Title: The Useful Daughter
Rating: K
Character/Pairing: Ty Lee
Summary: Ty Lee finally gets what she's always wanted from her parents.
A/N: Written for superlazygirl's birthday back in November, and posted for 31days, theme: neglected souls. Was written after I saw the Beach and contains sort of maybe vague spoilers for thereabouts.
When Ty Lee goes home again, for the short break between the spring and summer semesters of school, she makes two realizations:
The first comes after almost a week at their home, when she realizes that her parents have not mixed her up with her sisters. Not once, even though the other six of them could accidentally be called any name that came out of either parent's mouth at any given time – it's not even uncommon for her father to refer to her oldest sister by her mother's name. But not Ty Lee. Not once. They know exactly who she is, every time they look at her, every time they see her.
The second comes not long after, when, curiosity piqued, she actually starts paying attention to her parents, whom she has long dismissed from teaching her anything she considers significant. When they speak to her, have conversations with her, they love hearing about her adventures at the Academy – as long as they involve Azula.
It doesn't take long for her to make the connection between these two realizations, and when she does revulsion curls in her stomach, dimming her aura and ruining the rest of her time off. It is with distaste that she realizes that she has gotten what she wanted: she has become someone special in her parent's eyes – but only because she is friends with Azula. Her parent's know who she is now, but only for whom she knows in turn.
Summer solstice falls during the short vacation, and her family goes to the typical celebrations; the festivals and feasts and gaudy displays dedicated to Agni and his burning sun. It's during one of these celebrations that Ty Lee sees it: her destiny as she knows it. The animals shriek and roar, the jugglers amaze, and the acrobats fly through the air in a way that surely not even the airbenders could have achieved, if they had still been around.
That's when Ty Lee knows that her parents will always know which of their daughters she is, but not for the reasons they think.
'Ty Lee?' she tries out in her head, mentally imitating her father's smooth baritone. 'She's the one who ran away and joined the circus.'
Originally posted 11/07/2007