#04: "Love is a Battlefield" - Pat Benatar
Prompted By: Streetlight Eyes
Azula still has scars on her wrists from the handcuffs. The multitude of handcuffs that she only overcame by surrendering with honor, surrendering to a new life that she is still unsure about living. This broken life she is living. The one that lets her keep her bending and her freedom, well, a sorry excuse for freedom.
She sometimes wakes up with the sensation of having been bound, then gasps for breath and touches her wrists. Touches the marks on her previously perfect skin. All she craved was perfection, and now she is tied back by invisible chains that restrict her lungs like a rainy night.
"Are you okay?" Ty Lee murmurs beside her and Azula only just realizes that there is someone in bed with her. Her thoughts were preoccupied by her nightmares, by the dreams of drowning, being held down by a different face each time. Father, Zuko, Mai...
"Of course," Azula replies, drawing her knees to her chest. She contemplates running from the situation but decides against it.
"I love you," whispers Ty Lee as if it is some kind of consolation.
"What do you want from me, Azula?" Ty Lee asks, her voice trembling. They stand by the pier, two weeks after returning from their victory over Ba Sing Se. "I just don't understand."
Someone who faces terrifying things with a smile has trembling lips. She looks on the verge of tears and Azula supposes she should have known that her friend is quite bright enough to play these games. Princess Azula barely can keep up with them, and she makes the rules.
Azula steps forward confidently, though she is terrified inside. She feels trapped by this love, chained to Ty Lee's side. If it ever shattered, if the bonds were to break, Azula would not know what to do. And so she tightens them around Ty Lee, only to inadvertently tighten them around herself. It sickens her but she likes the nausea it brings.
"I want to make you love me so much you ask for permission to breathe," Azula whispers, her sharp fingertips brushing against Ty Lee's smooth skin, making the acrobat break out in goosebumps.
It is at that moment that she is bound to Azula.
"I left my life for you," Ty Lee says, touching Azula's hand. Her fingertips graze against the moon white scars. "I don't want to watch you hurt."
She wants Azula to give her pain to Ty Lee. The acrobat would rather be feeling it than watching the princess feel it.
"Then sleep with me," Azula breathes, crawling across the bed.
Their lips meet and they fall into each other. Fingers straying, moans, gasps and the delaying of confronting their faults and failings. The heat, the rush, orgasm in exchange for forgetting. Forgetting is so much easier than remembering.
It is not going to save her. But it binds them together like the red string of fate.
Ty Lee is trapped.
And she loves it.
