It feels like a nightmare in slow motion.
Suki wasn't supposed to be here. Ty Lee knew because she had calculated the timing of the personnel schedule from the morning's itinerary. There was supposed to be an endless stream of meetings with ambassadors and advisors that required the presence of the Kyoshi Warriors' leader, but now that it was apparent that she had been sorely mistaken.
Azula slowly rises to her feet beside her, and the full weight of the situation seized Ty Lee with an icy fist around her throat.
Her smile comes on like her livelihood had been made on it, and although her words are hollow, she waves enthusiastically and bursts into motion. "Hey Suki!" She runs the entire way to where Suki is standing, leaving Azula and the guards far away. Behind her, she feels Azula watching them, feels the way her stare burns into her back. "It's so cool that you made it to the festival! Waiting to see the fireworks?"
Ty Lee is sure that her own face is frozen in a horribly mockery of an already-transparent and old pretension, and Suki is speechless. Her eyes are wide with comprehension and fixed to the figure that Ty Lee knows is floating distantly over her shoulder. Her rigid body is wound tight like coiled steel under bright lights and festival garments, and Ty Lee understands the irony in spending her entire life under the command of others and how she stands between these two people now.
Azula can look into people's eyes and see the entirety of their lives. Ty Lee sees it in the way people move, breathe, speak, and every movement that exudes a color, a light, a figment of their soul that bleeds around them in waves, telling a story, a history, a future.
She wonders if she sees the fear that arises in Suki before Azula does, if the flicker of terror that streaks across Suki's halo is just her own imagination, and if she herself has always been doomed to betray her friendships as if certain friendships weren't already betrayals.
She anticipates everything in Suki's aura. It reminds her of Mai's, but instead of outrage, she sees dread, and instead of revulsion, it's pity, and out of all things it's the pity and disappointment that hits her in the chest and wakes her to the realization that Suki has known for years, that there was nothing more to hide, and the only thing either of them was doing now was waiting.
"Hey what's going on?"
There's a larger cosmic joke being played, Ty Lee was sure of it. As surely as she finds the voice that arises from the clamorous din of the streets, she finds the light of Sokka's blue eyes, and watches helplessly as his smile falls. There's an ill-placed measure of sympathy, of camaraderie that blooms inside her as she sees the transformation across his face, his familiar ease turning into a darkness, an ingrained contempt and instinctive hatred.
"What's this?"
It's accusing and fraught with a biting hostility. It cuts deeply, reminding her painfully through the clever and well-made artifices of the life she had so carefully built, that it was still a sham. She remembers his begrudging acceptance, his guarded enthusiasm, how no matter how jovial his appearance his smile never reached his eyes when he looked at her, and that the suspicions and ire of the Fire Nation didn't matter. In the minds of the rest of the world, the victory had been won by the blood and noble sacrifices of the warriors who had given their lives and families for freedom, and not by the chance and momentary decisions of a single girl.
"What's going on?"
Anything she might have said in an attempt to defend herself disappears. She doesn't remember the last time anyone had cared about her opinion or what she thought. She remembers summer nights with bonfires and stars, the dark sky stretching out forever and how small their problems began to seem in the vastness of time. She thinks about the fears and dreams they confessed to each other, the demises they were afraid that awaited them, and wonders if Azula has ever felt cursed.
"The trial's tomorrow and you're with her?"
"Sokka, wait-" Suki begins.
"No, I want to hear it from Ty Lee." He's furious, and he's not searching for an explanation as much as he's looking for a reason to finally prove what he's known all along.
Ty Lee's mouth opens, not sure what she intended to say. Her words are a mirror, reflecting what people expect in her and she's hid behind them for so long that she's beginning to forget which of her thoughts were just parts of her constructed identities, and which were truly her own.
"After everything? Everything she's done?" He starts shouting. "All the people she's hurt? All the people she's killed?"
"Sokka, stop it!" Suki grabs his elbow, frightened at the unmitigated display of his anger. The marginal distance between Sokka and Ty Lee unnerves her, and she slips into it as if all it takes is a physical barrier. "She can be with whoever she wants to." There's a slight edge to her voice that Ty Lee doesn't trust. It tells her that everything she's dreaded is true, that the hurt she sees simmering in Suki is more than just a manifestation of her guilt. There's no concrete defense in her words, they're weak and they float away like air when Ty Lee realizes that they're only said for the sake of her presence.
"After everything Suki's done for you?" Sokka continues, his voice now hushed and baleful.
It's purposely exploitative because out of all people in the world, it's Ty Lee who understands better than anyone. She understands-more than anyone should have needed to-that it wasn't purely through merits, hard work, or ethics that bought your place in life, and it was only through the kindness in others that she has gotten this far. The outrage of her countrymen still stings like a poorly healed scar, and Suki's compassion had soothed her wounds even before their tenuous relationship could have begun to be called a friendship.
