117: Camaraderie
Prompted By: korrasarmyy
The late evening air is crisp and cold. Wind whips through the bones of retired ships in the yard. It is a graveyard of warships, the gutted remnants of Fire Nation glory. And in the dim indigo twilight, four twenty-somethings are the only non-relics there.
The Fire Lord, his fiancée, his sister and her ex-girlfriend all are garbed in unassuming clothes to pass unnoticed between the palace and this dark, deserted place, carrying enough hard liquor for a regiment of rowdy soldiers while they talk and laugh with the earnestness of teenagers again despite being distinguished members of society approaching their late twenties.
Making the climb out here to light a fire, play drinking games and tell stories among the looming shadows of defeated and decommissioned warships is an annual tradition they started on the day after the first new year after things actually started to get better post-war. However, this is the first time Azula has joined them, which will either make the experience a little more pleasant and nostalgic or make it into an experience more akin to torture than celebration.
Mai argued the latter; Zuko argued the former. Ty Lee broke the tie and now the four have only just pushed past the unbelievably awkward reunion and painfully poor small talk, had a few drinks among this cemetery of their shared past and now, while casually sitting and drinking in the eroded, hollowed out husk of a decommissioned warship's hull, where they are playing 'who, what, where,' an old Fire Nation soldier's game meant for passing the time on long journeys by ship. The game asks the question, "Who should be informed first of your death, what will kill you and where will you die?" When Zuko introduced it to the Gaang they described it as too ghoulish to be fun, but given that Fire Nation military training emphasizes the tactic of assuming you are already dead before entering combat, it remains popular culturally even among children too young to remember the war.
When the spinning empty bottle stops at Zuko, he takes the first turn after a long and thoughtful swig of lukewarm sake. "Who, the Gaang and Mai. What, stopping a volcanic eruption with just my bending. Where, just above an orphanage or school or somewhere else that makes me double heroic."
Ty Lee makes a noise that could either be admiring towards the idea, mournful towards the orphans, mocking towards him or simply just because she took far too strong of a pull of spiced wine as he finished speaking. Azula snorts and rolls her eyes. Mai touches his hand and says nothing.
And then it is his turn to take a drink, screw back on the top and spin the bottle. Round and round it spins until it lands on its next victim.
Mai shrugs and pretends to begrudge the spinning bottle landing to point at her. "Who, Zuko. What, sexual exhaustion from an intense encounter with four impressionable and muscular cabana boys. Where, Ember Island."
Ty Lee giggles. Azula shrugs a shoulder and smirks, a cruel yet harmless gleam in her golden eyes. Zuko forces himself to laugh too; he knows she doesn't really mean it. Or so he hopes.
Mai takes a smooth, cold-blooded swig without the slightest grimace or gasp, screws the lid on with the nimble fingers of a bladeswoman and spins the bottle. It spins and spins and…
Silence falls, against the shreds better judgment that still remain in Mai, Zuko and Ty Lee even this deep into the drinks; the tension they covered up with drinking, laughter and a thick layer of nostalgia suddenly grips Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee again as the bottle points to Azula.
If the discomfort affects her, Azula does not show it. "Who, my mother; tell her it was all her fault. What, a lucky blow landed by the hundredth elite warrior after I defeated the first ninety-nine, and naturally the lucky blow becomes fatal because I make sure to kill him before I succumb to the blood loss. Where, on the beach on a blindingly sunny day."
Something between fear of letting the focus linger too long on Azula — despite the fact that the more Ty Lee drinks the less she can keep herself from staring at her ex-girlfriend — and the desperate need to not let her thoughts linger on the idea of Azula dying leads Ty Lee to grab the bottle and, with a bright but sloppy smile painstakingly plastered on her face, she turns it to face herself. No one protests; it's just a game. But Azula's eyes linger a little too long. She pretends it's judgment over Ty Lee's desperation for attention or derision towards how drunk her ex is right now, but deep down, way deep down somewhere in the glacial fire of her coal black heart, Azula is grateful for the excuse to stop avoiding looking at Ty Lee.
If Ty Lee notices the look in Azula's eyes — which Zuko uneasily identifies as hatred and makes a note to himself to lay off any more liquor and be ready to intervene in a fight but Mai correctly identifies as poorly concealed lust — she does not a acknowledge it and launches into her own turn.
"Who," she says, Zuko and Aang. What, the small explosion from the massive bomb I stop from fully detonating. Where, the most vulnerable room underneath the Maintained Peace Summit of World Dignitaries. I'll be the biggest hero in all Four Nations."
Ty Lee flexes and kisses both of her biceps before bursting into a fit of giggles.
The mood sufficiently lightened, the night can continue unimpeded, and so after a brief and casual post-game conversation mostly consisting of old half-forgotten inside jokes and reminiscing over days gone bye in ways they cannot in their ordinary lives, the small cemetery party slows down as the night wears on and they all know soon they had better start the hike back home to sleep off the booze. Sadly, the world still awaits them outside of the shipyard.
Mai and Zuko are sucking on each other's faces and Ty Lee is soothing the abnormal discomfort it prompts in her. It never bothered her before, but with Azula here, it makes her stomach flip and her skin crawl. So, she explores the old ship, careful not to stray too far from the campfire and Fire Lord.
Azula's apparent comfort in the silence between them as they poke around and snoop on the rusted hunk of history makes her feel an anger she cannot quite explain. But she supposes it is easier than talking.
Ty Lee is about to head back to Mai and Zuko when she sees a weathered carving written in a language she no longer speaks in a hand that screams of a deep, unquenchable sadness even after decades rotting here alone.
She brushes her hand over the carving and then tilts to face Azula.
"You can read Provincial, right?" she uneasily asks.
"Well enough," Azula coolly replies, punctuating her sentence fragment with half of a shrug.
"What does this carving mean?" Ty Lee whispers.
After a beat of soft silence, Azula replies, "It's from a soldier to his daughter or girlfriend or, well, some girl named Hope. It's an apology."
"For what?"
Azula re-reads it twice for caution's sake before she shrugs and admits, "It doesn't say why or what it was he did to her. Just that he was sorry."
The moonlight wanes for a brief moment as Azula and Ty Lee both feel as if they cannot stop staring at each other despite keeping their eyes diverted at all costs. The writing on the wall made them feel too transparent for their own good.
"Do you think she ever got to read it?"
Azula opens her mouth, almost as if she is about to say something that matters, but the light shifts and she changes her mind, choosing to scoff instead.
"Probably not. And I doubt it would have mattered if she even did. There are some things no one can forgive. No one with any self-respect, at least," Azula says coldly.
And Ty Lee swallows down the angry words that threaten to spill from her liquor-loosened lips as she realizes that Azula is a language Ty Lee is no longer fluent in, but still remembers how to read.
There is no further reason to linger any longer so they return to the party, both feeling sick from more than the drinks, both feeling cold from more than the night air, and both reaffirmed in the fact that their love cannot exist without fermenting into poison. Azula's callous remark was a reminder to stop before they could start. Maybe Ty Lee is even grateful for it.
As the moon hits its apex, "To bad decisions," is a toast Zuko enjoys making as a reprieve from his constant role as leader of a nation in the midst of atonement for its crimes.
Even Azula raises her glass to that one.
And then they begin the moonlit trek home.
They walk for a long while, the cool breeze and stiflingly warm air intermingling. It would be a quicker trip if they weren't all drunk and either currently or formerly in love and tangled up in the threads woven by their shared pasts.
Zuko grabs Ty Lee just before she would have stumbled. Ty Lee thanks him, a slurry of slurred words, as Azula glares and sneers at her brother's hands on Ty Lee's bare skin as he helps her to steady herself. And in her jealousy Azula convinces herself that she sees Ty Lee blush flirtatiously, even if logic and Zuko's long-term relationship with Mai indicate it is either the booze, the breeze or both.
Once Ty Lee is steady she begins to walk away but Zuko stops her and says, "No way are you going all the way across the city to your place alone. The three of us are headed to sleep this off at the palace. You know you're always welcome there and I, as Fire Lord, am commanding you to not be stupid and head home with us."
