Why was this chapter up for five hours and someone just now let me know I posted the wrong documentt? Sorry about that guys.
Warning for descriptions of blood in this chapter.
The room is completely dark when the door creaks open, not because it is nighttime—in fact, it is the middle of the afternoon—but because heavy, dark red curtains have been pulled across the windows. They make the room stiflingly hot, even though it is winter in the Fire Nation, but they are also necessary to block out the sun, which Ty Lee swears up and down shines more brightly here than anywhere else, despite the fact that Azula has never noticed.
The mattress dips as someone sits down on the edge of the bed behind Azula. She feels fingers against her cheek as the same person brushes damp hair away from her face. She wipes at her eyes furiously. No one should see her like this. She is not weepy over a child she had not even named yet.
"I brought you a cup of tea," Ty Lee tells her. "I was afraid you might overheat in here, so I let it cool down a lot, and now it's kind of… lukewarm." Azula hates tea. Ty Lee knows this. Unfortunately, it is what everyone drinks, except for, perhaps, the people in the Water Tribes, and Ty Lee's first impulse when anyone is upset is to make them tea. "I'm actually surprised this is affecting you so much. I mean, not that it's a bad thing," she rushes to add. "It just didn't seem like you were that excited about being a mother."
Azula takes a deep breath and does not like how she hears it shudder. "You're going to leave me, aren't you?"
"Azula…" Ty Lee gasps. "Of course not. Why would you even—I would have to be a terrible person to leave you over something like this."
The Princess shrugs carelessly. "Because this is the only thing you've ever asked for and I can't give it to you." She feels helpless. She has never felt so helpless and she loathes it. And she also feels completely inadequate, because she is trying as hard as she is and she cannot seem to do something that Mai did on accident.
"It's okay," Ty Lee assures her. "We can try again. Or we don't have to if you don't want to. Please don't tell me you only agreed to this pregnancy because I wanted it. Azula, you're enough for me."
"Of course I know that." Azula shakes her head and tries not to sniffle. "But I've never really had a family before. I want one with you."
Ty Lee leans down and presses her lips against her cheek and the Princess sighs.
"Does it still hurt?"
A nod.
"Still bleeding?"
Another nod.
There was so much blood. Azula is not squeamish, but agni, she cannot even thinkabout it without wanting to vomit. Ty Lee walked in on her looking like she had barely survived an assassination attempt.
"Roll onto your stomach," Ty Lee instructs her, pushing gently on her shoulder.
"Why?" Azula groans. Her abdomen feels like it is being clawed apart from the inside and the absolute last thing she wants is to move.
"Just trust me," Ty Lee insists. So Azula flops onto her stomach with an unattractive grunt and Ty Lee climbs on the bed and straddles her thighs. She feels the bottom of her robe being flipped up past her waist, and then there is the steady pressure of her wife's hand against her tailbone. "Does that feel any better?"
"Mmm," Azula hums, her eyes fluttering closed. Her breath hitches. There is still pain, of course, but Ty Lee's manipulation of her pressure points greatly diminishes it. There are perks to being married to someone who talks endlessly about chi.
"Why aren't you upset?" Azula asks after moment, when she feels the pressure begin to subside as Ty Lee takes her weight off of her. "I thought you really wanted this."
There are lips against her spine, right above the hem of her underwear, and then Ty Lee pulls her robe back down over her hips. "What do you mean? Of course I'm upset," she replies. "I've been crying on Mai's shoulder all day. Don't tell me my face always looks this blotchy." She eases her head onto the pillow beside Azula's and rests a hand on the small of her back.
"I expected you to be in hysterics somewhere," the Princess admits. "But you seem just fine." Ty Lee feels everything, everything, more than anyone else Azula has ever met. She cannot be handling this better. That is completely impossible.
"Yeah, I think I had enough of hysterics this morning."
Azula's mouth twists as she remembers Ty Lee scooping her up in her arms as she sat doubled over in a pool of blood and running through the palace, screaming for Zuko and Mai and then nearly kicking their bedroom door down. The servants are probably still cleaning the floors. Adrenaline will do strange things to people.
