(Theme Eighty-Three) Nyctophobia
(As Prompted By) SlytherinSchoolgirl
An eight year old Ty Lee lies in Azula's bed, frozen and terrified. Because she cannot get to sleep for the life of her, but the princess declared that she was tired and not to wake her under any circumstances. At home, Ty Lee tears her bed to shreds often trying to get settled and comfortable.
Yes, Azula's bed is big enough that there is probably enough room, but Ty Lee still has broken out into a sweat over the fact that she feels somewhat like somebody has just buried her alive with her eyes wide open and maybe dropped a huge venomous bug in with her.
Azula is also awake, although she is successfully pretending to be asleep. She is frozen in a silent vigil, her eyes uncertain how to remain on every looming shadow in the room at once, and her heart pounding. Ty Lee is too close. Azula should have had the foresight to demand that she sleep on the floor, but that would not have helped with the fact that it is pitch black in here.
It lasts for an eternity, and Ty Lee can barely breathe as she tries every useless trick her mom taught her to try to help her sleep. But then she is saved from her horrifying situation by the weirdest thing. Very slowly, the princess begins to sit up, slipping out of the blankets without displacing them, and she walks across the room.
Ty Lee stretches and moves, and releases as quickly as possible the pent up energy inside of a girl who was not built to sit still, which could be likened to a supernova. When she finally lies back down and begins to force her eyes shut, she notices that Azula has not come back.
Well, it is Ty Lee's first sleepover ever, and her mom told her not to pry, or intrude, or walk around the palace or bother anyone, but she does get up. She thinks briefly that she should come up with an excuse for why she is leaving Azula's room, but she does not have one.
After only a short walk down the hall, she is drawn into one of the million rooms because the lamplight coming from it is so bright. Instead of walking in on something and getting killed, as she very well could have, she finds the princess covered in silk blankets and half-asleep on an antique chaise longue.
The room is beautiful, but smaller and less grand, perhaps, than the princess's bedroom. The window is ajar, the night breeze creeping in and her small body is basked in moonlight. And the light that drew Ty Lee comes from four lamps that have been very recently lit, the candles have a very minimal amount of liquid wax in them.
Ty Lee disappears without waking Azula, sprawls herself out on the bed with only a tiny amount of regret and swears to take that secret to the grave.
zzz
"Oooo," Ty Lee says on their tenth sleepover, her eyes lighting up at the sight of a pretty thing. Azula has always been amused by the fact that Ty Lee so likes pretty things. She taps it very gently and watches it swirl before inhaling sharply.
It is a strange oddity, and like nothing Ty Lee has ever seen before. Azula is a bit fixated by the way her chestnut hair swirls around her body. The feelings inside of her, Azula is certain, are envy, envy of her body and how it is changing, and how much Azula thinks about it. How perfectly she has grown into herself.
Well, yes, Azula is beautiful and without a single flaw save for tiny uneven tits, but Ty Lee captivates her in the way that makes Azula want to capture her.
"It's a dream catcher," Azula says, having no idea at the time how well those words match her thoughts. Because her thoughts at the time will make no sense until she is much older. "And if you want to keep your fingers you will stop touching it."
"I've never heard of one," Ty Lee says as she quickly pulls her hand away and twists her fingers behind her back. Her cheeks flush light pink and Azula directs her eyes away and looks at the still rippling ribbons.
"My father gave it to me. They're spoils of war from the Water Tribe, or were, but this one was made in the Fire Nation. It's supposed to make sleep dreamless," Azula says coldly and precisely. Ty Lee nods with that small, coy smile. "Not that I believe in that sort of sham. You might, of course."
Azula thinks she prefers the bright, bold, reckless Ty Lee over this oddly demure one. The room seems too murky, and Azula does not like the unknown right now. It makes her heart beat slightly too quickly for her liking, and she makes sure to even the pace without Ty Lee noticing.
"I like to dream," Ty Lee says warmly, dizzily and Azula reclines, feeling comfortably superior now instead of disconcerted by the burning and twisting in her gut.
"Well, perhaps that's why no one ever takes you seriously." Azula was given it because her nightmares were so terrible.
It doesn't work.
zzz
Ten years later, Azula still has that dream catcher, and it is still just as much of a scam. And Azula has just had another passionate, heated tryst with her bodyguard, the woman she refuses to sleep in the same room with. Ty Lee sleeps on her own, and had no problem with that at first, but she and Azula have been rebuilding their romance from the start.
Every day, the dark, unknown in front of them becomes more and more illuminated, but, for some reason, that seems to make Azula more nervous. Ty Lee just wants to calm her, just wants for her to commit.
Ty Lee, however, knows that it is all about small steps. Very, very small steps.
It is the smallest of steps that take you across a tightrope without getting you a broken neck.
"You have to go to your room now," Azula says regally as soon as she collects herself, but Ty Lee does not melt and obey as the princess expected. That is not how it is supposed to work, Azula is certain, but Ty Lee disagrees.