Ty Lee's heart takes a rapid dive into her already spinning stomach but she knows, even with her brain barely functioning, that Zuko is right. Suki would call letting herself get injured or worse just to avoid her ex-girlfriend a set-back in her healing process.
And so, the foursome manages to return to the palace. Zuko gives a few warm parting words, kisses Mai, yawns loudly and heads off to his royal bedchamber. Uncomfortably, to get to her own Azul must walk with Mai and Ty Lee — on their way to one of the many lavish guest rooms — for a few agonizing minutes. Only one corridor. Ugh.
Finally, the stride through painful awkward silence and suffocating tension ends as Mai shoves open the guest room door and helps Ty Lee stagger inside.
"Good night," says Azula in her smooth politician's tone before coolly disappearing down the hall towards her bedchamber.
It makes Ty Lee's blood boil and the alcohol makes it difficult to conceal and even more difficult to figure out why Azula being cold, detached and so very Azula is making her so angry.
"Once we sober up, we really need to work on your taste in women," sighs Mai as she flops down onto one of the two beds and removes her shoes.
Ty Lee scoffs and slurs, slowly staggering her way to the other bed and dizzily collapsing onto the comfortable red slab, "Come on, am I sad at how things ended between us? Yeah. But am I still attracted to her?"
Ty Lee sloppily snorts as if in disbelief but Mai just sighs and replies, "Is water wet?"
"Hey!"
"Oh, I'm sorry," sarcastically drawls Mai with the tiniest gleam of amusement in her amber eyes. "Did you want me to answer honestly or just tell you what you want to hear?"
Ty Lee doesn't manage to finish rolling her eyes before drunken sleep takes her.
When the sun ruthlessly rises upon four hungover distinguished adult members of society, only two of them end up on their feet. Zuko needs to work and Ty Lee wants nothing more than to hurry home before her absence sparks any unwanted questions. Meanwhile, Mai slumbers and Azula languishes through her misery while taking a long, scalding bath alone.
Although Ty Lee at first contemplated taking one of the many secluded routes out of the palace she still had memorized — she had snuck out of this place at dawn more times in her wilder days than she could count — the memories felt painful and she feared it would make her look guilty.
She feels guilty, although she has done nothing wrong. It is strange.
Despite trying to scurry out as quickly as possible, she cannot help but stop when she hears Zuko sigh and sees him running a frustrated hand through his hair. So, although she knows she has every right to be selfish, she gives in to her gentle nature and walks over to ask him what's wrong.
The exact details are classified so he ends up tongue tied dancing around the issue. But she realizes it has to do with his family when he says, "Maybe guilt really is hereditary, but leadership may not be. I don't know. All I know is that I'm no politician." He cannot hide the resentment and ancient shame that strains his voice as he says, "Everyone said I was too soft to rule and that Azula was the politician." He huffs, nearly angrily enough to exhale smoke. "Maybe they're not wrong. At least ruthless dictators get things done."
"You can't let a few setbacks stop you from trying to push these measures through and make a better world. It's not about your family. It's a good thing people oppose you. You know why nobody openly told your father they disagreed with his ideas? He would've executed them for it. Politics aside, you can't let a few blemishes on your family tree convince you to stop you from doing all the good stuff you've been doing, Zuko."
"My uncle says that if all the fruit is rotted, then the tree is the real problem. Maybe I'm just as egotistical and insane as they all are. I just got kicked around enough to bury it."
He is not wrong, even if his fears are irrational in Ty Lee's opinion. After all, Fire Lord Sozin, who committed genocide for power, Fire Lord Azulon who ordered you to be killed to make a point, and Fire Lord Ozai who learned nothing from their mistakes were not men of brilliant leadership or foresight. They were cruel, petty and spiteful. Cruel and petty and spiteful in the most boring and ordinary of ways, and cruel, petty, spiteful men do cruel, petty, spiteful things.
Still, Ty Lee frowns. "Zuko, you know how much I love you, but sometimes when you talk about her being born lucky or whatever cruel, petty spiteful thing your dad told you, I think you overlook how much luckier than her you actually turned out to be. You manage to control and use your father's best traits, like powerful bending and leadership skills, while not expressing any of his worst ones. But Azula…"
Zuko sighs and averts his eyes, gripped by a sudden and very sharp sense of shame.
"I also overlook how observant you are," he admits.
"You do. You're super lucky to have me as a friend!" Ty Lee smiles, hugs him and then walks away into the blindingly bright morning.
In that brief moment, Zuko thinks he may finally understand why Azula never could get over her.
[X]
The sun settles into the midday sky. The fire blossoms drift on the gentle breeze like a soft snowfall at the South Pole and the same quartet meets again in a park, with as much privacy as they could manage, and a picnic lunch as large as they could smuggle out of the palace kitchens.
However, what was intended to be a peaceful afternoon in such tranquil surroundings has become anything but due to the unresolved angry yet blatantly sexual tension between Azula and Ty Lee.
It has been a full season since they last gathered together in peace, partying in the graveyard of warships. Today is a far more tranquil affair, or, at least, it would be were it not for the events of last night, when Ty Lee was sitting at a busy little tavern and, naturally, she was beset on all sides by patrons flirting with her. Her first instinct was to flirt back, if only for a free drink or for kindness's sake, but the same sickly feeling that she got every time this happened within Fire Nation borders overcame her.
It was frustrating. Everywhere else in the world, Ty Lee was as free as freedom can get. Yet, somehow, the moment she stepped foot in her homeland, flirting or smiling or kissing or spirits forbid anything else, made her feel a heavy and inexplicable guilt churning in her gut, as if she were cheating.
When she told Suki about the phenomenon, Suki likened it to when soldiers had lost limbs and felt phantom sensation from time to time. According to Suki, Ty Lee was suffering from a phantom relationship, in which the deeply ingrained muscle memory of her first love made her hallucinate its presence even in dingy taverns years after calling it quits. Ty Lee had laughed and changed the subject because it was beautiful and terrible at the same time — just like Azula herself — and Ty Lee had no desire to make any mention of the romantic feelings that lingered in her to anyone at all.
However, for the first time, the phantom ache wasn't just a phantom.
And Ty Lee gathered another secret to keep in her growing bouquet of hidden thoughts when she realized there was no more beautiful sight in years than Azula when she broke a full decanter of warm rice wine over the handsy, albeit polite and sweet, fisherman's head.
From there it escalated fast. Of course they both ended up tossed on the street and banned from the tavern. Of course they both ended up walking a familiar route without intending to since they were too preoccupied indulging in a bitter argument about boundaries and jealousy and the fact that this kind of thing was exactly why they broke up. Of course they ended up standing amongst fire flower blossoms and Azula was tucking her hair aside just so and Ty Lee kissed her.
And, naturally, Ty Lee ended up sneaking out through a window and jumping across two roofs while hungover and wearing last night's clothes before the princess woke up.
It was a mistake, yes, but spirits, Ty Lee had to admit sometimes she made the best ones.
Which explains why a day later when they are face to face for the first time since that night, the absence of Zuko that may only be a few minutes of understandable tardiness due to his prior political engagement feels like it stretches for eons in the awkward silence and furtive glances.
Sure, Mai is there, noticing, aware, and immediately able to see through the respective facades of Azula and Ty Lee, but she isn't known for sparkling conversation and, even if she were, she doesn't want to get involved in that mess of a relationship.
Thankfully, the unbearable tension eases up when Zuko finally arrives and sets down the basket of food and bottle of expensive sake in the center of the picnic gathering.
"How'd it go?" asks Ty Lee, patting his hand twice.
"Slightly better than the worst it possibly could have gone." He smiles but the three women immediately notice it is forced.
Still, Azula shrugs her shoulders and comments, "Well, ZuZu, at the very least no royal decree of yours can be worse than the last decree of our great great great grandfather."
"Uhh… refresh my memory? Uncle's history lessons were less comprehensive than the ones you got." Despite his tone of levity, all three women hear the tiny bitter bite beneath it and can see that flash of still-unresolved conflict about his upbringing in his eyes.
