Ty Lee enters the limousine without hesitation.
As Azula sits beside her, she feels like bait. She essentially is, and the lies she just told certainly were to lure Ty Lee into her father's hell soaked lair. It's just a teenage affair, it's just a teenage affair, it's just a teenage affair and eventually those butterfly-bees will die and she will move on.
Until then, Azula gazes out of the window as Caldera rolls by. It's a beautiful city; she wants it to be hers. It's a beautiful city and she is suddenly realizing that they are not going in the direction of her home.
Ty Lee doesn't notice; she is locked in an awkward conversation with Ozai that Azula will rescue her from only if Ty Lee is about to let something dangerous slip.
"Where are we, father?" Azula asks, shattering the discussion of reality television like breakaway glass.
"We're going to the train station. I sent you an e-mail regarding the change in plans last night. I assumed you had checked it."
"That is something you should have told me," Azula says coldly. "In person."
His eyes flicker to Ty Lee and Azula leans back. Yes, he could destroy her far-too-fragile teenage romance with a few words and he evidently knows that she knows that.
"Well, I would have to tell your dear... friend regardless. Your brother is home a week early." Ozai sounds none too pleased, and so Azula thinks perhaps he didn't choreograph it. "I'm certain it will make our dinner more interesting. We're going out."
That means there is less of a chance that it will end in incinerated corpses. It also means, however, that Azula will be forced uncomfortably into her I'm going to be Fire Lord and people can't see me whining at my father in public persona. Her brother's presence, of course, will spark their incessant sibling rivalry.
Not telling her was a good move on Ozai's part. Azula has no time to prepare for what Zuko and his ridiculous envy will unleash... to the point in which he presumes Azula would give up her romance in order to one up her brother or something that probably is a fair assumption.
But Azula is better than that.
Or so she believes.
Three years ago, everything went awry in Princess Azula's life during a school play. Her brother was never someone she enjoyed the company of, nor did she like him at all. It wasn't their fault; their parents had decided to divide the family sharply down the middle because of Azula. Because of reasons nobody ever bothered telling Azula.
But he was out having fun with his new girlfriend. And Azula hated him for his fuckup freedom.
She had her attention focused on her stupid play that she was highlighting random lines on in blue. So help her if the school does Love Amongst the Dragons another year she will drop out and become a bounty hunter.
And there was the scene from the whining guy who thought his girlfriend was an apathetic bitch. It made Azula sigh because it did nothing but remind her that she could be getting on with breaking up Zuko and Mai, which was one of the worst things that ever happened to her. But, no, she was memorizing these horrid lines for no reason other than her desperate need to coerce her Humanities teacher.
She did like the words:
And thus on the shores of the Boiling Rock
Weeps the deceitful crocodile-hawk
She had no clue if crocodile-hawks really did cry when eating people, but it would be fascinating if they did. Perhaps she could get one as an exotic pet when she became Fire Lord, which, ugh, hinged on her successes in every venture.
While Zuko got to go out with his girlfriend.
Fuck this.
She glanced up at the opening door.
"I would appreciate it if you would knock," Azula said quietly with no regard for the fact that she was addressing her father. She was genuinely considering running away to pursue her bounty hunter dreams at this point.
"I have no idea why I would need to, unless you're doing something I'd dislike," Ozai said so calmly, as if he were not ruining her life. "Speaking of which, I have my answer about you and going to the prom with that older girl."
Azula glanced up, the highlighter smearing the color of her fire on her fingers.
"What is it?" Azula whispered.
"That you can go if you come home immediately afterwards and are escorted there immediately before," he said and Azula wanted to hug him, and would if that were acceptable in their family. She expected a vehement no. "I will be checking up on you."
You will be hiring spies, she thought but she just capped her highlighter. "You can trust me, father. I'm not Zuko; you raised me better than that."
"No, you're not, but you're a teenager."
"You were a teenager once and now you run an empire."
"I was a teenager once and I know what I was doing as one."
To that, Azula muttered to herself, you mean who you were doing as one, as soon as he was gone.
The Sozin Station trains blur by like silver bullets.
They make Ty Lee's head spin as she watches them, but watching Azula and Ozai makes her head spin more. The trio is surrounded by bodyguards armed to the teeth but not openly, and Ty Lee has never gotten that attention before.
New money, after all.
