AN: Just a little oneshot that's been rattling around in my mind. It's (reasonably and canonically) always Azula as the broken one, but I wanted to experiment with Ty Lee as the broken one instead.
WISHFUL DRINKING
In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil I love
And it's as fun as real love
"Hold On, Hold On" — Neko Case
Ty Lee leaves the party just before dawn, alone, thank the spirits. Maybe for once she will not wake up in the mid-afternoon tangled in bed with a stranger.
She stumbles through the streets of Ba Sing Se and the thoughts she always tries to shove away begin to sink deeply into her mind.
When did she become this?
When did she become the girl who would follow any cheap thrill just to escape reality?
When did she begin to only allow herself to interact with strangers instead of friends?
It isn't as if she was unhappy with who she was for most of her life. And she still is bubbly and optimistic and loving. Just afraid of connections. Just afraid of getting attached.
Her expression sours as she tries to fight back the knowledge that she does know why. She does know why. She does know why.
A beggar calls out to her and Ty Lee fishes around in her purse. She clamps several silver coins into his trembling hand.
His pulse reminds her that she has always loved people. She did not always push them away.
He thanks her profusely and she replies with a bright cheery smile and waves as she resumes her walk.
Her broken dreams bear the scent of rotting flesh. Maybe that is why when she enters her flat she runs her fingertips across her dusty shelf of empty perfume bottles.
She used to be soft. She used to be bright pink gossamer and silk before it was ripped away. And she decided she could let herself be soft again.
Ty Lee walks into her room and collapses into bed, passing out fully clothed.
[X]
The moon is past its apex and Ty Lee is still at the exquisite socialite party when someone taps on her arm and asks her if she wants to dance.
The girl is beautiful even in the candlelit and vibrant party. Raven hair, ivory skin, unfortunately such emerald eyes but Ty Lee quickly catches herself when she starts thinking like that.
This is exactly why it is easier to hook up with guys.
But Ty Lee dances with her in the core of the sweaty and glamorous and drunken revelers.
Their soft lips touch and crush and their fingers dig.
They make out for a little too long before Ty Lee catches herself and goes to get another drink.
She drinks to paradise, and her future, and the pain of love she cannot let go.
It is terrifying how much suffering the happiest people can hide inside of their warm hearts.
[X]
Ty Lee goes out drinking tonight, as usual.
She looks and feels beautiful, despite a stone heart and brutal scars from burns on both of her wrists.
She is not unhinged or unhappy, she is just confused and wild at heart.
Once upon a time, she was five minutes from getting married to the love of her life. Now she is married to the night.
She dances with strangers and only strangers. They own the most tender place in her heart, once reserved for old friends and an old flame.
Something in the sea of people catches Ty Lee's blurry gaze.
When Ty Lee sees that flash of familiarity, she tenses. She hides and ignores it, but she misses the woman who was an almost to her. There's no name for how it hurts. It's just a feeling that aches in her bones.
People are not haunted by the dead, Ty Lee learned long, long ago when the war first ended. They are haunted by the living who make graveyards in their hearts that are impossible to ignore.
She sees the face again.
She sees the eyes on the edge of her vision.
The flip of hair.
Ty Lee is so occupied by what she assumes to be a hallucination that she does not notice the young man she was flirting with a few minutes ago take a vial from his pocket and mix it in her drink.
She takes a deep breath and pushes the images out of her mind. To snap herself out of it, she chugs her drugged drink in one long sip.
Ty Lee dances for a few moments longer before she begins to slip on her feet. Her head spins. Maybe drinking that so fast was a bad idea, but it is only her second drink of the night.
Strong male hands take her arm and steady her.
"Hey, are you okay? You don't look good," he says.
Ty Lee's knees buckle and she slurs, "I want to go home now. Sorry."
"Let me help you home. You don't seem well."
Ty Lee is no state of mind to say anything. Her eyelids and lips and limbs feel so heavy.
He half drags her into the street as she gets dizzier and dizzier and dizzier.
The stranger starts to pick her up before the bar door slams and someone charges at him.
He drops Ty Lee to the ground.
She does not feel the pain, barely conscious.
"Hands off, fucker, before I cut them off!" Dreaming. Ty Lee must be dreaming. She only hears that voice when she is asleep.
A flash of cerulean fire, a male cry of agony, knuckles crushing bone.
Ty Lee struggles to keep her eyes open as she hears a large body fall onto the stone street.