Azula has, in her defense, made quite the effort to ignore her brother and change the subject when he makes that sad little face, but she takes another swig, leans forward and purrs, "For all his flaws, Uncle is a good storyteller with an immense and proper knowledge of history. My education was mostly focused on battle tactics and improving my skill at killing people and conquering cities. I learned this story from Uncle, so stop being jealous and admit you just weren't ever paying any attention."
Zuko huffs. "Just tell the story."
"Fine. Our great great great grandfather was dying of the blood boil plague. There were rumors about a cure, an elixir from the Earth Kingdom. He sent out not only his best warriors but also a draft of civilians with any worthwhile training or education. He was so desperate to save his life that he gave a formal royal decree that if anyone sent to find the cure returned without it, they would be executed. So, naturally, none of them returned at all and he succumbed to the plague a few weeks later."
Zuko cannot help but burst into laughter and the others, with even Mai contributing a snort and small smirk, join him.
They dig into the meal without further ado and once the food is mostly eaten, the liquor halfway drained, and the sun nearing its apex, the quarter ends up playing 'who what where' again.
"Who," begins Zuko thoughtfully, "all the isolationist, war-starved officials pushing back against my every reasonable measure. What, self-immolation as an exhausted protest. Where, ugh I don't even care anymore at this point."
Even Mai laughs. Ty Lee squeezes Zuko's shoulder sympathetically, a purely platonic and friendly gesture from a touchy feely girl but it still makes Azula's nostrils flare and her blood boil.
The bottle next spins, spins, spins and then lands on Mai, an accident that mimics the order of their last time playing.
"Who, my little brother, and you had better break the news more gently than I would. What, a knife fight on the tallest building in Ba Sing Se. I win, but succumb to my injuries after the opponent succumbs first. Where…" She takes a swig and clears her throat after realizing her mistake. "I guess I already told you. Tallest building in Ba Sing Se."
They laugh, they chat for a few moments, and then they continue playing.
The bottle, after a few misfires from increasingly sloppy spinning work as the afternoon wears on, does finally land on Azula like an accusing finger.
"Who, my enemies, let them know they finally can get a good night's rest. What, a mutiny against me by a ship of pirates I had ruled with an iron fist. Where, somewhere far away and beautiful. Hopefully tropical, if I can get a wish, and after spending — and enjoying — every copper piece of a stolen fortune."
Azula may be a liar, a hypocrite, a war criminal and a laundry list of other unsavory nouns, but it is difficult for anybody present this afternoon to deny that the woman has style.
When the bottle lands on Ty Lee, she says, "Who, Suki. Tell her she was right to worry and tell her the truth about all the times I mopped up the truth to not be embarrassed or to get her to stop prying in my love life so I don't die a liar. What, Azula's miscalculated shot in a silly bar fight started over petty jealousy. Where, stuck in the same place I've been stuck since I was a kid."
If ever anything has killed a mood, that sentence does. And if anyone had never killed a mood so bluntly before, it is Ty Lee. The stunned silence falls over the group of picnickers like a heavy fog.
Zuko opens his mouth to speak but closes it when he catches Mai's gaze. She knows something he does not, her lips pursed into a thin, tight line.
Ty Lee begins to leave but stops. Between the dizziness from the alcohol weighing her body down and the guilt of being the one to ruin the fun urging her to fix things, she is anchored to her spot.
"I'm sorry," she says, cheeks flushed and hot. "Zuko, this is supposed to be about brightening things up for you after a tough day. I didn't mean to bring down the mood."
Zuko awkwardly pats her hand.
"It's not about me. Sure, today sucked but only as much as it always does for the ruler of a country. These outings are supposed to be about keeping us grounded and human."
And so Zuko does all he can to enforce that, Mai helping him to do so without him even needing to ask her, and so the next two hours pass without any incident, leaving them at the end of their outing polishing off the last of the expensive drinks and languidly discussing global politics.
"I value loyalty and take their oaths and mine seriously. I do all I can to keep the faith with them and live up to the Fire Lord they pledged loyalty to. That includes refusing to punish people who think I failed my end of the bargain. Look, I know what it's like to keep ramming my head into the same door without looking for a better way to open it but…. I don't get it." Zuko sighs, shrugs and removes his crown, stashing it in the picnic basket and withdrawing another bottle of sake in its place.
No one can ignore that Ty Lee's eyes remain fixed halfheartedly on Azula as she explains to Zuko, "To people who value oaths and loyalty, an oath of loyalty doesn't break just because the subject turns out to be unworthy. It just gets more bitter."
Azula looks directly at her ex-girlfriend as she argues to Zuko, "Then they are keeping the oath of loyalty only out of their own self interest and you owe them nothing, brother."
The game shifts after the first course of the picnic is finished and the first bottle of booze is fully depleted. Ty Lee had brought the tiles and dice. They had little to gamble with so they decided to play "grudges" or "fears" another former Fire Nation military favorite. Gambling real coins was illegal in military ranks, gambling personal secrets was not. So Zuko pops another bottle and they begin to play a rather basic game of strategy and luck in which the winner picks the loser and the loser has to confess a grudge or a fear.
They play round after round, ask probing questions, and tell as many jokes as truths as Azula wins again and again, collecting secrets the way Iroh collects trinkets or kids at the beach collect seashells but divulging none of her own, until the moment Ty Lee lies down a winning hand of tiles and Azula's luck at last runs out.
She sighs and gives in, loath to play by the rules but not in any mood to protest. "You all know my long, long list of grudges. Mental institutions, daddy issues, flighty cheating ex-girlfriends…"
Ty Lee interrupts by bitterly snapping, "Right. So what's your worst fear?"
Azula rolls her eyes.
"Dating you again," she replies coolly.
Any hope for a relaxing evening fizzles out when Ty Lee snorts, forces a laugh, and drunkenly demands of Azula, "Tell us your real worst fear."
They briefly bicker before finally and in a huff, "Then you tell me what it is, if you are such an expert," snaps Azula, the corner of her lip twisting and then contorting into the shape of a snarl.
"I think your worst fear is emotional intimacy," confidently slurs Ty Lee.
Azula rolls her eyes. "I'm not sure who isn't uncomfortable with emotional intimacy. I assure you that not one person on this Earth is walking around feeling happy and excited to be vulnerable and intimate emotionally with people."
Mai snorts. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but Azula has a point. I've never met anybody who's thrilled about emotional vulnerability either."
But whatever logic involved does not matter when Ty Lee gets up and starts walking — well, drunkenly staggering — away. Azula pushes herself up and ignores the spinning of her head as she heads after her. If Zuko or Mai make any attempt to pursue them, neither woman notices as the picnic melts away behind them and they find themselves alone together beneath the fire blossoms.
"Fine," spits Azula. "I will admit I have no right to be jealous about whose company you keep. We are not together and have not been for a long time. You have every right to be angry."
"That isn't why I'm angry!"
"Then enlighten me, because all I know is that I woke up alone after our tryst and the only moment I can recall you not being pleased about was me being jealous despite us not being in a relationship."
"The problem isn't jealousy! It's never been the jealousy; it's always been about trust. I'm angry because if you trusted me you wouldn't have any reason to feel jealous. You never could trust me. It's the main reason I know we would never work out no matter how much I want us to. It kills me how many times like last night make me want to give us another try but I know it will end as bad as it always does! You never could trust me and never will. You were always suspicious no matter how hard I tried to prove my loyalty, always jealous and paranoid and you'd accuse me of flirting or even cheating on you on a whim."
Azula huffs at the smallness of it, the banality and the pettiness and the peasantry of Ty Lee's main complaint. It does not seem to make sense for a grudge and a love that spanned across decades, continents and bloodshed.
"That isn't the worst thing I've ever done to you," says Azula softly, the only response she supposes she can manage with her heavy, drunken tongue.
"No," admits Ty Lee before drawing in a deep breath and adding, "But it's the one I can't forgive."
Azula hesitantly reaches out to touch Ty Lee's face and she hides her surprise at the fact that Ty Lee not okay lets her but leans in to the touch.
"You deserve to hold a grudge against me. You deserve that much dignity." Silence. Azula catches herself and slowly pulls her hand away. "Maybe I am not making sense."
"You always make sense," insists Ty Lee as she grabs Azula's removed wrist and pulls it towards her heart and then off to the side to her breast and she pulls them both closer and closer together. "Too much of it, sometimes."
