(Theme Fifty-Four) Danger
(As Prompted By) Koka Kola Veins
It is midnight. Azula is ghostwriting a speech. And then the speech quite literally disintegrates in front of her when her tea is knocked out of her hand.
"You can't drink five of those!" screams Ty Lee and Azula narrows her gilded eyes at her wife. "Are you trying to endanger our child?"
"I have had three. And given my tolerance to caffeine─"
"Three? Agni? Azula! No! Bad!" Ty Lee shouts, as if chastising her cat. Azula groans.
This has been madness. The tirade against red meat and staying up too late. While Azula does not mind Ty Lee's attempts to relieve any stress ─ the girl certainly understands massages with her encyclopedic knowledge of pressure points and chi flow ─ the overprotective nature of Ty Lee is getting incredibly tiring. If there is anything Azula hates, it is being told what to do, and being protected.
"Zuko has a speech tomorrow," Azula says. "I'm trying to finish it."
"Well your body is trying to finish making our baby," Ty Lee says shrilly and Azula hates that she does have a point. Perhaps the princess should prioritize her unborn child over politics, but she does find the obsessive worrying of Ty Lee mildly troubling.
Azula pauses. She wants to give Ty Lee her desire of keeping herself in some protective bubble until their baby claws its way out of her vagina, but she has a life, and she does not intend for it to be inhibited by such petty human things as pregnancy. Azula taps her fingernails on the table and examines the bleeding ink on her speech she has been writing for her brother laboriously.
"Alright, fine, fine, I will keep our baby completely out of danger. I will go to sleep now, and I will stop drinking caffeine and doing everything fun..." Azula trails off, her eyes glinting with disappointment. But Ty Lee does not budge; she has more staked in this than Azula seems to believe.
"You're not giving me that face to get out of this. Go to bed!"
"You can't simply order me around," Azula snarls, her lips curled viciously. "I outrank you and I am far more powerful than you are."
Ty Lee simply stares. It pierces Azula, puncturing her bones, skin and soul. She clears her throat uncomfortably, immensely frustrated that her powers of intimidation have exactly one person immune to them, and gets up.
"I'm going, I'm going," Azula sighs, clenching her fist so tightly that her nails send waves of pain through her hand from digging into her flesh.
Danger this, danger that, and Azula absolutely despises the fact that Ty Lee is both right and immovable. Most of the time Azula can bend her and melt her and push her around to her heart's desire, but she thinks she has found a topic that Ty Lee is so feverish about that even Azula cannot make her submit. It is almost as sickening as the perpetual nausea and vomiting.
She lies down in her bed and wonders why she is obeying. Perhaps she does have an interest in her child, or maybe Ty Lee is just starting to frighten her, not that Azula would ever admit either of those things aloud. She closes her eyes and tries to fall asleep, but her toes and fingers twitch and she feels sparks within her.
Someone lies beside her and winds up making soothing noises. Ty Lee. Azula... Azula thinks she has been pushed to her absolute limit. Her freedoms were stripped away for years because of her actions as a war criminal, and now she has finally gained the trust of the Avatar and Zuko, and is able to do mostly as she pleases. But Ty Lee intends to restrict her, which makes Azula want to rip people's throats out with her teeth.
"Stop," Azula snaps, clamping her hand over Ty Lee's mouth. "Just don't... I can't even express in words... Look at me! I'm speechless. I have never been speechless until this moment. Stop coddling me. I'm a perfectly competent adult and I don't need you to make hushing sounds to try to get me to fall asleep like I'm three years old."
Ty Lee watches Azula's eye twitch and starts briefly rethinking her position. But she thinks she may be more afraid of Azula's pregnancy than Azula is, and she cannot help but obsessively micromanage to try to prevent her fears. She waits for Azula to lift her hand away, although she wants to bite down and snap a few choice words about Azula being an absolute bitch.
But Ty Lee can understand how her behavior may be driving Azula even more insane.
"I just don't want our baby to get hurt. The world is extremely dangerous," Ty Lee says shrilly and Azula sighs and closes her eyes.
She does not want to argue this yet again. Absurd. Absolutely absurd. Anyone can do this. Princess Azula of the Fire Nation can do absolutely anything, including the impossible; she thinks she can manage doing something that peasant women do by accident. But Ty Lee clearly does not have that faith in her wife.
Azula goes to sleep, ignoring Ty Lee's constant gaze on her, because she is getting depressingly used to it.
And in the morning, she rewrites her spilled on speech, neglecting caffeine despite her wife not being present, and prepares herself for the event.
"Thank you, Azula," Zuko says and she does not respond. He clears his throat and picks at his fingers in attempt to make it less awkward.
The event progresses as planned, that is, until Azula finds herself in the middle of an assassination attempt. Zuko dodges the first attack and when he strikes back, Azula catches sight of the assailant. The crowd is thrown into chaos, and Azula vaults off of the royal balcony before anyone can stop her.
She catches herself on cerulean flames that lick the air, and then hits the ground running. Chasing the assassin, everything around her is a blur. She forgets about danger, Ty Lee, the people surrounding her or the triviality of the attempt.
Azula needs to breathe. She needs a fight.
She tackles the man with ease and snaps one of his arms behind his back. As she steps back, soldiers take over for her and she catches her breath.
That is when she belatedly learns that the assassin was not alone, she feels the ground shake and her body leave the ground unwillingly, and everything goes black.
"Azula, Azula, Azula," is the first thing Azula hears as she wakes up.
Hospital. She is in a hospital. Ty Lee is hovering above her, she is covered in bandages and she can still feel the explosion she was caught in. The next realization is that she now is probably going to get the lecture of a lifetime from Ty Lee. And the next makes her eyes flash and her fingertips fly to her abdomen. Still there. Still there.
"How long have you been shouting my name?" Azula rasps before clearing her throat. It does not make it any less sore.
"Intermittently. I cannot believe you thought that would be a good idea," Ty Lee snaps, looking both livid and unhinged. Azula purses her lips, hating that Ty Lee is right. "You can't just jump off of buildings and into explosions while pregnant with our firstborn child. Probably our only child."
Azula pauses. She does not honestly want to admit that she was wrong. And so she stares at the ceiling as Ty Lee waits for her response surprisingly patiently.
"Ugh. Fine. I'm sorry. There. But I feel like a prisoner and I wanted to..." and then Azula feels ridiculous. Behaving like a teenager is incredibly embarrassing when she says it out loud.
"I realize I've been kind of a horrific tyrant about the baby. You're an adult and I think you can probably handle it," Ty Lee says with a deep breath and Azula's eyes flicker in surprise. "But so help me, if you jump off of a balcony and get caught in an explosion again, I will shackle you to something for the next five months."
Azula can only nod. She thinks the deal is fair enough.
