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Life among the Kyoshi Warriors is something she can handle. Nearly every time she falls asleep, Ty Lee starts dreaming to a thought like that. They sleep in the open air a lot or beneath tents, and either place she finds that she can breathe, free, clear, and easy. After being locked up, she appreciates the freedom even more. It reminds her of her days in the circus, before everything had really started for her. Or maybe it had just been catching up.
It's thoughts like those that make her start awake.
Ty Lee opens her eyes and looks around. She finds the back of the girl lying closest to her. She watches her breathe. She tries to notice the hitch in each breath, any irregularity to it. She notes the length of the hair, the dimensions of her body, the exact tone of her skin beneath moonlight. She is looking for the differences to remind herself of where she is. She needs to remind herself that the girl beside her isn't her .
-
Ty Lee has shared a room with other girls before. She has done it all her life, in fact. But these girls don't look like her. And at home, she isn't sleeping in the royal palace.
The first time she is invited for a play date with the princess on the cusp of one of their first holidays from the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, she runs, plays, and somersaults all day. Azula is a challenging playmate.
She always wants to play at war, at fighting. Sometimes, Ty Lee wishes that they would play something that was a little less sad, but with Mei around it's a little easier to persuade her enough that it becomes a game instead of a battle to win.
That night, Ty Lee can't sleep for the longest time. After Ursa – that's Azula's mother's name, she learns, dizzy to the point of grinning – tucks them into bed, she simply lies in an empty space beside a girl who is not her sister. Beside a girl who is a princess and her friend from school. She steals a glance over at Azula who looks a lot less like she even could be scary in her sleep. She looks back up at the ceiling, willing herself to sleep. A cooler breeze – rare at this time of year in the Fire Nation – rushes past the curtain to the left of Azula's bed. She starts to drift into something a little less like being awake. She notices that to her right, Azula is warm.
When she awakes the following morning, it is with her face pressed so close to Azula's back that she almost can't breathe. She sits up and shakes her head clear.
-
Word travels slowly to them sometimes, when they are on missions of mercy somewhere far away from a larger town. Without the resources of an army responding to every need – they are their own army – the Kyoshi Warriors must be present wherever they are and handle their own information. Ty Lee rarely thinks about it, content to be lost in work, learning, and in her new friends. Every day she learns something new about one of them. Every day she is looking for something and doesn't find it, but she likes what she finds instead.
Then, one day, one of the girls comes to her side during training and waves for her attention. Ty Lee gives a little hum of consent, but she keeps working. She wants to do her best here. She wants to belong, and if she stands out at all, it wouldn't be in a bad way, she promises herself.
“Ty Lee,” the girl repeats. Ty Lee blinks and realizes that she had just ignored Suki.
Fear wells up in her heart for just a second. She squints as she tries to meet her eyes, only to find them still soft at their corners. If anything, they look a little hollow instead of bright.
“What is it?” she asks, without any special address, realizing where she is and that she doesn't need it. She doesn't need to be afraid.
“It's... Azula,” Suki says. She reaches out, and Ty Lee sees it coming but still feels a little jolt of surprise and electricity run up the back of her arm as Suki's fingers grip lightly to lead her out away from the training dummy, further into a patch of heavier brush that blocks the sun from their eyes and from their faces.
“What... about her?” Ty Lee says, mirroring Suki's hesitation. She wants to start promising that she would never go back, never betray what she has found for that, for her, but Suki doesn't seem to be looking at her, let alone accusing her of anything. Suki's gaze seems distant, and for a moment she's silent with a working brow that seems confused.
“It's an unconfirmed report,” Suki recites without looking at Ty Lee at first. “We aren't sure of anything. It's just that... being the former Fire Lord and a member of the royal family in the Fire Nation, she is still important enough that word spreads. It might not be true.”
“What might not be true?” Ty Lee demands. Then she tilts her head, trying to meet Suki's eyes. “You're scaring me,” she adds, in case that makes a difference.
Suki meets her eyes with a hollow, cool kind of respect that makes Ty Lee's stomach sink.
“There are some reports that she might be...”
“Don't,” Ty Lee says. Her fingers fly up to cover her own mouth. She learns that she was right to be afraid.
-
She would never have let herself see it coming. She has all her things in a pack that she can easily secure on her back, even through extensive movement. A girl she'd often shared a smaller tent with helps her test it before she goes to find the road. She actually has things to carry with her this time, btu there are some things she can't take with her.
-
It takes some time to search out the information Suki had come across. Ty Lee knows that Suki wouldn't lie to her, but when she arrives in a small village in the Fire Nation, far from the capital on a little island with a long boat ride to get there, she feels a little stupid for assuming the worst. When she sees Azula, robed in white, right by a fountain, she wonders if she should turn around before she sees her. She feels a little stupid for coming all this way.
Her hand goes up to check the strap of her pack. Her feet trudge forward a little. She isn't turning around.
“Miss,” one of the attendants interjects, reaching out to stop her.
Ty Lee lets herself be stopped, looking at the older woman's face.
“I do not know if the Princess should be disturbed.”
“Is she?” Ty Lee asks.