Their lips crush and crash and they stumble into a frantic midnight tumble of limbs and lips and long lost love. And in the moments her mind rifts from the fireworks and pleasure, Azula cannot help but recall a conversation she had with Ty Lee shortly after they conquered Ba Sing Se but had yet to return home.
"Do you respect our enemies?" asked Azula.
"I pity them." Ty Lee's comment was so startling. She rarely said anything that wasn't …
"Better to respect them. When you believe your enemy has come to the right with open eyes and free will to choose battle, killing them becomes easier. Nobody wants to be a butcher. We all want to feel we won fairly. Pity doesn't allow that."
"The circumstances they're in are the Fire Nation's fault. The famines and destruction and corrupt governors are real. We can't pretend they aren't. Wouldn't you be driven to do extreme stuff if people did that to your home?"
"The Earth Kingdom and its armies of savages aren't making things worse, even…" Azula inhaled. "Perhaps my father isn't making anything better either. That may be true. You have a soft heart, even if you punch hard, but you're a soldier, like me, like Mai, and we are faced with the burden every soldier has faced since the beginning of war. We cannot choose our battles. All sides fight for imperfect nations and people, even if they believe they fight for a perfect ideal."
"I don't fight for imperfect nations or people."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I only fight for you."
In the drunk, messy make out session beneath the falling fire blossoms tonight, Azula tastes that kiss decades ago beneath the walls of Ba Sing Se.
[X]
The late afternoon is thick with heavy heat and saturated with blistering sunlight.
In a few months time, Zuko and Mai will be married, and so this is more than the usual brief reprieve from busy lives and invaluable ego check. It also serves as their last chance together with no expectations or checklists or audiences before the madness of the royal wedding begins.
Mai sits with her head resting languidly on Zuko's shoulder, an impassive expression fixed on her face as he closes his eyes and basks in the warm sun that shines through the cracks in the pagoda roof. Across from them, Azula and Ty Lee's posture is their polar opposite; they keep a measured distance, a stiffness, as they share an uncomfortably acute awareness of every tiny inch of space between them.
The past may be behind them, but that does not stop it from breathing down their necks.
Differences in the duos aside, while the full quartet of comrades lounges beneath the shade of a pagoda on Ember Island, among the sand and salty spray of the sea, they are again playing "who, what, where."
The line is thin and it often blurs but still it persists.
Zuko plays his turn with, "Who, Azula, so she has plenty of time to write a speech and put on enough makeup to emphasize her fake tears." She playfully punches his shoulder at that. "What, sudden cardiac arrest from sheer joy after seeing my bride. Where, at the Fire Temple for my wedding ceremony."
Azula and Mai groan. Ty Lee coos at the cuteness. Zuko spins the bottle and it lands on his sister.
"Who, everyone who still whispers about how I got off too easy. Might as well make their day. What, some punk trying to make a name for herself who gets in a lucky stab with an old gutter knife. Where, Ember Island, outside my luxurious personal villa. I've been thinking lately that it wouldn't be half bad to retire out there."
She shrugs. A little laughter and chatter but nothing too insane follows as she spins the bottle and waits until it slows to a stop pointing at Mai.
"Who," drawls Mai casually, as if the heat is gently smothering her vocal chords, "the wedding planners. We can get our money back faster that way. What, dehydration from puking my guts out when I see the dress options Ty Lee picks out for me next. Where, the nicest room in my parent's house on top of their most expensive stupid rug they don't let anyone touch."
Her dry delivery is rewarded with the laughter of her friends. It takes her a few tries but she manages to get the bottle spinning and after a lot of time pivoting about, it finally lands on Ty Lee.
"Who, my nephew Rin," decides Ty Lee. "He's a good kid and I'd like him to remember me. What, a painless accident that I don't see coming and is over quickly. Where, somewhere pretty with flowers."
Her syrupy sweet sincerity in contrast to Mai's sarcastic ribbing makes the circle fall too silent too quickly. So Zuko remedies the situation by grabbing the bottle and pointing it towards himself.
"Who–" he begins before Azula cuts him off by seizing the bottle and pointing it at herself instead. He clenches his jaw but manages not to protest; it is supposed to be a fun game on a relaxing afternoon, after all, not a theater of war.
"Who, I don't give a fuck," snaps Azula. "What, a triple murder suicide with a broken sake bottle. Where, right here if I don't get some air."
She rockets up to her feet and, albeit stumbling and swaggering, storms away halfway down the beach towards the abandoned and isolated tide pools nearby.
The three left behind exchange glances, Zuko takes a moment to keep his eyes on her and make sure she hasn't fallen or drowned or killed anyone yet, only to turn back to see Mai and Ty Lee each with a finger on their noses.
Not it. Really mature. Ugh. Zuko wishes he could be surprised by their reluctance but he didn't follow Azula either. He also wishes he could be surprised by Azula's outburst, but really she just lacks the same practice he has at holding back. He wouldn't have been surprised if he had been the one to snap, or Mai or Ty Lee. Could any of them even fake shock at attempted normalcy sparking violent conflicts? The world made them into weapons and then told them to find peace.
So, he rolls his eyes at his fiancee and her best friend's immaturity, pushes himself up shakily onto his feet, and pursues Azula.
He finds her staring angrily at the tide pools. Her expression makes him want to just walk away and let her cool off alone to avoid any further altercation but he considered her to be his responsibility and he can't just leave her like this.
"If you are here to complain about me ruining your soiree, save your breath. You all know me. I see it in the way you people look at me. You expect this from me. The unpredictable and cruel," Azula snarls without looking up from the rippling safe havens containing small creatures of the sea.
"I'm not. And if you think you're the only one of the four of us people see as unpredictable or with temperament problems, you're just as selfish as you've always been," says Zuko.
Azula rolls her eyes. "It isn't the same. My reputation…"
"Your reputation isn't the only bad reputation here. I'm a pretty divisive Fire Lord but as a person? I know I have nightmares too, and I go off on people all the time, and that Mai may be sarcastic but she cries all the time when she doesn't think other people can see or hear, and that it took me two weeks to convince her I really meant it when I asked her to marry me, and thatI helped her and Ty Lee both get charges clears from arrests. Mai got in a knife fight over a game of darts a few months ago, Ty Lee got arrested twice for drunk and disorderly after visiting her family and Suki asked me to help. And I threw over a table at a meeting the other day. You're not the only one, but I can see… I can understand why you feel like you're different, like because you picked the losing side it makes you worse off. And maybe you are. Uncle Iroh always reminds me that the world can be a fickle and fragile place. One day you are new-growth, he'd tell me, and the next day you are kindling. Maybe today you're the kindling. You can always talk to me. We may have a complicated past but it's a shared one all the same and I love you. I don't invite you to these parties out of obligation or to participate in politics because I need your talents and I'm not sitting here talking to you out of pity. I do love you and I love you more than anything you can do wrong."
It's an old con artist's trick. If you start with a known truth and end with a lie, the target's acceptance of the former makes them more likely to accept the latter. She used to underestimate Zuko's powers of manipulation but spending so long in politics has clearly improved his skills. He could have sold the lie that he hasn't locked her in a dungeon to be forgotten out of anything but guilt, pity and obligation, or that he loves her, to almost anyone but herself. It sounded a lot more like he was trying to convince himself than convince her, Azula decides at last, so she holds her tongue, does not call him out on his con, and tries to be flattered rather than insulted, albeit mostly because she's too tired to argue, feeling too dizzy to make a coherent point and is pretty sure will puke if she yells at anyone again.
She sits down on a rock beside the tidal pool and glances up at the sky, just above the slowly and steadily setting sun. Zuko hesitates for a beat before sitting down beside her.
"So, what is it you think you can do?" murmurs Azula. Her tongue is heavy, her mouth sore and sandy. The words roll out like globs of clam meat rather than her usual stream of shining pearls.
"Well, I'd love to know what is going on between you and Ty Lee."
Azula bristles, sitting up as if he hit her with lightning, and just barely stops herself from falling into the tide pool. She scratches up her hand on some barnacles and jagged, salty rock catching herself and shoves it on her lap against her rouge skirt to hide it from her brother. The last thing she needs is any more of his pity and paternalistic bullshit.