"No, I don't," Ty Lee replies and Azula clenches her jaw. "You're awful and cold and selfish but you're not this kind of awful and cold and selfish."
"I don't know how you are so certain of that. This tryst is over, and you may leave."
Ty Lee purses her lips in a very unattractive pout of thought and concern. Azula keeps her posture as strong as possible, trying to maintain the facade of being disinterested and not desperate to be obeyed.
"Are you worried I'm going to kill you in your sleep?" Ty Lee bats her eyelashes and cocks her head to the side.
"I would think you should be more worried about me killing you." Azula smiles very faintly.
Ty Lee grins. But then she sits up on the mattress, the silk blankets falling around her, tan, naked body, in a manner that expresses her refusal to leave without answers. In an exposure that states she is comfortable with venturing into this darkness without looking back, and please, please, just trust in me, please...
"You know people say ignorance is bliss," Azula purrs and Ty Lee shrugs. She agrees, but she wants answers now, even if they aren't happy ones. "I need you to go home now. If not as an order from royalty, as a request from a friend, or slightly more than friend."
Ty Lee isn't sure what to say. "Fine. Fine," are not the right words, but she says them anyway. It always has been, even after of all of these years, been easier just to let Azula win. She stops before leaving the bed and adds, in hopes her hunch is right, "We really don't have to go anywhere tomorrow. We don't. I just want to be with you."
Azula wants her to pride to be wounded, but it is not. But her lip still curls into a distasteful snarl about the genuine look, the genuine desire to just be there with Azula and not fix her. It is much easier to use people who want to fix her than whatever the fuck Ty Lee is.
"I am not afraid of leaving the palace. I simply choose not to because the state of the Fire Nation disgusts and saddens me," Azula says haughtily, and Ty Lee does not believe her, but she does not actively show it either.
And so, instead of confronting all of the real feelings that are here, Ty Lee decides to tease. "You're still afraid of the dark, aren't you? It's okay."
Ty Lee lets herself smirk and then feels her hopes briefly dashed when Azula does not respond as Ty Lee thought that she would.
"I think perhaps it is you who should be afraid of the dark," Azula says and she has no idea why those words slipped from her lips. Yes, they were intimidating, but they had the layer of truth beneath them.
The fact that Azula does not want Ty Lee to spend the night because Azula is afraid of what Ty Lee will see in the dark here.
Like the screaming. Like the sleepwalking. Like anything else that could knock her from the pedestal she is contentedly perched on.
"Well, nobody said anything about sleeping," Ty Lee does insist. "I just said I wanted to stay the night."
Azula takes a slow deep breath. "I suppose I can allow it."
Because yes, Azula is afraid of leaving the palace, and she is afraid of whatever she is feeling for Ty Lee when this should just be fucking and nothing more, and she is horrified of what Ty Lee could witness if she stayed the night with Azula.
What Azula sees in her sleep is dreadful enough, but what those awake near her see seems to be twice as troubling. She supposes monsters in your head are more desirable than monsters in your head.
They play tile games, and talk about things that are not very important and neither of them really care about, but they do laugh, and even Azula laughs, and Azula refuses to let herself tire. She contorts the candles that are burning low around them in hopes of staying awake. But it is the last, last game of the night that winds up killing her plans of delaying Ty Lee's hopes of nudging their relationship along for just another day.
Azula falls asleep in Ty Lee's and the acrobat smiles very faintly.
This was a nice victory. The candles begin to die, very slowly, most of them probably only clinging to life by the force of the princess. Ty Lee helps her into bed and lies there beside her. For a moment, she feels like she is at that first sleepover again, horrified to move, as if she has been buried alive.
But she moves closer. And closer. And a little bit closer.
Azula wakes up in a panic. But the panic is not accompanied by screaming, or waking somewhere strange in the palace with her nails digging into her skin. She wakes because she does not remember falling asleep, and because the sunlight is pouring through the window.
It illuminates her body, and the body next to her.
She maneuvers around her... her girlfriend, very carefully, trying not to wake her, just like that first night, when Azula did not want to let her know. Of course, Ty Lee never mentioned it, and they both adjusted without acknowledgment.
Azula is in a panic because she didn't dream.
She doesn't believe in omens, alright? Azula might sometimes see things and feel things and she might be afraid to leave her home, but she doesn't believe in omens.
But perhaps if her mind is at ease enough to sleep beside someone, it might be at ease enough to attempt to try to do some of those things Azula yearns to do that she pretends Ty Lee is inconveniencing her by asking and begging about.
No. It doesn't...
It's not that easy.
A dreamless sleep means something, she supposes. Maybe if this morning is not catastrophic, Azula will go examine that teashop with Ty Lee.
But those secret and loathed fears aside, she is right now not at all afraid to be noticed by Ty Lee or the rising sun while she walks her fingers up the slumbering acrobat's sun-drenched arm.