Ty Lee sleeps in bunks instead of beds, barracks instead of houses, but it's still a home and a life that someone else has given her.
She remembers cold evenings that moved into slowly warming morning, the chilling mist breaking apart in a dawning sun. She remembers what it was like to stand in a singular frozen moment in time, the precise point that branched equidistant to her past and the moment when she would realize that all that remained of Azula was rotting flesh and bones.
Suki had been…kind. Motherly, even. A constant in a lifetime of changing variables.
"Do you even know what she did to Suki?" It lances through Ty Lee like she hadn't been waiting for it, like she hadn't been waiting for Sokka to recall this one thing because it's so plain to everyone that she already knows. She knows because she was there when everything happened.
"Sokka, that's enough!" He's crossed a line, an understanding that had been Ty Lee and Suki's alone. Suki never raised her voice, not even during drills or in the heat of the thickest arguments with the squad captains, but she's yelling now, furious and unbridled.
"It's funny, I remember having Ty Lee beaten as well." A voice says at Ty Lee's elbow. "And it might be the one thing I did in the war that no one really blames me for." Azula smiles, her escort of guards hovering behind her. "Strange, since she didn't seem to enjoy it nearly as much as your girlfriend did."
Sokka rankled, bristling at the implications of the princess' words, but still wise enough to realize bait when it was presented to him. "You're going to get what's coming to you."
It has to be accidental, how Azula stands at her back now when all Ty Lee has done is trail the heels of those that came before her. But Azula's standing here, so close that Ty Lee imagines the breath of her words whispering down the skin of her neck. She has no misguided notions as to what this is; Azula is not defending her, she's defending an idea, a patriotism, the hungering voracity of their fathers, and the propensities for violence that had seeded their births. It overshadows Ty Lee's shame. Azula is disgusted by it, disgusted that Ty Lee would be cowed by people who never had to account for anything in their lives, who won their victories through the power of others, and justified themselves with nothing but the memories of those long dead and gone.
"Not likely." Azula replied dully-almost sadly-entirely uninterested in the tirade the man seems poised to launch. Motionlessly, she seemed to skirt him away, intent on something else. The bottom of Ty Lee's stomach plummeted at Azula's slow smile, trembling faintly at the gaze that flowed through her golden eyes and into Suki's frame.
"But if it isn't my favorite little Earth peasant." Her voice is different-its transformation, surreal-the morose and embittered heaviness evaporating like a mirage, as if her metal bindings hadn't existed at all and the fire was still able to burn inside her.
It's a cold hand laid at the base of Ty Lee's neck, it coils down her spine as surely as if Azula had reached out and touched her to ignite their collective memory of her ease, her quiet acquiescence in being a tool for suffering and torment. If Azula had been the mastermind, Ty Lee had been the machine, and every inch of the scars the princess had made in the skin and bodies of their enemies had been made with Ty Lee's hands, with a covenant, a pledge, a condemnation.
"Azula." Suki says, looking more confident than she felt.
If there had been a victim of the war, (who existed in the purest and most genuine expressions of the term) Ty Lee was sure that it had to have been Suki, lured beyond the safety of her home with ill-conceived notions of grandeur and idealism. Suki-full of kindness-who had only nurtured her and helped her grow.
"Leave her alone." Sokka practically growled, and this time when he moved to block Suki, the girl didn't protest and instead fell silently beside him. Still, she wasn't without her stubbornness, and Ty Lee supposed that Earth Kingdom women could be just as prideful, even in the most untimely of moments.
I know what you really are. Azula says it without a breath, the same look on her face that Ty Lee had seen countless times over again. She was a ghost, haunting the same dark dungeons and prisons that would bind her. But back then, there had been very little Azula left undone, and in the grim shadows of her dying empire, she had stripped Suki away until there was nothing left. She had flayed her of virtue and honor, dignity and principles, and Ty Lee had been witness to it all; she had seen how everything Suki held dear flee under Azula's terrifying artistry.
It was true that Suki had never broke, never given up hope, but it had been such a thin distinction. It had seemed more pathetic than honorable, and Suki had devolved into something so horrifyingly inhumane that Ty Lee knew that there might as well have been no difference at all.
"Still so brave, I see." Azula says to Suki, making cruelty look so amiable.
The corners of the princess' mouth curled up, and while Suki held her gaze steadily and with the same unfailing strength that had always come so easily to her, Ty Lee could see the curling tendrils of horror. "I'm not afraid of you." Suki's voice is thin like paper
"Azula…" The words die in Ty Lee's mouth, fallen to ash, and while the princess freezes her blood with a single venomous glare, Suki and Sokka (to their credit) pretend like she never spoke at all.
