Ty Lee was the first of them to go. She had been traveling with the circus again, now freakish not only in her contortional ability but also in her age. The doctors said it was nothing but a heart attack. She finally returned to the Fire Nation in death, where Zuko helped to pay for her funeral. Mai watched flames consume another lover and felt sure that her time was coming too.

Ty hadn't had children, hadn't ever even married. Mai wondered if she had been lonely. Perhaps forcing her from the palace had been wrong. Perhaps an alternate future could have been, one where she continued her affair with a woman and a memory.

At this funeral, too, she stood dry-eyed while the companions around her cried. Zuko was on her right, tears catching in the wrinkles around his eyes. Izumi was on her left, also crying, though Ty Lee was nothing more to her than a figure from her childhood. At the end of the group was the teenaged Iroh, standing gravely to support his mother. His face, too, was devoid of tears, but Mai thought that was simply because he'd never known Ty Lee. She wasn't crying for different reasons. She wondered if Ty Lee would go to the Spirit World, and if there would be someone there waiting for her. Now there were two friends beckoning her to the grave.

Forty years earlier, Izumi had traveled to see the ancient dragons her father had encountered. It was to the awe and astonishment of the whole world when she returned bearing two eggs, one blue and one scarlet. Zuko had taken charge of the red dragonling, while Izumi reared the blue. She had asked her mother whether Azula was a suitable name for the creature. Mai had imagined what it would feel like to hear the name day after day, referring not to an irreplaceable princess but to a beast, and she had told her daughter no. But even after that, she watched the blue dragon grow, spread its wings, and breathe beautiful fire, and she wished she believed that Azula's spirit had been reincarnated into such a thing. Azula deserved such a noble form.

Happiness came back to Mai. She felt closer to Azula and Ty Lee than she had in decades. Soon they would all be alike again. Soon they would be together again as ashes, as spirits, as death. She had waking visions of the other two. She would hear the sound of the swish of fabric, hear laughs, as if they were all still teenagers playing their games.

Less than two years after Ty Lee's death, Mai fell ill. The doctors tried what they could, but ultimately they had to announce a dismal prognosis to Zuko: his wife was dying, and there was little they could do to prevent it.

Now she lay in her bed, a cough wracking her throat, a fever tearing its way through her skin. Izumi, Iroh, and Zuko took turns in sitting by her side, holding her hand. Mai didn't see them. She was seeing other people, distant visions filtering through time and space. She didn't know whether Ty Lee was really lying at her side, or whether it was just a hallucination. She didn't know whether it was really Azula's hand in her own. But she could imagine that it was, that her old friends and lovers were there to guide her on, waiting somewhere beyond.

Mai died smiling, peaceful, with the sun shining on her.

Ty Lee died doing what she loved, surrounded by those who cared for and admired her.

Azula died before she turned twenty, alone in a cell, forsaken and cold.

They remembered the romance differently. One looked on it with bitterness and fury, sure it had been a lie, sure it had been a construction. One looked on it as something that had been wonderful and far too brief, becoming painful in its aftermath. And one remembered it with nostalgia, wondering what could have been different, knowing she was the catalyst.

But the affair itself remained unchanged. Whatever meaning they attached to them, the kisses were always only kisses.

A/N: Well! As I mentioned a few chapters earlier, this is the end of the plotline. I hope you've enjoyed it! It's certainly been fun to write. The next four drabbles will be disconnected oneshots. I have exciting things planned for those, and Azula is still alive, so stay tuned!