"What makes you think anything is going on between me and Ty Lee?" she asks, too drunk to hide her shocked facial expression and shrill, accusatory tone.
"Uh, everything kind of points to that. But, if that's not the problem, I'm sorry for assuming, and no matter what the problem is that made you lose your temper back there, you can tell me. I know it isn't really my business, but I can keep a secret and I want to help." His eyes drifting to the scraped and scratched wound on her palm she is sloppily trying to keep hidden, he adds, "And I think you'd benefit from letting other people help you once in a while."
"You're right," says Azula, drawing in her knees to her chest and keeping her cold, wounded hand concealed near her warm, fiery core. "It isn't any of your business."
Zuko sighs. At least he tried.
"Is there anything I can do to make you stop sulking and come back to the party? I mean, you know we do this because of the problem of our reputations and our pasts. We do this to be with the closest thing we've got to a lifelong family. The people who know where we came from and why we ended up who we are now. I wear a lot of masks every day. All four of us do. So, we do this to take them off, or at least to be with those who can see through them. It's why I thought we should start inviting you too. I figured you could use the break as much as we can."
"So, who exactly is this 'real' Azula you claim to be able to see?" mocks his sister, but Zuko does not let it phase him, despite the way his jaw clenches and his teeth grind as he just barely holds back a rush of rage.
The truth is, Azula really wants to know. She thought this would be a conversation she found irritating at best and enraging at worst but she now sees an opportunity to see her brother with his filters and fears removed by the sake and rice wine and summer swelter tell her what he really thinks and how he truly views his charity case sister.
Not that she would ever let Zuko notice that. His ego is over-inflated enough already.
Zuko takes a deep breath and wishes he had brought one of the rice wine bottles over with him. But he can do this without the liquid courage. He looks straight at her, unblinking, unflinching (although the look on her face and in her eyes makes the young exile who still lives inside the grown Fire Lord want to recoil for his safety).
"You've been difficult ever since you were a baby. Even though dad thought you hung the sun and stars in the sky and looked at me like I was a sea slug, the one credit he gave me was that I was an easier baby and that if he told mom or the nursemaids to shut me up they did, and that I slept through the night easily, but you, on the other hand, wouldn't stop crying unless he or mom were holding you, and until you were six or seven months old you couldn't sleep until they rocked you over open flames. Later he said it just meant you were some chosen firebender or that royalty does not sleep easily or some shit, but you were difficult then and you never stopped. I had my terrible twos, sure, but you had terrible twelves! And when I was banished you were still holding your breath until you fainted to get what you wanted and it was still working. The first time I ever tried that I never tried it again."
"I always did have more perseverance in such matters, ZuZu," softly teases Azula. His ears perk up, because he had been talking to the shadows of the sea more than to her, and he only just realized that she has actually been listening, not just waiting for parts of his statements to pick apart and spit back in his face.
"That's where you come from. And the things you accomplished just on a lark are things people have died and barely made the footnotes of history scrolls trying to do. I've never been stupid enough to trust you, but you do have something about you that makes people willing to follow you to the ends of the Earth and back at no small expense to themselves. I wish I had that. You were just as jealous as me, only better at hiding it. You did horrible things, but you were always still my little sister."
"And who am I now? That's the question nobody ever seems able or willing to answer."
Zuko pauses. He rolls a damp sea stone around in his palm for a moment as he thinks, and Azula sits in silence as she lets him.
"Still difficult, still ambitious, still strong. Still intense and jealous. Still arrogant. Now you have less emotional impulse control and you don't scare me anymore, sure, but you're still just as prone to making cosmically epic mistakes." Zuko takes a breath as Azula's expression begins to sour, so before she can push him into the ocean he continues in earnest, "But, those cosmically epic mistakes you make aren't the same. You used to make them to serve yourself and your wants and your ambition or to try to prove yourself to dad. Now when you make them, the reason I forgive is because they come from a place of love, real love, and because you want the best for the world and you want to heal the people and things you hurt, including yourself, and they come from a place of effort that never was there before. I won't pretend I don't admittedly enjoy seeing you attempting things you aren't immediately good at for once. It is kind of nice to be better than you at something for once." They both laugh. "But I wouldn't want anybody else by my side ruling the Fire Nation or as the best woman at my wedding."
"As the what?" Azula asks.
"I want it to be you."
"Not Aang or Sokka or…" Azula trails off. He has so many friends and admirers and she cannot even keep Ty Lee in a relationship with her for more than a month anymore. It takes every ounce of self-control she has left to bite her lip and make sure Zuko does not see the tears in her eyes.
"I want it to be you."
Her smile is sweet and somber and sincere. They're both drunk. He probably still will have Sokka up there as his best man and Aang as his officiant or even that bitch Katara as his best woman, but the sentiment, despite coming from drunk lips of her obnoxiously pious elder brother, is sincere. She cannot see or feel or hear a single lie in his soft insistence.
But she has no interest in continuing the conversation, so she finally points out something she noticed long before the conversation she assumed would be a snore or something that made her get into a firebending fight on the beach with ZuZu and spend the night in the Ember Island drunk tank or worse turned out to be something she actually was interested to hear/
"Those clouds are rolling in fast," says Azula, loosely gesturing towards the sky. "You should help Mai and Ty Lee pack up and get inside before we get caught in a downpour. I'll catch up."
She sounds reasonably calm and semi-sober so Zuko nods and gives her the space she asked for. He can't disagree about the clouds either and when he gets back to Mai and Ty Lee, they have noticed too and are already packing up the picnic and linens and empty liquor bottles and everything else.
It takes them longer than it should, and the rain has started by the time the wasted trio manages to have all the baskets and bags balanced in their arms and to be heading in the right direction up the beach towards the hidden back path to the summer palace.
Zuko bounces between nearly dropping his haul — seeing as he took everything Azula had carried to the beach after losing yet another game of not it against Mai and Ty Lee — and trying to shield Mai from the rain (which she hates almost as much as she hates the orange tint the sunsets give the dark grey clouds opening up over them) and so between the multitasking and his booze clouded brain he does not notice that Azula still sits beside the tide pools, almost faded into the scenery sufficiently enough to be invisible.
But Ty Lee notices. She tries to call out to Zuko and Mai but they are already on the path to the palace, so she huffs, screws her courage to the sticking post and trudges across the gross, muddy sand to make sure Azula isn't out here trying to get herself killed, or is too drunk to stand but won't admit it, or is having a secret meeting with a spy or terrorist or assassin. Ty Lee wishes she could not say she has not been witness to everything on that list of potentialities at least once during their on and off again romance of the past two decades but she can.
If Azula's problem was having too many secrets, then Ty Lee's was having too few, and they had suffered through that cyclic argument countless times in their many failed attempts at maintaining a romantic relationship over the years.
At least the secret is pretty simple this time; it's that Azula overestimated her alcohol tolerance and is trying not to let anyone see that she is puking her guts up into a tide pool. Ty Lee frowns in sadness about the poor animals there before Azula's violent retching snaps her focus back. And as a woman absolutely incapable of vulnerability even in the form of basic intimacy — as Ty Lee knows and loathes well — she would rather die on the beach alone and wash up a week later as a bloated and vomit-covered corpse than admit she needs help.
"Azula, let me help you back to the house." Ty Lee decides littering is okay in a life or death situation and drops the two baskets of scraps and empty bottles on the beach so she can reach out and try to help the princess back up to her feet.
Azula swings out her arm with no purpose and even less aim and Ty Lee has to jump to avoid getting her face scratched by Azula's pointed nails.
"Go mother someone else!" snaps the princess through another vomiting fit.
But, despite every muscle and bone in her body urging her to bolt, Ty Lee sighs, crosses her arms and stands her ground.
"Come with me right now or I swear to the spirits I will chi block you and throw you over my shoulder. You're drunk and as much as I hate you, I'm not leaving you alone on an abandoned beach so wasted that you can hardly stand up."
