"They're so cute together," Ty Lee coos.
Azula is crouched behind a pillar at the insistence of her wife, watching her daughter's date progress, and she feels strange about it. She remembers trying to stealthily court Ty Lee as a teenager after they returned from Ba Sing Se and how enraged she would have been if anyone had dared spy on them, but Ty Lee insists that "Shinzei is not the same person as you," and "she might need us," and "otherwise, we'll never know what happened."
It still feels like a violation of trust.
Shinzei is in the garden with Kya. They are loosely holding hands, and Shinzei keeps looking at her and then quickly looking away. Kya is much braver. She stares at the other girl and refuses to back down. She is the one who initiated their blossoming romance after all. Azula is still wary of the relationship. Kya is beautiful, of course. She is tall. She has brilliant blue eyes, smooth, dark skin that draws a dramatic contrast to Shinzei's own ivory skintone, and a defined musculature, much like Azula had when she was younger. And these features are only slightly undermined by the fact that she is a waterbender and that, even at sixteen years old, she is perennially barefoot.
"I'm just so excited. It's such an exciting time in her life, you know, Azula?" Ty Lee is bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, effortlessly maintaining her balance in her awkward crouched position, and even if Azula is still unsure how she feels about her daughter's choice in romantic partners, her enthusiasm is contagious.
"How should I know?" she answers. "I was locked in a mental hospital when I was sixteen."
She is really not still bitter about it.
Well, maybe a little. Those were supposed to be the best years of her life, after all.
"Shhh! Look at them!" Ty Lee slaps her lightly on the shoulder to quiet her. In the garden, Kya whispers something into Shinzei's ear. Their daughter continues to stare at the ground in front of her, but she smiles and nods. They watch as the girls make their way to the nearby fountain. Ty Lee's arm tightens around Azula's shoulders. The fountain is significant in their relationship too. During the war, Azula used to take Ty Lee there to make out when they grew tired of keeping their relationship confined to her stuffy bedroom. She can still remember the press of damp grass against the back of her thighs and the weight of her then-girlfriend on her lap, the combined fear and exhilaration that came with the possibility of being spotted.
Kya releases Shinzei's hand and falls into her waterbending from. As she draws a thick stream of water from the fountain, Shinzei watches, completely mesmerized, the way Ty Lee used to watch Azula firebend. It seems like some cruel trick of the fates that Azula's daughter hates firebending but is so enthralled with a waterbender. Azula might even question whether Shinzei was hers if she did not remember giving birth to her herself.
Kya bends the beginning and end of the water whip together, so that the water rotates in a circle between them. Then, with a few fluid motions of her hands, she twists it into the shape of a heart.
"Oh, that is so cute!" Ty Lee whispers. "Why didn't you ever do anything that romantic for me?"
"You knew what you were getting," Azula dismisses the question with a wave of her hand. "If you wanted romance, you should have married Zuko."
Ty Lee sighs. "She gets a heart made out of water, I get thrown in the Boiling Rock." But her arm does not leave Azula's shoulders.
"She probably gets it from her parents," Azula mutters darkly. "Have you seen them? They're disgustingly in love. In my family, not being banished for a stupid, teenage mistake was a show of love."
Ty Lee giggles. "No wonder you're so bad at it." Her lips brush Azula's cheek and edge toward her ear, and for a moment, Azula thinks she might be able to persuade her wife to take her to their bedroom and leave their daughter with some privacy, but then Ty Lee turns back to the garden, just as interested as ever.
Shinzei is clenching and unclenching her fists rapidly, bouncing up and down in glee. Kya puts the water down and waits, a calm, patient smile spread across her face. It reminds Azula of the way she used to look at Ty Lee, and she hates it because she does not want to like their relationship.
Shinzei eventually stills, and Azula thinks she reads a murmured apology on her lips, but Kya simply shakes her head and takes Shinzei's hand again.
"Did you ever think this would be happening to her?" Ty Lee asks as she drops her head to Azula's shoulder.
The honest answer is that Azula did not give it much thought. Where Ty Lee wanted Shinzei to date, Azula wanted her to firebend and dominate. "I knew she could," she replies slowly. "She just never seemed interested."
"You knew she could?" Ty Lee repeats, furrowing her brow in curiosity, and Azula nods.
"No one thought I was human enough to fall in love either," she explains. "All I needed was to find the person who knew that wasn't true. It's no different for her."
Ty Lee loves their daughter, but she has never understood Shinzei the way Azula has. Azula, who knows what it is like to never feel adequate, who understands the unique loneliness of being surrounded by people who are all made uncomfortable by her, who was once also believed to be a monster, even if it was a monster of a different kind.
