Azula knows she is insane, but she did not predict she was crazy enough to be playing mahjong with a hallucination early this morning. She gets up to go splash water on her face and then looks over her shoulder at the visage of a beautiful dead woman.
"Don't peek," Azula orders.
Ty Lee smiles. "I'm a hallucination, remember? I already know what the tiles are."
"Have you stopped insisting you are a ghost then?"
"No. But if you think I'm planning on peeking at your tiles, have you stopped insisting I'm imaginary?" Ty Lee teases, smiling. Azula does not criticize her for the boldness.
"I could spend my whole life dreaming, you know?" Azula says softly, studying the impeccably designed imaginary girl. "I never would have thought that before the war ended, but, now I don't think it would be so bad."
"You aren't dreaming, though, princess," Ty Lee says, tapping a tile with her fingers. The noise echoes so realistically even though Azula knows it is not there. "You're wide awake. What happens then? I wanna know because you know that I love you."
"You dare ask because you no longer fear me. There is nothing I can do to you worse than killing you," Azula states, shrugging. She revels in openly treating the act coldly for the first time.
"There are worse things," Ty Lee says, standing up and walking towards Azula. "You could forget me, but I don't know if you'll ever do that. You could continue flaunting being with other people just to spite me. You could die too."
"If you… if I was dead and you were alive, would you miss me?" Azula asks, terrified by how much she shrinks while letting the thought invade her broken mind.
Ty Lee whispers, stroking Azula's arm soothingly, "Do you care about the answer? According to you I'm imaginary, Azula."
Azula snarls, batting Ty Lee's soft hand away. "Oh, come on. Stop being difficult."
Ty Lee pauses before she quietly replies, with unmistakable tears in her eyes, "If I were still alive and you were dead, I know that I would miss you."
When Azula begins to wretchedly sob, Ty Lee wisely disappears yet again.
Azula tires of a war that never seems to end. She sits on a throne and studies men and women in fancy uniforms that do not mean a thing. Her ghost lingers in the room and gives no indication that she will mention this morning when Azula broke while playing Mahjong.
She listens to their worthless opinions and opts to seize control of this fight on her own. If you want something done right, you must do it yourself.
"I think we need to make a direct strike," Azula orders, her expression keeping it clear that she will not put an ounce of thought into their idiotic ideas. "We cannot stand by and look weak in the eyes of the rebellion. They will suffer and despair at our hands."
"I love your confidence," brightly remarks the ghost sitting on the floor beside the throne. Azula tries her best not to look over her shoulder but cannot stop herself. She quickly fixes her attention back on those closest to her. In a business sense, not a personal sense, of course. Azula only has one friend and that friend is not real.
"That is confident, your majesty," says her Defense Minister and she starts to quietly laugh before she pulls herself together. They all look so concerned about her. "We could pull it off if only we knew where to strike them."
"I have a few ideas about that," Azula says, leaning back in her throne. "I found a prisoner in the dungeons the other day. My brother. The rebels would love having him, enough to be reckless, enough to give us some opportunity to find out how to hit them hard."
The eyes of her underlings light up eagerly. Azula smirks victoriously. Maybe Ozai was not a fool to hand off the city to her. She will be better at stamping out the rebellion than anyone could ever be. Than even he could ever be.
If only she were not crazy. Not being hung up on her ex-girlfriend's ghost would probably help her be an effective leader.
"And you will speak to the disgraced Prince Zuko?" asks her second in command.
"If you use a royal title in relation to that traitor again, I will hang you in front of the palace by the tendons in your heels," Azula calmly says, as if commenting on the weather.
"Yes, your highness," the man stammers, his eyes wide.
Ty Lee giggles. It nearly feels like old times.
When Azula goes to visit Zuko during a break in agonizing audiences and meetings, her brother looks up at her, smoldering with anger, and asks, "Did you like killing her?"
"Who? You are going to have to be much more specific," Azula says, despite knowing exactly whom he refers to. Mai, of course.
"You know who I'm talking about," Zuko growls through his teeth.
"Maybe." Azula tilts her head to the side and thinks for a few moments, mostly to leave him hanging. "Yes. I think I did like killing her. It was cathartic."
"Both of them?"
"Yes." Azula never has lied so poorly. "No. Not both of them, but it's your fault that it happened. You killed them both and you better learn to live with it."
"I didn't sign any execution orders."
"Our father made the suggestion and the arrangements. I thought prison was more appropriate."
"So you could break Ty Lee out and pretend to be her hero?"
Right on time, Azula's ghost touches her shoulder blade. Azula manages not to turn around.
"You used to lock me in rooms and closets just to listen to me scream," Ty Lee says softly, her hot breath beating against Azula's neck. "Then you'd come rescue me and pretend to be a hero. And I fell for it every time. I fell for it in purpose, because I wanted you to save me."
Azula reaches behind her to push Ty Lee away. Zuko looks baffled for a moment but she does not care what he thinks. She returns her gaze to her brother but still sees Ty Lee out of the corner of her eye.