"And," Ty Lee takes a deep breath. "I figured when I came in here to see you, I should try to hold myself together, since, you know, I'm not the one who miscarried a baby today." She slides her hand up to rub circles into Azula's shoulders.
It is odd to feel like she cannot trust her own body anymore. After all, that is the thing she has been valued for most of her life. Her body and the things that came with it. Destruction. Pleasure. But apparently not life.
"You could cry a little," she tells her wife. "Maybe then I wouldn't feel so pathetic."
"You mean it?" Ty Lee whispers, and Azula nods. The acrobat scoots towards her, her chin already beginning to wobble, and buries her face in her wife's chest. Normally, Azula hates it when Ty Lee cries in front of her, but today she welcomes it, because today she feels incredibly helpless and alone and Ty Lee is the only other person whom she knows understands that.
"We can try again," Azula repeats absently, as she strokes Ty Lee's heaving back.
"Are you sure," Ty Lee's voice is muffled against her. "I know you didn't do so well with the… making it part last time."
"Remember who you're talking to," she answers sharply. "I have commanded armies. I am not afraid of a single man."
She hears a wet giggle, and then Ty Lee withdraws her head and kisses Azula sloppily on the nose, getting tears everywhere, of course. "The next one will be perfect. I know it will," she says determinedly. "We'll have a baby with your eyes and my laugh an d you can teach it firebending, and I can teach it how to flirt, and our lives will be just perfect."
"Your optimism is nauseating," Azula mutters. It is something she thinks would sound at home coming out of Mai's mouth. She knows that Ty Lee is probably right because Azula is prefect and can do anything, and if she does not feel that way, she at least needs to pretend, but right now she hurts and she is angry at herself, and she just wants to wallow for a few more hours before making herself presentable and pretending to be completely unbothered at dinner.
However, Ty Lee's plans for the future do seem rather appealing. A no doubt very attractive child with Azula's superior bending abilities and Ty Lee's sociability would be nearly unstoppable. Perhaps their child would even be popular enough among the people of the Fire Nation to lead a successful insurrection when the time was right.
She decides not to tell Ty Lee that she is considering grooming their hypothetical baby to eventually assassinate Mai and Zuko's daughter and her entire family. She has a feeling her wife would not be as enthused by the prospect as she is.
"Somebody has to look on the bright side." Ty Lee is running her fingers over Azula's lips now, tears still leaking from her eyes. "Besides," she shrugs. "I know I'm right. We have to be able to have a baby because we'd be such great parents. There's no way the universe would let that go to waste."
Azula thinks she is wrong on both counts, because people who definitely don not deserve children get them all the time and Azula is striving to become one of those people, but she opts not to ruin her wife's hope. Instead, she pulls Ty Lee back toward her and pretends it is for the other woman's comfort so she does not have to admit that it is for her own.
Ty Lee's hand curls delicately around her shoulder as Azula holds her. "Do you think it was a boy or a girl?"
"A boy, obviously," Azula replies without pausing to think about it. "Can you imagine us with a girl?"
"I kind of thought it was a girl," Ty Lee admits. "I just kind of have a feeling like we're supposed to have a daughter."
Azula scoffs. "Don't tell me you read its aura or met it in a dream or something."
"No," Ty Lee answers. "But you know how sometimes you just know things?" Another shrug. "I guess I just knew."
"Well only one of us can be right, and since I'm always right about everything, it's obviously me."
She can feel her wife smile against her, and it feels better than she would like to admit, like something warm running through her veins from the point where the acrobat's lips touch her skin. There is something empowering about knowing that, even in times like these, she can make Ty Lee smile.
Even if she was being completely serious.
"I love you, Azula," the acrobat whispers fiercely. "And I promise we'll be really happy no matter what, okay?"
"If you say so."
Azula wishes she could believe that.
A/N: Fun fact about this chapter. This scene was originally planned for the epilogue of Fate Is Cruel, but I decided to go a different direction with the epilogue and keep it a little closer to the present, and I also didn't really want to end that fic on this sort of note, so I put it here instead, and I honestly think it works a lot better in this context.
Up next: Shinzei's first kiss