The stand off lasts until the first rumble of thunder when Azula finally gives up and lets Ty Lee help her up. They walk together until it becomes too difficult for Ty Lee to manage Azula's drunken gait, and Ty Lee easily uses her muscular arms to sweep the princess up into a bridal carry. She quickens her pace as the rain worsens and the first flash of lightning illuminates the atmosphere.
Azula closes her eyes and tries to ignore the insistent heat in her loins that is an entirely involuntary response to Ty Lee's strength, soft touch and the fact that their bodies are so close.
Finally, they make it to the summer palace where Zuko and Mai are in their own chambers taking a hot bath, and Ty Lee helps Azula out of her wet clothes, into the first dry robe she can find and then avoids several attempts at seduction as she tries to get the utterly sloshed Conqueror of Ba Sing Se into her spirits-forsaken bed.
"Ty Lee," slurs Azula as the other woman finishes tucking her into the bed and starts to walk away to dry herself off and get some sleep in her own chambers. "Wait."
Azula seizes Ty Lee by the wrist and the acrobat gracefully glides back to face her ex-girlfriend.
"You should rest," says Ty Lee as Azula's eyelids flutter and her ordinarily masterful words come out as an unintelligible murmur. "We can talk in the morning, okay?"
Azula inhales deeply, a wind fueling a fire, and says as clearly as the sky's reflection on South Pole ice, "Ty Lee, I'm still in love with you. I've never stopped being in love with you."
"You're drunk," says Ty Lee, again trying to leave.
"I am fully capable of being both at the same time."
Ty Lee lingers for just a moment longer before kissing Azula on the forehead, slapping the hand that grabs at her ass back into the covers and says, "Well, then we can talk about it in the morning when you're not drunk and just still in love with me."
Exhausted, drunk Azula either is too tired to put up more of a fight or accepts the promise. Ty Lee, on the other hand, knows full well that it is never going to happen, and if Ty Lee were foolish enough to ask about it in the morning, Azula would claim not to remember and insist Ty Lee is projecting her own feelings and it would be a whole… thing.
Still, the answer satisfies Azula enough to put her to sleep, so Ty Lee can leave and bathe and get dry and cozy and drift off to her own dreamland, one that she wishes were not almost as disrupted by brutal nightmares as Azula's.
Mai, freshly bathed, probably freshly fucked, and otherwise looking much happier than usual, especially with that smug glint in her eyes that makes Ty Lee's repressed anger prickle up again, waits outside the door holding a towel and a dry set of clothes for her best friend.
Ty Lee accepts the gift and sighs, "She's difficult," as she shuts the door behind her. "As usual."
Mai scoffs and rolls her eyes. "You're both difficult," she remarks bluntly. "I always thought that was what made it work between you two."
"Yeah," says Ty Lee, forcing herself not to look behind her literally or metaphorically. "Until it didn't."
Mai has to concede that point, so she lets Ty Lee drift away down the corridor alone.
[X]
The nighttime air is almost as cold as the grave and the wind howls mournfully outside, and yet this is the best outing the group has had since letting Azula back into their fray. Not even the howling wind can drown out their earnest, jovial laughter.
It is the fourth and final outing of the year, the end of the first year of being a quartet, and it went worse than Zuko had hoped but better than he had feared, which counts for something, he thinks.
They stride through the brilliant lights of the Night Market hosted in Caldera as soon as the festivals of fertility and celebrations of the harvest wane and as the nights grow longer and the days grow shorter, the cold, rainy season in the Fire Nation begins.
The tradition is to create striking and ornate paper lanterns in the shape of the sun and illuminate as many as possible on this first long night at the tail end of autumn. They look as beautiful as always tonight, and between the fire breathers, other street performers, merchants, huge fiery light displays and street hawkers drawing in potential buyers, the darkness, the the plain, inconspicuous clothes Zuko, his pregnant wife, his sister, and their best friend changed into after his official appearance as Fire Lord, no one notices that they are any different than the rest of the crowd.
Just four friends, laughing, sharing an easy camaraderie as they drink the themed, shimmering gold, yellow and crimson alcohol and eat the spicy candies wrapped in papers painted to look like sunny summer afternoons.
"Okay, okay, who," shouts Ty Lee, snagging the attention of her three — three and a half given the little peanut growing inside of Mai — friends immediately even amongst the chaos and cacophony of the night market. "scream it from the rooftops to anybody who listens! What, having too much fun tonight! Where, at the last stop on the night-market liquor crawl with my three favorite people in all Four Nations!"
Ty Lee's smile is so contagious that even Mai's lips curl the slightest bit when she sees it. Thankfully, a lightheaded sweep of nausea cuts it off before she even needs to control her facial muscles and maintain her mystique.
"It's been quite the year," says Zuko, his lips curling into something resembling a true, genuine smile.
Lately he has been so stressed about the baby that his smile is a rare occurrence. Azula haughtily rolls her eyes to pretend that she does not notice it or care.
"Who," starts Mai, given that her discomfort with the gushy, warm and fuzzy moment is equal to, if not greater than, Azula's. "Zuko, because me being pregnant is his fault. What, literally puking out all of my guts during an episode of morning sickness. Where, possibly right here and now if I have to put up with any more touchy feely nonsense."
Azula cackles, the group breaks into disparate chatter as they swagger farther along the festival's sprawling expanse of interests and oddities.
They all stop when Azula stops so abruptly that it snaps every head to face her.
She gestures at the signs and ornate decorations in front of the tunnel. It is a tunnel that people frequently hike in order to enjoy the best view of the city but once a year for the festival, the Fire Sages and their volunteers set it up as a challenge and a test mimicking the ancient story on which the traditions of the night are based. It is something of an obstacle course with a spiritual point to be made and in order to get to the viewpoint above, one must – or at least is supposed to, given that there is no one checking if anyone cheats – face every obstacle within.
Games like these mostly bored Azula after she tasted the thrilling reality of war and she had sparse few opportunities to attend parties after the Fire Nation's defeat. But tonight, she cannot help but feel deeply tempted to try her luck once more.
Azula coolly explains the reason she stopped their bar crawl so suddenly, being careful to keep any emotion, nostalgia or other vulnerabilities from leaking into her tone."I haven't hiked the Caldera Cave Path since I was… what were we, maybe twelve? We have to do it this year."
"I'm sitting this one out. Hiking isn't my thing even when my feet aren't swollen to twice their normal size," says Mai, settling on a bench with the extra bag of Fire gummies that Zuko had given her.
"We can do something else this year." He sits down beside his wife and she casually rests her head on his broad, strong shoulder.
Ty Lee inhales the festival incense mixed with the salty spray of the sea air now that they have arrived at the marina. She hasn't hiked the tunnel in ages and it did sound like fun, but missing out certainly will not kill her night. She is too excited about the peanut to be bothered, anyway!
"We could start the liquor crawl. We're pretty much out of festival stuff until the next round of fireworks anyway." Ty Lee smiles and points in the direction of the nearest street vendor handing out steaming cups of warm sake.
Azula frowns and does not pay the fact that she may ruin the sweet and happy vibe any mind as she sets her hands on her hips and allows three sets of eyes to land on her in their own time before she speaks with all the grandiosity her position affords her.
"Well," huffs Azula with a careless shrug, "I suppose I will meet up with the rest of you later because I have skipped this festival too many times over the miserable years to not participate in my favorite event."
She easily lifts her leg over the marina rail and begins to stretch, giving them a few moments to either change their minds or give her their blessing.
Mai and Zuko remain resolute in watching fireworks like old people or babies, but Ty Lee sets her hands on her hips .
"I'm coming to," she says as Mai and Zuko's eyes bore into her, urging her to do what they cannot and be Azula's buddy system partner to keep her out of trouble tonight.
Azula snaps her legs back into place and begins to walk towards the mouth of the cave. She smirks as winks once she notices that Ty Lee begrudgingly follows her.
"I knew you would come around," Azula purrs as she snags one of the competition maps in one hand and Ty Lee's sweaty wrist in the other.
"I'd follow you to the pits of Koh's Realm and back, Azula, and I know you know that," is the smooth, familiar reply that escapes Ty Lee's lips before she even realizes her words. Once she does, Ty Lee sighs and shakes free of Azula's grip. "But sometimes I do wish you'd stop going there."