"You're not fooling anyone with that act." Sokka carries on. "You may have Ty Lee and your brother believing you, but people are always going to remember who you are and what you did."
"Well, that's good news." Azula says as if truly gratified. "I was beginning to worry."
"People like you are the worst. You have no sympathy for the people you hurt; you take peoples' families, homes, and lives and you don't even care. If you had wanted to die you should have done it years ago and saved everyone the trouble."
He speaks casually about death like it's never touched him, a curse with no weight, as if his own paths have never brought him through wastelands and killing fields, as if there's nothing that hangs over him overshadowing the memories of his boyhood and the home he left behind. As if Azula has never lost a mother. As if Azula ever had a mother to lose.
Ty Lee remembers then-with all the sadness and shame of its sudden arrival-that no one has told Azula about Ursa's death.
"You would be dead right now if you had really wanted to die. What are we supposed to think, unless suicide is just something else lunatic tyrants can't even do right."
There was a harsh sound, and a terrible pain flamed through the flat of her hand and up her wrist. Suki was looking at her, horrified, and mute. Sokka staggered, his eyes wide and full of comprehension. Behind her, there was the distinct movement of metal as Azula's guards moved to shield her and take her by the arm. She didn't even remember moving, or even being angry.
"I-I…" She stammered as Sokka precariously lifted a palm to the side of his face, all of his thoughts plainly featured in the look he gives her. A hint of red dotted the corner of his mouth and Ty Lee realizes that she had split his lip.
"I'm impressed, Ty Lee." Azula said, almost as stunned as everyone else. "Shutting him up is the most useful thing you've done all day."
A strong insistent hand grabbed her bicep, pulling her away as the other guard took Sokka by the shoulder and ushered them apart. Sokka's face twists into a mask of plain disgust, opening his mouth to say something that she couldn't hear.
"Lady Ty Lee..." The man holding her started, but was interrupted by Sokka lunging against the broad armored figure of the other guard. Azula must have said something to bait him. She stood grinning wolfishly behind the armored human wall that surged to shield them.
Guilt overwhelmed Ty Lee. As betrayed as they had seemed when they first saw the princess, it felt like nothing to how it was now. She let her mind go blank as the guard swiftly pulled them as fast as discretion allowed through the remnants of the festival. They had started to form a gathering of spectators, and while fleeting looks from commoners were harmless, it wouldn't take much beyond a closer inspection to see Azula's highborn bearing and metal cuffs to yield their identities.
Distantly she could still hear Sokka's voice, floating above the crowd and her blood freezes at his words.
"You're a murderer, Azula, and tomorrow everyone will know it! Good luck sleeping with the screams of everyone you've tortured and killed!"
Her name, screamed with all the anger and futility that had poisoned her ambitions, falls over them like a shadow. Like a broken enchantment, the lethargy that had taken hold of the city vaporizes. Complacent eyes shimmer with clarity, and the bystanders who had only slowed to give them cursory looks now stopped, and it seemed for a second that the entirety of the Fire Nation capital was focusing its eyes on Azula.
"The only thing that keeps me up at night is the particularly enjoyable memory of your girlfriend's." Azula tosses the comment over her shoulder, not slowing as she let herself be whisked away by her guards. The congregated crowd parts before them before again enveloping them from behind. In their eyes, Ty Lee saw awe, suspicion, and fear, the crowd only growing larger as through they were attracted through some compulsive desire.
She felt the murmurs flow through them, the whispers and prying stares. Sometimes an indistinct shout would arise, appearing to echo the embittered sentiments that Sokka had ignited, cursing her name and glorifying Zuko's throne. But there were many more who bowed their heads, some kneeling and others standing, but all with lowered eyes that didn't dare look at the princess as she strode by. They saluted her with respectful decorum, drilled into them by a hundred years of societal conventions, and the whispers soon became utterances spoke in delicate tones. They called her by her old titles, the ones afforded to her in the old kingdom. They say it as they pass through the crowd, hurrying as they were half-dragged and half-carried from the city's festival.
Princess…Your Grace…Your Highness…
Azula doesn't spare them a single glance.
Ty Lee knows what they say, beyond the islands of the Fire Nation. She's traveled to Kyoshi, to the glacial plains of the Water Tribes, and the shambled cities of the Earth Kingdom. She knows what they say about Ozai, his house, and the people they had lead. They look at them from steep mountains made from the tall towers of their foreign values. Adoration was a perversion of patriotism, fealty only being the chains of oppression. They called their devotion a product of brainwashing.
And at the same time, she remembers a very different story. Greatness was achieved, not inherited, and it felt like a lesson . For every young prince that had been born into his right to the crown, there had been someone else struggling, scheming, fighting their way into distinction and excellence, to reach a level of perfection that their elders and betters would deign to admire. Words like "talent" and "prodigy" meant training until sunset, studying through the night, blisters and broken bones, while others slept in beds of inheritance.