Ty Lee lifts her head to kiss Azula on the lips before replacing it and holds her wife even more tightly that before. "Kya knows."
"I believe that." Even if she does not want to. "And neither of those people are who our parents wanted them to be."
"Hey, speak for yourself!" Ty Lee argues. "I've always loved Kya."
"You love everyone. That doesn't count," Azula insists.
But instead of responding, Ty Lee gasps and points frantically into the garden, where Kya is, slowly, giving Shinzei ample time to stop her, moving her hands to the other girl's waist and leaning in. When their lips meet, Shinzei stiffs, and Kya immediately pulls away, her cheeks growing pink. Ty Lee lets out a sigh of disappointment, but Shinzei is positively beaming, even if she is still staring at the ground between them. She rocks forward and pulls back, and then she leans forward again and kisses Kya back. Her hands hang in the air, not quite touching the waterbender's sides, but Kya's flatten against Shinzei's back and gently pull her closer.
"Azula!" Ty Lee gasps, squeezing her wife so tightly it is painful. "Azula!"
"I know, I know," Azula grumbles. "This is the best moment of your life. Now can we let them have the rest of day to themselves? This is what you dragged me here in the hopes of seeing, isn't it?"
"Ugh, fine," Ty Lee sighs. "Why can't you ever just let me enjoy anything?"
"Because our daughter deserves some privacy on her date," Azula hisses, picking herself up off the veranda and brushing off her robes.
"Some parents make their children take chaperones on their dates," Ty Lee huffs. "I am not that bad."
"Most parents are worried for their children's safety if they let them wander the Caldera alone with strange boys ," Azula points out. "Our daughter is with her friend and they have not left the palace grounds. You're just being nosey."
Ty Lee crosses her arms and looks annoyed, but she does not argue.
Shinzei comes to them after Kya rejoins the rest of her family in the guest wing of the palace. She smiles serenely in the doorway of the parlor where Azula and Ty Lee are seated on the couch, sipping tea and pretending they have been there for hours.
"Come sit," Ty Lee tells her, a wide smile stretched across her face as she pats the seat of the chair beside her. "Tell us all about your date."
Shinzei slips into the chair and reaches for the tea tray. "What do you want to know?"
"How was it? Did you take her to the garden like I told you too? What happened?" Questions flow from Ty Lee's mouth before her daughter has time to even digest them. Her eyes widen in a panic.
"How was it? Did you…" is her only response, and Azula thinks she is trying to communicate that she did not understand the questions that were being fired at her.
"Did it go well?" she asks, much more slowly, setting a hand on her wife's shoulder to pull her back.
"Yes," Shinzei answers simply as her cheeks redden.
"What did you guys do?" Ty Lee asks in a much more measured voice than before.
"We went to the garden," Shinzei tells them. "And we… talked." Her eyes light up. "She showed me a waterbending trick."
"Oh really?" Azula raises her eyebrows. "What kind of waterbending trick?"
"She made shapes out of the water." She notices that her daughter carefully avoids mentioning the heart. "I know you don't like that she's a waterbender, but I think it's beautiful. I wish firebending wasn't so awful. Or maybe I just wish I was a waterbender too."
"I used to feel the same way about your mother's firebending?" Ty Lee sighs. She smiles warmly at her wife. "Remember that, Azula?"
"Yes, you used to watch me avidly every time I trained," Azula replies, stirring her tea absently. "It was actually quite creepy."
"Hey!" Ty Lee slaps her in the shoulder and Azula narrowly avoids sloshing tea all over her lap. She turns back to her daughter. "Are you going to go out with her again?"
"Her family is going to be in town for the Fire Days Festival next month. We've agreed to go together."
Ty Lee pouts. "That's an awfully long time to wait. I know! You love climbing out on the roof and watching the stars. You should ask her if she wants to go with you. Your mother and I used to do that together when we were teenagers."
"Do you think she would like that?" Shinzei asks hopefully, and Ty Lee nods.
"We found it very romantic. Right Azula? We had a couple of firsts on that roof."
Azula grunts noncommittally and Shinzei wrinkles her nose. "I know you're excited that I… went on a date, but I don't need to know all those details. You're my parents."
"Okay," Ty Lee shrugs in mild disappointment. "Just trying to help."
And that night, a breeze blows through Shinzei's room from the open window, and Ty Lee and Azula exchange a knowing glance when Aang and Katara wonder aloud where their daughter has run off to.