Azula barely suppresses her laugh and smile in time to keep them hidden from her ex.
Despite Ty Lee's weary protestation, she and Azula walk into the dark obsidian tunnel and undertake the tradition with Mai and Zuko left behind them. It changes the entire dynamic. All the elation and laughter of true friends, true comrades in arms, evaporates as soon as the light of the festival behind Azula and Ty Lee begins to fade, and the group of four separates, isolating the two who try so hard to do anything within their power to avoid ever being alone together anymore.
Despite the trouble she knows getting involved with Azula always brings into her life, Ty Lee cannot help but be reminded of how Suki always told the younger girls who struggled with certain techniques or complained about training and practice being too hard that quiet ostrich-horses don't make for skilled riders, and she never once said she wanted an easy life. Not once.
Azula and Ty Lee have not done this traditional competition since they were twelve or thirteen. The world is no longer the same, and whether that is for better or for worse depends on the day for both young women, not that they ever admit it, even to each other or themselves.
Upon entering, they stop as soon as the light only laps at them in faint strands, the darkness awaits, and the first carving related to the legend on which the competition is based awaits the two girls. The temple's carvings in the stone are the for the full year round, along with etched initials of lovers, messages of hope, wails of war widows and anything else a hiker might carve into the stone in a desperate attempt to be remembered, but tonight the temple carvings are painted in luminous colors, and beside this one lies a basket with maps and candles. Azula takes a map. Ty Lee takes a candle.
The carving tells the familiar legend of Kimiko and Kai, the reason, at least, according to the myths and Fire Sages, that firebending is weaker at night and, thus, their story has long been intertwined with a festival focused on the longest night of the year.
They were both two of the earliest firebenders in an ancient civilization. Kimiko, the wife and true love of Kai, died young and violently, sacrificed to the Spirit World when she was thrown into a volcano. So, Kai bargained with the spirits for passage into their land, where he traded away the length of the days in half of the seasons for his chance to face four obstacles and win her back. Ultimately, it ended in tragedy when he failed at the end of his last obstacle, but the spirit Agni took pity on him and allowed him to stay with Kimiko in the Spirit World forever.
Azula and Ty Lee enter the path formed long, long ago by volcanic activity side by side and trudge on in resolute silence for some time before they reach a bend where they need to check the map again. Azula leans against the wall and lights blue flames in her palm while Ty Lee holds up the fragile paper so that they can both see.
Ty Lee does her best to ignore the way that hue of blue always makes the pit of her stomach twist or how much staring at that fire — and that fire alone — makes her feel like a helpless spider-moth being drawn into the bold and brilliant flames seeking paradise but finding nothing but death and pain.
They settle on their direction with minimal words exchanged and resume again, only to stop about halfway up to the peak to check the map again.
They solve the issue more quickly this time and Ty Lee is about to walk away when Azula's fire dies and she sinks into the shadows, not budging from the slick and cold obsidian wall where she leans.
Ty Lee hesitates, folding and unfolding the map in her nervous, jittery hands, before she finally summons the courage to ask. She wants to tease Azula, challenge her, ask if she is coming yet, but she knows the real question, while it requires far more bravery, needs to be asked now or never.
"Is something wrong?" Ty Lee asks, abandoning their ascent and striding back to face her ex.
Azula leans in silence for an agonizingly long while before she finally sorts out the right order for the words that are eating at her heart and soul.
"If I told you how much I miss you, it wouldn't really be fair to either of us, would it?" whispers Azula and there is something in her voice, some siren song that tugs at Ty Lee's navel like a fish hook dug in and now the rod is reeling her in. "Maybe we can just coexist. Maybe it is less complicated this way. Just to meet as friends a few times a year, make the occasional mistake of a drunken fuck and then pretend it didn't happen. You cannot tell me you don't agree that this has been easier than any of our tries at being a couple."
"Since when does Princess Azula think that easy is a positive quality instead of an insult?" Ty Lee leans back beside her. "And you know damned well you're being unfair. You just want to act noble or have a ready-made excuse prepared to let yourself off the hook in case I don't respond the way you want me to, in case I don't still love you and miss you. If you really wanted to be fair, you wouldn't be standing here with me, and you certainly wouldn't have mentioned the fact that you miss me in that tone, the one you know… the one you know I've never been strong enough to resist."
"What does that even mean?" snorts Azula.
"Who," says Ty Lee. "Tell no one, just let me disappear and be forgotten to time. What, a broken heart. Where, standing here by you trying to act like just friends is the noble or smart or brave choice instead of us being cowards plain and simple. You're really so afraid of failing or getting hurt that you're too chicken to even try. And maybe I have been too but no, Azula, no, it hasn't been any easier. At least not for me."
Azula bites her lip so hard she thinks she may draw blood, but that pain is insufficient distraction from the verbal gut punch she just received from the woman she once thought was the love of her life. Not once. Many times. It never worked out. None of them.
No matter how badly Azula wants to be reckless and walk down that path again, it has never before ended in anything but heartache.
So she seeks out a grander distraction, a harder hurt, by starting off at full speed back on the trail to the peak. She hears and feels Ty Lee behind her, also easily picking up her pace, but Azula refuses to let herself look back. She is afraid of what will happen if she does.
They reach the first of the four obstacles after a few moments.
The next painted carving with two fresh torches of flame mounted beside it reads of the moment in the legend when Kai must navigate through the pitch black darkness, filled with horrors of the Spirit World, without using any fire to light his way.
Azula, however, is not nearly as foolish as the mythical man, and so she lights her palm to illuminate the way for herself and her ex-girlfriend, but her fire weakens once she enters the cold mist. It does not go out; she is much too powerful for that, but it cannot light the entire cavern corridor either, only a small circle within a few feet of herself. It would decimate any lantern or torch and probably the flames from more weaker firebenders than herself. Not bad enforcement of challenge participation for stuffy sages.
"Ugh," complains Ty Lee with a shudder. "I know the whole point of the festival is that it takes place from sunset to sunrise but everything is already creepy enough at night without this added freaky darkness!"
Azula snorts derisively at the fears she deems irrational. "You're not even a firebender who is weaker after sunset. For you, night is empirically not any more dangerous than day."
"Boring facts like that don't make nighttime any less creepy."
"Just imagine it as a dark version of daytime."
"Right, because I have such fantastic memories of the last solar eclipse."
"Well, I had plenty of fun that day. And don't tell me you're still afraid of the dark."
"Only a little."
"You're an adult. Come on, you're falling too far behind and I don't have the patience to wait for you nor the affection to go back for you."
"I remember that you lied and said you were the one who wanted to sleep with all those candles lit so I wouldn't feel embarrassed to be afraid during our sleepovers. You didn't even ever tell Mai it was because I was afraid of the dark; you told her it was to improve your bending skills even while asleep."
"It isn't as if it cost me anything to help you not pay any price."
"Sure, you didn't have anything to lose but you didn't have anything to gain either. You just did it to be a good friend."
"It really doesn't undo the decades of breakups, toxic reunions, betrayals, cheating, lying and so on and so on that followed, though. Does it?"
Ty Lee finally reaches the peak and softly squeezes Azula's sweaty hand once before slowly letting it go. She considers saying something more but decides to let the conversation go and head with the princess to the next obstacle on the path.
"I suppose it is a romantic story," says Ty Lee as they walk up the steep incline. Kai and Kimiko."
"It's famously a tragedy. No wonder you have such poor taste in partners."
"It's only a tragedy because he loved her. That's romantic, even if it's sad."
"I'm not convinced he made this journey out of love."
"What do you mean? They specifically say it's his love that makes him break the rules of the last challenge and lift her feet from the coals."
"Yeah, but if you read between the lines, you realize that doing something like this to yank your wife back to where you want her to be instead of grieving her and moving on, it means his journey was more about trying to prove that his relationship meant something and was worth it, and so he loses in the end. He fails because he's an idiot who thinks he can prove to himself that the pain was worth the happiness if he tortures himself and her."
"You mean like me following you in here even though I could have stayed and gotten more fire floss and sake with Mai and Zuko?"