She sees a ghost hovering over her right before losing consciousness.
[X]
"Iroh?" Ty Lee slurs, trying to make out his frame in the painful light.
She does not know where she is or how she got here. All she knows is that she is in a soft bed within a cluttered room.
"I am glad you are awake," says the former general. "How do you feel?"
"Really bad."
"Azula tells me someone drugged your drink. She knocked out the man and carried you here."
"Azula? She can't leave the Fire Nation," murmurs Ty Lee, still dizzy and now nauseated.
"She hasn't been doing well, so she came here."
Someone in the doorway clears her throat. Ty Lee cannot see very well in the light right now, but she would know Princess Azula's silhouette in a room full of shadows.
"My brother forced me to come here because he does not want to deal with me."
Iroh frowns. "That is not entirely true."
"I'm starving," says Ty Lee softly.
"Stay and eat. You need to get better. Why don't you stay until tomorrow? I would love to catch up and, of course, make sure you do not suffer from unexpected side effects."
Azula comes closer, until she is fully in sight. Her pale, stunning aura shines, as sharp as death, ashes or love.
Ty Lee thought of a thousand poetic things she would say if she saw Azula again. Some cruel, some loving, most just lost.
But, "Hi," is all she manages to say.
"So is this what finding yourself and restoring your aura looks like?" Azula's derisive scoff feels like a dagger plunged into Ty Lee's heart. "Getting wasted and trying to hook up with strangers?"
"Yeah." Ty Lee does not want to engage her, and the comments do not hurt as much as Azula seems to want them to hurt.
Shakily, Ty Lee gets up and Iroh helps her get back to walking more easily on her own.
She hugs him, glances at Azula, and walks out into the apartment.
Ty Lee makes her way down the stairs, stumbling a little.
A tea shop. A counter. A bowl of unripe peaches.
Ty Lee picks one up and takes a bite.
It is bitter, just like seeing her lost love again.
[X]
Ty Lee lingers downstairs for some time before the princess dares approach her.
And Ty Lee cannot help but to look up and face her.
Azula's gilded eyes tell stories with dangerous beginnings and tragic endings, in which every scene I alive and bursting with color.
She is still as beautiful as the day Ty Lee left.
But the world is full of marvelously beautiful monsters, and Ty Lee cannot let herself fall for one ever again.
"You look good," says Ty Lee.
"I know," is Azula's cold response.
"You brought me here. Thank you."
"Just because I hate you does not mean I want you to be abused. I have things to do. Goodbye."
Ty Lee grabs Azula's arm. Azula pivots to face her with burning eyes and a livid expression.
"Do you want a cup of tea?"
"No."
Azula abandons her lost love yet again.
Ty Lee bites back tears and pours herself another cup of Iroh's excellent tea.
[X]
In the late afternoon, Ty Lee sits upstairs trying to rest. She feels uneasy here, but she also wants desperately to stay.
Maybe she has given her love to no one but complete strangers for too long.
She is exhausted, but when Azula sits down next to her, she becomes utterly wide awake.
"What happened to you?" asks Azula.
"I guess you did."
Azula purses her lips. She wants to snap and snarl at the overbold woman. But Ty Lee is right.
"We have a penchant for destroying each other, don't we?"
"And a desperation to love each other," breathes Ty Lee, as the butterflies swarm in her stomach.
Azula bitterly frowns and averts her eyes.
Ty Lee knows why she feels this way, which is why she desperately tries to ignore the emotions. Absence and a lack of communication makes the heart and mind twist someone into an idealized version of what they are.
"I don't think our love was ever healthy." Azula softly takes Ty Lee's hand and gazes with a pained expression at the scar on her wrist. "We thought it was love because we did when we were to young to understand what love is. And we clung to that just because we were afraid to let go. For what it is worth, I am truly sorry."
"About the scars? Azula I shook you awake really hard when you were in an episode. It isn't your fault."
"I am not talking about the scars. I am sorry that I wanted you to somehow heal me with devotion and love and blamed you when you couldn't. Healing doesn't work that way."
"I'm sorry too.'I thought you could heal all my guilt and blamed you when you couldn't."
"It's better we broke up. I am better off at least."
"Well I'm not!" shouts Ty Lee, and Azula is stunned by her boldness and anger. "What was I supposed to do with the fire you left in me? I tried to let it go and ignore but I guess… I guess it burned me alive."
