Night Sixteen: Understanding
Azula sits and stares out of the open window, watching the sun begin to dip below the horizon. This morning, she woke and she cannot remember what followed. She is not entirely sure how she ended up sitting here.
She wants to die. The only thing that keeps her living is the fact that when she goes to sleep she can live in another world, a better world.
"Mother," says a small voice from the doorway, "will you tuck me in?"
"Is it even nighttime?" Azula asks, not turning around to face the daughter she created with her now dead wife.
"It's light out 'cause it's summer but it's my bedtime," Mizuki chirps.
Azula stands up. "Fine. I will tuck you in."
Mizuki goes with Azula down the hallway until she reaches her bedroom. She clambers into her bed by herself and waits with no covers on. Azula edges inside and then pulls them up over her daughter. She is not sure what else to do.
"Tell me a story, please," Mizuki asks, eyes wide, pleading and sparkling.
"How are you okay?" Azula asks, rubbing at her own dark, baggy eyes. "Do you not understand what happened?"
Am I supposed to make you understand what happened? Because I don't even understand what happened, she thinks.
"I dunno." The pained twist of her lips answers Azula's question.
"Fine. I will tell you the story of the little Princess Sparrowkeet," says Azula, because the only person who can understand the gravity of this loss is that tiny little girl.
Mizuki listens to the story while holding back tears.
睡美人的镜子
Ty Lee wakes up alone after ages in solitude under a strangely colored sky, the setting sun making patterns on her exposed back.
She slowly gets out of bed and tries to find her mother-in-law, or at least someone who can make her go back to sleep immediately.
After walking a little ways down the hall, she decides she is tired and weak enough to just return. Even if Azula is not there, it is infinitely better than here.
Ty Lee goes to her bed and lies down. She half-expects someone to come tell her she is being irresponsible, or to tell her that they knew she could not live without Azula. No one does. No one cares. No one understands.
Those thoughts keep Ty Lee awake until the sky is pitch black.
She drifts off while weeping.
睡美人的镜子
Azula runs through the terrarium that once terrified her. She had to look strong during all of the tests in this place, but now she truly is more powerful than it. Ty Lee waits for her in a meadow of strange paper flowers that crumble under Princess Azula's touch.
"What do you want to do tonight?" Ty Lee asks sweetly, batting her eyelashes and blushing.
Azula says what she has been thinking about all day, during her periods of lucidity. "We should build a home here. A real home."
Ty Lee looks eager at first, but something wipes that expression from her face.
She asks, glancing over each shoulder uneasily, "But what about all the crazy stuff that happens in this world."
"Strange things happen in every world," Azula says curtly.
"You're so smart, my princess."
Ty Lee smiles, and they both get to work finding a proper plot of land.