#08: "Pompeii" - Bastille
Prompted By: FanfictionVillainess

"If you close your eyes, it's kind of like nothing changed," Ty Lee says blithely, her eyes squeezed shut.

Princess Azula does not respond, nor does she close her eyes. She never did when she was told to, not when her father took her to executions, not when teachers told her to do it, not... not even for the only person who seems to want to talk to her anymore.

It smells of Earth Kingdom summer; rot, decay and the stench of an overdeveloped city. Azula is repulsed by the fact that she has to go to Ba Sing Se to stay with her uncle, by her mother and her brother and their stupid faces at the breakfast table.

"It looks pretty different to me, Ty Lee," Azula says airily, carelessly, trying to restore some of her former dignity with a barbed tongue. The Princess crosses her arms over her chest. She gazes at the walls, shoddily built in comparison to what was there before. And she is on the inside this time, dressed in clothes that don't fit and being led about by a circus freak and a disgraced general.

"It looks different because your eyes are open, princess," Ty Lee responds overly sweetly, rubbing her thumb around Azula's palm. She is finding it hard to stay optimistic about this.

Azula grits her teeth and lets Ty Lee rub her hand and hold it. If this is what the people want, this is what they will get. Princess Azula shamefully hiding in this disgusting city. Mother will pay... eventually.

And the walls came tumbling down. Azula feels entirely responsible, as she watches her new pets tear down the rings of Ba Sing Se. The ground shakes with the force and the air smells disgusting from the crushed dirt, dust, stone and age. It took uncle six hundred days to even breach the wall; it took Azula a week.

Mai looks incredibly unimpressed by the sight. But Ty Lee reaches her hand over and intertwines her fingers with Azula. It is in this city that they kindled their fledging love, and Ty Lee can't help but feel that the crashing walls are a symbol of breaking down some of the walls around Princess Azula.

And for the first time, Azula does not slip her fingers away.

Ty Lee guides Azula through the city, their hands locked together.

It almost feels like nothing changed at all.