"Do you miss her?" Zuko asks, giving Azula gooseflesh. She does not need this.
Azula coldly, more convincingly this time, insists, "No. Why would I miss her?"
"Are you gonna hide our relationship from your brother?" Ty Lee asks, batting her eyelashes and looking so damned pretty that Azula wants to kill her again.
"Because," Zuko says, unaware of the ghost or hallucination in the room, "I think she would miss you." His eyebrows shoot up and Azula has no idea why until she takes survey of her posture, body, thoughts and then touches her damp cheek.
"You must be suffocating on all of the dust in here. You have infinite time as a prisoner, why don't you bother cleaning?" Something in my eye. She almost laughs at how pitiful that attempt sounds. Azula needs to get back into the swing of lying about more than her affections for the girls that come and go one night at a time.
"Right," says Zuko, not poking the dragon. "But your insane girlfriend aside, since she'd love you even if you cut her fingers off… I think Mai would miss you too."
Azula turns around, walks out of the room and slams the door behind her.
She cries alone in these ancient halls.
Azula skips her meetings, claiming to be ill from the disgusting food and water in this horrible excuse for a city, and lies in her bed, staring at the ceiling. She has done this before in her life many times, consumed by her racing thoughts and feeling encapsulated in that prison of consciousness and brilliant intelligence that makes her analyze every breath she takes.
Someone sits down on her bed and touches her hand. She lets Ty Lee do it because she does not have the willpower to force her away.
"Don't cry, please," Ty Lee whispers, sounding so genuine that Azula wants to scream and claw her face. "It hurts me so much when I can't make you happy all the time."
"It is all your fault," Azula hisses, letting tears fall. The imaginary can witness weakness. She does not care what this fragment of a memory sees.
"You don't know what'll come tomorrow. That's the best I can do, your highness," Ty Lee says gently, caressing Azula's face. The Fire Lord still does not move.
"You are being far too bold," Azula snaps and Ty Lee recoils and makes herself look small.
"Your plans to attack the rebels are so good. You're the best Fire Lord ever," Ty Lee says.
"I know that. This has nothing to do with my capability as a ruler!" Azula exclaims, not giving a damn who hears. All grovel before her no matter what she screams in the night.
"You feel like you have blood on your hands, don't you?"'
"So do you. We were soldiers. We were soldiers and so we killed."
"That's different. Enemy soldiers and leaders and whoever else we killed were different than executing people you didn't…" Ty Lee breathes in deeply and edges slightly away from Azula. "Not that you didn't. There just wasn't a lot of closure for you. You needed it and now you'll never get it."
"Go away," Azula chokes, knowing full well that Ty Lee rarely obeys that order.
"I still love you," Ty Lee says. "I'll always love you, just like Zuko said."
"Your love does not matter to me. I have all I ever wanted."
"If I may protest, your majesty, I don't think the things you wanted are what you have," Ty Lee says, now hesitantly touching Azula's hair. She breathes a sigh of relief when the Fire Lord allows it. It makes her seem more real, which kills Azula.
"I told you I have what I wanted, so shut up if you know what's good for you," Azula snaps, but then her voice weakens slightly. "I want you to go away. I want to forget you. Make me forget you before I—I—I…" She does not know how to threaten a dead girl.
"It's nice to live in your world," Ty Lee comments, which Azula does not understand. "If you forgot me, I don't think I'd have that anymore. I'm here whenever you need me. Isn't that important? I'm a ghost. I'm someone who will always be on your side and always be there and never do anything against you or to hurt you. You'll never be lonely."
Azula closes her eyes for a long while. Ty Lee sits beside her while she sleeps.
She remains there when Azula wakes up.
In the morning, Azula wakes early and skips her firebending to go check in on Zuko. She still formulates the different ways she could use him as leverage to catch the rebels. Every idea would work, but many of them fail once she thinks far enough ahead.
She needs to form some kind of bond with Zuko, which makes her sick. It would be easier to just keep tormenting him until the end of time. Yet, she knows they have only one thing—or two, if you will—that bind them together.
Two people.
"I thought about what you said," Azula says as she walks inside, deciding to take an approach she does not like but thinks might work. "It is an interesting theory that I might miss them."
"An interesting theory?" Zuko rolls his eyes. "I bet you wish they were never born. It would've been better for both of us, huh?"
"It would cause less pain, certainly," Azula says. "I once read that it is much darker and colder when a flame goes out than if it never burned."
"Not a bad one." Zuko shrugs.
They feel like siblings for a few fleeting moments and it makes them both extremely uncomfortable. The brother and sister were born to be enemies and breaking that mold never feels very good to either.
"I miss them both," Azula says. "Are you satisfied with that answer?"
"Yeah. Creepy as it is, I like you when you're honest," Zuko says.
"It might be best if you do not like me as we proceed. Your future is bleak."
"Always has been. I'm used to it." He laughs. She laughs. Azula stops first and stiffens.
She regally orders, "I have a request, brother."
He does not like the sound of it already.