Azula shrugs. Shrugs. Ty Lee wants to throttle her.
Azula cavalierly comments, "You torture me and I torture you. That was how it worked since we were only children."
Ty Lee does not know what to say.
Neither does Azula.
They break apart and go their separate ways in the apartment.
There is unfinished business, but neither wants to acknowledge it.
[X]
Ty Lee feels nervous — which is unusual for her — as she sits down for dinner with Azula and Iroh.
After serving the food and tea, Iroh starts talking about interesting customers because he doubts Azula and Ty Lee will feel very comfortable talking to each other.
Ty Lee laughs and smiles and enjoys herself and the home cooked meal as Azula stays silent and icy and picks at her food. Ty Lee wonders if she really did miss being with people who are not strangers to her at all in the slightest.
She still really likes Iroh, after all.
She still really loves Azula, after all.
Once dinner is over, Iroh rises to take away the dishes, and disappears into the kitchen, leaving the two young women alone at the table.
They sip their tea and pretend not to look each other. Until Ty Lee interrupts the silent and agonizing dance.
"It wasn't all bad, was it?" Ty Lee asks.
"No."
"Some of it was… good."
"Pretty damned good."
Azula flashes that wicked and glamorous smile Ty Lee once knew so well.
The bartenders in Ba Sing Se often ask something Ty Lee never heard in the Fire Nation or on Kyoshi Island.
What's your poison?
Ty Lee just picked a random drink to try. She never found an Earth Kingdom liquor favorite.
But Ty Lee thinks she has finally picked her poison.
And it's Azula.
[X]
It is a night of a thousand stars.
Azula and Ty Lee sit on the roof of the Jasmine Dragon gazing up at the dark indigo sky.
Azula says suddenly, "I wish we could go back. I wish we could try again."
"Really?"
"I would trade all of the pearls in the sea and every star in the sky to try it again. But despite that, I know it is unhealthy for us both. I am not stupid. It ended for wise reasons."
"Will you kiss me? It doesn't have to mean anything. Just for old time's sake."
Azula hesitates for only a moment before they both slip briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered, knowing well it is reckless and insane.
Fire lives in the kiss. They have a way of melting each other when their lips connect.
The kiss lasts, crushing, frantic, deeply passionate until they finally come to their senses and break away.
Ty Lee knows she should be wiser than this. She is so aware of the scars on her wrists and the scars on her heart.
But she has never called herself smart.
She blurts out into the cool and soothing night air, "I love you. I never stopped loving you. And that's why I'm so screwed up now. Because I can't get over my feelings for you even after all you did to me, and all I did to you."
"We keep coming back to each other and it has not gone well for us once."
"I know," breathes Ty Lee. "But wouldn't it be nice if it did this time?"
"Ty Lee…" Azula takes a sharp breath. "I am over you. Or, perhaps, I just should be over you."
Azula tries to avert her eyes and fails when she sees that somehow Ty Lee still looks at her like she placed the stars in the sky.
"I guess we never manage to do that, huh?"
"Sometimes love just is not enough. I don't want to give you the wrong idea. I don't want to give myself the wrong idea."
But the oddly comfortable silence and the brush of Azula's bruised knuckles softly against Ty Lee's hand speak volumes.
The two women do not know if they will survive each other another time. But they suppose they will just have to either run, or find out.
They remain silent, stargazing for what feels like hours before they become too cold and tired and return to the apart.
Yet, even after all they said, they end up in the same bed.
And for the first time in almost two years, Ty Lee does not wake up beside a stranger.
[X]
In the early morning, Ty Lee knows it is time to leave. She cleans herself up the best she can and then walks down into the busy tea shop.
Azula follows her.
"I just wanted to say that, despite everything that happened in the past, it has been nice seeing you again," Azula admits, her words not smooth as they always are, but instead constricted.
"I'll visit. I mean it." The tragic thing of the ordeal is that Ty Lee is telling the truth.
It is like drawing a sword for a war she knows she will not win.
"I would like that," admits Azula with a blush she cannot hide.
Ty Lee kisses her cheek and walks out the door, fading into the Ba Sing Se sunrise.
Azula's heart thunders as she watches her ex-lover leave, hopefully just for now.
Their goodbye proves one tragic thing.
In the end, they are just reckless fools drunk not on liquor, but on the delusion that love, only love, can heal their brokenness.
THE END