But it is certainly far enough to delve deeper and deeper into this dark perversion of the real world. She cannot help but wonder against her will if perhaps Ty Lee is right, and that Azula is the comatose one, and that Azula is the one whose life is in danger.
Yet, Azula has not seen any evidence of that with her own two eyes. While the world might not always be real to Azula, given the hallucinations that come and go like sudden rainfall in the spring, she cannot comprehend the idea that all of her time at Ty Lee's bedside was merely an illusion.
"What were those things?" Ty Lee whispers, her eyes wide. She seems more rattled than Azula has ever seen her before in their lives. "They were awful. They were awful. Please hold me."
Her voice is too breathy, but Azula chalks it up to the fact that they have been separated for so long. This world may be dark and twisted, but they are in it together and nothing is as beautiful as that fact. Azula wants to savor every second even if it means slashing up her old life and letting it bleed out.
"I don't know. But they weren't alive," Azula replies as her wife latches onto her and clings.
The heat between them is magnificent, but Azula does feel it becoming colder and colder, like the rush of blood as it pulses against skin and then drains from her body. Ty Lee is a part of her, like that blood, and Azula loves her as much as her own very life essence.
Therefore, Azula does not give a fuck how many screaming feminine zombies she has to slay. Because no one is going to help her save Ty Lee but herself. And there is a huge chance that their daughter, their only child, their beloved child is trapped somewhere here.
"Yeah," Ty Lee whispers as she continues to drag Azula forward.
They continue their march through the mist without hesitation.
睡美人的镜子
Ty Lee catches her breath when she stops at the edge of a stream of dark water. It is blackened and ashen looking, just like everything else in this nightmare she and Azula are trapped in. Ty Lee looks down at it and then glances around for a bridge, for any bridge.
"There's a way across, right? I can see the palace from here," Azula says quietly and Ty Lee purses her dry, cracked lips.
She does not think that they should go to the palace; there cannot be anything good waiting there for she and Azula. It looks even more macabre than it does in the real world, and Ty Lee has no clue why Azula seems so preoccupied with getting to it.
Perhaps because it is the only familiar feature here, but that just makes it more chilling and disturbing to Ty Lee. The acrobat shivers for a moment before feeling much, much too warm. She squints around at the sky, desperately seeking the sun, a firestorm or some other source of the agonizing heat that is engulfing her body as Azula studies the shore in search of a way across the river.
At first it is just mildly uncomfortable, like realizing she has stayed out in the summer sun for much too long. But now her chest is tightening as it becomes as unbearable as being held against her will in excruciatingly hot water.
"Azula!" is the first thing that Ty Lee screams, because there is no other word that comes to her lips. "Azula, do you feel this?"
Azula's head snaps up from her careful survey and she stares at Ty Lee as if she is in insane.
"I don't feel anything. It's cold, though. It's way too cold here and it's getting colder," Azula says smoothly and Ty Lee attempts to laugh, but she thinks her lungs might be scalding away.
"You're-you're kidding, right?" Ty Lee stammers as she walks towards Azula. The pressure of the air against her face just feels like smoke billowing out of a volcano and making her sweat even more.
"I don't..." Azula squints and Ty Lee can see that she does have no idea. That Azula is shivering very slightly and when Ty Lee looks more closely, her wife's lips are an uncomfortably unnerving shade of blue.
"I'm sweating. I'm burning, actually, I think I might be burning alive and..." Ty Lee presses her hands against her stomach and starts rolling up her shirt to remove it.
Azula watches, noticing how much colder the nighttime feels. She assumed her frigid chill was because those dark, opaque clouds had blocked out whatever type of sun this unconscious world boasts. But Ty Lee is sweating; she is sweating beads as she looks hungrily at the water.
"Don't go in there," Azula snaps, her voice echoing through the seemingly deserted ledge.
"I'm not," Ty Lee squeaks, even though she wants nothing more than to douse herself in any water, no matter how black and deadly it looks.
"You're hot because it wants you to go into the water!" Azula snarls viciously as she walks towards Ty Lee to forcibly restrain her if she has to. It seems incredibly foreboding the more she thinks about it. Particularly since her teeth are chattering ever so slightly as her face gradually blanches.
"What? What wants me to go into the water?" Ty Lee shrieks, her eyes widening as she truly contemplates doing it no matter what Azula says.
The contemplation becomes unbearable urge and need, and she walks past Azula as quickly as her legs can carry her. Azula lunges forward and her hands slip from Ty Lee's skin; it is much too slick with sweat. But Azula pushes off of the ashy bank with one foot and grabs Ty Lee by the arm as hard as she can.
Ty Lee takes a shallow, frightened breath and looks up at her bride. "I'm burning." Ty Lee hesitates as Azula digs her fingers into Ty Lee's arm, refusing to let her dive into what looks like certain and absolute death.
"You're going to look for a way across with me. The fog is freezing anyway," Azula says quietly as she looks at the frigid mist that is pressing against her, engulfing her in a glacier. "You are not going to leave my sight or disobey my orders until we are in safety."
Ty Lee clenches her jaw and for a moment forgets the volcanic heat tearing at her skin.
"You do not tell me what to do. You do not order me around. I will do whatever I want to do because you are not in charge of me!" Ty Lee shrieks with an irrational anger that she thinks must stem from the fire in her veins.