The right train stops and Ty Lee cannot help but be excited. She remembers walking into Azula's home and seeing a mantle adorned with pictures of only Azula, with not a trace of Zuko or Azula's mom; Ty Lee doesn't even know the former Fire Lady's name, to be honest.
Azula's fingers brush against Ty Lee's hand, but slip away before Ty Lee can hold her. Zuko has just left the train and is confidently striding out with one suitcase in hand. But his prideful stride becomes that of a baby animal with its tail between its legs. He clearly is as scared of Ozai's opinion as Ty Lee is.
Zuko stands in front of his father and sister. His eyes then drift to Ty Lee. The first expression is of course that of 'you got pretty?' which everyone who knew Ty Lee in her past makes. Then he smiles at her with a glint of attraction in his eyes, which everyone Ty Lee comes across does.
"We're going out to dinner. I'll have your other luggage picked up and delivered from home," Ozai says coldly and Zuko just nods. "This is Azula's friend."
Azula swallows. Ty Lee watches her open her mouth and thinks she is going to proclaim their romantic relationship, but then Azula whispers to Ty Lee, "In public he'll be too embarrassed to take it well."
Ty Lee smiles and nods.
Azula actually wishes manipulating her wasn't this easy.
Three years ago, days before prom, Azula fainted on stage.
Her father acted so surprised, but her awful brother turned out to be not so awful in this case, since he seemed to have a moderate understanding of what the fourteen year old perpetually went through. So much for a successful matinee of Love Amongst the Dragons, granted that the princess smashed her head on the scenery.
Zuko stood up for her like an idiot. With an Agni Kai in the middle of their fucking apartment, which, for some reason, father didn't turn down like a sane person.
Fire Lord Ozai had two children in the hospital that night.
And so he made the shame disappear, and erased Zuko from the family tree.
They eat at a restaurant with a gigantic stone statue of some Air Guru. A fountain pours from the Water Tribe warrior on the other side, and behind where Azula is sitting is the symbol for Earth as graffiti; it's an ironic reference to the rebellions during the Hundred Year War.
Everything else is traditionally Fire Nation, including the menu.
Ty Lee thinks it might be just a cash grab. Like ninety percent of things that her grandma goes on and on about being overcompensation for the war. "A victor's economy isn't worth Air Nomad fruit pies in the shops..."
The interrogation begins as Ty Lee is thinking about her grandma's racism.
"Right, Azula's friend. You must have some kind of boyfriend, given the way you dress and look. Addicted to love, I assume? You only want to fall into it and not go past those opening butterflies," Ozai says and Ty Lee flushes bright pink.
Azula sees Ty Lee gazing at her. She swallows.
She repeats history's mistakes the moment she opens her mouth and starts with, "She is my girlfriend, and how dare you speak to her that way! How dare you...!"
Azula is outside with her father and all she can smell is cigarette smoke, rain and discomfort. Ty Lee has left after giving Azula a timid kiss. Zuko is in the bathroom. The cars flash past on the street, splashing puddles up into the air as they whirr past green lights.
"I'm sorry. No one noticed."
"That's what you said last time."
"It wasn't a breakdown. I stood up for my girl and I... shouldn't have, but it's human nature."
"You're better than human. You are an empress and she is a tramp. I'm separating you from her and the cheerleader she made you into. You always have an offer at Akane Academy; it's the school a princess serious about politics would attend."
Azula blinks. She probably should not have shouted out the part about her declining the Akane Academy offer in order to attempt to taste and touch what being a normal teenager is about.
"You won't hurt her, right?" Azula whispers as the splashing of another car going by conceals her words from any eavesdroppers.
"She is the type of woman I would date. Your romance is like fashion and will pass by too quickly for me to be concerned," Ozai comments and Azula is not optimistic. "I want you to break up with her tomorrow. Long distance relationships don't ever work out and I can't bear to see my little girl hurt."
Azula has so many harsh but beautiful words to say.
But she saves them for the break-up, because she knows her father is serious.
She also knows that she has no choice anymore.
At Azula's last day of school before her weeklong break with her father and brother and then her trip to Akane Academy, Azula and Ty Lee say goodbye.
They say goodbye for the last time. Azula swallows her questions, apologies, anything unscripted, even though she knows it would be easier if she offered platitudes and a dash of romanticized political rhetoric. But she just breathes in and steps back when Ty Lee stares at her lips.
They say goodbye.
They say their last goodbyes.
Ty Lee murmurs, "Ask them for a light up spine at the factory."
It only hurts when Azula laughs.
END PART ONE