(Theme Thirty-One) Bad Metaphors (Freedom & "Sky Full of Stars" - Coldplay)

(As prompted by) LoveandLust and FanfictionVillainess

Freedom is an illusion. Just when Azula takes one step forward she takes two steps back and it feels like barbed wire wrapped around her, tearing into her skin. It leaves her in tatters and she would never tell anyone because she is excellent at pretending.

She isn't fragile. Zuko treats her like she is a thin glass ball ready to be dropped and broken. But she is more of a stone wall that has been replaced and put back together several times, some of the stones crumbling despite the feeble repairs.

"I'm not fragile," Azula snaps, tossing her toothbrush into the sink and leaving it there. The sound of wood against porcelain is not as satisfying as she thought it would be. "Stop treating me like I'm fragile."

Ty Lee's eyes widen and her lips shrink. She touches Azula's arm and the princess does not move. Ty Lee is in a state of half dressed disarray, and partially braided hair. Azula looks flawless even though she spent the entire day in bed complaining about a migraine but really trapped in her flashbacks.

Everybody knows she is lying. But nobody wants to poke the sleeping dragon.

"I don't think you're fragile. I think you're the strongest person I've ever met," Ty Lee says as Azula walks back to the bed she spent her day in. She feels tired. "You're like a diamond."

"Like a diamond?" Azula snorts derisively. "A diamond, really?"

"They're the hardest kind of stone," Ty Lee breathes, sitting down at the vanity with her legs partially spread. They are directly across from each other but Azula barely makes eye contact with the girl she married. The girl who was crazy enough to marry someone insane. Who's crazier in that aspect? Because both of them sacrificed freedom for madness.

"And the sharpest," Azula says, attempting to avoid the situation.

"And they always survive," Ty Lee continues. "Like you do."

"I'm pretty hard to kill," Azula says with a small shrug. It isn't what Ty Lee meant, but she doesn't correct Azula. She never has.

"You're a diamond and I'm going to love you until the end of time," Ty Lee says and Azula is rather stunned by how poetic the shallowest person she has ever met can be. Ty Lee is not one for metaphor, even ones including shiny gemstones.

"Wait what?"

"I've been calling you a star for a really long time so I'm changing it up."

"But stars are... on fire. Diamonds are just..."

"Fine, you try to come up with loving metaphors," Ty Lee grumbles, crossing her arms. "I considered sky full of stars."

"Ugh, that's just even more cliché. Alright, you can call me a diamond," Azula says with a haughty sigh, as if it is an inconvenience to be compared to beautiful feats of nature.

"Gemstones and stars and skies aside, I really want to be with you. I could leave at any moment. Nobody's keeping me here anymore," Ty Lee says, regretting the last sentence, although Azula does not react.

"You would leave me if you had the chance," Azula says, lying down. Ty Lee looks at her, squinting, wondering how she can miss the point when she is a genius. "You're just stuck with me because neither of us is ever going to have any freedom. I didn't have any as a youth and I don't have it now. I was locked up and..."

"I've had plenty of chances to leave you. And I decided not to," Ty Lee says, walking to the bed and sitting beside her. She runs her fingers along Azula's navel. "You may have noticed that I decided to marry you, asylum and all."

"You're crazy."

"I think I've never been freer than when I'm with you."

"You're also extremely cliché in your romantic one liners. I'm amazed that I tolerate them. I mean do you actually think terrible metaphors are romantic?"

Ty Lee just smiles.