Azula tugs on her and then her breath catches when she sees the overly dark purple marks spreading across Ty Lee's smooth, tan skin. The bruises increase and Azula pulls her hand away as quickly as she can, watching Ty Lee look at her with a puzzled expression as her arm begins to become the shade of the water.
"Do you not see that?" Azula whispers and Ty Lee shakes her head. "Does it hurt?"
Ty Lee shakes her head again, her lips ajar. She has no idea what Azula is talking about, but she does not doubt that her wife is seeing something that Ty Lee cannot. Because while they may be in this world together, it is most certainly not a shared dream and Ty Lee realizes that more and more every second they spend in this abysmal prison.
"Azula, please help me find a way across. I'm fine." Ty Lee extends a hand and Azula recoils from it, still staring. Still staring as Ty Lee pulls back her braid to try to relieve herself from the sweat that seems to be trying to drown her.
Before Azula can protest, that familiar, nauseating screaming echoes behind them. They argued too loudly. They woke those awful things again, and Azula can see them emerging from the grey mist out of the corner of her eye.
"Just go in the water," Azula hisses, unable to find any other option. Her thoughts feel as frozen as her body, and she does not care anymore. "Just go."
Ty Lee does not have to be told twice as she runs to the water and dives into it without any concern about her likely death from touching it. It cools her, relieving the horrid searing sensation. She closes her eyes for a moment as the heat fades away, but she opens them as soon as she feels Azula beside her, swimming as quickly as she can in the opposite direction of the banks.
It should lead to the other side.
Should. Presumably. Ty Lee does not care because she can hear the howls of the dead and violent intensifying behind her.
Azula embraces the warmth of the water, although she feels a discomfort within her about the fact that it must be torture to Ty Lee. For some reason Ty Lee is burning up bright red from fever while Azula can see her skin becoming ruddy from frostbite.
The water seems endless. Endless. Endless.
睡美人的镜子
"Ty Lee," whispers a frantic voice and Ty Lee tries to force her eyes open. She cannot have left the dream world, not with Azula probably about to drown. Ty Lee is a stronger swimmer than her despite Azula's overconfidence in absolutely everything she does. "Ty Lee please drink this. Please."
Slowly, Ty Lee recognizes that muffled voice. Her... grandmother? Agni, she has not seen her grandmother in...
Well, time does not seem very clear to Ty Lee right now as her mind becomes hazier and hazier. But her eyes do open as her grandmother pleads more about drinking something. She realizes that she is sinking under water.
She is sinking under water and she begins to kick her legs in utter panic. But they feel so heavy; they want to drag her down in these disgustingly murky depths.
A hand grabs her wrist and Ty Lee feels the familiar, painful nails digging into her as she glides, drifting through the water away from the strange voice that feels ripped out of her childhood.
Ty Lee gasps for breath when her back hits the muddy ground, but she does not feel as if she needed to breathe. Because it is a dream, she reminds herself. How many dreams has she had in which she was swimming on Ember Island and could breathe under water without it being strange at all?
"Did you hear that?" Azula asks as she sits up on her knees and tries to pull her tangled hair out of her face.
"Hear what?" Ty Lee mumbles, rubbing her sore eyes. She still cannot quite see what her surroundings are, but it doesn't matter to her much in the long run.
"My brother. He was screaming at me before I realized I was drowning. Probably wanted me to drown." She laughs mirthlessly as she stands up.
"He wouldn't. You two get along so good," Ty Lee murmurs as she brushes Azula's hand away and pushes herself up. It makes her wife grind her teeth for a moment in the frustration of being rejected, but Ty Lee cannot care about tiny things like that right now.
"We don't want to kill each other anymore. There is a significant difference," Azula purrs before climbing up the tiny, crumbling cliff that blocks the two of them from the other side of the river. "Are you okay from the heat?"
"The water was cold." Ty Lee hesitates. "The water was cold for me."
Azula looks at her and nods, not protesting the fact that they both are experiencing intensely different sensations while here. Their fears were so different, after all. Their prisons were so different. This world is not to be trusted for an instant.
"It's closer," Azula whispers, sighing in relief. She had the creeping fear that perhaps this world was so untrustworthy that going towards the palace would bring her further away from it. "Mizuki is there and I know it."
"Mizuki probably isn't even here," Ty Lee admits. "And the palace doesn't look that inviting. Do you even see all those... thorns, or stakes, or something that's trying to keep people out."
"I do. That's exactly why I'm certain that our goal is there. This world is tailored for us. We are the only people here. Therefore, the only people the palace is trying to keep out are us. Therefore, those sharp blockades are trying to keep us from getting Mizuki back. You heard her screaming," Azula states and Ty Lee rolls her eyes before regretting it.
Ty Lee wishes she were not feeling annoyed with Azula, because Azula is lying on a bed, comatose, dying and Ty Lee cannot let that happen.
"If we're going to die," Ty Lee says quietly without thinking first, "I just really want to enjoy this time with you, okay?"
Azula looks at her, but before they can share the sweet moment Ty Lee was imagining, she averts her eyes and starts walking through the mist in the direction of the palace.
Ty Lee stares after her for a moment, her arms crossed over her soaking body, and then runs to catch up with her wife.
She knows Azula doesn't mean it. Azula never means it.
Azula just doesn't know how to express her love well.
And Azula isn't going to change; Ty Lee regrets trying to change her now that Azula is slipping away and might be gone any moment.
It isn't worth it.