“Is she what?” the attendant asks with a voice with particular, practiced grooves in it for patience.
Ty Lee swallows. She doesn't want to ask about the injuries, about where the rumor had come from, about why. She wonders, but she doesn't want to hear it from this woman if at all.
“Is she still a princess?” she asks instead.
-
In her memory, sometimes everything from the day Azula had found her circus to the day at Boiling Rock is a blur. Sometimes she can manage that. Sometimes it's a lot better, especially when she starts trying to speak to her, refusing to leave for more than a couple of hours at a time even when the yelling and gnashing of teeth starts. Other times, she can't blot it out. It's like a stain on her skin, even when she goes to the stream to try and wash it away.
-
Ba Sing Se beats like a drum or like a plodding, frightened, dying heartbeat. If she listens to it, Ty Lee can hardly stand to be there. So many people are so afraid, and she is a part of the cause of it. It is exactly what they wanted. They've won.
She is happy to see Mei almost smile. She is happy to see Azula so pleased. She is happy to have a roof over her head, good food to eat, and not to have to fight anymore for a while. It all comes with that little thrum in the background, though. She knows there's something wrong with this, that it can't last, but it has to, because Azula says it must.
After they share a meal together in the chambers Azula has claimed for herself, Azula takes on a strange new air of purpose. There is still the sweet, sharp berry taste of desserts and something to drink on Ty Lee's lips as she watches Azula smirk and tilt her head and lean and do everything she can to convince Mei that what Azula wants, she wants.
“Isn't there something they say about the spoils of war? You won, Mei. We even won him back to our side. I don't know how long he'll be useful, but perhaps you could find a use for him. I certainly don't have one for him right now. You should go see Zuko. It could be good for you. It's the chance you've been waiting for. In spite of your ennui.”
The barrage goes on, mingled throughout a conversation and last bites of food. There are little detours away from the topic at hand, but like a creature that coils and constricts around its prey, Azula always returns with the same purpose.
Mei doesn't give a real indication that she will or won't do as Azula says.
Somehow, she has always known how to get by with that better.
Finally, she doesn't say yes, but she leaves.
They are alone.
Azula stands from where she has been lounging. She approaches her and her hand reaches out, beckoning Ty Lee to rise in whatever way she can find that is the fastest. She finds herself kneeling before her still, at the full height of her knees. Azula's fingers touch her throat, four fingertips distinct but not gripping at its side. Ty Lee feels Azula's fingers in her heartbeat.
Then, Azula is called away. There are sharp snatches of voice by the door. Azula has become ruler of tis place, these people, and of her. She lifts her eyes, still holding on her knees. She sits back against her heels, only to brace her weight and slowly stand up. She has a heavy, liquid feeling running through her that starts in her throat and pours down her spine. She sees golden linen hanging from the edges of a bed. She goes to sit on the edge of it.
She glances at the door after Azula. She thinks of poison in the water that might touch all of the people below them. She thinks of honey on the few cakes left scattered on an ornate platter. She stays quiet and waits.
-
It is the brightest, fullest moon of the season. It is the middle of the night, but the darkness is chased away by that cool, blue light. There isn't a cloud to be seen in the sky. Ty Lee hugs herself in the borrowed white clothing she wears with a stolen blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She sits by the stream where the few broken souls who are cared for here take in their daily sun.
Sometimes, the attendants here – Ty Lee still isn't certain what, exactly, they are called – limit their sunshine on some days, particularly for Azula. On the days she is angriest, she suns the least.
On this night, Ty Lee is all alone by the stream. She wonders if staying here makes her one of the sick people, too.
“Ty Lee,” Azula says, pronouncing her name with a sharp roll to it that feels like a prickle of electricity up her spine. Ty Lee looks at her, but she doesn't feel or see the very real, brilliant crackle it could be.
“Azula,” she says softly, as if anything higher might break a spell. “You're awake.” She hugs her knees tighter. She thinks about it. Then she eventually lowers her gaze without inviting Azula and without refusing to give an invitation. She watches the water flow.
“Why do you stay here?” Azula demands with sharp, haughty clarity. Ty Lee hears it more now, after all this time away again. “Why don't you go home?” she asks, not giving Ty Lee a chance to answer the first question.
Ty Lee gets to think about them both, and after a few moments she says: “Home? Where would I go?”
“It seems you found freedom for yourself after my direct instructions,” Azula says.
Ty Lee isn't sure if this clarity is reassuring or not.
“The War is over, Azula. You have to stop fighting,” she says with more confidence than she had anticipated.
“You presume to—” Azula begins to say.
Ty Lee swallows hard. She is swallowing her fear and putting it so deep in her belly that it might never come back up if she pushes through it. She lifts her gaze and tilts it so she is looking right at Azula and looking right through her command. Finally, she feels the right to do it and that it hasn't just happened by mistake, like a firework catching a stray spark.
“Yeah, I do,” she says, tired but sure. “Sit down, Azula,” she requests. “Let the War be over.”
It takes a while, but eventually she feels it. She feels the breath, the body heat, and the soft crackle of energy that is so familiar she sees it in other people right beside her.