"Not everything is all about you, Ty." Azula huffs as she realizes that the next obstacle undercuts her words because where there should be a bridge, instead is an illuminated carving and a tightrope tied over the illusion chasm – a shallow drop that is famous for looking deceptively deep – leading to the other side. Ugh. "My point still stands, regardless of the fact that this challenge happens to be tailored to your skill set."
"Yeah, well at least if we fall, we just get some mud on our clothes and maybe a couple of bruises. It's a lot better than falling into a horde of stampeding animals." Ty Lee steps onto the rope and hurries to about a quarter of the way across it as Azula, scowling at the subtle insult, follows a short distance behind.
"I am letting you get away with that," says Azula. "Never let it be said I lack generosity."
"And you always take me to such nice places! Now, if only you were ever emotionally honest and you'd be the full package!"
"What do you define emotional honesty as, anyway? You have known me pretty much your entire life and I have never been the type to bawl on anyone's shoulders. You knew exactly what you were getting into every time you dated or slept with me."
Ty Lee leaps back, nearly knocking Azula off balance before she adjusts her center of gravity. The sudden summoning of her combat reflexes and the sickly feeling of looking into the optical illusion of an abyss beneath her throws off her focus just long enough for her to be startled when she realizes how incredibly close her ex-girlfriend is standing to her,
"It means," says Ty Lee, close enough to feel the heat radiating from Azula's body, close enough that Azula can smell the cinnamon on her breath and in her hair from the festival candy, and with such intensity that she nearly slips from the tight rope and falls, "that you tell me things instead of being too afraid. It means you make an effort, instead of just bailing at the first sign of anything you don't like. It means not being a coward. And before you try to argue with me about calling you that, I personally think it really doesn't matter how many lands you conquer or armies you slaughter if you're terrified of your own feelings."
And that is exactly the moment when Azula loses her footing. She plummets – the few disorienting inches, at least – before catching one hand around the rope as Ty Lee gracefully leaps down to seize her by the wrist with both hands.
"I need you to let go of the rope so I can pull you up," says Ty Lee, trying not to look at the optical illusion of a terrifying void over which she and Azula teeter. "Please trust me."
But, of course, Azula is completely and utterly unwilling to concede any of her control or to let Ty Lee win at anything. "You let go of me! I can take care of myself."
"I know you can, but my whole point is that you don't have to!" Ty Lee yanks Azula up with such vigor that Azula's fingers break free of the rope, and they both tumble over and around each other to the opposite side of the ravine in their struggle.
After the chaotic and frantic few seconds, they walk ahead in silence, Ty Lee awkward and embarrassed after her outburst at her ex-girlfriend resulted in such a panic-inducing momentary nightmare and Azula trying not to think about the way Ty Lee's final statement is stuck rattling around in her head and her heart.
The third obstacle requires a detour from the normal path, into a thin part of the cavern that shakes with the night's thunderous drumming. It looks less than stable, but neither Azula nor Ty Lee care all that much.
As they step in, they make it a few steps before the claustrophobic cavern passage rumbles and shakes. Thankfully, Ty Lee turns her fall into a flip and catches herself and Azula steels herself and her stance to keep from floundering even slightly.
They keep moving after the shaking subsides.
"What did you mean about me not having to take care of myself? That's a puzzling statement."
"I mean that all I ever really wanted was for you to, once in a while, let me be there for you in a real way and that I obviously know how amazing you are and that you can handle yourself in almost any situation but that sometimes, you're doing someone a favor by letting them do you a favor."
"Almost any situation?" asks Azula and Ty Lee sighs.
Ty Lee turns to respond but the ground shakes again and this time, the two women are too distracted to easily utilize their physical training to ignore it and they both simultaneously lose their footing. Ty Lee collapses into Azula, who barely catches them on the wall in time to avoid losing their progress forward.
Her arm, as if with a mind of its own, wraps around Ty Lee's waist. Ty Lee feels a surge flood through her and Azula's cheeks and nose flush whether she likes it or not.
For a moment, they both linger in the pleasure of the moment before they remember themselves and Ty Lee gently shoves herself free as Azula simultaneously tears away her touch.
Once free, Ty Lee snaps, "I don't need you to coddle me. I'm just as equipped, if not more so, to handle this challenge as you, I've literally spent the last almost ten years as a professional member of a group of warriors while you've been sitting in political meetings, I can handle a shaky cave!"
Azula's nostrils flare as she snarls, "I was trying to be nice! This kind of response to my attempts at kindness is exactly why I prefer being cruel."
"Azula, pretend all you want but despite all the evidence to the contrary and your seriously, like, infamous reputation, I happen to have it on good authority that you can be a very lovely woman."
"Just admit you prefer me as a cold-hearted bitch."
"Over all the past years of my mistakes with you and experiencing new, happy relationships among the Kyoshi Warriors, I've realized I like kindhearted women."
"Well, I have to admit that if you're so surrounded by love and light then it does sound like you could use at least one cold-hearted bitch in your life. Just to keep things interesting."
Ty Lee turns, her eyes drifting first to meet Azula's gaze, then slowly to rest her sights on her lips. They lean closer and a little closer and then the cave trembles and they remember themselves, remember they need to get to the other side and not go backwards.
So, the two young women pull apart and resume their forward march,
They make it to the other side and both are grateful for the reprieve, even if it is a dark, musty and steep pathway in a dormant volcano.
The final obstacle is a long walk across hot coals. They smolder with a light so bright that the tiny glimmer at the end of the stone corridor of the lanterns, moon and stars at the peak ahead is barely visible.
"I don't want to get burned. Maybe I'll just take the path out." Ty Lee turns to take the tunnel that leads to the stairs down back into the city but Azula grabs her arm and pulls her back.
"We've come this far. We're going to finish this together or die trying," Azula snarls. When the crackling of a coal makes Ty Lee flinch and so Azula adds, "You're not going to get burned."
"How do you know?" huffs Ty Lee.
"Because I'm not going to burn," Azula replies, which Ty Lee of course knows. "And I wouldn't let you burn either."
"Why wouldn't you let me burn?"
"Because I need you."
And so Ty Lee grabs Azula's hand and holds it as tightly as she can.
She squeezes her eyes shut. She lets Azula lead and breathes through any pain and can barely believe how quickly she finds herself standing on the other side unscathed.
"You were right," says Ty Lee.
Azula laughs. "Yes, I know."
"Please let me finish. You were right that I've always known what I'm in for when I follow you. I keep coming back into your life with my eyes wide open and I can't keep blaming you for it."
Azula nods. Ty Lee turns to start her walk up the carved stone steps to the peak and Azula begins to move to follow before she changes her mind and seizes Ty Lee's arm. She pulls her back.
"You were right too. About what I'm really afraid of. I can't change it overnight but I suppose I could adjust over time… try to tell you what I'm really feeling instead of burning everything right away."
Ty Lee beams with a smile so bright it outshines the coals behind them, puts the shining stars illuminating the path to the peak to shame, and makes the full moon's glimmering glow pale in comparison. It is one of those smiles that even on the coldest and longest night of the year manages to make Azula feel like a cat basking in the sun.
They walk up the final stone stairs and into the open air side by side.
The view is beautiful, but even during her returns to the festival over the years and going through many times with her sisters and friends, she never quite considered the view as worth the obstacles as everyone else seemed to think. If anything, the view simply must seem better than usual because going through the challenges and the dark, creepy tunnel made it a relief to be on the other side, which her elders always told her was the whole point, but it still did not mean she thought it was an adequate prize.
But she has to say that she would go through the tunnel and its obstacles a thousand times over again if it meant she would again get to feel this one moment of pure joy warmly glowing in Azula's ordinarily hard and cold eyes while she is breathless from the kiss and the first soft words she speaks in Ty Lee's ear once she catches her breath. "Who, our children and our grandchildren. What, nothing fancy or dramatic, just old age, dying in my sleep at age one hundred and one. Where, sleeping beside you, all cozy in the summer palace after decades of blissful retirement."
"Clearly this fire cider is stronger than I thought," Ty Lee replies, albeit with her cheeks flushed and her heart fluttering.
Azula allows the awkward joke to fade and leans forward to draw Ty Lee into a deep, passionate kiss.