Silent and Starving

26. Your Mouth

Ty Lee listens to the story and her heart surges with an unfathomable warmth. Azula trusted her. Azula trusted her. Azula trusted her enough to let those words escape her mouth and tell Ty Lee about her time as a fugitive, brief, nondescript statements about the father of Izumi.

"Thank you," says Ty Lee softly, touching Azula's hand. "Thank you for telling me. It's the—it's the biggest honor I can even ever think of."

"Then you do not have an expansive imagination. Or perhaps you lack goals."

"I'm not really goal-oriented. That's why I admire how you achieve yours."

"I achieved them a long time ago, and I was a different person then." Azula stops walking in front of the throne room and steps inside. No flames light the cavernous enclosure, but it still looks formidable to Ty Lee. "My main goal was to sit on that throne. But I stopped reaching every goal I had the day my crown was stolen. I drowned and breathed again as… as someone else."

Azula walks forward to touch the Fire Nation throne and freezes. She moves her hovering hand away and turns to her girlfriend.

"I like every version of you. I love every version of you."

"You have an odd way of showing it. Our relationship has been nothing but knives in my back."

"I was really young, and I guess we had the kind of love that I screwed up because I had too much living left to do. My head was empty and I didn't realize you were perfect until it was too late."

"You said I was perfect since we first met."

"But I didn't really understand that word. I knew parts of you were perfect. Your mouth, your voice, your hair, your talents. I didn't see the whole picture."

"How unlucky," says Azula bitterly, she eyes Ty Lee with displeasure before reaching out to the throne and just shy of touching it retracts her hand once more.

"Really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlucky," says Ty Lee.

"You could be more eloquent if you tried."

"I've thought some pretty words that maybe are worthy of your lips, your mouth," says Ty Lee, blushing. "Not nearly as good because nobody is as good at talking as you but I could try."

Azula, amused with a twinkle in her golden eyes, says, "Alright. Try me."

"Even though I'm scared of you, every time I look at you I want to kiss you. Every time I looked at you, even at the Boiling Rock or after the Boiling Rock I wanted to kiss you. More than anything I just wanted a kiss, y'know? A kiss to tell me that you trust your lips against mine even though I know you never ever will. A kiss to prove to me that—that you're still my world even though, like, like, like, I know you're my world. A kiss to remind me that I can do stuff with actions as powerful as you can with words. I—I—well—I, I look at you and I just want to kiss you." Ty Lee is out of breath once she finishes speaking.

Azula walks forward, not even glancing over her shoulder at the throne, and kisses Ty Lee fiercely on her mouth.

27. Your Voice

Their nights together as a romantic couple seem like slumber parties from time to time. Azula tucks in Izumi after reading her a storybook and Ty Lee watches from beneath the arch of the door. Princess Azula still carries the book in her hand when they walk back to their shared bedroom.

Azula sits down.

Ty Lee says, "Do you remember when you used to read official scrolls in sexy voices and me and Mai would just die laughing."

"Oh, I can still do that," Azula purrs with a flutter of her eyelashes. She picks up the book and begins, and they both cannot breathe by the end of the grandiose show worthy of a sexy Ember Island Players show.

Azula laughs and Ty Lee laughs and even though neither of them have found the courage yet to admit they fall asleep thinking about each other, they both silently know. Their knees touch and their hearts race like the wind, but the world had never felt so right as it did in that moment beside each other.

"I wish you'd read to me every night," says Ty Lee.

And when Azula says, "I will," it feels like all the commitment Ty Lee could ever need.

28. Your Hair

The day after a happy night, Azula is angry and sad and broken and Ty Lee tries to figure out what to do. She never knows, no matter how many times she tries.

Ty Lee wishes she could voice how she feels. That she wants to swallow Azula's midnights and give her a thousand sunrises in exchange and a thousand more after and a thousand more after that. When her sun faded and she was left without that burning power, Ty Lee wanted to wave her hand and create a trillion specks of bright light. She wanted to swim in those twilights and drag Azula to shore before she could drown again—and those panic attacks did seem like she was drowning—and she would kiss the shadows of her charred heart.

But none of that poetry really matters. It isn't what it's about. It's cold, wet misery and destruction of those pretty glass figurines Azula collected and adored as a little girl. It's trying to breathe and drowning over and over again in her mind while Ty Lee does not know how to save her.

It is Ty Lee standing by, and hoping she can help by just being there.

Tentatively, Ty Lee does run her fingers through Azula's hair. It is so soft. It always made the princess happy so Ty Lee hopes for the best.

This time, when Azula steps through the shattered glass and sits beside her girlfriend, she says the most important words in the world.

"I promise," she says, "I promise a royal promise that I shall never break, that I will marry you and we will have the grandest wedding in the history of all Four Nations."

Again, Ty Lee does not know which words to say because her emotions are too big for her body.

She settles for, "I love you," and kisses Azula on the damp lips.

AN: The copious fluff means angst and drama is coming. I apologize in advance and want to mention that I love each and every single one of you readers. :)