Adoration-to Ty Lee-had felt rather natural, instead of a perverse indoctrination of beliefs.
They left the city plaza as swiftly as they had arrived, slipping into the hospital courtyard through the workers' entrance. The gate clamored shut behind them, encasing them in stone walls. The locks fell grinding into place, and Azula was home.
"You were right, Ty Lee." Azula said as the orderlies appeared with the rest of the princess' retinue of guards. "Today was the most fun I've had in ages." Her smile was ravenous, but horribly sincere as she lifted her chin and undid the high collar of her shirt. Shiny metal gleamed at her neck as she let out a sigh of contentment that steamed in the warm summer air. "You would think they would learn after a while."
"Lady Ty Lee," Someone says and she looks up to see the old guard who had first pulled them away from the festival. Without his helmet, he lost all the intimidating qualities that seemed universal amongst his comrades. She could see the kindness in his stern face when he told her, "I apologize but…the Fire Lord will be wanting to-"
"I understand." She said plaintively, watching with a morbid fascination as the nurses tended to Azula. The chi-locks gave the princess a constant, elevated resting body temperature, and someone had handed her an ice towel, which she used to press gently to her cheek, glaring the whole while(as she usually did) at Ty Lee. "I…I'll tell him, it's fine." She said under the princess' steady gaze, noting the lack of surprise or anger flickering in what should have been a revelation.
She wondered how long Azula had known about her meetings with Zuko.
He nodded and left her alone, but she knew that someone else would follow up and approach Zuko on their own about the matter. She had personally jeopardized whatever slim chance Azula might have had on leniency from the Water Tribes, and knowing it turned Ty Lee's stomach to rot. The whole afternoon outing had been her idea, and still dizzy with what had transpired in the park square, it felt like it was all she could do to not vomit her guts out.
"I'm sorry." She said quietly to the other girl, feeling every inch as stupid and wretched as her words. "It's all my fault, if I hadn't… I can't believe I did that." She finished, blinking tears from her eyes.
Azula didn't respond, standing with the towel in her hand and the top laces of her shirt open. Ty Lee remembered how perfect her hair used to be, how it was a mark of her pride and vanity. Now, a few strands had fallen, displaced and unintentional, clinging to her skin. A muscle in her jaw twitched as she clenched the towel in her fist and flung it into the chest of a nearby nurse.
"Leave us." Azula snapped, banishing the team of attendants from the courtyard. The guards remained, but she waited for the last orderly to leave before she spoke again.
"I've always known you were an idiot, but I suppose even idiocy can be underestimated."
Ty Lee flinched. "I'm sorry." She said again.
"That's all you ever are. If you ever took a moment from being sorry for yourself and everyone around you, maybe you could grow enough of a spine and do something about it." Azula continued, growing heated and vicious. "Honestly, what were you expecting? That you could walk the middle ground forever? Grow up!"
Perhaps it was because it had been so long since the last time anyone had been truly honest with her. Maybe it was because she had forgotten how to speak with anyone who wasn't walking around eggshells and landmines with her and that she had failed to remember that behind the stinging, backhanded disdain of Azula's remarks could be unflinching and unforgiving astuteness. But for a second, her breath left her in a giant rush, Azula's words seeping into her and joining with the nausea and sickness that was already inside her. She waited for the rest of her derision, but it never came, if only for the fact that the princess was unwilling to show the levels of her contempt in front of people who answered to those who would use it against her.
The silence rotted, and the pointed looks from the armored entourage was enough of a hint. Blindly, she turned and started to grope for the door handle.
"What do you want, Ty Lee?"
It's the same question as before, and Azula asks it in the same way. The edge is gone, not out of kindness, but out of desperation. She was looking for a real answer and not the one that Ty Lee was poised to give.
"Everybody wants something." She continues when Ty Lee takes too long to reply. "You're here because you want something. You just haven't figured out what it is yet."
She turns away without preamble, and disappears into the doors of the hospital, the ever-present trail of soldiers following after her. She leaves Ty Lee in the courtyard with her words and the uncharacteristic flickers of fragility, staring after her although she is long gone.
The street feels colder than she had first found it. The sky is already darkened, the dying fingers of light fading into withering plumes of yellow and red on the distant horizon. She blows a breath out from her lips, wondering if she looked as exhausted as she felt. The strings of lanterns that decorate the city are already lit, glimmering cheerily at her. She looks at them numbly with glassy eyes, and slowly she willed her heavy feet to move. Plunging into the throngs of traffic, she let the waves of bodies carry her home, the dim skies above her bursting with the festival's jubilant cries and the streams of fireworks.